Amid the full morning sunshine, and in our shirt sleeves, we left Windsor and cruised alongside the……..
……… perfectly manicured edges of Windsor Great Park - lined with beautifully preserved mature London Plane trees. Should we have expected anything else?
Well yes, but the serenity is regularly shattered every 90 seconds by the very low flying Heathrow bound aircraft. However, the Queen doesn’t mind so why should we!
It wasn’t long before we got to Runnymede, where we moored up at one of the National Trust moorings close to the A308. About 100 yards on the other side of the road is the American Bar Memorial to commemorate the Magna Carta.
Now, thanks to Adam on ‘Briar Rose’, who told us about the Air Forces Memorial on top of the hill, we took the delightful walk up through the woods (dappled sunlight with bluebells and wild garlic!) and arrived at the memorial after about 20 minutes.
The entrance to the memorial where everything is perfectly kept.
There are more 20,000 names of those airmen lost in operations from bases in The UK and North and Western Europe. Many of those who’s names are engraved around the cloisters died without trace. It is a very moving and awe-inspiring place.
When we got to the top of the tower we were treated to the most amazing views. Luckily, after the rain yesterday, the air was reasonably clear and we could see London in the distance.
We could just see the blue colour of ‘Chance’ on the river just right of centre.
A ‘zoom in’ of Windsor Castle.
London (in the haze) on the horizon next to the trees.
James, with London at this elbow, made it quite happily up the hill with his fat and very bruised ankle. Luckily, it doesn’t hurt and looks a lot worse than it is. He thanks everyone for their sympathy and “comments”!
A ‘zoom in’ of London.
The memorial viewing tower from inside the quadrangle of the memorial.
Just a few hundred yards down from the Runnymede moorings we stopped for the day at about 1:30. The moorings are very good here and the lovely sunshine this afternoon was begging to be enjoyed. We used some of the the time to get the boat back up to scratch as the trees at Windsor had dropped sap and we were very sticky. Another great day.
Glad you enjoyed the walk and the views. We only found the memorial by accident -- we were actually looking for the JFK memorial (which we never found!)
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