A country walk in Oxfordshire

Originally uploaded by sf2london.

With Steven in San Francisco for the 15-year WIRED reunion, Chris and I decided it would be nice to head out of London for a lovely day in the country. After turning the house upside down I found our copy of “Country Walks Near London” (since I didn't want to fork out £13 for another one).

Yesterday we took a train from Paddington to Henley-on-Thames, switching at Twyford. Setting out on the abridged 8.8 mile route (as opposed to the full-on 13.7 mile, ten and a half hour one) we walked over the hill and through the woods... and over the hill and through the woods... and over the hill... well, you get the idea. I think in this part of the world they call the hills escarpments, but that’s probably just because they like using words with more letters.

Among the notable fauna we observed were some old horses wearing blankets, several kites (a kind of bird), and a few teenage girls hopping around the train platform wearing nothing but sleeping bags and knickers (the British kind). There were also a couple of planes doing aerobatics above the fields all afternoon (not exactly fauna, I know).

We had lunch at the Rainbow Pub in Lower Assenden and tea at the Henley Tea Rooms, which is run by Spaniards and staffed by Vietnamese.