Saturday, 27 September 2008

Memorial to Thomas Gray



This evening I managed a 25 mile circuit, around Stoke Poges and Burnham Beeches. I passed this memorial to Thomas Gray outside St Giles church in Stoke Poges, where he is supposed to have been inspired to create "Elegy written in a country churchyard".

The parts of the circuit nearest home are very familiar, while the rest covered ground that I have cycled before, but not for a while.

I seem to have picked quite a popular route, and saw a lot of other cyclists out for ride on a lovely autumn evening. In retrospect perhaps I could have avoided quite so many busy roads, and uninteresting suburbs. On the other hand, Burnham Beeches was looking very fine, with low sun filtering through the trees; and by the time I crossed back over the Thames at Cookham, the rich, low sunlight made the river look like molten metal.

On balance it wasn't such a bad mix.

2 comments:

toppoi said...

At the other side of the church are the memorial gardens. Very well maintained and great place, at least for a stroll, if not, for having your ashes buried. At the north west boundary there are great views over the striking Stoke park manor house. Famous for featuring in a couple of Bond movies.

gom1 said...

Thanks for that - I saw the gardens but didn't go in. I gather the Bond films were Goldfingar and Tomorrow Never Dies. Stoke Park seems to have have been used as a location for a number of films: http://www.stokeparkclub.com/history.htm