Thames Path – Day Nine – Maidenhead to Marlow

It’s been a long time since we last did a leg of the Thames Path – nine months in fact. The reasons for this are many and varied but boil down to three things: a busy life, the weather and that we found the last leg boring which somewhat put us off. However, with the weather improving we decided to get out and do another leg.

Every Man, Woman and Child and their Dog

We really want to get to the start of each leg using public transport but sometimes that’s just not possible. To get from our base in Reading to (and from) our destinations of Maidenhead and Marlow today would have been possible by train but would have required more time than we had. Instead we drove and parked the car in Marlow and then got the train to Maidenhead so we could start from where we left off. The problem is that Maidenhead station is a long way, over a mile, from the river through not very interesting back streets which is not a great way to start any leg.

It was a gorgeous day, the first truly nice weather of the year, and so consequently there were lots of people on the paths. It felt like everyone from Maidenhead, Bourne End, Cookham, and Marlow were out in force. Oddly, while we saw lots of people there were surprisingly few pleasure boats on the water

What we did see were lots and lots of big houses, some with boat houses at the bottom of their gardens that were as big as our house. However, the biggest house of the lot was the National Trust’s Cliveden on opposite bank. We have been there countless times but it was interesting to see it from the opposite bank of the river.

One thing I was very pleased to see as we walked back into Marlow was a Little Library of which I have written about before. I even found a book to take away and I hope to return the favour and drop one back into it when we return by it next.