THAMES PATH

EASTERN ENGLAND

The Thames Path is unique among Britain's National Trails because it follows the royal river for almost all of its 184 miles, from the Cotswold hills where it rises, down through London to the Thames Barrier in Greenwich.

One of the loveliest sections of the path is from Oxford all the way down to Marlow. Do take the time to explore this lovely Buckinghamshire market town where the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and T. S. Eliot lived (albeit 100 years apart). Both men were residents of Marlow's West Street. Other writers to enjoy the Thames Path here include Shelley's wife Mary, who completed her novel Frankenstein while living in Marlow in 1817. Jerome K. Jerome is said to have written parts of his comic novel, Three Men in a Boat at the Two Brewers, a pub on the banks of the Thames here.

Where to stay

The Compleat Angler Hotel, Marlow

Famed for its Indian cuisine, The Compleat Angler Hotel takes its name from Isaak Walton's seventeenth-century classic about fishing.

It stands next to a chain bridge constructed in 1832 that resembles the famous Széchenyi Chain Bridge across the Danube in Budapest. The Bristol engineer, William Tierney Clark designed them both.

IMAGES Left-right: Kings Hotel, Chipping Camden; Broadway Tower; Traditional Cotswold stone cottages and stone footbridge in the Cotswolds village of Lower Slaughter; UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hadrianís Wall; The Compleat Angler Hotel; The Thames Path.