This river runs deep
Telegraph South East England supplement
Published on Saturday February 23, 2008
Ply me a river, says Chris Alden, on a tour of the Thames near Marlow and Henley.
“There’s nothing half so much worth doing,” says Ratty to Moley in The Wind in the Willows, “as simply messing about in boats.”
Amen to that, rat. Because it might be 100 years since Kenneth Grahame published his children’s tale about shifting seasons by the Thames, but England’s most famous river is still charming visitors, as it has seduced writers for centuries.
Grahame was lucky enough to be born in Cookham Dean, in that dreamlike stretch of the Thames between Maidenhead and Reading, where the real world seems to slide away and only memories of your last river trip play on your mind. Grahame left the area as a five-year-old, but never forgot it: it was only when he settled back here in 1906, in his forties, that he wrote the book.
If you visit The River and Rowing Museum at Henley-on-Thames, where there’s a long-running Wind in the Willows exhibition, you’ll see just how much everybody still loves the tale – from Ratty and Moley enjoying the “luxuriant days of summer” to carol-singing field mice. The museum also has a wealth of boating and rowing artefacts, including a Thames log boat that’s at least 1,500 years old.
Strictly speaking, to enjoy the river, it doesn’t matter if you’re in a boat or not. In Jerome K Jerome’s famous travelogue, Three Men in a Boat, three upper-class layabouts row a skiff upriver from Kingston to Oxford, and between depictions of watery mishaps and disputations on modern Victorian life, Jerome finds time for lush descriptions of this dreamiest English spot.
Cliveden, Jerome says, is where to go for “deep peace”. Marlow is one of the “pleasantest river centres” he knows of. Past Quarry Woods is a “lovely reach”. From Marlow to Sonning, “even fairer yet”. Sonning is “the most fairy-like little nook on the whole river”. Thing is: it’s not changed all that much.
Stay in Marlow, as Jerome K Jerome did, and you can spot plaques remembering authors that have lived here over the years. TS Eliot, check. Percy Bysshe Shelley, check. Thomas Love Peacock, check.
It’s a good base for watery adventures. Stay at hotels such as The Compleat Angler and attractive B&Bs, eat in tea rooms like Burgers of Marlow or in grand style at a family-run gastropub like the Two Brewers, where the food and beer are first-class.
Of course, the river really comes to life at regatta time. Photos at the River & Rowing Museum show Victorian tents on the banks of the Thames as hardy crews pull past; and it’s largely the same scene now. Royal Henley Regatta, in July, is the most famous, but Marlow has a Town Regatta and there are smaller versions in villages all the way down the river. And don’t miss Swan-Upping, a swan-marking ceremony in the third week of July.
However you enjoy the river, in the words of Jerome K Jerome, “Let your boat of life be light.” It’s better that way, or so they say.
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