My Birthday 2026

This year’s birthday treat was meant to be another Perambulation courtesy of Stefi Orazi of Modernist Estates, this time Richmond and Ham. I had – of course – booked us a night in the Richmond Premier Inn and we’d been going to spend the 13th and 14th August there. However, at the beginning of the week it became apparent that very high temperatures were forecast for the Thursday, and it dawned on me that it wasn’t going to be ideal temperatures for walking, plus we were both a bit worried about leaving Cassius unattended without us around to fan him/open windows where necessary. Our petsitter Sam would have been coming in, but she’s really only paid to feed him and attempt the odd stroke (which I’m sure he is unimpressed by). So we cancelled the hotel and stayed at home, though I did still have the two days off.

In the event, Thursday 13 August did prove to be the hottest day in the UK so far in 2026, with the top temperature, of 38.1 degrees C, recorded at Kew Gardens, a tantalising less than one mile from the hotel we'd booked into. The hotel would, hopefully, have been air-conditioned but I think the walk would have been a bit of a slog. I'm hoping we can rebook it for some time in the autumn, though as Ruth has just started a new job it might be a month or so before we can go.

 

Proximity of the Premier Inn Richmond to Kew Gardens

I spent the weekend of my birthday in Wales with family – sans Ruth, as she’s no longer leaving Cassius for more than a night. Mum, Dad and I spent the Saturday night at Dave’s, where we had dinner in the garden courtesy of their outdoor pizza oven. Dave did the ovening bit while Alys worked hard in the kitchen assembling pizzas. After that we played Flip 7 which Huw won by some way, Nia maintaining that it’s just not her game.

Pizza oven

The following morning I made coffee courtesy of the mini-cafetiere I carry on most trips, plus a Disney princess mug. We had bacon bagels.

Several of us – possibly not including the kids, but they were hauled along anyway – decided we fancied a bit of a stroll, so we went to the Allt-yr-yn nature reserve for a walk – not somewhere I’d been before. A short drive from Dave’s house. The walk took in a section of the Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal that runs parallel to the M4 - Wikipedia suggests that this bit is the Crumlin Arm. This section wasn’t over-watery and certainly not navigable.

Late in the walk we got to an area with some rope swings, which I think perked the kids up.

After lunch we had several rounds of Racing Demon, which I almost won, but Nia refused to be beaten into second place and insisted on one final round, which she proceeded to win.

We had several varieties of cake, including an excellent Swiss roll made by Huw.

Huw's Swiss roll

Goodbye, Little Car

I have said goodbye to my silver 2007 Ford Fiesta, after 15 years of ownership. Which I know is quite a long time to keep a car, but it was still serving my needs, decent cars are expensive and I don’t see the point in changing cars for the sake of it.

Parked in the garage, shortly after I'd acquired it in May 2011

The Fiesta came via Bufton's of Peterchurch. Bufton's have now supplied my parents with four or so cars and they sourced this one for me in 2011. Prior to this, I had not owned a car for a few years, as I worked locally here in Reading and found it less hassle to hire a car for the odd long-distance journey. However, having accepted a job at the OU, I knew I’d need one, a) to travel back and forth between Reading and Milton Keynes, as the train journey is cumbersome; b) because Milton Keynes was clearly built around cars. MK is low-density and spread out for a UK town and it isn’t simply a case of walking from A to B, whereas in Reading, often it is (and where it isn’t, Reading has a much better bus service than MK does).

Snowy at Old Groveway in 2012

The Fiesta proved to be an excellently reliable, sturdy little vehicle. Over the years it’s had some repairs done, but nothing obscenely expensive - I think the priciest single repair was a clutch replacement in 2014 but that was sub-£400. In all the years I owned it, I think I only had to call the AA out three times, and one of those was to my home during lockdown when the car's battery had gone flat. I had managed to put quite a large number of miles on it: at its MOT in May 2011, when I got it, it had 45,128 miles on the clock; at its MOT this August it had 191,144. Although not the most comfortable drive over long distances, it was still reliably getting from A to B and had not reached the stage of "exciting" unpredictability that my Renault 5 reached the year before I offloaded it. So I took quite some time ruminating over whether it made sense to offload a still mechanically reliable vehicle and spend a not inconsiderable sum of money that I could have spent on other things, like a new kitchen. Also, more sentimentally, it had served me well and I was just going to abandon it, alone and bewildered, for the lure of a shinier, newer vehicle? What sort of a way was that to reward years of faithful service? This Reddit thread didn't help with all of that.

My friend Matt owns a 1987 Peugeot 205 which he evidently regards as part of the family. However, I’m reasonably sure that Matt’s Peugeot only does small local journeys. Most of my driving currently is between Reading and Milton Keynes (on the route that I usually take, about 70 miles) or to Wales to visit family (around 120 miles from Reading to Abergavenny), plus the occasional UK-based holiday. I do as little local driving as possible. For the last couple of years I have found the Fiesta less comfortable for longer journeys with pain up my right leg after about an hour of driving. I’ll also admit to being tempted by the navigation screens and climate control that a newer car promised, but then berated myself for shallowness, wanton extravagance etc. Also, various minor things had stopped working – most recently, the passenger door had stopped being willing to open from the outside. Nothing insurmountable, but small things can build up.

Looking a bit solitary in the car park at the Wolverton Park flats in 2019

Because I like to have some parameters, and I’d been impressed with the Fiesta’s reliability, I decided to go for another Fiesta. I’ve since discovered from Bufton's that Fiestas from the end years of production – Ford ceased production of the Fiesta in 2023 – are a bit like gold dust. To cut a few months’ car search story short, and skipping over several possibilities that didn’t come off, I am now the owner of a 2023 Ford Fiesta Trend. The new car is a delicious tomato red. It isn’t one of the turbo engines – actually, at only 1084 cc, its engine is smaller than my 2007 Fiesta, at 1242. Which I suppose isn’t ideal, but other things seemed right about it. Certainly driving it back on the motorway, I wouldn’t say its acceleration felt turbo-charged but I think it will be adequate for my purposes. It's a more comfortable and smoother ride than my old Fiesta - something I could tell as soon as I drove it out onto the road from Bufton's yard, even without Dad commenting darkly that the suspension was better on this one.

Parked near the Premier Inn MK Theatre District, where I often stay. Just back from being cleaned at Roni’s Peartree Bridge.

Mervyn Bufton had agreed that they would take back the 2011 Fiesta and give me something in part-exchange. I was not expecting very much, given that it had done heavy mileage and had some cosmetic damage, and was fine with the £500 I got for it. I was a bit more downcast when, having tried to assure Mervyn that it would be a good car for someone as a local runabout, he said “I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, to be honest” and said that apparently all the youngsters have high expectations, which I assume means more gadgetry than the old car has. Bloody hell. I drove off with visions of it being fed into a giant compactor as soon as my back was turned.

Parked under a tree in the OU’s East car park, July this year

Having a bath at the Hill's Meadow car wash last week

Ready to return to Buftons. Its last journey? 

I'll finish with its successful MOT in July this year. Relatively few advisories really. Rust schmust.

Weekend out on Ray's boat

Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 July

Ruth and I joined Ray on his boat for a bit of a pootle down (actually, pedantically, up) the canal. The boat had been in the dry dock near Newbury marina for the week prior, having some repairs done and also for Ray to have a chance to do some painting of the underside. On the Friday evening he collected the boat and moored up overnight by Greenham Lock, where we walked over to meet him on the Saturday morning. The plan was to have a leisurely meander back to his mooring at Kintbury, stopping overnight on the way.

Leaving the mooring upstream of Greenham Lock

The walk from Newbury station to Greenham Lock made me wonder whether Greenham Lock Cottage was still standing. A friend of Mum’s lived there in the 1970s with her husband and two children and I remember going over there to visit them more than once. If I remember correctly, the cottage was accessed by a footbridge from the town side though I assume there must have been vehicle access, albeit looking at the site on Google Maps I can’t see where this would have been. I’m sure I remember there being an access bridge more or less opposite the cottage, plus a shakier-looking footbridge a bit upstream of it. However, memory being what it is, who the hell knows at this stage.

I asked the Facebook group ‘Memories of Newbury and West Berkshire’ whether anyone knew whether the cottage had been demolished – certainly I couldn’t see it, but the whole area has changed so much with the creation of the marina that I can’t really get my bearings. One chap replied saying that its site was the red rectangle on this Google Earth view:

This Heritage Gateway page states that:

The core of the cottage at Greenham Lock is of probable 18th century date, with a succession of later additions. The property was proposed for demolition and replacement with a new dwelling, and as part of the planning conditions, Historic Building Recording was carried out in January 2014 by Lang Hall Archaeology. The report concluded that the modern 'periodising' features have obscured the principal dating evidence and that only the core cottage is of any architectural or historic value.

Though the building is adjacent to Greenham Lock on the Kennet and Avon Canal (formerly the Kennet Navigation), it is unclear whether it was historically a lock keeper's cottage. The First Edition Ordnance Survey mapping of 1880-81 appears to label this as a boat house.

It clearly wasn’t still a lockkeeper’s cottage by the 1970s, if it ever was, as Mum confirmed that her friend’s husband had worked for Honeywell and had nothing to do with the canals.

Further searching confirms that the cottage was indeed demolished, and a new build erected in its place. Greenham Construction lists the New GLC among its portfolio of work (with some inaccuracies – it’s not in the centre of Newbury; there’s possibly some confusion with the lock cottage at Newbury Lock, which was indeed in the centre of Newbury, though it was demolished in the 1980s. It sounds as though GLC might have lasted a bit longer). Here’s a more extensive blurb re the construction of the new property: LOCK KEEPERS COTTAGE, SUSTAINABLE REPLACEMENT DWELLING ON AN ISLAND SITE, which includes the following:

The historic canal-side cottage was much loved by the local community and those travelling along the Kennet & Avon Canal, but in reality, it was flood-prone and uncomfortable to live in.

As a child, I remember having mixed views on it. It was certainly quite excitingly unusual to access someone’s house via a footbridge. If I remember correctly, the amendments made to it included a 70s-style slatted staircase leading up from the middle of the living area to the bedrooms; I remember that there was an additional back staircase, presumably the original. I can’t say I ever hankered after living there. As a child I determinedly favoured nice modern houses that weren’t by dark bodies of water, a preference that it’s fair to say I still have in adulthood.

Passing Newbury Wharf

We set off, passing Newbury Wharf. Ray bemoaned that recent redevelopments at the wharf have not included any boaters’ facilities; there are none between Kintbury and Aldermaston which given the increasing popularity of narrowboats seems a bit ridiculous. We passed under the little 18th-century Town Bridge.

Approaching Town Bridge

Some volunteers were manning Newbury Lock so we didn’t have to do the gates ourselves. The next obstacle after the lock is the swing bridge at West Mills. Operation of this is intended to be a simple matter of turning the key in the lock and then pressing and holding a button to open and close the bridge. Opening it went fine, and Ray took the boat through and moored up just past the bridge. Closure wasn’t quite so smooth: I kept my finger down until the bridge had got itself back in position and the level crossing-style gates had started to lift, then took it off, carelessly assuming that they’d make it the rest of the way up by themselves. Unfortunately they didn’t and stopped where they were. The handful of pedestrians who’d started forward to cross the bridge as the gates started to lift stepped back uncertainly, while I took my finger on and off the button in agitation and the gates jumped up and down. Eventually I took a punt on just holding it down again and hoping that the gates completed opening, which thankfully they did. The elderly couple who’d paused in their walk to watch me operate the bridge, with helpful input at one point along the lines of “ooh, you’ve messed that up”, shuffled off at this point.

Approaching Newbury Lock

Swing bridge open

Thankfully there are no more swing bridges between Newbury and Kintbury, though there are several between Newbury and Reading, and there’s one at Hungerford. There are seven further locks, though in the event we only passed through three on the Saturday before calling a halt to the day's boating. Guyer’s and Higg’s (just beyond the A34 bridge) went OK; Benham proved a bit of a git. The footboard looked ropey, wobbling and with the edge breaking off it, though Ruth did gingerly make her way across it OK; more problematically, one of the balance beams on the upper gates was bowing in the middle, making it tricky to push. I pushed it for a while but all it did was bow even more, while the gate remained unmoved. Ray was eventually reduced to ramming the gates with the boat, which may have shifted something; he and Ruth then pushing together on the non-broken beam managed to do the trick. I’m not sure what happens if you get stuck in a lock – I assume there’s a number you can call, as I guess it must have happened to people.

This Reading Chronicle piece from May notes that repairs had recently been completed to one of the lock gate beams at Benham Lock. It did look as though a piece of metal had been nailed over the dodgy area, presumably to hold it steady, but it was still clearly bowing. I suppose the metal might at least prevent it actually snapping in two.

Ray declared that he’d had enough after wrestling with Benham Lock – it was a warm day – so we moored up for the night just short of Hamstead Marshall. We cooked dinner – I had brought a small tonnage of pork belly strips from the Caversham Butcher. Due to my unfamiliarity with Ray’s oven it was quite late by the time we finally ate and we’d tanked a fair bit of wine by that time, so we only made a scrappy meal and had some meat over to bring back with us.

Our mooring position was just up from a small weir – I assume one of the many points where the River Kennet comes in/goes out. Looking at the map, we were just opposite Hamstead Park, where Ray and I had walked quite recently. There was some sort of tributary going off just opposite us, which online research suggests was probably one end of the Craven Fishery. We could see some sort of little wooden structure, though it was hard to get a good view of it.

Channel going off opposite

The little wooden structure

On the Sunday morning, we passed through four further locks: Hamstead, Copse (lovely shady position), Dreweatt’s and finally Kintbury.

Copse Lock

Approaching Kintbury. Horse-drawn barge moored up

Week off in May

11-15 May

I took a week off in May partly to do some walks with the Reading Walks Festival (see separate post). Aside from those:

Caversham Arts Trail 2026

After doing my first of four Reading Walks Festival walks on the Saturday morning, Ruth and I walked around three venues on the Caversham Arts Trail in the afternoon. We ended up walking five miles, to add to the five I’d walked in the morning, which was a bit more than I’d anticipated.

We started off walking up Kidmore Road to Sandcroft Road to see John Nicholls’ stone sculpture, though we ended up spending more time looking at Sue Bridge’s mixed media paintings which were displayed at the same property.

After this we walked to Hunters Chase to see Rachel McCrindle’s kiln-formed glass. Here we made our only purchase of the day, two of these cute little horses.

Hunters Chase is a road of mainly detached executive-style “family homes”, built along one side of the Hemdean Valley in the 1990s as part of a controversial development. The property we visited had a smallish garden ending abruptly in some sort of quite high vertical cliff. Google’s AI Mode told me the following:

The "vertical cliff" you noticed at the end of that Hunters Chase garden is a fascinating piece of Reading’s industrial history: it is the sheer wall of a historic disused chalk pit and gravel quarry.

and referred me to this planning report from 2008, which I think must relate to what is now Hornbeam Close, off Kidmore Road. This contains the following:

I digress. Our final visit of the afternoon was to a house on Albert Road to see Ally Evans Ceramics. Nice stuff but I made the decision not to make any more purchases, mindful of where exactly I’d put them.

Cassius to vet

We took Cassius to Cherry Orchard Vets in Gallowstree Common for a checkup before he could be prescribed more of the meds he takes for joint stiffness. For the second time we saw vet Sarah Fox, who on the previous visit charmed us (or me, anyway) by exclaiming “You’re a splendid elderly gentleman” when Ruth opened the pet carrier. I suppose rabbits either don’t often reach Cassius’ age or are in a poorer state than him when they do so. Cassius was born, according to his Health Care card, in September 2014, so – assuming he lives that long – will be 12 this year. He has slowed down over the past year or so – he no longer jumps onto things and no longer attempts the stairs, but he still reasonably often has a scamper out onto the landing, does a circuit of the back bedroom and then returns to his room, where he generally then has a lie down.

This time, Sarah placed Cassius on the consulting room floor to see how he moves, and did comment that he had “a bit of an old man gait”. Something to do with loss of force in his back legs, I think, though he does still recognizably hop – I think I’ve read about old rabbits losing their characteristic hopping motion. She asked us “How well do you think he sees?”, suggesting that his keeping right to the edge of the room as he moved about might be a sign that he was relying heavily on his whiskers for navigation. We have certainly had some doubts about the quality of his eyesight these days, as we often have to hold snacks right up to him. From what she said, some degree of sight loss is pretty common in elderly rabbits.

Both of us (me especially) are conscious that in quartering Cassius in an upstairs room - originally an emergency measure to allow him to recover from injury without being savaged again by Chloe - we have deprived him of access to the outdoors. Now that Chloe has died we could in principle have moved him downstairs again, but have been suspecting that he would immediately try and get back upstairs. Sarah seemed to be of the view that at his time of life and given his probably poor eyesight, it would be better to keep him in surroundings he is familiar with. Which I guess made us feel slightly better.

Below is a recent photo of Cassius after his dinner. He has a custom of tipping his food out of his bowl and then eating it off the floor, or sometimes flipping the bowl altogether so that it covers the food, as here, which seems to me an unhelpful way of doing things.

Mum's visit

Mum came for a short visit. I picked her up from the station on the Monday afternoon, the same day we had taken Cassius to the vet and also popped in to the Playhatch Garden Centre, though I forget for what.

Mum and I had originally pencilled in having a day in London together on the Tuesday, but hadn’t arrived at any concrete plan for what to do and I think both felt vaguely lazy, so we had a day in Reading instead. We headed first for Reading Museum as the ‘Reading: Then & Now’ exhibition had been on my to do list. It was quite interesting, though I wished there had been more old photographs included as opposed to drawings.

After seeing Then & Now, we wandered through a few other galleries – I hadn’t been to the museum in years and had rather forgotten what was there. One gallery was given over to a display of the work of potter Alan Caiger-Smith. I wasn’t familiar with him but Mum had heard of him, partly because apparently he and his wife at one point lived in St James’ Close in Pangbourne at the time my aunt and uncle lived there (early 70s) and the couples had been friends. Caiger-Smith founded Aldermaston Pottery in the 1950s. He was apparently an expert in tin-glaze pottery and lustreware. The museum published this blog post about ACS after his death in 2020: Alan Caiger-Smith, International Potter, Local Hero.

We also had a wander through the Natural History gallery, a fairly typical collection of faded/depressed-looking animals and birds. This stag was managing to look fairly assertive even in death though.

Stag

We popped in for a quick look at Britain’s Bayeux Tapestry, stitched in the 1880s by 35 lady embroiderers led by Elizabeth Wardle of the Leek Embroidery Society. I was childishly amused by the modesty shorts that had been embroidered onto this little chap.

Apparently, there's a whole debate over the number of penises depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry: Penis count debate rages over Bayeux Tapestry, though most of them evidently belong to horses. According to this BBC piece, the Leek Embroidery Society ladies worked from censored images so most of the appendages do not appear on the replica in Reading Museum.

For lunch, I took us to the Ori Caffè in John Lewis, which I had been hoping would be a tranquil retreat but turned out to be extremely busy. We managed to grab the last remaining table, where I had trouble hanging on to Mum’s chair while she was at the counter. The staff were shooting glares at a big party of ladies lingering at a large table and shrieking chummily, seemingly long after they’d finished their drinks.

After lunch, we had a walk via Forbury Gardens to the Abbey ruins. Just as we were about to pass through the archway that leads through to the ruins, we were stopped by a woman who asked us if we enjoyed fantasy novels. Mum replied reasonably yet firmly that no, she didn't, while I tried to size up whether the woman was a nutter. She looked quite respectable, so I replied that yes, while perhaps not a feverish enthusiast, I didn’t hate the genre and was open to reading them. I declined to actually buy a copy of her novel, The Nature of Shadow (she had a stash in her arms) but did accept this bookmark. The woman, one Emma R. Schofield, is evidently planning a number of sequels according to her website. I made the mistake of admitting to belonging to a book group, which triggered a gleam in ERS’ eye and an offer to come along to one of our meetings with a stack of copies of the book. I said I’d give it some thought.

On the Wednesday morning we went for breakfast at The Collective in Caversham. They appear to have removed all the bacon from their breakfast menu but Mum obligingly said she was happy with a smoked salmon bagel, while I had sourdough toast. Afterwards we walked to the station for Mum to catch her train, calling in to Your Local Convenience Store on Caversham Road to buy some frozen parathas (Dad had texted asking if Mum could acquire some to take home with her, as they struggle to get them locally). The chap there was a lot chattier than he ever is with me, advising Mum on a cooking technique seeming to involve spreading them with butter and folding them over. I suppose that is the way I’ve had them presented in restaurants. The Shana parathas that both my parents and I like are fine cooked in a dry pan as they seem to release a bit of oil themselves when cooking.

Circular walk from Kintbury with Ray

We started off with coffee and biscuits. Ray’s boat Lawrence is looking much smarter and more finished now.

Oak tree near towpath

Copse Lock

We walked down the towpath eastwards from Kintbury, past this gorgeous oak tree and the sheltered Copse Lock. At Hamstead Lock we left the towpath to take a footpath through Hamstead Park. We sometimes used to walk through here with Mum as kids – Dave reminded me that it was from Hamstead Park he had amassed the collection of empty gun cartridges he kept for a while.

Hamstead Park was owned by the Craven family from 1620 until the 1980s. A mansion was built there in the 17th century, but only stood for around a hundred years before burning down. Its most notable feature are the several pairs of stranded gate piers, weirdly now just standing in the middle of fields but marking the boundary of what was once a grand formal garden.

What I had thought said ‘Dark Dale’ on the OS Explorer map actually says ‘Park Pale’ – apparently a term referring to the boundary of a deer park.

We walked across the park, coming out on Park Lane and taking another footpath opposite, where we sat on a handy bench to eat sandwiches. Then we walked down into Hamstead Marshall and turned right through the village, passing this sign presumably erected by a resident. We chickened out of following a footpath that led through a field of cattle and took a slightly longer route round by the road, turning down Old Lane to meet the end of the footpath.

We followed the peaceful Old Lane for a bit and then descended Irish Hill back to the canal towpath.

Old Lane

Walking down Irish Hill back towards the canal