Windsor Great Park and the Thames

For this ride I met up with my good friend at Surbiton station, and we took the train to Virginia Water (change at Weybridge), then cycled back via Windsor Great Park and the Thames towpath (Staines, Weybridge, Walton, Hampton Court), finishing through Bushy Park. A map of our track is below.



This ride further extends my explorations of the Thames. The route we took from Windsor Great Park and along the Thames more or less follows Route 4 of the National Cycle Network, although we did deviate a bit in a few places.

We had an inauspicious start when we found that Virginia Water station has a short platform: being with our bikes in the last carriage, we found the 'open the b***** doors' button was not activated, and there was no platform outside the carriage anyway. This precipitated an undignified scramble along the train to reach a carriage from which we could alight. But after that all went well.

We cycled down the B389 to reach the Virginia Water entrance to Windsor Great Park, and from here we were largely off-road or on quiet roads. After the run of extremely hot days, it was quite a relief to have a bit of cloud and temperatures 'only' in the mid twenties. We didn't rush, and took about 7 hours to cover 28 miles, including several refreshment stops. Here are some photos of our day.

Virginia Water entrance to Windsor Great Park

Path beside Virginia Water Lake: there is good network of cycle paths in Windsor Great Park. It is quite crowded close to the entrance car parks, requiring lots of pedestrian-dodging, but deep in the Park it was nice and quiet.

Totem Pole

The road alongside Smiths Lawn

Approaching the 'Copper Statue' of King George III (on foot: don't attempt to cycle anywhere except on permitted paths)

The statue was erected by George IV in memory of his father. Given the poor relations between them, the inscription 'Patri optimo' is presumably ironic. 

From the statue, there is a great view along the Long Walk to Windsor Castle.

We stopped off at the Beehive pub in Englefield Green for lunch.

 On Cooper's Hill, we called at the RAF Memorial for aircrew missing in action.

The names of the missing are inscribed on the walls

The lawns were pretty parched

The memorial tower gives a great view towards Heathrow and the distant London towers

We cycled down to join the Thames Towpath at Runnymede

There were plenty of ageing wrecks along the river in addition to we two

Towpath chic

The towpath was in good condition after all the dry weather

We crossed the river on the Weybridge ferry

The new Walton bridge

Fred Karno's Astoria houseboat, built to be moored alongside his Karsino hotel on Tagg's Island. (Karno Casino - geddit?). The boat was latterly owned by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, who used it as a recording studio.

Hampton (the other side of the river is visited in this blogpost)

Approaching Hampton Court bridge

Hampton Court

We reached Kingston via Bushy Park

There is an excellent cycle path through Bushy Park