Ridgeway Trip VII: A Short Walk

By -

 After a fairly unsatisfactory breakfast and being unable to find anyone to pay the bill to (someone finally appeared to Teresa at the last moment, after the rest of us had left), we took a long, beautiful footpath up to the Ridgeway.  There was relatively little up today, and more down, as we headed into the Thames valley.  We passed a gallops -- there were so many gallops along the way, and we were disappointed never to actually see any galloping, because they do it at 7am and it took us until 9 to get up there.  

We are extremely bad at taking selfies

Getting up to the track


We crossed over an old brick and concrete bridge that covered an overgrown gully, which was in fact a dismantled railway.  Then we went up a stony track to more beautiful farms and fields.  We did pass two of the most beautiful, expensive horses I've ever seen in my life, being ridden by a couple of women in their 30s.  We also met a local fellow wearing a cheerful Mexican belt, so Kim asked him about it and they chatted about Mexico for a little while. 

Old railway gully, one side of the bridge is brick

...and the other is a wooden fence

Somewhat steep and stony track

We passed a steep-sided valley that was just lovely and full of farm stuff.  As we got down closer to town, there were houses and the occasional car.  We were on the lookout for a bench that was supposed to be just across from a golf course, and it was a lovely bench!  We had a nice lunch and were almost to Streatley by then.  We got to the B&B fairly early -- much earlier than official check-in time -- but Teresa was already there so we were looking for her, and allowed to come in and rest.   We'd only gone 7 miles, but I was feeling very tired and enjoyed a fabulous nap.  We met our hostess, and arranged to be driven into town for dinner because of Teresa's ankle.  We even got to go into a pharmacy just before it closed and get a few much-needed items.  Then we had a massive and delicious Indian feast dinner, got picked up, and came home.


Our friend, the bench

There were ponies in this daisy-filled field

We still had plenty of time to sit in our hosts' absolutely beautiful garden.  They were quite surprised that we headed straight for the shady side of the house; one thing about being from California is that you always look for the shade, while British people appreciate the sun while it lasts!  


Comments

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

CC Spin #36: Rob Roy

By -
Image
 Success!  I had a little trouble with this one, because I was trying to read it on my phone, and that was just not working very well.  I was less than halfway through and March was looming, but a nice Penguin copy came across the donation table and I took it home.  After that, it was easy to read 50 pages a day and zoom through... Rob Roy, by Sir Walter Scott When I read The Heart of Mid-Lothian , I was surprised that it wasn't about Jacobites adventuring all over the highlands, but that turns out to be Rob Roy.  Honestly I preferred Jeanie Deans, but this was quite fun.  I can see why stay-at-home English folks of the mid 1800s loved reading this! It's 1715, and our narrator is Frank Osbaldistone, whose father is a London businessman.  Young Frank prefers art and poetry to accounting (and doesn't quite see why he should work hard when his dad has plenty of money), and his exasperated dad sends him off to cousins in Northumberland, pointing out that he who does not work do
Read more