Maidenhead - Pinkneys Green – Quarry Wood – Marlow – Bourne End – Cookham – Maidenhead Bridge

10 May 2008

• Total distance: a touch over thirteen miles
• Start point: Farm Road, Maidenhead, SU 866814
• Weather: Bright sun, comfortably warm. Thundery clouds later.
• Temperature at start: 18C.
• Muddiness rating: ** (*=dry, *****=awful)
• People passed: I gave up counting when I got to a million, all of them along the Thames.
• Step counter: 28165
• Camera: Olympus C-5060W. Images taken before deletions = 83.

As I walked away from the house the monoxidal whiff of smouldering hydrocarbons reminded me that Carter’s Steam Fair was setting up on Pinkneys Green. It’s an admirable event and although I no longer feel the need to terrify myself on the Steam Gallopers or Chair-o-Planes I’m very glad it survives. It feels like it’s run by enthusiasts rather than by the usual faceless entertainment corporation. Luckily Michael Jackson’s attempt to buy it a few years ago was thwarted or – well, let’s not go there.

Gouldings Wood and Park Wood, just north of the Lemon Tree pub, were carpeted by bluebells. Traditionally they’ve been at their peak in the first week of May so, in line with the trend for spring milestones to arrive ever earlier, I was surprised to see them. (When I went back seven days later there wasn’t one left so maybe it was just luck).

Generally if I take JPEGs and RAWs of the same subject, the latter open up with slightly duller colours. But when recording bluebells the colours are markedly different, the RAWs being bluer and more intense. I’ve no idea why it happens. It’s a mystery, and one that I then complicated by accidentally changing the white balance on the camera from Automatic to the Romantic Candlelit Dinner With Gypsy Violinist setting, rendering all my images a deep blue. For sentimental reasons I was carrying the first digital camera I owned, an Olympus 5060. It’s been a faithful servant over the years, and optically it’s still impressive, but its controls are a bit fiddly and this was the second time I’d changed something important by accident. Unless there are strong reasons for producing RAW images I generally don’t do so with this (unbuffered) camera, but I cursed my decision later because I could have easily corrected the colour temperature retrospectively. I’d ascribed the blueish tint on the images on the camera’s LCD display to its age, but alas it was my age, not the camera’s, that was the real problem. Silence at the back there.

Walking into Bisham I had to use my meagre diplomatic skills to navigate through a herd of inquisitive young cattle, and then counted eighteen red kites circling above. They were clearly attracted by the freshly turned earth in the fields alongside Quarry Wood Road. Several of them came swooping down to ground level and joined gulls and crows in the rolling maul behind the tractor. I haven’t seen kites doing this before.

Along the Thames from Marlow to Cookham there were huge numbers of people out enjoying the good weather. Familes, couples, joggers, chavs, bare-chested lads, bikini’d East European girls, Big Brother rejects – all of them evidently happy to be out in the sun. Those rich enough to afford a boat perched ostentatiously aboard their vast gin-palaces, hooting down their cellphones to other seafarers bravely negotiating the high seas around Pangbourne or Oxford. You wouldn’t want to get one of those vessels in seawater after all. Imagine the salt. Ugh.

The crowds slowly dispersed as the sunlight gave way to ominous dark clouds, and I turned off the towpath at Maidenhead Bridge with the feeling I’d be lucky to get home without a soaking.

They’re talking about redeveloping our cinema on the Colonnade. How can they casually discard our town’s heritage like that? All those memories of Saturday matinees, two pennorth of broken biscuits and the latest Flash Gordon, all gone, cast aside? It’s an outrage. Something Should Be Done.

Next to the forlorn cinema building is York Stream. The Maidenhead Waterways Restoration Group has an ambitious plan to enable boat traffic to “once again” reach the town centre. Apparently the waterway they want to re-establish, then known as The Canal, was still in use in the 1940’s. This group of people deserve the utmost respect for their enthusiasm and the determination they’ve demonstrated in getting realistic plans in place and attracting some serious sponsors. Unlike in other riverside towns, the Thames has no influence on Maidenhead’s core, so any hint that there’s a river nearby would go some way to restoring the town’s (probably apochryphal and undoubtedly selfstyled) “Jewel of the Thames” tag. But digging the channel can only be a first step. It’ll have to accompanied by investment in the area alongside. It’s unlikely that the channel would attract any commercial traffic so the town must become interesting enough to encourage visitors to leave the easily navigable river linking Windsor, Marlow, Henley, and Reading. The boarded up shops in the High Street and Nicholsons Centre wouldn’t be a big draw. But it might just be the spark Maidenhead needs. Let’s hope.

We could start improving the place right away by eliminating the pretentious Pseud’s-Corner style verses on the walls around our subways. “Donnish ruins, pungent with history”? In Maidenhead? I suppose we’ve still got the old cinema ....... but I don’t think that smell’s history.

Maidenhead Waterways Restoration Group > http://www.maidenheadwaterways.org/index.shtml

Click here for map > SouthThamesMap

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-- RodBird - 27 Jun 2008