Sunday walk through Cookham

We had beautiful weather this past weekend, so we decided to go for a nice walk around Cookham. It was also the first real cross-country test drive of our new stroller. Worked a treat, once we got the tired properly inflated.

Here you can see G. with the stroller walking down towards the train station. I don't think you can see it in the picture, but way in the background is Cliveden, a large manor near us.
G getting aquainted with some of the friendly neighbours. What's funny is that this is about 200 meters from a regular side street in Cookham Rise.
We continued our walk through Cookham village and visited the Holy Trinity Church. It is quite old, well, parts of it are old. Before this church, there was a Saxon church built here, dating back at least as far as 750 AD. It was refurbished to more along its current form in the 1400s. If you visit, there is a good explanation of the architecture and history available to read.
From the church we went to The Ferry, a nice restaurant and bar right on the riverside, for a drink. It was the first time I had breastfed Lena out in the open, which was a slightly weird feeling, but actually was no big deal.

After the drink we headed for home, but took a side path to see if it also led towards our place. It didn't and we started to encounter fairly rough countryside with just the narrowest of paths. It's good our stroller is 3-wheel drive. But along with being a bit rough, it was leading us away from home, with no easy or short way back. But we were walking right beside some houses and I could see that if we cut through the yard of one place, we could get from their driveway to the street. G wasn't keen on doing it, but I was even less keen on walking an extra kilometre or so over rough ground, especially in the wrong direction. So we decided to go for it. Sure enough, the second we were on their grass, a window in the house flew open and a woman shouted out at us, "Just what do you think you're doing?" She sounded fairly annoyed, as I would be with someone walking in my yard. But I pulled the ultimate trump card, an apologetic tone and a baby. I immediately apologised and explained we were just trying to get to the road because we had lost the path. She quickly came around and was much friendlier once she saw we had the baby and a stroller to push. She let us go across to her driveway which led to the street - it was only about 30 meters from the edge of her property anyways. I was as sorry as my tone to her indicated; I didn't want to trespass, but I'm glad we did in the end. So thanks to the lady who by the end of our little encounter was making gentle small talk with us for letting us take a shortcut home. We promise not to do it again.

Measuring our walk using Gmaps Pedometer, we walked nearly exactly 6km. (Sorry, if you want the uncivilized mile measurement, you'll have to figure it out yourself.) Not bad for our first big walk out. The weather has become far more winter-like today, so we are unlikely to repeat it this weekend, but will be trying to do more and more in the future.