Summer is the time to get out of the confines of the house and enjoy the weather. While it may not be sunny all the time, this is the best period in the year to enjoy what nature has to offer. You don’t even need to go far or out of the country. Just take a look around you and you will find a lot of options.
One of these is a floating picnic at the River Thames. The best online resource for this kind of outing is Visit Thames, which compiles most anything that you can do related to the river. There are lots of restaurants by the river, from the outskirts of London to the Cotswolds. The Guardian recently had a feature on these floating picnic outings and suggests these:
The Beetle & Wedge Boathouse in Moulsford near Goring (beetleandwedge.co.uk) makes up hampers of cheese, salads, gravadlax, baguettes, melon and strawberries, then puts you in a wooden launch that seats up to 10 people (one hour boat hire £50, hampers from £15pp).
Or cruise the Thames in style from Marlow on the Compleat Angler’s Edwardian-style electric launch, while tucking into poached salmon, sandwiches, salads, scones, cheese and biscuits and strawberries and cream (macdonaldhotels.co.uk/compleatangler, boat hire £75-£95 per hour, hampers £25-£36).
If you want to pack your own hamper the website also lists boat hire companies such as Cotswold Boat Hire (cotswoldboat.co.uk), based in Lechlade, which has open-top motor boats from £80 for four hours for up to five people, and rowing boats from £15 per hour.
Now that sounds pretty good to me. What about you?