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.

Legoland: A Brief Retrospective

Having been warned in advance of our visit that Legoland is 'shit', we weren't expecting much. Which, all things considered, was lucky. Like Tom Cruise films, limited edition chocolate bars and Jilly Cooper novels post-Polo, Legoland certainly falls into the category of 'Expect nothing and you won't be disappointed', which, for a family attraction, is possibly not the category for which the land's creators were hoping. Even the name itself is a dramatic overstatement: Legohamlet would probably have been a more accurate moniker. Despite this, Mr Legoland's astonishing bravery as regards ticket prices would not suggest a company worried about disappointing their punters - or perhaps they just aren't expecting any return business. Either way, we went, clutching our print-out discount voucher and anticipating a mediocre Sunday morning near Windsor.

And that, unusually, is precisely what we got. Legoland has good points: a nifty line in branded keyrings in the shop and the faded glories of Miniworld, where cars and buses run without tracks through some sort of magnetic wizardry, where Eurostar streaks between Paris and London, where some crucial integral walls in Sacre Coeur have collapsed to one side, where America is represented only by NASA, where the old Wembley hasn't been replaced by the new one and where ABBA play eternally to a group of Swedish fans and an empty pushchair.

Despite wonderful attention to detail, the park is looking tired and none of the rides justified more than a thirty second queue - even the most 'scary' attraction, the Dragon Coaster, proved to be depressingly tame when Simon managed to take a cup of coffee on board by accident and survive without spilling a drop. He later admitted, however, that he had not escaped entirely and was suffering from minor burns having used his thumb to block the small hole in the cup's plastic drinking lid. The food selection deserves all the negative press it is currently receiving - the only way to eat healthily within the park's confines is to abstain altogether. Even fans of junk-food are in for a shock though - a chicken sandwich meal is over £7. I may have an insatiable appetite and a new salary but that was out of the question.

How things change. It's a week after our Legoland visit and I'm now on a strict pre-holiday crash diet and have eaten only soup, corn thins and fruit today. My stomach has been rumbling non-stop for seventeen hours and suddenly £7 for a chicken burger looks like a generous and irresistable option. I must go to sleep before I phone for an emergency portion of garlic bread with cheese.