Day Thirty-Six - Reading to Dorchester

We woke to clear skies which was great to see after yesterday’s drizzle. The morning was very chilly. Before we went to bed I put the extra doona from the spare bed (Brian’s bunk!) on top of my doona. Henk put two spare doona covers on top of his doona. We weren’t cold overnight but we were during the day. Henk with my beanie and gloves braved the chill and steered until we arrived at Wallingford at lunchtime. I kept making hot drinks to keep him going.
When we left Reading at eight thirty we encountered quite a number of rowers and canoeists making most of the weekend sunshine. At times it was a bit tricky especially with the novice rowers. We could tell which ones they were as they couldn’t row straight and occasionally rowed into the overhanging trees along the banks of the river or in front of us!
We had lunch on the boat and then spent a couple of hours in Wallingford. It was a pleasant, small town with a wide range of little shops and a long history. The town was fortified by Alfred the Great and we visited the castle built by William the Conqueror. There is very little remaining of the castle as Henry VIII ordered much of its timber and lead to be shipped downstream for enlarging Windsor Castle. We found a tea room at the top of the High Street specialising in patty cakes and we tried their vanilla variety with lashings of icing. They were very good.
We were going to stay overnight at Wallingford but as we had made good time we decided to do an extra couple of hours in the afternoon which will give us more time in Oxford.
As we had planned eating on the boat we didn’t need to moor alongside a town and we moored along a green bank near a very tiny Dorchester. The paddock beside the boat had over a hundred geese waiting to greet us.
Photos: Henk rugged up against the chill; Peering through a window at Wallingford Castle; Shillingford Court on the bank of the Thames; Our backyard for our overnight stay; Henk tying up the boat for the evening.