Date: 29th December 2013
Route: Hambleden to Henley and back
Distance: around 9 miles
Since we started the year walking along the Thames Path, it seemed to make sense to finish 2013 the same way, with our favourite walk, the first walk from the Time Out Book of Country Walks and the walk I have probably blogged about the most regularly.
Beautiful sunshine, frosty hedgerows and barely a cloud in the sky made for perfect walking conditions - or so we thought, until we came to Henley Bridge halfway through the walk to discover that our usual path home was underneath a substantial amount of the Thames, surrounded by flooded roads and fields and frozen puddles!
We vaguely remembered the route up to a path on the hillside above the flood waters, then joined up with a lane running to the Flower Pot Hotel, before descending on a causeway to Medmenham Lock (keeping our fingers crossed that we would actually be able to cross the lock when we got to it!).
Thankfully, the path over the lock was high enough to escape the high water, although with vast amounts of water flowing beneath our feet, looking down was decidedly vertigo-inducing.
All in all, a bit of adventure, even though this was a very familiar route, setting up for a lot more walking in 2014.
