So I finally finished it. The Thames Path that is. It took me nearly two years to walk al of its 25 stages and that is by no means impressive if you realize that most stages are around 20 km long, the path follows a river and so the elevation differences are minimal. However, it provides such an enjoyable way to see England that there was no point in rushing through it. The only possible claim to fame may be that I did it all relying exclusively on public transport. Near London that was not a problem, you can get to most places by the tube or suburban train and little planning was needed. Further afield, all I really needed was a good train timetable. Beyond Oxford, however, situation became substantially trickier and I had to start using buses, often more than one. On the weekends the service is not very frequent, the first bus leaves late and the last one returns early and travel planning became substantially trickier. For the last two segments I gave up and did them over Saturday and Sunday, spending the night in a little country inn in Cricklade.

(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.)

The Thames is not navigable this far upstream and eventually one cannot even call it a river, more a series of individual pools separated by vegetated patches. Eventually, the water disappears altogether (at least in late summer) and probably runs in the gravel bed underground. The last few kilometers I was just following a dry gentle depression in the topography and had to backtrack once, before I finally found the official source of the river. There is a little monument and a patch of gravel under an old tree, where, presumably in the spring Thames can be seen flowing from the ground. It almost might be worth a separate trip next summer, because there is a train station nearby in Kimble and so transport is not a problem.

To complete our travels for the year we headed for a week to Italy. This time I did not even look for a package tour. Instead, we bought tickets well ahead of time on Ryan Air and by aiming at the middle of the week we were able to fly for 100 quid each. The plan was to look for a hotel on the spot. Rome was on the difficult side, 120 euros will literally get you no more than a broom closet. More of a problem, however, was rain. In fact the weather man was predicting an entire week of rain. As it turned out, they were wrong as usual, but the two days of rain in Rome were quite enough. But temperatures were still relatively pleasant and the rain was not constant and so we were able to catch up and see the sights we missed on our previous visits.

The real objective of the trip, however, was southern Italy, more specifically Pompeii and Sorrento Peninsula. We were presently surprised by the quality and price (much cheaper than UK) of the train connection to Naples. I had unfavorable recollection of Naples from my visit 30 years ago and so we headed directly for Sorrento, which turned out to be a very vise decision. Beautiful little town, reasonable hotel prices and good food everywhere we ate. It also provides a staging area for visiting Pompeii (same distance as from Naples).

One day we hopped on a boat and went to the island of Capri. Beautiful little island, so little in fact that in less than half a day we were able to walk almost half of the hiking paths. An of course, we could not miss the famous blue cave, which is in fact quite impressive. But more impressive is the operation that enables you to see it. First a little boat from the harbor which costs 8 euro. Then all the boats line up in an orderly fashion and people transfer to tiny boats (2-3 per boat) and an oarsmen takes you through a very small opening in the cliff into the cave. The opening is so small, that everyone has to lie down so that the boat will fit in. Inside it becomes a little bit of a zoo, with the guides signing and tourists flashing their cameras. We were lucky – our guide (for a little bit of extra) stayed in the cave until all the other boats left and we were left on our own for a few minutes. Must have been were nice in the old days when tourists were few and it was possible to swim in.