Day 11 - Windsor to Shepperton - Monday 7 August

Distance: 14.5 miles +
Time: 4 hours 56 minutes
Walking partner: Nick Healey (for the first hour and 47 mins - a stirling effort given his string of cricket-related injuries (?))
Accommodation: Littleton Nurseries B&B, Shepperton Green

Breakfasted alone and early and left to meet Nick by Windsor bridge for 9am. The rain of the night (which required a midnight flit from the top of the house down to the garden to rescue my clothes) had turned to a slight drizzle so for only the second time of the trip I was in my waterproofs and sporting an umbrella.

Nick turned up on cue and we began a very pleasant stroll from Windsor through Datchet and on towards Runnymede Common past meadows giving different views of the castle which dominates this slow and lazy bend of the river. Monday morning was quiet on the water with hardly any boats on the move compared to the carnage between Maidenhead and Windsor of yesterday. Having been on the receiving end of a few ninety-mile an hour cricket balls during his 'friendly' tour of Cornwall, Nick stepped off the trail just before Runnymede and I continued alone.

A coffee break with flapjack at the tea hut opposite Magna Carta Island was enlivened by my dawning realisation that the carpark plays host to numerous secret assignations in this part of Surrey. One besuited gent jumping out of his swish company car to fulsomely embrace a young woman in flipflops who'd just parked her bashed up Clio and then getting her to follow him by car to some other destination could be said to be a fluke. But two? Aah, romance is alive and well in Staines.

The waterside leading up to Staines is diverting with lots of pretty bungalows and chalets decked with flowers suggesting, with all due respect to Ali G and his massive, that it's a good retirement destination. When I got to Staines it was starting to rain hard again so I opted to take a couple of hours break and amused myself by touring the shopping mall, eating a prawn sandwich from Boots and taking in a quick chick flick at the multi-plex. When I emerged the rain had gone and the sun had returned.

The last leg of this trip took in Chertsey and Shepperton. By now I had been under the M4 (yesterday), the M25 and the M3 and really felt that I was getting back to town. There were fewer and fewer open fields to encounter and I was quite sad when I read in the book that I had passed my last traditional Thames watermeadow scene. But time was ticking on and I was hoping to get to the B&B by 6pm to shower and rest before my two schoolfriends Fiona and Karen joined me. Shepperton Lock area looked pleasant enough and I made a mental note to return with the girls for a drink later. Little did I know that I had booked my B&B in Shepperton alright, but in the Shepperton which is in Outer Mongolia. Having done nearly 15 miles I was aghast to realise that I still had another 2 and a half miles to walk. To say I did it, with a grimace on my face is something of an understatement. I was hot. My back was soaked in sweat. I was grimy from the road I was trudging along (it is hardly an attractive route along a bypass crossing back over the M3.)

However the welcome I received from Ann McCarthy could hardly have been warmer. As it turns out, Ann is a stalwart fund-raiser herself and has years of experience of raising cash through sponsorship for, would you believe, another orphanage in Uganda. She supports Amigos International a charity that works in sub-saharan Africa, but also directly funds an independent project in Uganda. She has already raised over £7000 and a few years ago completed a 10,000km challenge in Ethiopia and Uganda travelling around by any form of transport she could. She is a fantastic lady and I can see why local papers have named her Shepperton's super granny.

The girls and I were actually staying in a house that Ann rents out mainly as long-term B&B lets and it took us back to student/nurse house-sharing days. We ordered in pizza, drank Asti Spumanti and talked and giggled till it was time for bed. In classic house-share style the only thing to disturb our slumber was the squeak, squeak, squeak of the bed springs above as the nocturnal activities of our co-guests began. Karen was convinced they were playing Yahtzee, but then she's not the romantic type.