Henley Walk

We received an email from one of the girls we met on our sail Croatia tour to come for a walk in the country side and jumped at the chance of doing something cool without having to organise it. Petria has apparently organised a few walks during her time in London but this was the first one since the Croatia trip. We met at Paddington station then caught the train out to Hanley on Thames. This area was beautiful! The walk began along a river where we watched the rowers training, apparently there is a huge regatta there during summer. We couldn’t understand how anyone would willingly climb into a row boat as it was bloody cold. Everyone was wearing thermals and Damien had decided it was cold enough to wear his snow jacket.

It was cold, very cold! There was frost on the grass and puddles had frozen over. We walked over a loch, through sheep paddocks, cow paddocks, along muddy tracks and through sparse forests. Finally after 5 miles, we reached our half way lunch stop, The Stag and Huntsman. The food here was really good, so good in fact that we couldn’t even bear to look at the dessert menu after finishing our main. This was a good thing too as after lunch the path began to climb.


We continued up hills through forests carpeted with autumn leaves. Through meadows, where the grass was still frosty even though it was getting quite late in the day. Eventually, as the sun was beginning to set, say around 4pm, we arrived back in town ready to catch the train back to Paddington. We were all very tired and cold so a hot chocolate was well deserved. It was a great day and it was lovely to meet some of Petria’s friends. We hope to do it again soon. Sunday I was having trouble sleeping so I got up early to avoid waking Damien and so I could ring mum. It sounds like everyone is falling apart at home. She is very restricted at the moment after an arthroscopy on her knee whilst Andrew is in a moon boot after breaking his foot in Cairns. Once Damien appeared we made plans to head to the Tate Modern to see the new installation in the turbine hall.
The sky was blue so we walked through Hyde Park. It looks so different every week at the moment with all the leaves falling. The grass is still green but otherwise it has become quite stark. It is always nice seeing all the people using the space to walk their dogs or exercise. From Hyde park corner we caught the bus to Waterloo then walked along Southbank towards to Tate. We stopped for lunch at the Real Greek (another chain) then headed into the gallery.

The current installation in the turbine hall is by a Chinese artist Ai Weiwei who worked with people from the traditional porcelain making region to create hundreds of thousands of porcelain sunflower seeds. Each piece was made in a mould, fired, hand painted, re-fired and then polished. When the installation first opened people were actually able to walk through and interact with the art work but this was stopped due to fears that the ceramic dust would cause health problems. I think that fencing the work off has sucked some of the life out of it as it is now very static, but it is still pretty cool. After the turbine hall we headed had a look around some of the permanent collections then decided it was time to go home. We crossed the Thames on the millennium bridge and just about froze! I think winter has come a little bit early. As I write this it is snowing outside. I think I’ll head to Hyde Park a bit later to see if there is enough snow to make a snow angel.