The genesis of the idea of the boat trip was a visit by my brother and his family to Goring (the lock there can be seen in the photo above).
Here they found a lovely village, with great pubs and restaurants, all next to the beautiful Thames, flowing gently through green meadows. And the idea came - why not see the region as it should: from a boat.
And from that seed discussions were held and bookings were made, until we all met at the Reading boat yard on-board the Caversham Queen. And from here we headed up river, back to Goring.
On the way we also stayed at Pangbourne and travelled up to Shillingford, before returning stopping at the same places. In total over the long weekend we went through 10 locks and travelled about 33 nautical miles or 62 km.
There was of course the alternative to go down river to Henley, Marlow etc, but we couldn't do both and as well as being more pastoral we had arranged to meet another relative at Shillingford, so upriver it was to be.And as it has been said many times before, there is nothing quite like simply messing about in boats - and in this case it was in a motor boat.
On the way we'd experience the Thames of the Wind in the Willows, passing what was the inspiration for Toad Hall and visiting the last home of its author, Kenneth Grahame.
