A few days at Henley on Thames

A bit late in getting our motorhoming season off the ground this year. I won’t bore you with all the things that got in the way of getting away earlier. Anyway, we decided that we would return to Henley on Thames as the town is walkable and there are also buses. We have generally stayed at Henley Four Oaks but this time we decided to use Swiss Farm which is set back from that noisy road. This is only the second time we have used this site, the last being in 2012, as we used the site as a base for visiting the Olympic Rowing on Super Saturday, glory days!

Sunday 14th May saw us heading down the M40. We decided to avoid going via Oxford as there were lane closures and stories of chaos which were best avoided. A leisurely stop was made at Oxford Services for a coffee. At these services caravans and motorhomes go in with the coaches, as also do a few lorries seemingly! Having left the motorway and picked our way through Marlow we were on the Henley road and soon arrived at Swiss Farm. Our pitch was at the top of the site overlooking the almost empty large tent field. We had a fully serviced pitch including TV hook-up and good free WiFi.

Overnight we seemed to have encountered a problem. In taking a bottle of water out of the fridge we realised it had thick ice in it. In the scheme of things this would not we a problem. However, Margaret also stores her spare insulin in the fridge and if that had become frozen it would have been useless! We discovered that the thermostat on the fridge had been turned up full, probably at the service to test the fridge, and we had not noticed! We were intending to go into Henley the next day, this event just added an extra urgency to it. After consulting two pharmacies I think Margaret was reassured that the insulin was OK to use. If it had not, been it would have required our surgery in MK to send a prescription to one of the Henley pharmacies or alternatively, we could have paid privately for it and that would have only cost £80!!!

Once that worry was out of the way we were free to wander around the town. Everywhere seemed busy and down by the river we could see they were getting ready for the annual Regatta as the Marquees were being constructed on the far bank of the Thames.

The next day we settled for just a walk down to the River Thames, making use on a handy bench to watch the river traffic go by. I’m with  Kenneth Grahame when it comes to rivers and messing about on them! On the way back to the motorhome we stopped off at the site café and a Club Sandwich which was extremely filling and their coffee was excellent. For those of you that think that the CMC has exclusive rights on mowing grass to within a millimetre of its life, you are wrong! Swiss Farm are pretty good at it as well!

Our final day on site and our intention was to take the bus into Marlow, about eight miles away. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a few cancellations so we passed on the idea and just decided to go back to the site café for another lovely coffee. We had a wander around what is, quite a large site. The tent field seems to stretch into the distance. Being so open also a good place to watch for Red Kites of which there is a large population of in this area.

Thursday and time to go home. Being aware of the continued difficulties on the roads around Oxford we again opted to use the M40 to Bicester and then across to MK and home. Another stop at the services, everything was going well!  As we re-joined the motorway the traffic seemed lighter than normal. A miles or two ahead we came across the reason, the motorway had been closed between junctions 9 and 10 due to a serious accident. No way out, we were trapped! What should have been a half hour journey turned into a five and half hour nightmare! We were just glad we had the facilities of the motorhome to hand.