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Went for a walk to Burnham Beeches today. It’s a nice wooded area to the north west of Slough. I started off in Maidenhead so here’s a picture of the bridge:

Maidenhead has a pair of very nice bridges. The Brunel railway bridge is just downstream from here and worth a visit.

The walk to Burnham took longer than it should have due to some terrible map-reading incompetence resulting in a number of detours. As I close in on my destination the way is blocked by an obstruction!

As you can see the paths are all a bit muddy after the wet weather we’ve been having. It’s all rather good fun: leaping between dry patches and diving under fallen trees. I pretend I’m an adventurer in the jungle! And really, there is very little practical difference between the Amazon and a path along the side of a Buckinghamshire golf course.

Here we are at the aforementioned Burnham Beeches. This is a very nice place for a Sunday afternoon walk. The trees here are all very old, must show respect! The land is actually owned by the City of London who purchased it as a place for Londoners to visit to escape the smog, pollution, etc. Nowadays it seems to serve a similar purpose for the residents of Slough. I heartily approve.

Walking down to Slough through Farnham Royal I spied Slough Trading Estate power plant and thought it looked rather pretty with the current configuration of sun and clouds. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a very good position to take a picture so this will have to do:

The weather has been terrible this weekend here in Berkshire: very wet and windy. However, the forecast promised sunshine this afternoon, so being optimistic, I decided to go for a walk up to Marlow. I really had fun, despite getting a little cold and muddy. First I went through Maidenhead Thicket, which is a nice wooded area by the A404.

Here’s a mushroom which I found. Lots of mushrooms around at the moment but mustn’t eat them as they might be poisonous.

An hour or so later on I’m walking through Bisham wood. It’s a bit eerie as all the leaves are gone and it’s starting to get dark.

I’d originally planned to go and visit Bisham abbey but it was getting a little too dark and cold so I decided to go straight to Marlow. I’ll leave the abbey for another outing.

I really like Marlow. You might remember I’ve been here before on my way to Henley. I defy anyone to visit and not think it’s one of the loveliest English towns.

Marlow has, by any standard, a rather fantastic bridge. This is the only bridge in the town and separates the Berkshire side from Buckinghamshire.

A few more photos from my walk here.

Afterwards I got the train back home to Maidenhead. Oh, the happy Marlow train! It trundles back and forwards all day; always on time and with a smile on its face. Even when the rest of the FGW network is in meltdown the Marlow train is always punctual.

While it’s been raining and winding outside I’ve been thinking about going on holiday next year. Since I really enjoyed by trip to Prague earlier this year, and especially my ride on the vlak, I’m thinking about getting an InterRail ticket and riding around on some European trains for a week. But where to go? When I first thought of this I decided on a route which seemed good in theory. However, the discovery that physical distances don’t correspond well to train travel times (especially in Poland for some reason); and the discovery that the cost of two single plane tickets isn’t much different to a return ticket caused me to reconsider my plans.

So I’m now thinking of visiting: Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest in that order. Have any of you readers been to central Europe? Where is good to visit? Where should be avoided?