It’s got to be said, I’ve neglected this blog for some time. It’s not that I’ve found it difficult to maintain. It’s not even that I’ve given up walking the Thames Path. It’s just I forgot about it really.

So now I’m posting another entry, this time to say that I have now finished the Thames Path. It has taken approximately two years, which is nothing to brag about. Only the other week the winner of the London Marathon did it in just over 2 hours. And at that pace he’d have done the Path is around 16 hours! But, as anyone who knows me will testify, I’m no marathon runner. But doing the Thames Path has allowed me to rediscover walking.

I’ve always enjoyed walking. As a child I would regularly go walking with my parents, particularly on our holidays, usually in Scotland. But as a student and then a fully employed adult, my walking boots tended to get a little dusty.

The Thames Path has reinvigorated all that. I'm pleased to get it finished. The latter stages, west of Oxford, had to be done in groups with one car left in villages at the start and end of the day’s walk. The landscape in this part of the world is very flat, which to be fair surprised me, but still made for a pleasant walk. The stage immediately after Lechlade, which involved a long walk down for a mile down an A road, and a distinct lack of riverside walking and was consequently the least enjoyable.

However, there was a real sense of achievement arriving at the source, marked by a some stones on the ground, a tree and a lump of granite left by the Thames Conservators, but whose plaque is getting tricky to read. I would recommend that anyone doing this lack stage should park at The Thames Head pub. Once you’ve finished you just need to retrace your steps and for a couple of field lengths, then turn right and head up the hill to the railway track. Carefully cross the track (it is allowed at this point) then turn immediately left over the stile and follow the track alongside the railway until it drops down to the main road. The pub is then just up to the right. It’s not the best of pubs, but on a cool day it was got to stop for a celebratory coffee and banoffee pie! (The better pub to stop for lunch is The Wild Duck in Ewen, just a short diversion from the Path.)

So that is the Thames Path. What next?

Well I paid a visit to Waterstones and have purchased a couple of books for other long distance paths in the South. The first is the more challenging Ridgeway. Like the Thames Path, most of The Ridgeway is accessible from home, albeit by car rather than public transport. I’ll do this, but will have to use the same method adopted for the west of Oxford sections of the Thames Path. However, the other one that is intriguing me, that can be done by public transport is the London LOOP. This starts at Erith, along part of the Thames Path Extension.

In addition I’ll be doing plenty of circular walks, some picked up from books, others from the excellent Country Walking magazine, and some just made up after a perusal of a OS map. And I’ll try to right about them here.