After what seemed liked weeks of rain we had a dry but bitterly cold spell so we took a chance and took Lizzie to historic Henley on Thames. Our first trip in 2023. We stayed at the Four Oaks Henley club site (caravan and motorhome club) – a good clean site and a 10-15 minute walk into town or hop on a bus to Marlow, High Wycombe or Reading.
After setting up we discovered that our water pump wasn’t working but luckily we travel with an electric heater as well. After a blast from that for a couple of hours the pump worked so we had hot water – phew!!
Henley is of course famous for its Royal Regatta but is also home to Friar Park where George Harrison (of Beatles fame) set up Friar Park studios and Dusty Springfield lived here and her gravestone can be seen in St Mary’s Churchyard. The area has been used for filming locations in the TV series Midsomer Murders as well. Henley is an easy town to explore and has lots of history to investigate and a town trail to help you along the way. You certainly won’t go hungry, there are many many coffee shops and eateries – we particularly liked the cafe Spoon, the Hart Street Tavern and the Three Tuns.
After exploring Henley for a couple of days we then went slightly further out and jumped on the bus to Hambleden Mill, Lock and weir and started our walk. (You could walk from the site but we’d been advised that the first part was not passable due to flooding). First stop Hambleden, a small hamlet that has also been the film location for a few Midsomer Murders episodes – a lovely quintessential English hamlet with an impressive church (where WH Smith, the newsagent, used to be a churchwarden), a very well stocked shop (delicious toffee apple pies!) and a pub. Next we retraced our steps to the weir and struck out along the Thames River path back towards Henley and passed the starting point of the Henley Regatta and the Temple Islands along the way. It was a bit soggy and icy in places up as far as Remenham where we were defeated by the floods and resorted to walking the rest of the way to Henley on the road. All in all a lovely walk.
On our final day in Henley with another beautiful blue sky, we set off up Gravel Hill and along the pack and prime bridleway to the village of Rotherfied Greys – heading west out of Henley.
It was a lovely albeit muddy walk through woodland tracks and fields. The tiny village has a fascinating church – St Nicholas, dating back to Norman times, with a couple of war graves, a world war one grave marker, a very old brass dedicated to Sir Robert de Grey who died in 1387 and an amazing monument to the Knollys family in the Knollys chapel. Opposite the church is an ornate Victorian “bus shelter”!
We stopped at the pub for a pint before heading back to Henley and once there had a late lunch in the Three Tuns.
We loved our trip to Henley on Thames, despite the bitter cold. It was supposed to be our penultimate trip in Lizzie but now, as things have suddenly moved quickly, it may have been our last as we have a potential buyer for her.