A Circle Tour and Two Shows

I'm now at my next to last stopover before heading home, in the town of Maidenhead, which is just west of Windsor.  I came here to spend a couple of days visiting with my good friends Janine and Lisa.  Janine is a former colleague from Elliot Lake Secondary School.  Her mother and sister both live in Woodstock, near my home, so we're all good friends!

On Saturday night, Janine cooked up a great turkey dinner in honour of Canadian Thanksgiving, and we had a good visit.  Yesterday, she picked me up at my hotel and took me on a little circle tour by car of some of the smaller towns and villages around about.  Our one extended stop was at the town of Marlow, which -- like Maidenhead -- is on the Thames River.  This river meanders back and forth in great big loops across the countryside.  So it's a little confusing to find that the river is on the east side of Maidenhead, and then you can drive west to Henley -- which is on the river -- and then go northeast to Marlow -- which is also on the river -- and..., well, you get the idea!

Anyway, Marlow is another attractive English country town.  This means that you have a High Street with all the main shops, cafes, banks, restaurants, and the like.  You have buildings of all ages from the 1200s to the 2000s rubbing shoulders, but discreetly, and the most modern ones are sometimes hidden from view behind an older facade.  There are always a handful of old pubs and inns, dating way back, such as the George and Dragon (a common pub name).

There's always a lovely old parish church with its graveyard.  In Marlow, the church (All Saints) has a particularly imposing tower and spire and a lovely setting right by the river.  

Close, by, a chain suspension bridge finished in 1832 spans the river.  It is one of two existing bridges built by William Tierney Clark, the other being the similar but larger bridge spanning the Danube at Budapest.

During the late 1700s and early 1800s a great web of canals stretched across the landscape, and canal boats carried passengers and freight between many of the major towns and cities.  The Thames River formed a major link in this network, and numerous locks and weirs were built to keep the river level consistent and move the canal boats up and down the stream.  A weir and lock are located just downstream from the bridge.

From Marlow we continued circling through villages such as Cookham and Bray, and made our way down to Windsor, where we stopped for lunch.  Windsor Castle was not on the agenda, as that is an extended visit all on its own and we had other plans!  And, alas, that is where the pictures stopped because rain was in the forecast.

After lunch, the three of us drove into London to the Tate Gallery, which has mounted a major exhibition of the late works of J. M. W. Turner, one of my favourite artists.  The Tate houses the Turner Bequest, and for this special exhibition their collection was supplemented by works borrowed from other galleries.  Certainly the classic paintings such as Rain, Steam and Speed: The Great Western Railway, or The Angel Standing in the Sun were shown, in context, alongside many lesser-known works.  Also on display were pages from the artist's sketchbooks, his palettes and palette knives, his spectacles, and the like.  All was arranged to show how his style continued to evolve quite dramatically during the later years of his life while his subject matter remained consistent in many cases.  All in all it was a fascinating and informative show!

We then went out to dinner, and then to the Duchess Theatre.  The Play That Goes Wrong is a side-splitting farce, the kind that wears you out because you laugh so hard.  If it wasn't precisely great theatre it certainly was great fun.  You can read my detailed reactions to the show here:

An Outrageous Evening of Farce

The beauty of the 7:00pm curtain time is that we were able to make it back to Maidenhead and our respective quarters in very good time, so it wasn't a late night out!