GPX file here
Viewranger File here
We set off and walk towards Windsor.
Windsor Great Park is a Royal Park of 2,020 hectares (5,000 acres), including a deer park, to the south of the town of Windsor on the border of Berkshire and Surrey in England. The park was, for many centuries, the private hunting ground of Windsor Castle and dates primarily from the mid-13th century. Historically the park covered an area many times the current size known as Windsor Forest, Windsor Royal Park or its current name. The park is managed and funded by the Crown Estate.
We take a turn to our right where a path leads us to the Long Walk.
We can see the Copper Horse statue that sits at the end of The Long Walk and at its other end is Windsor Castle.
The Copper Horse is a statue marking one end of the Long Walk at Snow Hill in Windsor Great Park. According to contemporary newspapers, His Majesty, King George IV, in January 1821, ordered "a full length statue in bronze of George III to be erected on the top of Snow Hill, Windsor Park, with his hand pointing towards his favourite residence, Windsor Castle". It was sculpted by Sir Richard Westmacott and erected in October 1831.
The northern end of the Long Walk is at the George IV Gateway at Windsor Castle. The Copper Horse is a statue of George III on horseback, and is said to represent George as an emperor in the Roman tradition riding without stirrups, along the lines of the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius. A comparison has also been made to the equestrian statue of Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg.
The statue was commissioned by George's son, George IV. The base bears the ironic inscription in Latin: Georgio Tertio / Patri optimo / Georgius Rex, which translates as: George the Third / the best of fathers / King George [IV]. Like so many father–son relationships in the Hanoverian family, however, George III and George IV were known to have despised one another.
We walk the Long Walk towards the castle.
From the Castle gate to the foot of the statue of King George III (The Copper Horse) The long walk measures 2.64 miles in length. So a run there and back is a great distance for joggers and is a very popular route for walkers too.
Snow Hill, as the legend has it, was where King Henry VIII sat and waited for news of the execution of his second wife, Queen Anne Boleyn. However, the path as we know it only came into being during the reign of King Charles II who had double rows of Elm trees planted the entire length of the route. There were 1,652 trees planted to create the basis of the landscape we know today. Charles had previously spent time at Versailles and wanted to remodel Windsor in a similar flamboyant style. The Long Walk was just one aspect of his improvement plans.
Later in 1710 Queen Anne had a road constructed down the centre of the tree lined avenue so that coaches could head out into the park on a comfortably smooth surface. A little way down from the Castle, the Long Walk is crossed by the Albert Road (A308) to old Windsor. Cars often slow to a walking pace to enjoy the views in both directions.
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| View back to Snow Hill |
The Long Walk is still used by the royal carriages every year as part of the route from Windsor Castle to the Ascot Races. Occasionally a warden’s car comes down Windsor’s Long Walk but other than that it is free from all except pedestrian traffic.
After crossing the A308 we continue along the Long walk and up to the Castle.
We arrive about 15 minutes before the Changing of the Guard at Windsor Castle, so we wait about. Felt a little uneasy as the armed Police walk over towards us a few times with their gun in hand.
Windsor Castle Guard:
Nijmegen Company Grenadier Guards
Musical Support:
Band of the Welsh Guards
The Grenadier Guards (GREN GDS) is an infantry regiment of the British Army. It can trace its lineage back to 1656 when Lord Wentworth's Regiment was raised in Bruges to protect the exiled Charles II. In 1665, this regiment was combined with John Russell's Regiment of Guards to form the current regiment, known as the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards. Since then, the regiment has filled both a ceremonial and protective role as well as an operational one. In 1900, the regiment provided a cadre of personnel to form the Irish Guards; while later, in 1915 it also provided the basis of the Welsh Guards upon their formation.
The guard leave the Victoria Barracks in Windsor and march up towards us. Its a spectacle to make you proud to be British.
After watching the change of the guard we walk over to the Soldiers Statue honouring the fallen Irish guardsmen.
Just behind the statue was a strange Blue postbox, so we had a look.
Blue post boxes seem to be a very rare thing indeed and some sources suggest that this may be the last still to be found in the country. Blue post boxes began to be introduced into some British cities and other locations of note in 1930 and were used for postal airmail services to send and receive mail mainly to and from Europe. The blue post box at Windsor Castle, which is near the site of the old Windsor Post Office (1887 – 1966) commemorates the first United Kingdom airmail service. On the 9th September 1911, Gustav Hamel flew a Blériot monoplane (which looks a bit of a death-trap) from Hendon aerodrome in London and landed on the Long Walk behind Windsor Castle. This 19 mile flight took only 18 minutes and his cargo was a sack of mail celebrating the coronation of King George V. Following this first official airmail flight the use of airmail slowly increased and became firmly established in the 1920’s when improved post World War I aircraft and pilots became available to support the service.
The use of these bespoke blue post boxes was short lived however and by the end of 1938 they had fallen out of use. A number of reasons for their withdrawal are citied including: the rise of air travel; the build-up to the Second World War and the re-allocation of aircraft assets; and the cost associated with having bespoke post boxes solely for airmail. Whatever the true reason, come the end of 1938 it was acceptable for airmail to be posted in normal red post boxes and the only reference to the blue boxes remained in the blue airmail stickers that adorned the envelopes of airmail letters.
Gustav Hamel (25 June 1889 – 23 May 1914) who safely delivered the UK’s first airmail in 1911, sadly got “lost in the post” himself. Hamel disappeared on the 23rd May 1914 whilst returning from France in a Morane-Saulnier monoplane that he had just collected. Whilst his aircraft was never found a body was found on the 6th July 1914 by the crew of a fishing vessel in the English Channel near Boulogne. The crew did not retrieve the body, but their description of clothing on the corpse and the fact that one of the personnel effects of the deceased was a road map of southern England led some to conclude that the body was Hamel.
Now we pass the castle not wishing to pay the entrance fee.
The original castle was built in the 11th century after the Norman invasion of England by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I, it has been used by the reigning monarch and is the longest-occupied palace in Europe. The castle's lavish early 19th-century State Apartments were described by the art historian Hugh Roberts as "a superb and unrivalled sequence of rooms widely regarded as the finest and most complete expression of later Georgian taste". Inside the castle walls is the 15th-century St George's Chapel, considered by the historian John Martin Robinson to be "one of the supreme achievements of English Perpendicular Gothic" design.
Originally designed to protect Norman dominance around the outskirts of London and oversee a strategically important part of the River Thames, Windsor Castle was built as a motte-and-bailey, with three wards surrounding a central mound. Gradually replaced with stone fortifications, the castle withstood a prolonged siege during the First Barons' War at the start of the 13th century. Henry III built a luxurious royal palace within the castle during the middle of the century, and Edward III went further, rebuilding the palace to make an even grander set of buildings in what would become "the most expensive secular building project of the entire Middle Ages in England". Edward's core design lasted through the Tudor period, during which Henry VIII and Elizabeth I made increasing use of the castle as a royal court and centre for diplomatic entertainment.
Windsor Castle survived the tumultuous period of the English Civil War, when it was used as a military headquarters by Parliamentary forces and a prison for Charles I. At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II rebuilt much of Windsor Castle with the help of the architect Hugh May, creating a set of extravagant Baroque interiors that are still admired. After a period of neglect during the 18th century, George III and George IV renovated and rebuilt Charles II's palace at colossal expense, producing the current design of the State Apartments, full of Rococo, Gothic and Baroque furnishings. Queen Victoria made a few minor changes to the castle, which became the centre for royal entertainment for much of her reign. Windsor Castle was used as a refuge by the royal family during the Luftwaffe bombing campaigns of the Second World War and survived a fire in 1992. It is a popular tourist attraction, a venue for hosting state visits, and the preferred weekend home of Elizabeth II.
We have a look around the many tourist shops here.
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| One of many lions of a display that is currently on display in Windsor and Eton. |
This fine bronze statue of Queen Victoria was designed and executed by Sir Edgar Boehm. It was erected in 1887 in celebration of the queen's Golden Jubilee. The cost of £2,500 was covered by subscriptions from the people of Windsor and the surrounding districts. The base is of red granite.
Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm (1834-1890) was born to Hungarian parents in Vienna, Austria, where he was educated, later coming to England to further his studies. He was to become one of the foremost British sculptors, settling in England in 1862. He was naturalised British in 1865. He died just three years after creating the Queen Victoria statue. Queen Victoria commissioned him to create bronzes of her family and statues at Windsor Castle. He was appointed Sculptor in Ordinary to the Queen in 1881.
We pass The Windsor Royal Shopping.,once a Victorian Railway Station now a vast array of high st shops.
We walk down The Cloisters and past a Statue 'My duty is to my country'.
We now reach the Windsor Bridge that will take us across The Thames into Eton.
The Windsor Bridge is an iron and granite arch bridge over the River Thames. The Thames Path crosses the river here. The bridge carries pedestrian and cycle traffic, and crosses the Thames just above Romney Lock. It is a Grade II listed structure.
It is likely that the first bridge on this site was built in the 12th century AD. By 1172 it is recorded that Osbert de Bray derived over £4 from tolls levied on vessels passing beneath the bridge. In 1242, permission was granted for oak trees to be felled in Windsor Forest for the purpose of constructing a new bridge between Windsor and Eton. By 1819 the wooden bridge, presumably rebuilt many times over its life, had deteriorated and it was decided to build a new bridge in new materials.
The name Eton derives from Old English Ēa-tūn, = "River-Town", i.e. on the River Thames.
The land that is now Eton once belonged to the manor of Queen Edith, wife of Edward the Confessor. The land was appropriated by the Normans after 1066. The main road between Windsor and London went through the area and a hamlet sprang up amid pasture meadows to maintain the road and the bridge.
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| View back across the bridge to Windsor. |
In 1440, Henry VI chose Eton as the location for his new college, Eton College. Workmen were moved into Eton to build the college. All of the land immediately around the hamlet was granted to the college, which stopped further growth. The new college chapel made the village a pilgrimage point, and inns were set up along the high street. Henry VI gave the college the right to hold fairs on its grounds.
During the English Civil War, after Windsor Castle was captured by parliamentarian forces, the Royalist army moved into Eton and attempted to retake the town, occupying the college. Efforts to retake Windsor were unsuccessful and the royalists eventually fled.
The population was 3,526 by 1841.
The college sometimes leased small plots of land to the village as an act of charity, leading to the construction of houses near the bridge. Scholars at the college also used to collect "salt" (money) from the inns of Eton High Street. This practice continued until 1845 when a scholar refused to associate with the inns because they were a "temptation" to Eton students. Eton was favourably modernised and was the first village in the UK to have its own post office and modern drainage system.
By 1925 the town was described as more commercial than residential, with most of the buildings (apart from those of the school itself) belonging to businesses serving the schoolboys.
In about 1970, the bridge connecting Eton to Windsor was closed to all motor traffic.
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| Eton Porny School of England. |
We now the main building of Eton College, but there are many sub buildings all over Eton.
Eton College is a 13–18 independent boarding school and sixth form for boys in the parish of Eton, near Windsor in Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as Kynge's College of Our Ladye of Eton besyde Windesore (The King's College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor), as a sister institution to King's College, Cambridge, making it the 18th-oldest Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference school. Eton's history and influence have made Eton one of the most prestigious schools in the world.
Following the public school tradition, Eton is a full boarding school, which means pupils live at the school seven days a week, and it is one of only four such remaining single-sex boys', boarding-only independent senior schools in the United Kingdom (the others being Harrow, Radley, and Winchester). The remainder have since become co-educational: Rugby (1976), Charterhouse (1971), Westminster (1973), and Shrewsbury (2014) and Merchant Taylors' which is now a day school. Eton has educated prime ministers, world leaders, Nobel laureates and generations of the aristocracy and has been referred to as "the chief nurse of England's statesmen".
Eton charges up to £42,501 per year[ (£14,167 per term, with three terms per academic year, in 2019). Eton was noted as being the sixth most expensive HMC boarding school in the UK in 2013/14, however the school admits some boys with modest parental income: in 2011 it was reported that around 250 boys received "significant" financial help from the school, with the figure rising to 263 pupils in 2014, receiving the equivalent of around 60% of school fee assistance, whilst a further 63 received their education free of charge. Eton has also announced plans to increase the figure to around 320 pupils, with 70 educated free of charge, with the intention that the number of pupils receiving financial assistance from the school continues to increase.
Eton College was founded by King Henry VI as a charity school to provide free education to 70 poor boys who would then go on to King's College, Cambridge, founded by the same King in 1441. Henry took Winchester College as his model, visiting on many occasions, borrowing its statutes and removing its headmaster and some of the scholars to start his new school.
In 1959, the college constructed a nuclear bunker to house the college's provost and fellows. The facility is now used for storage.
Eton has produced twenty British Prime Ministers, including Sir Robert Walpole, William Pitt the Elder, the first Duke of Wellington, William Ewart Gladstone, the third Marquess of Salisbury, the fifth Earl of Rosebery, Arthur James Balfour, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home, David Cameron and current Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
A rising number of pupils come to Eton from overseas, including members of royal families from Europe, Africa and Asia, some of whom have been sending their sons to Eton for generations. One of them, King Prajadhipok or Rama VII (1893–1941) of Siam, donated a garden to Eton. The former Prime Minister of Thailand, Abhisit Vejjajiva, who governed from 2008 to 2011, was also educated at Eton. King Leopold III of Belgium was sent to Eton during the First World War.
Besides Prince William and Prince Harry, members of the extended British royal family who have attended Eton include Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester and his son Alexander Windsor, Earl of Ulster; Prince William of Gloucester (1942-1972) son of Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester; Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, his eldest son George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews and grandson Edward Windsor, Lord Downpatrick; Prince Michael of Kent and his son Lord Frederick Windsor; James Ogilvy, son of Princess Alexandra and the Honourable Sir Angus Ogilvy.; Princess Margaret's grandsons Samuel and Arthur Chatto, and Charles Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley, also attended Eton College, as did George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood, son of Princess Mary, Princess Royal.
Here follows a list of films partially filmed at Eton.
Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972)
Aces High (1976)
Chariots of Fire (1981)
Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)
The Fourth Protocol (1987)
Inspector Morse: Absolute Conviction (1992 TV episode)
Lovejoy: "Friends in High Places" (1992 TV episode)
The Secret Garden (1993)
The Madness of King George (1994)
A Dance to the Music of Time (1997 TV mini-series)
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Mansfield Park (1999)
A History of Britain (2000 TV series documentary)
My Week With Marilyn (2010)
Etons College School Library.
College Library is a rare book and manuscript library of international importance. Established soon after the foundation of Eton College, it houses more than 150,000 items, ranging from the 9th to 21st centuries. These include printed and manuscript volumes, literary manuscripts, autograph letters, and prints and drawings.
The library's earliest collections were predominantly theological. Changes in taste and thought are reflected in subsequent additions, which include large numbers of classical books and manuscripts, early scientific works, historical and literary texts in modern languages, and materials valued primarily for their aesthetic or historical interest.
In the 1960s the college began also collecting rare books and manuscripts from the 19th century onwards. The modern collection includes important holdings of English literature and is also rich in travel writing, theatrical history and fine printing. College Library also has responsibility for the Macnaghten Library of First World War materials, presented to Eton as a memorial in 1938.
We wind our way through Eton with no purpose or direction.
Arthur Christopher Benson, FRSL (24 April 1862 – 17 June 1925) was an English essayist, poet, author and academic and the 28th Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He is noted for having written the words of the song "Land of Hope and Glory".
Dan found a library of books housed in a golden Telephone box.
Now we make our way down a path across a field towards the Thames and Windsor.
We walk along the pleasant Thames back towards Windsor Bridge.
We cross back across the bridge and take some funny photos at a piece of artwork on the bridge.
Just across the bridge was a wood pigeon hanging upside down on a bush wings out eating berries.
We walk along the Thames on Windsor side passing the Boat Trips dock.
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| John Logie Motor Boat hire. |
We cross the road from the Promenade and across to the Jubilee Fountain.
A fountain inspired by the crown jewels has opened in Windsor to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
The Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire, Mary Bayliss, officially unveiled the Jubilee Fountain in The Goswells park.
The fountain is 25m long with a circular pool at the centre. In the middle of the pool is a geyser with a "crown" of 60 water jets.
It cost £107,000 to build and was sponsored by council contractors ISS Waterers and local developers.
We walk along a tree lined path back towards the town and castle.
Here we find a Wetherspoons pub and stop for a drink. Dan has a pint of S.O.D and me a pint of Abbots Ale.
We then walk through The Royal Windsor Shopping before cutting through some other roads trying to make our way back towards the car.
We walk down Sheet Street and pass the Victoria Barracks.
The Coldstream Guards (COLDM GDS) is a part of the Guards Division, Foot Guards regiments of the British Army.
It is the oldest regiment in the British Army in continuous active service, originating in Coldstream, Scotland, in 1650 when General George Monck founded the regiment. It is one of two regiments of the Household Division that can trace its lineage to the New Model Army, the other being the Blues and Royals (Royal Horse Guards and 1st Dragoons).
We eventually find our way back onto The Long Walk and back the way we came.
We see herds of deer in The Deer park in The Windsor Great Park.
We are back at the car after a great 7.1 mile walk.
