Cliveden Reach

Wooded stretch of the Thames below Cliveden, between Boulter’s Lock and Cookham. Three Men in a Boat calls it perhaps the sweetest stretch of the river.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Three Men in a Boat	Jerome K. Jerome	backdrop	The Cliveden woods in spring make this ‘perhaps the sweetest stretch of all the river’.

Three Men in a Boat — Jerome K. Jerome (1889)

Source: Exploration of Three Men in a Boat · Three Men in a Boat · Original · Readwise highlight

Cliveden Woods still wore their dainty dress of spring, and rose up, from the water’s edge, in one long harmony of blended shades of fairy green.

• Role: backdrop
• In the book: Above Maidenhead the narrator describes the Cliveden woods rising from the water in shades of green and calls the reach perhaps the loveliest on the river. They take tea in the backwater below Cookham and sail on before an evening wind.
• Why it matters: One of the book’s lyrical landscape passages, a calm interlude between comic episodes.