Thames Path

The least river-like part of the trail, and the part that surprises people. The spring at Trewsbury Mead is dry for much of the year and the bed can stay empty for some distance below it, so the first hours are field paths, stiles, a stretch of disused railway and a line of willows marking where the Thames ought to be. Water arrives properly among the lakes of the Cotswold Water Park and is a real stream by Cricklade, the first town. Beyond Cricklade it is hay meadow and quiet lane through small Cotswold villages to Castle Eaton and on to Lechlade, which is the hinge of the whole section: the navigation starts just above the town at Inglesham, and from there you have an actual towpath, broad and level, running out across flat floodplain past Radcot and Tadpole Bridge into the emptiest country on the trail. Nothing climbs. What governs the day is how much water the meadows are holding and how far apart the villages are.

Navigation: Acorn waymarked throughout and simple once there is a river to follow, but for the first 20 km the Thames is often invisible and it is the turns out of fields that matter, not the water. One thing worth knowing before you set off: the trail between Upper Inglesham and Inglesham has been taken off the road onto a riverside line, and National Trails' own advice on that stretch is to follow the signs on the ground rather than an OS map, which may still show the older route along the road.

Eight kilometres of the quietest walking on the whole river, and the only part of the trail with no significant settlement in it at all. Wide flat meadow on both banks, Chimney Meadows nature reserve behind you on the right, and one piece of engineering to break it up: Shifford lock cut, a dead straight artificial channel about a mile long that the path follows before crossing onto the island halfway down on a wooden footbridge and rejoining the old river. Newbridge, medieval, narrow and with a pub at either end of it, is the one place on this stretch where anything happens, and it is the obvious stop.

Logistics: No road worth the name touches this section between Tadpole Bridge and Newbridge, and neither of those has public transport.

Navigation: Straightforward, with the river or the cut as a handrail all the way. The single moment to pay attention is the lock cut, where the path crosses to the island midway on a footbridge rather than staying on the bank you started on.

The river grows up and the trail finally gets towns to aim at. Above Oxford it is still meadow and farm track, overgrown in places, pushed inland here and there by farms and by ferries that no longer exist, with Swinford's 18th century toll bridge and a run of lock gardens as landmarks. Then Port Meadow, ancient unfenced common with horses and cattle loose on it, and Oxford arrives almost without warning at Osney and is behind you a couple of kilometres later. Below Iffley the walking is rural again but the water is busy with college boathouses and pleasure boats. The middle of the section is the river's big detour: from Abingdon the Thames swings almost ninety degrees round the Wittenham Clumps, so you walk about 22 km to make 13 in a straight line, past Culham and Clifton Hampden and Days Lock. Abingdon, Dorchester and Wallingford give the day real punctuation. Level and mostly firm underfoot, with the meadows rather than any gradient setting the pace.

Navigation: Well signed and easy while the towpath holds, but this is the stretch where it repeatedly does not. The old towpath crossed the river by ferry in a dozen places and those ferries are gone, so short lengths of field track and lane at Bablock Hythe, at Shillingford and around Wallingford are the route rather than a mistake. Around Northmoor the path can be overgrown enough in summer to hide the line. Diversions on this reach do change; the trail's own map is the thing to check rather than a printed guide.

The one stretch where the Thames Path behaves like a walk in hills. The Chilterns and the Berkshire Downs pinch together at the Goring Gap, the narrowest part of the whole valley, where river, railway and road share the floor, and twice the path abandons the water and climbs. The serious one is above Whitchurch, where a tree lined lane climbs past a farm, drops into a valley and climbs out the other side, then runs through wood with the Thames a long way below and mostly out of sight. Between the climbs it is classic river walking: meadow under the wooded scarp from Moulsford down, the two railway bridges at Gatehampton, then Pangbourne and the wooded reach past Mapledurham. The gradients are trivial by any other trail's standard, but close to a third of the entire trail's climbing happens in these 21 km, and it is the only part where the surface rather than the river level decides your pace.

Navigation: Well signed, but this is the section where the river stops being the handrail. Above Whitchurch the route is on lanes and woodland tracks well away from the bank for a couple of kilometres, and the instinct to stay by the water is wrong. At Moulsford a riverside line now exists where older descriptions send you along the road, so trust the waymarks over the guidebook.

The one stretch where the Thames Path behaves like a walk in hills. The Chilterns and the Berkshire Downs pinch together at the Goring Gap, the narrowest part of the whole valley, where river, railway and road share the floor, and twice the path abandons the water and climbs. The serious one is above Whitchurch, where a tree lined lane climbs past a farm, drops into a valley and climbs out the other side, then runs through wood with the Thames a long way below and mostly out of sight. Between the climbs it is classic river walking: meadow under the wooded scarp from Moulsford down, the two railway bridges at Gatehampton, then Pangbourne and the wooded reach past Mapledurham. The gradients are trivial by any other trail's standard, but close to a third of the entire trail's climbing happens in these 21 km, and it is the only part where the surface rather than the river level decides your pace.

Navigation: Well signed, but this is the section where the river stops being the handrail. Above Whitchurch the route is on lanes and woodland tracks well away from the bank for a couple of kilometres, and the instinct to stay by the water is wrong. At Moulsford a riverside line now exists where older descriptions send you along the road, so trust the waymarks over the guidebook.

Short, handsome and unmistakably moneyed. The path leaves the water at Shiplake and takes a tree lined road past very large houses and over the railway before dropping back to the bank at the lock, one of the run of inland dodges on this reach that exist because the towpath ferries are gone. From there it is meadow to Marsh Lock, where the path goes round the lock on a long wooden causeway built out over the water, and then straight into the middle of Henley. Below the bridge you are on the regatta reach itself, dead straight, mown and open, with Temple Island at the far end, and the walking stays in fields almost to Hambleden Lock. Busier with rowing and river traffic than anywhere else on the non tidal river.

Navigation: The Shiplake diversion is the one to get right, because the obvious line along the bank is not the route and the path is inland on tarmac for the better part of a kilometre before it returns at the lock. Everything else on this stretch is well signed and the Marsh Lock causeway is impossible to mistake.

The long Thames Valley middle, and the stretch that changes character fastest. Meadows and lock islands at Hurley and Temple, a modern footbridge across to the south bank, then Marlow, where the path goes up through the churchyard and out over the town bridge. At Bourne End the river is crossed on a walkway bolted to the side of the railway bridge. From Cookham the trail is pushed off the water for several kilometres by three lost ferries, so the Cliveden beech woods, the best scenery in this half, are seen from across the river rather than walked. Maidenhead is the low point underfoot, pavement beside a busy road, partly redeemed by passing under Brunel's brick arches. Below Windsor and Eton it changes again: Home Park, the road through Datchet, then the wide flat openness of Runnymede with the M25 crossing overhead and Heathrow traffic passing low every couple of minutes. From Staines down it is suburban river, reservoirs, boatyards and bungalows, quick and easy and rarely far from a road.

Logistics: The section ends at the Shepperton to Weybridge ferry, the only ferry on the route of the Thames Path itself, summoned by a bell on either bank. When it is not running the alternative is Walton Bridge, a round trip of about 5 km on foot.

Navigation: The bank changes constantly here and most of the diversions are the route rather than an error: away from the river at Cookham, along the road into Datchet, and onto the Old Windsor cut while the river goes round Ham Island. Bourne End is the one people miss, because the crossing is a footway attached to a railway bridge and does not look like a walkers' bridge from a distance. In Marlow the line goes through the churchyard rather than along the bank.

Fifty kilometres in which the river stops being a river and becomes the Tideway, and the walking turns from towpath into city. As far as Hampton Court it is still gravel and grass past lock islands, boatyards and reservoirs. Teddington Lock is the hinge: below it the Thames is tidal, the level shifts several metres twice a day, and the towpath is a towpath in name only. Richmond, Kew and Mortlake are leafy and often muddy, an unmade tree lined path under big trees with the water sometimes over it. Around Beverley Brook above Putney the surface hardens for good and never softens again: tarmac and paving through Wandsworth, Battersea Park, Vauxhall and the South Bank, crossing to the north bank at Westminster for the Embankment and the City, and ending at Tower Bridge. The last fifteen kilometres are a city walk shared with commuters, runners and tourists, and crowds do more to your pace than terrain does.

Logistics: Below Teddington Lock the trail runs on both banks and the two are different lengths and different walks. This line follows the south bank to Westminster and the north bank from there to Tower Bridge, so pick the bank at the start of the day rather than at a bridge.

Navigation: Two things need attention. From Teddington down there is a path on each bank, they are not equivalent and the signage assumes you have already chosen. And the Wandsworth stretch goes inland through industrial and commercial streets where the waymarks are genuinely hard to spot; Mortlake has a marked inland alternative along the High Street for when the riverside is under water.

Two quite different walks stitched together, and a section to read the distance on carefully. From Tower Bridge the south bank is stop and start: the warehouse canyon at Shad Thames, then Rotherhithe, where flats block the frontage often enough that the route becomes a sequence of short inland dodges along narrow lanes and Rotherhithe Street. Deptford and Greenwich hand the river back, cobbles, the Naval College and the Cutty Sark, and then the Greenwich Peninsula, fenced away from the water for much of the way round the O2, with working aggregate wharves and building sites on either side. Charlton is dying industry with the path running in a corridor between fences, and then the Barrier hoods appear, which is the finish most people are walking to. The official trail carries on about 2 km below it to the foot tunnel. The line recorded here goes further, out along the unofficial extension through Thamesmead and Erith to Crayford Ness at the mouth of the Darent, tarmac estate roads giving way to gravel causeway across grazing marsh, loud with conveyors and jetties on a weekday, and then it turns round and retraces the whole 17 km back to the Barrier.

Logistics: The National Trail ends at the foot tunnel about 2 km below the Barrier. The extension beyond it is not part of the National Trail, and the recorded line walks it out and back, so the last 17 km of this section is ground already covered on the way out. There is no public transport at Crayford Ness itself.

Navigation: Signed but repeatedly interrupted. Between Tower Bridge and Deptford the frontage is private often enough that the route is a run of short inland detours, and one missed sign leaves you a street back from the water for a while. Around the O2 the path is fenced off from the river and diversions come and go with the building sites. East of Thamesmead the way is shared with National Cycle Route 1 across the marshes and is obvious once you are on the embankment.