Day 17 - Windsor to Runnymede

 Friday 25 August

We took the train from Newbury to Reading, which was full of Reading Festival people being herded into lanes/queues and onto Slough, where we caught the little quick train into the centre of Windsor.

Through the shops and restaurants mall and you are bang smack opposite the castle.  Avoiding the long taxi queue that snakes up the hill we found someone to take our starting photo.

We walked down the hill, past the previously mentioned fudge shop and onto Windsor Bridge, the bridge that links Windsor with Eton, built in 1822.

We should have guessed it was going to be one of those days when Susan despite standing under this sign pointing our way for the day, walked in the opposite direction!

As this walk progressed we made sure we kept looking back, as you kept seeing the Castle from different angles and Eton College's Chapel.

Henry VI who founded the college in 1440 when he was only 18 had intended for the chapel to be bigger than a cathedral, at least twice it's present length, but was toppled by Edward IV in 1461 before the chapel was completed.

We were passing through the public area of Home Park at this point, these playing fields date back to the late 1600s when work was undertaken to construct a great garden between Windsor Castle, the River Thames and Datchet.  In 1851 Queen Victoria authorised and commanded that this area of land should be appropriated and used for the recreation of the citizens of Windsor.  The park is still owned by The Crown Estates.  The site is home to Windsor Rugby, Cricket, Archery and Fishing clubs.

The other section of Home Park is the King's private back garden, open to the public on just a few days a year.

The next bridge along is closed for security reasons, so we crossed over the road and onto the path on the other side of the river.

Victoria Bridge; this was originally a cast iron bridge but was replaced by concrete in the 1960s, after the WW2 tanks crossing it and causing damage.  It connects Windsor to the pretty village of Datchet. (Datchet was the first place in Britain to witness the arrival of the motor car!)

The Honourable Evelyn Ellis (1843-1913) bought the car, a Panhard-Levassor which had a Daimler engine.  He picked it up at Micheldever station in Hampshire, it had come over from France by train.  He drove it back to Datchet in July 1895 and in February 1896 King Edward VII became the first King to have a ride in a car.  Ellis himself went on to found the RAC and the Panhard-Levassor can be seen in the Science Museum, London.

Looking back at the bridge.

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The lovely building below is the Royal Boathouse, 'Albert Cottage and Boathouse'

The next section of the walk is plagued by huge aeroplanes having taken off or landing at Heathrow, they come in really low and you have to stop conversation!

There are some really interesting houses along this stretch, a real mixture.

We arrived at our first Lock of the day Old Windsor Lock, where we saw the people we'd waved at when we were crossing Victoria Bridge.

Old Windsor is where the palace belonging to Edward the Confessor was sited before William the Conqueror moved the royal residence to the present castle site 3 miles away.  It was a very important town in Saxon Berkshire.  

Along this section there is only one place to stop for lunch, a Harvester Restaurant called the Bells of Ouzeley, so you may want a picnic for this stretch, it was really busy, and I'd got a Wowcher voucher which in the end caused way more bother than it was worth!

We had been walking for over 2 hours and had done about 5 miles.

It's name recalls a legend that goes back to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when in 1538, the bells of Osney Abbey in Oxford were supposed to have been lost in the mud of the river bed here by the monks who were trying to escape with them from Henry VIII's agents.  The bells have never been found.

Just down from the Lock is Honeypot Cottage, built in 1933 with local bricks and thatch, where actress Beryl Reid used to live from the late 1950s til she died in 1996, apparently she loved cats and would look after any stray having up to 20 cats in her home.  It has round rooms and she added a square dining room.

The right river bank which is in Berkshire, now becomes Surrey and we enter the land of The Magna Carta, where over 800 years ago somewhere in this huge (now owned by the National Trust) meadow King John stamped his seal on the Magna Carta (the Great Charter) this formed the foundation stone of English Liberty.

It was a result of King John's abject misrule.  There was no money and the King had been forced to raise exorbitant taxes to pay for his disastrous wars.  The Barons had enough and united against him and liberated the nation from the power of absolute monarchy.  This subsequently became enshrined in English Law and formed the bedrock of national constitutions around the english-speaking world.  There were 49 grievances drawn up by the barons and by the edge of the river an agreement was thrashed out by the King, representatives of the noblemen, the church, merchants of London and some ordinary men folk.

It underlies the American Constitution and Bill of Rights, and also the European Convention for Human Rights.

There are 3 memorials, the Magna Carta Memorial (pictured below) was presented in 1957 by the American Bar Association as a tribute to 'freedom under law' and also the Kennedy Memorial, set on an acre of land given to the people of America in 1965 in memory of President John F Kennedy. At the summit of the hill is the Commonwealth Air Forces Memorial, dedicated to the 20,456 airmen who have no grave.

We wandered over to Writ in Water, an immersive architectural installation.

Designed to reflect upon the founding principles of democracy through a meeting of water, sky and light.

A doorway leads to a circular labyrinth, where you can turn either way to reach the inner doorway which opens out into a central chamber, where there is a huge opening through which you can see the sky which reflects above a pool of water.

A little further downstream is Ankerwyke Priory, founded in Henry II's era for Benedictine Nuns and alongside is the National Trust's oldest tree the Ankerwyke Yew, estimated to be about 2000 years old.

We only had a little further to walk before reaching our stop for the night right next to Bell Weir Lock

We stayed at The Runnymede Hotel, which was perfect after a day of walking The Thames Path, the view below is from our bedroom, overlooking Bell Weir Lock.  The hotel had an outdoor pool which was wonderful to swim in and a buffet style dinner which was amazing!

We finished today's walk at 8.5 miles, 21,000 steps.