Taplow - Jubilee River - Eton - Thames Path - Dorney Rowing Lake

27 Oct 2005

• Total distance : 17-18 miles, all on firm paths.
• Start point : The Environment Agency car park near the paper mill in Taplow, SU 904819. There's a bigger car park over the road, with a sign proclaiming it to be the "Visitor's car park", but the presence of a large man in a hi-vis jacket with SECURITY on his back suggested it had something to do with the paper recycling company.
• Weather : Amazing. The hottest October day on record.
• Temperature at start 17C, by lunchtime 23C.
• Muddiness rating (*=dry, *****=awful) *
• People passed : Hundreds, but there was room for them all.
• Step counter : 31610.
• Camera : Olympus C-5060W. Images taken before deletions = 84.

Opened in 2002 after five year's construction and fifteen years in the planning, the Jubilee River is the visible result of the Environment Agency's Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton Flood Alleviation Scheme. Put simply, it's another channel for the Thames, and it's designed to avoid flooding in the relevant towns.

There are people who say it was a waste of money, or worse. Soon after it opened, in January 2003, there was serious flooding, particularly around and downstream of Windsor. A report commissioned to investigate the role of the new river concluded that it hadn't caused the problem, but that hasn't prevented people from claiming it did - notably those in the Wraysbury area who say it stands to reason that if the RBWM ships its floods downstream, they're going to cop it. Bizarrely some people UPstream from Taplow claim it's worsened things there too. There are probably folks walking round New Orleans saying "this never happened under the Lib Dems".

Whatever. It's there and it's unlikely to get filled in. What is without question is that the Environment Agency has done a marvellous job in recreating long-lost habitats like marshlands, wetlands and withy beds. They also built an 8-mile long footpath cum cycle-way alongside the river, with several elegant wooden footbridges linking to existing footpaths and byways. The real triumph, though, is that despite lying rarely more than a mile from the M4 the Jubilee River provides a quiet, open, and largely deserted landscape in which the human, not the wildlife, feels the intruder.

I set off at about 10.00 on a weekday morning in bright October sun. By the time I'd walked quarter of a mile I'd taken fifty photos: the sun, the warm colours of the foliage and the intense blue of the sky and water kept pressing my creative buttons, despite my insistence that I think purely in black-and-white.

The Jubilee Path is throughout its length firm, dry and flat, and as such each mile is easily walked. But there are lots of them - it's about eight miles to Eton and the walk back along the Thames is at least as far again. Most people choose to start from one of the car parks along the river's length, but when I'd been hospitalised with a broken leg back in April I'd set myself the target of doing the whole circuit before the end of the year, so I ploughed happily on, stopping only to eat my sandwiches at the amazing Dorney Wetlands. In places, particularly east of Eton Wick, the path is straight and the riverscape unfolds at a fairly slow pace, but if you know what birds to look out for you'll find plenty to keep your attention all the way along.

Disappointed that the path didn't take me to the very point where the river rejoins the Thames, I was directed along an avenue through Eton School's playing fields (an area known as Agar's Plough) into Eton. The sun was blazing down, the temperature had gone up past balmy, so I gratefully turned into the taproom of the Henry VI pub.

I was overjoyed to find it a proper grown-up's boozer, not a bleached-pine-tabled you-simply-must-try-our-sunblushed-focaccia gastropub, or - even worse - a Cheeky-Charlie's-Chicken-Nuggets-and-Sticky-Fingers-Trampolinn with Barside Baby-Changing Facilities. In a pleasant gloom deep enough for me to slip my boots off without anyone noticing (not visually anyway) I supped my bitter and watched someone's backlit cigarette smoke coiling gently up to the ochre ceiling. If they really ban fags from pubs I reckon Glade will have to launch a special air-unfreshener to recreate the atmosphere us old soaks find so relaxing.

Eventually I hauled myself back upright and started off along the Thames. Boys were playing football with their shirts off and doubling as goalposts. Two little girls were splashing in the river watched by their mother, sitting swishing her feet in the water. Parakeets squawked in the treetops. The sun beat down from a deep blue sky. It was late October. Global warming didn't seem such a bad thing after all.

At Boveney there's an abrupt bend in the river, and I diverted at the boathouse to have a look at Dorney Rowing Lake, as I hadn't been there for a few years.

I expected to be appalled by the desecration of perfectly good farmland which (here he goes again folks) I remember well, but in the event I was impressed. It's a mile-and-a-half long lake, with a stylish set of buldings at its eastern end and an extensive arboretum. It's open to the public all year round. The only worrying thing about it is the fact that it'll be a London 2012 Olympics venue, which'll probably mean we'll be subsidising the "upgrade" of the little road past Dorney Reach to Spaghetti Junction standards.

Go and see it quick, before they start.

When they were digging out the 8 million tonnes of gravel and clay to construct the lake, they discovered the remains of what were apparently two bridges across the Thames, dating from 1200 BC and 400 BC respectively. These would be the oldest bridges on the Thames. They may have spanned the whole river, but are more likely to have crossed one of several channels when the Thames had a more distributed pattern of flow than it does today. Although we think of it now as one river, in many places - such as at Queen's Eyot (pictured) a mile south of the M4, and at Bray - it still takes multiple routes.

Click here for map > JubileeMap

Environment Agency website > http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/

Dorney Lake website > http://www.dorneylake.com/

Choose another walk > TheWalks

-- RodBird - 05 Nov 2005