Day Six Sunday
I woke up around 7.30 and had to explain to Natalie that I had to leave to continue my hike. As a parting gift I left her my crotchless fishnets. We'd discarded our respective fishnet attires just prior to going to sleep. Natalie in turn gifted me her black hold-ups as a souvenir for me. Both sets of nylons had miraculously stood up to the punishment they'd taken the night before. I dressed, putting her black fishnets on and having exchanged contact details and one last kiss I promptly left. I'm sure the sight of a woman in a fancy dress, a pair of black fishnets and with hair and make-up that made her look like she'd been dragged head-first through a hedge first thing in the morning, especially a Sunday morning elicited many looks and wandering thoughts, but I didn't care. Indeed I found it rather arousing, all those people wondering what I'd gotten up to the previous night and with whom. I unselfconsciously stopped off at the same 'greasy spoon' for breakfast as I had the previous evening and had a slightly less hearty breakfast as I was going to be doing a lot of walking today. Plus, I didn't want anything to ruin Andrea's dress.
I returned to my room, stripped and showered. I dried off, dressed in my hiking clothes, set my hair & make-up and took a detour to Andrea & Richard's.
"So how did it go last night?" Andrea asked me as I sat at her kitchen table drinking coffee.
"I spent the night with a young lesbian." I omitted Natalie's name and all other details that might have lead back to her, limiting my tale to what we'd got up to with each other and 'Big Richard'.
"Well I've got my own 'Big Richard' and he's going to be put to good use before this morning's out." Andrea promised me. At that moment Richard appeared in the kitchen, sporting a 'five o'clock shadow', a pale-blue flannel dressing-gown and slippers.
"Morning Amy. Andrea's dress still in one piece?" We both laughed, much to his confusion and after a trip to their loo and some good-bye pecks on their cheeks I headed back to the river and resumed my journey along the Thames. As I did so I began whistling 'The Lonely Man' theme from the old 'Incredible Hulk' TV show which seemed appropriate. Meanwhile in a house in Oxford's suburbia, I was confident a man named 'Richard' was getting a good work-out courtesy of his wife Andrea, all without leaving their bed...
Day Seven Monday
I left Abingdon and thanked the nice old lady who'd put me up for the night in her B & B. I'm finding I like having sex free days on this journey. They give my pussy chance to recover and for me to appreciate it more when I get it. I'd gone to bed just before 10.00 and propped up on a couple of pillows, read more of my 'From Source to Sea' book. Learning amongst other things that there are a lot of churches near the Thames named 'St. Mary's'...
After a day walking along the meandering river I was nearing the end of another day's walk. My destination for the day was Goring and I had a room booked at an Inn named 'The Taurus'. As I approached Cleve Lock I saw a massive Dutch-style houseboat, moored by the riverbank. It was black and easily twenty feet wide. I'd seen a number of them on the Amsterdam canals and marvelled at how someone had brought this one so far up river. As I drew closer I could make out details. The 'house' section rose some eighteen inches above the deck and spanned all but a foot or so of the deck on either side with a gently sloping roof. There were a couple of what I took to be either funnels or smoke stacks, a satellite dish and some aerials and aft was a glazed box roughly the size of four telephone boxes in a square. I could just make out the outline of a person inside it. There was a Black Labrador lying in a foetal position near the bow, its greying muzzle and docile nature telling me it was a senior dog. It mewled pathetically at my approach.
"Hello dog." I said pausing by a gangplank that connected the boat, moored approximately three feet out into the water.
"Her name's 'Rosie', just like this boat." A prim-educated voice called from astern. I looked up to see a fifty-something woman (I was later to learn she'd just turned sixty), moving down the boat towards me. She was about my height with a 'pear-shaped' physique and an ample bosom, accentuated by a tight-fitting white t-shirt with an anchor and chain symbol emblazoned across the chest. Boot-cut jeans turned up at the ankles, a pair of cork flip-flops and a black leather Breton fisherman's cap atop short ginger hair, completed the ensemble. She stopped beside the dog and I could see that she had a face that in her youth was probably quite attractive, though now it was somewhat weather-beaten and lined, with a small cluster of pale freckles on and around her nose and cheeks that had survived puberty.
"Hello Rosie." I cooed at the dog.
"My name's Angela by the way. Now let me guess, Thames River walker?" Angela stooped down and extended her hand. In order to take it I had to step up onto the boarding ramp.
"What gave me away?" I quipped back after a brief handshake. I stepped back onto the path, my 'gaydar' screaming 'dyke'!
"Got much farther to go today?" Angela asked.
"I'm booked into the Taurus in town." I replied.
"That's my local. Most nights, weather-permitting I like to go there for a drink before bed. I might see you in there later." She waved goodbye to me as I pressed on.
The Taurus Inn was a little way off the river, but not too far. A quaint little pub with a picture of the night sky with the constellation that bore its name on the sign outside. Inside it was a typical quaint, English country pub. There were a number of people already in there when I stepped in around 7.00 in the evening. Judging by their attire it was a mix of locals and tourists, mainly fellow Thames hikers. Music played in a juke box, the sound of a dozen or so conversations challenging the music box for noise. I nodded a few greetings whenever I made eye contact with patrons and walked to the bar.
"My name's Amy -- I booked a room here online." I said to the Landlady, a short, rotund lady in her fifties with a mop of dark hair that looked like a bird's nest stuck on her head. She smiled at me and walked over to a where she'd left a clipboard with a computer print-out on it. She kept a pair of reading glasses on a long-chain around her neck and put them on. She consulted the list, muttering my name over and over.
"Oh dear." She said.
"What, what is it?" I asked, suddenly concerned.
"It's these bloody computers, excuse my French." She replied.