Christmas walks | >Re-PHOTO

Christmas Walks. For many years we have had a family get-together on Boxing Day and we will do the same today, but it will be a little different as for the first time for many years we will not be walking the five or six miles to it.

Staines to Runnymede Walk

We always needed that walk to work up enough appetite for a large meal in the middle of the day after a little overindulgence on Christmas Day. I’ve posted some pictures from our Boxing Day walks here in previous years, But as we got a little older they became simply a matter of the shortest route- a pleasant stroll along the Thames Path rather than any of the slightly longer and hillier variations that use to add interest.

And in late 2023 the Environment Agency found an unsafe 90 year old footbridge across a small creek close to Runnymede Bridge and fenced of this short section of the Thames Path in February 2024. Almost two years later it remains fenced off with work yet to start. The diversion isn’t a great deal longer but makes the walk less interesting.

We’d also go out on at least one walk between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day on a longer walk with whichever of our family were staying with us. But now our house seems to have shrunk as our children’s families have grown and we go away to stay with or near them. But I think we will still make some walks.

In 2019 we made three walks between Christmas Day and the New Year and I posted about all three on My London Diary.

The first, our walk on Boxing Day 2019 from Staines to lunch in Old Windsor was cut a little short, not by the Environment Agency but by the weather. We made it roughly two-thirds of the way to the café at Runnymede when the heavens opened – and we rang to be collected.

Staines to Runnymede walk

Wimbledon to Richmond walk

The second walk, two days later, followed an invitation on the Christmas card from the father of my younger son’s wife to join a walk he was arranging from Wimbledon across the common and through Richmond Park. We hadn’t intended to go, but it was a fine day and we decided at the last minute to join them, though we had to leave before the lunch they had planned at the café in Richmond Park.

More at Wimbledon to Richmond

Matlock & Matlock Bath

The next day we took the trains to briefly visit my elder son and family in Milton Keynes and from there were driven up to Matlock by my younger son to stay with them for a couple of days. And the next day we walked what was described by one sensationalist article in a tabloid newspaper as the “most dangerous footpath in England” around the face of High Tor to Matlock Bath.

Of course it is no more dangerous than many other paths on cliffs around the country – and even has a handrail to hold on the narrowest section, as well as a short ‘one-way’ section to reduce the risk where passing others could be dangerous.

Matlock Bath is in parts tourist hell, full of fish and chips and ice cream shops, and a mecca for bikers, but it does have at least one decent pub – where we ate and went to look at some very large specimen fish before visiting the Mining Museum.

Coming out, I and my younger son started to climb up the hill on the west side of the valley while the rest of our party decided to take the short train journey back to Matlock. The climb of the valley was steep and exhausting, but once we had reached the top it was fairly easy going, with more great views at times of the Derwent valley as the light was beginning to fade.

By the time we reached Matlock I was thinking I should have taken the train.

Matlock & Matlock Bath

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Christmas Eve, Christmas walks. I don’t think I’ve ever worked on Christmas Eve. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to be able to help with the final preparations for Christmas – things like going to collect our order from the butcher, wrapping presents… But there is sometimes time for a walk.

*Sculptures and the Old Town Hall, Staines*

For many years we’ve invited people to visit on Christmas Eve, to come in and share some home made cakes, biscuits and drinks. Linda has made mulled wine which has gone down well, or mulled apple juice and some of us shared a decent bottle of red, though I often had to drink most of it myself.

Our smallish front room often got rather crowded though most of the younger visitors would be upstairs in a bedroom making large and complicated layouts of a Brio railway. There was a lot of talking, sharing news and sometimes some singing together; it is a small room, but still has a piano. We’d often run out of chairs, though we brought more down from upstairs.

It had rather run down in more recent years, partly because our own two children had left home, but also as friends moved away. But this year it won’t be happening at all. Omicron has made us all rethink. People are wary of inviting others or of responding to invitations. We’ve still got the large Stollen and I expect several different varieties of biscuits will be made, but on Christmas Eve we will be eating them on our own, though we are expecting just a little help from close family in the few days that follow. But then there’s the Christmas Cake to eat as well.

But it will be a rather different Christmas to usual. We decided too that we should cancel the family Boxing Day pub meal that had been booked. That means also we won’t be making the five or six mile walk to get there which we needed to get back an appetite after Christmas Day. I’ve already missed the carol service where Linda was in the choir – it seemed an unnecessary risk. And the concert by her choral society last Saturday was cancelled at short notice.

But we still will have a Christmas dinner with some family – if rather fewer of them than previous years, and I’m sure we will still go out for some walks. We will still have presents to share and still enjoy ourselves, but it won’t be quite the same.

The pictures here are from our walks in 2013. Since there is no public transport here on Christmas Day and little or none on Boxing Day our walks are all close to our home. You can see more of them in Walks around Staines.