The Thames Path Days 9-10

So hard to believe that we’ve been walking for over a week now.Our first big shock came when we started walking on the 9th day. The path led us through the town of Reading and it soon became apparent that this was an area which was a little ‚rough‘ with rubbish strewn everywhere. How could this happen to our beautiful river? Needless to say, the river has long become our friend and we were watching out for it.
Thank goodness the scenery soon changed back to lovely countryside and our anticipation of Henley grew with each step we took and each rowing team which passed us on the river. Oh yes, there were many teams practicing for the Henley Royal Regatta. The regatta takes place every year in the last week of June / first week of July and seems to be a very big affair, attracting teams from all over the world. It’s been held since 1886 and is termed ‚royal“ becsuse the Queen is the patron.
Here in Henley at last we took a rowing boat out on the Thames with strawberries and Prosecco ……aaahh messing about on the river, there“s no better way to spend an afternoon.
The following day we walked on to Marlow, with the sun on our faces and beautiful wide open countryside to admire.
Once we reached Marlow there was a regatta going on between the various schools and it was exciting to watch the young rowers compete. There were many schools represented, including Eton. Indeed this had been something we’d noticed since leaving Reading, the number of private schools along the Thames, each with their own rowing club. At the end of day 10 we were in Maidenhead and met up with
my niece and her husband for a very enjoyable evening together.