Peter Robins, his website

The Roads to Santiago - Britain: London-Marlow-Reading

The obvious route is to follow the river along the Thames Path, though it is far from being a straight line. Various monastic foundations existed along the river. Benedictine Chertsey abbey was briefly the centre of a pilgrimage of King Henry VI, but little remains of this large site, apart from some fishponds. The remains of Burnham Priory, a community of Augustinian nuns, were incorporated in the current nunnery of the Society of the Precious Blood when they re-occupied the site. Little remains of the small Benedicine nunnery at Little Marlow, which controlled the Spade Oak ferry across the river. St Peter's in Marlow, where the hand of St James is now supposed to be, is right by the river. At Bisham, remains of the Augustinian priory are incorporated in what's now called Bisham Abbey. Further W, at Hurley, the parish church is from the former Benedictine priory, and the Old Bell Inn is the former guesthouse. On the other side of the river, little remains of Cistercian Medmenham abbey, which became notorious as the centre of the Hellfire Club. Just before Reading is Sonning, which was a bishop's seat and minor pilgrimage site in Saxon times.

April 2005