After a comfortable nights stop at The Trout and a full English we were ready for another days walk – today only ten miles. Before leaving we spoke to one of the pub workers who lives on a boat at New Bridge, which we’d passed yesterday. He drives to work as it would take him a couple of hours by boat at 3mph!
The race is on!
We were on a tight schedule today as we wanted to catch the 13:22 bus from Lechlade to Swindon. There are only three buses a day and while Lechlade is a pretty place we didn’t want to spend an extra three hours there. We’d hoped to leave The Trout at 8:30 but by the time we’d breakfasted and sorted ourselves it was nine. That gave us 4 hours and 22 mins to reach Lechlade.
We haven’t really bothered looking at our pace on previous legs because it really hasn’t been important but this time we were clock watching and trying to keep to 3mph. That is 20 minute miles which seemed hard work but than I thought about Roger Bannister, the first man to run a sub 4-minute mile, and I thought we should be able to manage to do it in 20!
Spoiler alert – we made it!
Pill Boxes
It was another beautiful day for a walk and, once again, quiet with hardly any people around. The river became more interesting on this stage as in places it would widen to form almost lake like pools and then narrow down again. It has also become windier. In some places we were able to cut off the corner, which saved a bit of time, but in other places we were forced to hug the river and had to follow some very big loops.
There were also lots of pillboxes both today and yesterday, frequently dotted along the river. In some places they were close to the bank and in others quite some distance away. I wondered if they were built further away or whether over the last 60 years the river has subtly moved its course.
I had a hard time imagining foreign forces being dropped in rural Oxfordshire and paddling up the Thames to make mischief in Lechlade making the pillboxes necessary but there are plenty of them so someone clearly felt that there was a need. I tried to imagine wanting to do my bit for the war and being stationed in one of these.
We made it to Lechlade with an hour before our bus so had tea and cake in a local cafe before making our way home satisfied with a couple of days perfect walking. Two down and just two to go now.
To Date
Day: 19
Start: Tadpole Bridge
End: Lechlade
Distance: 10.19 miles
Cumulative: 164.77 miles
To go: 22 miles