No Snow in Derbyshire: I’ve just looked at the weather forecast for Christmas this year and found we are expected to have day temperatures of around 13°C, dry and cloudy with a bit of sun. But back in 2010 the last ten days or so of December was considerably more Siberian and a week before Christmas we trudged through a few inches of snow with more still falling in London as we made our way to St Pancras for the trip to Belper in Derbyshire for a brief visit to our younger son and family.
For once there was no snow in Derbyshire, and the thin white sprinkling on open ground was simply frost and the streets were clear. Fortunately there was little wind and wrapped up well we went out for walks on both Sunday 19th December and Monday 20th December. As usual I took a few pictures, both in the town and on the hills around.
I’ll post a few here, but there are rather more on-line.
The daytime temperature didn’t quite reach zero – 0°C (32°F) – during our visit and the frost was building up to an unusual degree for the UK
We walked over the hills to Milford and then I think caught the train back.
Strutt’s North and East Mills on the River Derwent in Belper are a part of the of the Derwent Valley Mills given UNESCO World Heritage Status in 2001.
And the Grade II listed houses on Long Row where my son was then living close to the top of the steeply sloping street were built by the Strutts for their mill workers in a rather odd internally interlocking design.
The last mills in Belper closed in the 1990s. Until 2022 the North Mill, Grade I listed and one of the world’s first fireproof buildings was Strutt’s North Mill Museum, but then lost its funding due to Tory cuts meaning the local authority could no longer fund it. The building was Save Britain’s Heritage ‘Building of the Month‘ in September 2023 and campaigners and local residents hope it can be saved and reused.
There had been unusually low minimum temperatures – a few days earlier it had gone down to -18 C (0 F)
I grew up not far from the Thames, though rather more of my young days were spent playing in and around one of its tributaries, the River Crane both in the wilder areas of Hounslow Heath and to the north and in the rather tamer Crane Park, where I caught tiddlers, sticklebacks which were destined to die in jam jars, and learnt that small boys on bicycles were faster than irate whistle-blowing park keepers.
But the river was there, a formidable barrier protecting us in Middlesex from the wilds of Surrey, though we occasionally crossed it on bridges and ferries, perhaps to go to Kew Gardens in search of plant specimens. This was before the days of garden centres, and my father, a keen gardener carried scissors in his waistcoat pocket and would occasionally take a small cutting from gardens as we walked past or visited, or find seeds. Gardeners where we lived didn’t buy seeds – they saved them and swapped them with others.
And the Thames was the river where I learnt to swim, if only badly, with a paddling pool and a swimming area with a springboard in the riverside park, The Lammas. Later I learnt to row at Isleworth, in a heavyweight Sea Scout boat – and we swam there too, despite the filthy oily state of the mud and water.
Older and wiser I kept to the riverside paths, walking them both in Middlesex and Surrey and also out to the east of London, sometimes taking my family with me, but also on walks with other photographers and on my own. And when plans were being made in the 1980s for a Thames Walk I made a few suggestions on the proposed path of what in 1989 became the Thames Path.
Far more of the river in London is now accessible to the public than back in the 1970s and 80s when much of the riverside was still a working area, though many of the wharves were derelict. But as I found when I joined a small group led by a Tower Hamlets official with responsibility for footpaths, parts of the path on the north bank were still not always easy to access, with developers and residents erecting gates and barriers and making some parts appear private. Some years later The Guardian in 2015 published Privatised London: the Thames Path walk that resembles a prison corridor which showed that little had changed.
But like many others, my family has now walked the Thames Path, from the Thames Barrier at Charlton to the source in Gloucestershire, as well as some way to the east along both shores. Most of the path proper is readily accessible by public transport and can be done as a series of one-day walks, travelling and returning from from our home in Staines or from London. But for the final three days of walking we had to spend a couple of nights in hotels on the route.
At Streatley the path goes through a small lake
At the start of 2010, we spent both New Years Day and January 2nd walking two short sections of the walk, from Reading to Pangbourne on Friday 1st and returning to Pangbourne on the Saturday to walk to Cholsey. Both Cholsey and Pangbourne have stations with trains to Reading, so access was easy, although Cholsey station is over a mile from the Thames Path.
The pictures here are all from Saturday 2nd January, on what is perhaps the most scenic stretch of the Thames Path. It was a bitterly cold day, which was perhaps as well, as the parts of this section would have been very muddy and a little flooded. But the mud was frozen and most of the ice on the flooded parts was thick enough to take our weight. It was more pleasant walking across the ice than it would have been wading through the few inches of mud and freezing water, almost certainly just deep enough to overtop my walking boots.
At the start of the walk from Pangbourne, after crossing the river the path climbs a little up a ridge, with occasional views through the trees across the valley. It then goes down to the riverside again, passing under one of Brunel’s fine brick bridges for the GWR to the Goring Gap, where the Thames runs between wooded hills. Goring itself is the kind of place I like to avoid, though I’m sure it has its charms, but I’ve always seen it as a kind of playground for the self-satisfied rich. We crossed the river to Streatley on the south side, a village owned by Oxford Brewery owners the Morrell family until they sold it in in 1938. They had protected it from development.
It was here that we found the worst flooding on the path, and almost took one look at a gate leading on to a lake and turned round – we could have ended our walk here and returned to Reading from Goring station. But eventually we decided the water couldn’t be too deep and perhaps the ice might hold our weight and we went on. I think we all got wet feet.
There were more icy bits on the rest of the walk, but nothing quite so bad, and we continued our walk along the Thames Path. Unfortunately at Moulsford the path leaves the river – the towpath switches to the opposite bank, and although this is a Ferry Lane, the ferries are long gone. Moulsford would be a pleasant enough village were it not on the A329, and the one kilometre trek along this relatively busy road was tedious, though we did make a short diversion to see the parish church.
Our walk along the Thames Path ended when this left the road to return to the river, but we had further to go before turning off onto a footpath on our way to Cholsey station, adding another mile to our walk.
More on My London Diary at Thames Path including our walk on the previous day from Reading to Pangbourne.
Thames Path – Pangbourne – Cholsey: At the start of 2010 we were still walking sections of the Thames Path. On New Years Day we had walked from Reading to Pangbourne, and on the following day caught the train back to Pangbourne to begin our day’s journey there.
The Thames from the Thames Path along a hillside west of Whitchurch
We were heading to Cholsey, around 8 miles away, an easy distance suitable for a short day with over an hour’s rail travel at each end. Cholsey is a small village and has a railway station a little over a mile from the Thames Path with trains back to Reading from where trains run – if rather slowly – back to Staines.
Gatehampton Bridge
Pangbourne is a much larger village, and its station is a short walk from where we joined the Thames Path, and there were a few shops where we could buy some crisps and sweets to supplement the sandwiches in our bags and even a public toilet, so a very useful place to start a walk.
Before our walk really started we spent a little time in Pangbourne, visiting the parish church and photographing the Pang before rejoining the Thames Path at Whitchurch Bridge. Crossing the bridge takes you to Whitchurch, perhaps a prettier village than Pangbourne. Here the path takes quite a long detour away from the river bank and up on a hillside, with some extensive views through trees of the river and country to the south, before going back down to the riverside.
The railway line crosses the path and the river at Gatehampton Bridge, built by Brunel for the GWR main line in 1838 but the path stays on the north bank, passing between the tree-covered slopes of the Goring Gap, where the river cut through to seperate the Chilterns from the Berkshire Downs. Winter sun on the leafless bare branches was magical.
The bridge linking Goring on the north bank with Streatley on the south seems a rather primitive and temporary wooden structure, but has been here since 1923 when it replace the earlier bridge from 1837. Before then there had been both a ferry and a ford, though this was probably more often passable on horseback than on foot. It takes two bridges to reach Streatley from where the Thames Path proceeds westward on the south bank.
Streatley from Goring lock
At Streatley, a village until 1938 owned by the Oxfordshire brewers Morrell we visited the church and then set out on a partly underwater path by the river. December 2009 had been one of the wettest months on record and we began to doubt the wisdom of We thought about turning back and abandoning the walk, taking a train from Goring, but after seeing a walker paddle through towards us decided to continue.
Fortunately it was only a few inches deep, but despite our boots I think we all got wet feet. The day was around freezing, but walking kept our feet warm, and many of the smaller puddles along the rest of our route were frozen over, as well as the mud, and it was much easier to walk than had it been warmer.
The Beetle and Wedge at Mouslford looked very closed
A little further on the tow path moves from the south to the north bank, not a great problem in the past for craft being towed who could pole over to the other side, but more so for walkers, who need to take a path away from the river and along a main road for a mile or so leaving the path were it went down towards the Moulsford railway bridge and continuing to a footpath beside the railway to Cholsey station.
