I’d been wanting to try The Bull Inn at Sonning ever since I read Jerome K. Jerome’s description in his comic masterpiece Three Men in A Boat – Not to mention the dog (1889): “If you stay at Sonning,” he advised, “put up at ‘The Bull’.”
Built in the 16th century, it is still owned by the neighbouring St Andrew’s Church (which rents it to Fullers).
Summer in the UK is festival time! In the immediate run-up to the big Reading Festival (from 24 August), tiny Mapledurham village has just hosted an enjoyable food festival in the grounds of the 16th-century Mapledurham House – with everything from artisanal cheeses and locally produced rapeseed oil to Provencale rosé, South African biltong and the fruit scones I’m scoffing right this minute with butter and tea.
Like the bear that went over the mountain, what often keeps me going is the urge to know what’s coming up ahead. So wherever we stop to moor up, I can’t help wondering what the next lock or village looks like. (Whereas Roy, apparently, has no such interest.)
Fortunately, the place that’s ahead is often close enough for me to be able to gently jog there along the towpath. Here’s what I saw on the 10km route from Wallingford to Shillingford and back, via Benson lock.
Along the Thames, it’s common for a bridge to immediately link two separate towns or villages, one of which is obviously more flourishing than its neighbour. Goring has Streatley, Pangbourne has Whitchurch, and Wallingford has Crowmarsh Gifford. (Sounds straight out of Harry Potter, doesn’t it?)
It would be rude not to at least take a stroll through the bustling metropolis of Crowmarsh, especially as we’re moored on its side of the bridge. Apart from boasting an impressive total of two builder’s merchants, the village is perhaps most memorable for:
Waking up to the English rarity of a clear blue sky and warm sunshine, murder – nay, multiple and grisly murders! – was the first thing that crossed my mind.
You see, Wallingford is one of several villages featured in the TV series Midsomer Murders; it was Inspector Barnaby’s home village of Causton. Both the Town Hall and the Corn Exchange (now a theatre) were used in the episodes “Death of a Hollow Man” and “Death of a Stranger”.
“Wallingford is lovely!”, all our friends at the Thames & Kennet Marina agreed. So we set off in our Dutch barge Karanja to take a look at this ancient market town, and ended up spending six nights there.
Anyone with a boat wants to be out on the Thames during summer weekends – especially when the weather plays along. There being so many marinas downstream from Reading, plenty of craft come out with the sun; and though it never really seems over-busy on the river itself, it can be at the locks. Coming back from Henley-on-Thames a couple of Sundays ago, lock queues sometimes meant a long wait.
Not being restricted to weekends, luckily, it was 9.30am on Tuesday morning before we left, uneventfully passing through five locks (Caversham, Mapledurham, Whitchurch, Goring and Cleeve) before the open 5km stretch to Wallingford.
Arriving at 2pm meant we were lucky to get the last mooring on the Riverside Park bank of the Thames, cheekily encroaching on the clearly marked “Private Mooring” reserved for a passenger cruiser. (Not too big a one, fortunately; it came along later and managed uncomplainingly to tuck in behind us. Next day, we moved along as soon as a space opened up.)
Neighbours-for-a-night Claire and Jeremy from Happy Chance, another beautiful Piper-built Dutch barge, asked us over for drinks. Having the boating life in common – especially when you’ve ordered your vessels through the same company – means there’s always plenty to talk about. They’d just returned from two rainy weeks on a hired boat in France, starting from Migennes as we plan to do next year; so they had some very useful information to share about the experience. I only wish I could remember more of it… Happily, we should have another opportunity to chat at the annual Piper get-together at Henley, in September.
Lots to do and see in Wallingford
It all started a few days before we left Singapore, with a sudden urge to phone my mother. Registering that our landline phone had been packed for Perth, I asked Roy for his mobile. “No,” he said bluntly. “Use your own. Now that I’ve retired, there’s no company paying the phone bills anymore.”
“But I can’t afford international calls!” I wailed (embarrassingly, in retrospect). “Especially long ones.”
“Neither can I.” Then, it being 11pm and time for a retired gentleman to retire, he went off to bed.
What was to be done? Sulking was unlikely to be effective, especially in the absence of the sulkee. Clearly, the time had come to enter the new age of telecommunications. Hmm… what had Wendy and Blaire said they were using to call us? Something internet-based, cheap enough both for youngsters with mortgages and for struggling pensioners like ourselves… Skype!
An inflatable dinghy like this 2.7m Zodiac comes with a foot-pump, but £100 extra for a compressor was money well spent, says Roy.
After shopping for a dinghy in Putney and popping in to the Brompton Bike shop in Covent Garden, The Real Greek restaurant – just up the road from the bike shop – was perfect for lunch.
Around 2pm, we were lucky to get a window table at this buzzy, friendly and authentic-feeling joint. Half-a-litre of retsina (£12.50) accompanied several tapas-sized plates: some of the nicest char-grilled octopus ever (£7.50), authentic horiatiki (no lettuce, slab of feta), chips (£3.50), and a serving of gigantes (giant beans; £4.75), followed by a slice of superb baklava (£4.25) with our coffee.
In such a touristy location, the place would probably manage to survive on passing trade alone. But that’s not the feeling you get here, either from the food or the service – we could almost have been on the Plaka in Athens.
Our first trip by dinghy to the Tesco Express on the other side of the Thames was a revelation. This was such a cool way to do one’s grocery shopping! We simply had to get a dinghy, and soon.
After giving us a little tour by tender of the Thames & Kennet Marina, our generous D Pontoon neighbour, David, insisted we use his little dinghy for our next supermarket trip. By car, it’s six or seven kilometres away, through sometimes heavy traffic and over Reading Bridge. By boat, it’s a mile at most.
Like many others, no doubt, David shops online and gets his groceries delivered, so he only needs to pop across the river every couple of days for bread and milk and such. Generous to a fault, he’s also quick to offer a lift to King’s Meadow, just before the bridge, from where it’s only a five-minute walk to the train station.
That was how we got to Reading Station before heading to London to visit Chas Newens Marine Boat Co. Ltd, located on the embankment near Putney Bridge, in search of an inflatable dinghy of our very own. (David’s dinghy being temporarily unwell, however, he prevailed upon his friends Howard and Sarah’s son, Oscar (14), to take us in their much fancier and more powerful motorboat – shown at the top of this page.)
