We’ve been walking the dogs on the Thames footpath today, giving them a chance to run off some energy and us a chance for a bit of fresh air after spending most of yesterday in the car.

Henley-on Thames was our starting point – the Wind in the Willows museum. I must say, an experience like that was absolutely spot-on to ensure we know what a good choice we made in our move to Cornwall. Today is, of course, two days post Christmas and lethargy seems to be the most common state to be in at the moment. Knowing this, I’d have assumed that the local politicians and health services would be encouraging their citizens to get out of the house and get a bit of exercise – it’s been cold so some inducement to go out would seem like a good thing not a bad one.

We were, therefore shocked…..no, mortified to discover that the price of a parking bay outside the museum was not just the normal £2.60 (daylight robbery in any other language) but, because it’s a public holiday, the price has been increased to £5 for the privilege of spending a couple of hours walking along a bitterly cold and muddy towpath. Is it any wonder with these prices people are put off from enjoying the most basic of exercises? Anyway – ha ha to Henley town council because someone gave us their ticket as they left – yep, I know by admitting this I could get fined by the council but for heavens sake, surely a bit of ‘Christian spirit’ should be kicking in here. It strikes me that instead of this greedy increase in price (and let’s face it, people weren’t queuing for space), a day’s free parking may have been a more generously spirited way of encouraging some healthy activity. Incidentally, our new home’s nearest town allows the same amount of time to be spent in its car parks for the much-more-reasonable price of £1.10 and on public holidays, it is free!

This is the second example of the variance in the cost of living here compared to there – on Christmas Eve I had to insure our house and its contents. I looked around for some competitive quotes and was very pleased to discover that it’s possible to buy insurance for your home in Cornwall at less than half of the price of the same in the South East. Cool!

So there we were on the path to the lock and there is a strange wooden bridge structure over the weir to the lock then back onto the bank. I think it’s because in days gone by the horse-drawn barges needed access for horses to pull their barges through the lock. It’s very exposed in the middle of the river on a day like today and the wind was biting.

This is the ‘dividing line’ between Marsh Lock and the adjacent weir – the bottom of the picture is the torrent of water coming from the weir and whooshing through the ‘teeth’ of the wooden pilings on the downstream side of the lock. I suppose it’s the ambiguity I like – it could be snow, water, cloud, steam or even white icing.

It’s already clear to me that coming ‘up-country’ is a very good reminder for why we chose to opt out of this crazy life here in the South East. Now all we have to do is to persuade the people we care about to join us then we won’t have to venture up here too often.

Two years ago, I was quite pleased with myself for my ingenuity and last year, I was photographing a 'wooly jumper'