Summer Pimms and Flower Shows

My travelsleuthing diary for July gets ever more overcrowded as each year passes, leaving little time to enjoy a well earned pint at my favourite watering hole. This first week sees me trekking out to SW19 on Monday to cheer on Britain's Wimbledon hopeful Tim Henman as he battles it out with Swiss Michel Kratochvil on No.1 Court for a place in the quarter finals. If either Henman or his fellow Brit Greg Rusedski, (or both), make it to the finals on Sunday, they will be honoured by the presence of The Queen in the newly furnished Royal Box. This would be her first appearance in the Royal Box at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis and Crocquet Club since the finals of 1977, her Silver Jubilee year, when she was there to present the trophy to the last British Singles winner, Virginia Wade.

On Thursday I make my way west up the river Thames to watch the rowing at Henley Royal Regatta as a guest of an old chum from university days who once rowed for the Leander Club, British rowing's Holy of Holies. As an old blade he will be dressed for the occasion in Leander pink - pink blazer, pink cap, pink tie, and pink socks beneath his white flannels. Now decidedly pear-shaped after a life of business lunches in the City, he begins to look distinctly like the pink elephants I may see gambling by the water's edge after quaffing too many Pimms in the course of spectator duty. They say that more Pimms is drunk at the Henley Regatta than in all the rest of the year put together. Previous experience on the banks of the Thames here gives me little reason to doubt this and I fear I have done my own little bit in producing this statistic. As required by tradition I shall be suitably attired in white flannels, a now rather faded sports club blazer and tie and white trilby.

This will be my second Thamesside jaunt of the week. On Tuesday I visit Hampton Court Palace for the opening of the Royal Horticultural Society's annual flower show there. As always on a visit to this most beautiful of royal residences I shall travel there as the original owner and builder Cardinal Wolsey did in the early 1500s before he handed the palace keys to his master Henry VIII; by river. The king also chose to travel this way, rowed upstream from Greenwich or Westminster in his royal barge to his palace given him by his disgraced Chancellor. The stately barges of yesteryear have given way now to faster riverboats but the water trip from Westminster Bridge is still a pleasant way to travel - and infinitely preferable to taking the car or train.

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