Sorry, but we just have to share with you the day travelling before we get to the walk!

We would like to talk about our journey down on the Saturday before we get into the day proper on Sunday. All of our 4 buses were on time today so no problems with the late arrival of the inbound… however if you are familiar with bus travel then you could skip the next few paragraphs, but for those that perhaps had their last bus journey to school or Saturday morning pictures, a lot has changed. Outside of rush hour and perhaps big cities there seem fewer people on buses than when we were small children. I can still remember, on my paper-round, the long chatty queues of grey people waiting at the bus stop and the double-deckers with steamed-up windows, full of noisy and smoking men and women, especially upstairs.

However, the buses are still pretty well used and on the main routes can still be double-deckers! So head for the upstairs and try not to be too disappointed when the four spotty youths, all plugged into their Walkmans (or what ever they use now) have already bagged the front seat, after all they probably have paid something towards their fare and you may have a concession or be a senior saver, like us! One good thing though, there is no more smoke! However, today luck was on our side and we had front seats on the main part of our journey. In general the people are people just like you and I, but of course there will always be the exception. While WI-fi is now standard on the longer-haul buses there are some on-board that would definitely struggle to find the Arriva app on their tablets! But of course most of the youths or silver-haired seniors I am sure would now cope very well. We alighted at the High Street stop in Oxford centre struggling our 10kgs rucksacks out of the bus's somewhat inadequate for a large rucksack-luggage holder and stepping down onto a thronging pavement of mainly oriental tourists. The first challenge of the walk was to keep Lesley out of the White Stuff clothes shop, remonstrating with her that it was simply not possible to cram any more clothes into our already weighty and bulging bags. We struck lucky for our morning brunch as just a few doors up from the stop was a really good Mediterranean salad bar and knowing we had nearly an hour to get across to Gloucester Green bus station, a leisurely salad and coffee was taken. It's at this stage of trying to 'park' your rucksacks that you now appreciate the pushchair laden folks, trying to park their cumbersome chariots, or was it we were simply trying to carry too much gear?

A stroll followed our brunch across the packed and mainly pedestrianised roads to Gloucester Green where the next double-decker bus was waiting for us and once again I flash my concession at the card-reader and my 'younger' wife has to cough-up for the 25 mile journey. Our kindly driver, and I must say at this stage, they usually are, whispered that could he make a suggestion to my wife, only the last time he said this, ofense was definitely taken! "We do have a senior saver ticket that can be used on Stagecoach (the Ogborne bus was Stagecoach too) that would save money but you need to be (or look) 'senior' to qualify". However much Lesley doesn't look 60+*, she definitely is and it was only a fiver for unlimited day travel. So there is our money-saving tip, try to be or look old! Back to bus people again, the bus was reasonably empty as we took our upstairs seats only to be joined by a mixed group of 'loud' passengers, acting like kids but were definitely well into their 30's at least. It seemed that their conversation, if that's what you could call it, involved telling the whole bus, even though they or at least we, didn't want to hear it. Thankfully they departed after 20 minutes allowing us to hear ourselves speak and enjoy the countryside without the continuous inane and pointless jabber. The twenty or so miles to Swindon came up in just over the hour because the bus took quite a few detours from the A420 to collect villagers who seemed to actually want to go to Swindon! Now, bus stations by their placement or just lack of design, are generally not pretty and this terminus was on the much less pretty end of the beauty stakes, only being surpassed by the Poole terminus, to my limited, but steadily improving knowledge of transport hubs in the South. Waiting at the stop for the Ogborne bus, an inspector informed our queue that our bus was delayed in traffic. The shock was far greater from having an operative keeping us abreast of the situation, than the somewhat painful notion of having to wait a few extra minutes at Swindon! Our single-decker arrived over 2 minutes late! I must write to Mr Stagecoach and perhaps ask for a refund, but then again I am a concession so very little point……..Our driver looked like a Gurkha or Nepalese and had a big broad smile on his round face. It seemed like he really enjoyed his regular run between Swindon and Marlborough via the Great Western Hospital and on to Ogbourne St George. When leaving his bus thirty minutes later he wished us well on our walk, saying he would have liked to do it also, but then I suppose he had a bus full of people and they wouldn't have been at all amused at being abandoned, but then again………...why not!

So we soon arrived into this lovely village and walked down to Parklands otel ( yes the 'H' is missing on the hotel sign too) to be greeted by Mark, who as well as doing pretty near everything in the hotel, had a very dry sense of humour, almost a match for mine at times. Later that evening when ordering food he appeared enthusiastically with pen and pad looking to take down our choice. I firstly asked for "2 towels please". Mark refused to reply and with a dead-pan face just wrote something down and they appeared magically in our room, on our return from our meal . Pleased at dumping our cumbersome loads into our nice little room, we went out to explore with a walk around the village followed by tasting the beer in the local pub where we would be eating on Sunday evening (Parklands is closed for food on Sundays) before returning, sprucing up and taking our evening meal. We were soon off to bed to partake in plenty of sleep ready for the next day's walk. However after a short read and settling down for our eight-hours plus, the plumbing in our room really didn't want us to drop-off or not just yet, until that is the kitchen and every last guest had stopped using the hot tap. The pipes sent out clicks, cracks and creaks at an alarming and progressive rate through the joists and floorboards somewhere beneath our bed. There was good news though, we certainly didn't need to set our alarm or order a wake-up-call in the morning. That leads nicely on to the Day One walk, proper >>>>>>>>

* "what a creep"! Lesley.