ridgeway: goring to princes risborogh

This weekend I had the rare experience of not spending it stuck in front of the computer at work! So my b/f and I went on a little hike through the country side on the Ridgeway National Trail. Just getting to Goring was not the easiest thing in the world as we had to get up at the crazy hour of 5:30am, then ended up taking a replacement bus to Southall so we could get to Reading and finally a train to Goring.

So off we went in the usual grey murk that often accompanies British mornings, starting at 9am, heading north, and mostly along the Thames for the first 2hrs. After that we went Eastish for the rest of the day. By the time it was 12 the sun was out and all the autumn colours could be seen, v.pretty! Also around this time we started to think about lunch, however I didn't fully appreciate how fussy we both were in terms of fining a nice spot to eat and so was another 1.5 hrs before we found a nice field with the sun on our backs, green grass, autumn trees and birds of prey to watch. It seems that the Red Kite has made a great come back in the area, fantastic to watch so graceful.

At that point we had gone half way (20ish km) so then was the second half. This half was not as interesting as there were very long stretches along bridleways that always seemed to look the same! Felt for a while like I was in the twilight zone… Still we made it in the end to Princes Risborogh a full trip of 42km in about 8hrs.

Then there was the task of finding somewhere to eat. What a strange town, every pub we went to didn't serve food on Sundays! Eventually we found one but it felt like we had to hike another 10km to get there! After a Guinness everything was feeling much better :) Then we did a little jog back to the station in time to catch the train back to London and a nice hot shower!

Was a great day out!