Two people, four days, fifty six miles

It was a triumph of Nurofen over unmarked paths and rude bar-staff. With dogged determination and regular ‘oaty pauses’, when my mother-bought health bars coaxed us through the next few fields, Simon and I managed to walk from the source of the Thames in Gloucestershire to the centre of Oxford over the four days of our secular Chocolate Egg Bank Holiday Weekend.

Both of us confessed to having severe nerves as the train pulled into Kemble on Thursday evening. Clutching our luggage – mine, a purpose-bought rucksack; Simon’s, a cumbersome laptop bag which he’d got free from work – we set off on the mile long walk to our first night’s stay. Our navigation of the short journey was not exactly confident but we made it in good time and enjoyed an early night in a faux-antique four poster that felt no sturdier than a paper anvil.

Four days later, on Monday afternoon, we crawled into Oxford town centre, sunburned, insect-eaten and smelling feintly of Tiger Balm. Over the past few days we had witnessed the Thames grow from this:



To something more like this:

We’d seen lots of these:

And witnessed the British spring at its best:

But we’d also trudged through countless badly-marked fields where horse hooves had packed previously muddy earth into a now-arid and perilous potholed terrain; we'd dragged ourselves onwards when the pub we’d earmarked as ‘lunch’ turned out to be fully booked and rammed with trendy country living types who glowered at our backpacks, mud-splattered tracksuit bottoms and sweaty upper lips; and we had to put up with the fact that several stretches of the Thames path were around a mile from the actual Thames and, at one (thankfully rare) point, along an A road, thus:

For all the flippancy and moaning, however, there’s no doubt that the trek was worthwhile: a real test of our mental strength and ultimately more satisfying than an ice-cold beer at a Lanzarote lunchtime. It’s now two days later and my calves are still aching but there are no regrets other than one particularly flaccid portion of fish pie at The Rose Revived, Newbridge. Plans to complete the next leg, from Oxford to Windsor, are afoot for 2008 – although it seems more likely that we will enjoy the route from the comfort of a barge or similar floating vessel. Given that I managed to walk nearly sixty miles and still gain four pounds, the merits of making the epic journey on foot seem to have waned somewhat.