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 Maideneahd lies on the River Thames. For the whole length of the river runs a walk called the Thames Path. We walked along there one day heading north from Maideneahd and made it as far as Cookham (which isn't far at all, but after stopping there for lunch and a pint we decided to head back home). The walk goes through lots of cow paddies and past a historic house on beautiful grounds called Clivenden.
We had been meaning to go to the Henley Regatta all week and so when the weekend came we headed down to Henley on the Saturday. We went there in the late afternoon for a couple of hours just to check it out. The races had been running all week and were finishing up on the weekend. We had not bought an entry ticket, as we thought that watching rowing for a whole day would be a bit much. We caught the bus down there to save us hassle with parking. As soon as we got to Henley we realised that it was good idea. The whole town was teaming with people. Ladies wore casual dresses and all sorts of hats, from straw ones to those that impeded their sight, but looked cool. Men were dressed casually and those that went to schools with uniforms wore their blazers and ties. The funny thing was that since we got there quite late (about 5pm) most people had been partying on for most of the day and the guys looked pretty funny in their blasers half off their shoulders and ties half undone. Not the proper look that their old school head masters would expect. The river was a traffic jam! There were all sorts of boats on the river - from big to little, and smart to dingies. Jon wasn't too impressed with some of the driving. There were heaps of near misses despite the fact that they were all snailing along. Most of the boats had some kind of a party happening. And of course then there were the rowing races. There wasn't a lot of racing happening any more as it was quite late, but we did see a few teams pull out onto the 'runway'. It was fenced off with buoys. The teams looked very professional in their outfits. We treated ourselves to an ice-cream as we watched all the action and then went into a pub for a drink before heading back home.
The Henley Music Festival is staged over five nights (Wednesday to Sunday). We went on Thursday, and had tickets for the lawn area, which allowed us to see all the events but not to sit in the grand stand. The festival area was filled with marquees and art exhibitions, music performances and restaurants and cafes. Needless to say our fist stop was a restaurant. The food was good, even though quite expensive as you would expect at a special event. We then wandered around the area feeling as knowledgable about the art work as during our university days in the gallery coffee shop! There was a lot of new age art on display. The sort where you have to try and guess what it is, as it isn't immediately (or otherwise) obvious - or is that the whole point? We then stood in a spot from where we could see the main stage, which was floating on water and attached to the river bank so they would not blow away. Very impressive! The night's main performance was items from operas sung by an American soprano. The evening was really nice and balmy and the whole experience was really enjoyable. I think Jon would have preferred listening to U2 but he didn't complain. The event was meant to be black tie and we saw someone turned away because they were wearing clothes that were too casual. We felt really sorry for them and the friend who was with him complained to the organisers as apparently he was a real music buff. After the opera performance was the bit that really thrilled Jon. It was a multimedia display. I must admit that we were both quite sceptical about what that actually meant, but we were wrong. It was way cool! The display was actually shown on the opposite shoreline of the river using lasers and either smoke or fine water spray as the display medium. So it looked totally three dimensional. The theme was the millennium and it took us through a lot of new inventions and the major events such as wars that changed our lives this millennium. Like the World Wars, the light globe, mirrors etc. It was finished off with a fireworks display. Then the evening went on with various performances dotted around the festival area. There were heaps of busker type people doing strange things. For example a lady floating in the air suspended by a small hot air balloon and doing acrobatics. We settled for the jazz band that was making a lot of noise on the front stage. There were even heaps of people boogting down (but unfortunately not us!). The band was great. When we had enough we headed home at about midnight. We decided that night that the English definitely know how to put on a good show!
On Friday we took the afternoon off work to go and see some tennis at Wimbledon. We arrived at the gates where the queue started at 1pm, and it took us more than 5 minutes solid walking just to find the end of the queue! It was incredible how many people there were. People even had camping gear and were lining up for Saturday. We waited in line with the sun blazing down on us. There was nowhere to sit since English people don't seem to know how to use bins. Instead we shuffled through the rubbish for 5 hours. The fun part was eating icecreams and being able to read the whole paper while waiting. Finally at about 6pm we walked through the gates. We had general admission tickets which allowed us to go to courts 3 to 19. There were no matches we really wanted to see on these courts, except perhaps for the Kournikova match. However there was another line to wait in to get to her match and after our 5 hour wait before we did not want to spend another minute in a line. Instead we wandered around looking at all the courts until we came across a large grandstand. We decided to walk up and have a look. Noone complained and so we sat down and watched the match. It was only a few minutes later that we realised we had accidentally walked into Court number 2. The match there was quite good but we did not know any of the players. After 1 set we left the court and decided to investigate the food situation - I wonder who prompted that move :) Gosia pointed out the strawberries and cream and we also decided to have a Pimms. Of course this was just to get into the atmosphere of things. Icecream and Pimms The tournament draw
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