Day 1—Head of the Thames to Cricklade

Two days ago, Anne and I landed in London and promptly took a train to Bath. We spent the night in a hotel near the Bath train station and the next day walked along an old tow path beside the River Avon in a long arc to the village of Claverton. We left the tow path at Claverton, climbed to the top of a hill on the Bath Skyline Trail, and descended back down the hill into Bath. We had views of the city and the surrounding valley the entire way. We questioned whether a long and hard hike was wise the day before setting off on a long walk.  But the sky was blue with white puffy clouds and the sun was shining, so off we went, completely enchanted, forgetting what often befalls those falling under magic spells.  

The next morning, the start of our 18-day walk along the Thames, we were at a highway crossing just outside the village of Kemble, a short train ride from Bath, where we had spent the night at an inn. It was cold and the sky was grey. We were walking along a busy highway to reach a trail that would take us a short distance to the source of the Thames. As cars sped past on the highway, we jumped to the side of the road and waited for an opening to hurry a few more feet down the highway towards the trail. Our enjoyment of Bath the day before had been so great that we had joked that we would look back on the trip and say that nothing equalled that first day and that perhaps we should quit while we were ahead. Dodging cars on a cold grey morning was making a prediction look keenly, too keenly, astute. After several uneasy moments, we were off the highway and onto a trail through an uncultivated field. 

After a short walk through farm land, we were at a plaque marking the source, which rises from a spring marked by a circle of stones. The UK has a drought, and the spring was not flowing.

Opposite the plaque was an old ash tree that is one of the traditional signposts of the source.

There has been controversy over the source’s location, with some saying that it is actually located at another spring in a field that is some distance from where we were standing. As we were to learn later in the day, the Thames River Conservation Authority, which placed the plaque, hasn’t been able to quell the controversy over source’s location. 

The Thames Path starts at the source, and as we walked down the path to begin our trip, Anne asked if I planned to write a blog during our trip. I told her no, because I had nothing to say. I was empty.  She asked why I felt that way, and I had no answer for her.

We were walking through fields of grass. Beside us ran a dry rock-lined ditch, the beginning of the Thames. 

We walked several miles before we first saw a muddy pool in the ditch. The Thame’s first surface water.

I told Anne what was bothering me. For several months before the trip, I had been working with a group of neighbors on an affordable housing project planned for our neighborhood. I wanted the affordable housing project, to the greatest extent possible, not to cause overcrowding, traffic, and noise in the neighborhood. I wanted to focus on areas where the neighbors had a realistic chance of making meaningful changes that would benefit the neighborhood. There was a small group of very active and vocal project opponents. Despite talking with them for months, they could never articulate what their goals were, much less how they wanted to achieve them. They only wanted to criticize and destroy. In the end, I believe that that they were only interested in fighting. They were angry and abusive. They made up facts. When confronted with their misstatements, they pivoted and made up new facts. Dealing with them was frustrating and exhausting. Having lived with many of them for years, I was left feeling that I had never really known them at all, which was depressing.

After several miles of walking, Anne and I came to the village of Ashton Keynes where the Thames was a small stream now.

Beyond Ashton Keynes, the Thames disappears into series of abandoned gravel pits, some of which are very large.They are now called a water park. Some are used for boating.

It was outside one of the abandoned gravel pits that Anne and I bumped into an elderly mother and her daughter walking their dog. They asked where we came from, and we told them that we had started at the source that morning. They told us that we hadn’t started at the real source, which was a spring several miles from the plaque that the government had misleadingly put in the wrong location. We didn’t ask why the government would want to mislead people about the Thames’ source, and they never offered an explanation. 

Leaving the water park behind, Anne and I walked through fields covered with flowers, some with farm animals.

After almost 14 miles of walking, we reached the village of Cricklade, our first day’s destination.  We are both exhausted and have lots of aches and pains. Unfortunately, we didn’t do any consistent training for the walk. Anne was hampered by a hip injury that has only recently healed. I have no excuse for not preparing. We also no doubt are paying the price for our peregrination around Bath.  We have another longish day tomorrow, about 11 miles, and hope to get a good night’s sleep before setting out.