2013 Thames Path, Day 1/12: The Source to Cricklade June 27
Tales from the White Hart
Two guys walk into a pub. “Do you serve Yanks?” asks one.
“Sure! Roasted or fried?”
OK, I didn’t meet Fred Christensen until lunch, and the publican didn’t make any jokes about Yanks other than a slight sneer about old-school credit cards that you had to swipe, but meeting Fred was in many ways the highlight of the day. And it’s not that White Hart, of course. You have read Arthur C. Clarke’s Tales from the White Hart, right?
I saw Fred much earlier in the day, maybe 15 minutes after I left the Source, but we didn’t talk then. We passed going opposite directions but about 40 yards apart. I was wondering why a hiker was out on that field but so far from the trail, and only later realized that he was on the Thames Path, and I was on the Cow Path.
The day started with a good Full English Breakfast at the Thames Head. I chatted with a fellow who was staying there for a few days while taking a certification course at a nearby airport. Then I packed up my backpack (really a day pack) with 4 days’ worth of clothes, toiletry kit, rain gear, and a cheap Android tablet that I found frustrating as it had no Bluetooth and no way to connect a keyboard. I refilled a plastic water bottle with tap water, donned the pack and slung my Canon 620 around my neck, and headed out. First I retraced my route from last night back to the still dry Source and took a few pictures with the better camera, then headed out in the direction the 184 Miles fingerpost pointed.
The first couple of miles were still familiar from yesterday afternoon, back to the outskirts of Kemble. No sign of a stream here in this dry season, just a shallow, barely noticeable trough crossing a pasture. The valiant hiker must dodge cow patties, then brave the metal bulls roaring along the A433 and cross to another pasture, where a long muddy draw actually had occasional puddles standing. Somewhere along here I mistook which beaten trail was actually the Thames Path, or I would have met Fred much earlier in the day. It wasn’t until I crossed the road that led back to Kemble and started breaking new ground that I saw a semblance of actual running water in the infant Thames (or Isis). That road had an actual bridge over the stream, heavily over-engineered for the present level of flow. Since I had made a point of photographing every bridge I passed downstream, I took a couple of this one.
Shortly I was passing through the first small village the Path actually went through, Ewan: lots of low stone walls and ivy covered cottages. A road sign at a crossroads also held fingerposts for the Thames Path, but I was fascinated by the town names including Poole Keynes and Somerford Keynes; I would be passing through Ashton Keynes later. The collection of similar names reminded me of all of the fictional villages and towns featured in Midsomer Murders: Midsomer Mallow, Midsomer Newton, Midsomer Parva, et al. Many of the locations filmed for that series are near the Thames downstream, mostly in the Oxford to Reading stretch. Leaving the village the path was well-graded gravel, more impressive than the shallow, elongated puddle it followed, which looked more like a poorly drained field than an actual creek. That soon changed and I could believe that this rivulet was headed for Oxford, Reading, Windsor, London itself and finally the sea.
I continued to snap a photo of every bridge, even though some of them were private walkways from the path to a house. Given that the trail sometimes was out of sight of the “river”, I surely missed a few of these, but I think I captured every named bridge, and probably every road bridge. This burgeoning stream soon became lost in a series of manmade lakes, the Cotswold Water Park. These abandoned gravel pits have become a wildlife preserve and recreational site, teeming with ducks and waterfowl.
I reached Ashton Keynes around 2, ready for a late lunch. The “Thames or Isis” splits into several channels around and through the Cotswold Water Park, and splits again on the way into Ashton Keynes, a series of burbling brooks with tiny footbridges leadind to houses. The path followed a carefully sculpted (and landscaped) channel past one of the town’s four “preaching crosses”. I turned away from the trail down the High Road to find the White Hart Inn and lunch. (See photo at top of this story.) The pub advertised an upcoming American Night on the 4th of July, with a Cowboy/Cowgirl theme.
I don’t recall what I had for lunch, but as I was finishing that and enjoying a pint, another walker came in with his own copy of the National Trail guide. He was American also, although he had a proper British wedge-shaped cap. This was Fred Christensen, a retired college administrator and instructor, whom I had seen at a distance that morning. I quickly confirmed that he was also hiking the Thames, and we compared notes. Fred had rented a car and driving to one end of each day’s walk, then taking a bus from there to the other end where he would start hiking, or hiking from there and taking the bus back at the end of the day. He was also driving around elsewhere on alternate days, including a pilgrimage to the bookshops of Hay on Wye.
I rented a car after the ’87 WorldCon in Brighton, drove as far as southern Wales then back to the outskirts of London. And totaled the car on the M25 ring road while heading back to Gatwick to check it in. Not planning on doing that again.
We walked together that afternoon from Ashton Keynes to Cricklade, and that was very pleasant. I find that I am one of the slower walkers on the trail, but Fred was OK with my pace. We chatted about history, and the upcoming sesquicentennial of the battle of Gettysburg. Fred was planning on guiding a bus tour a year later, avoiding the crowds on the big anniversary. I asked for a recommendation on a good book about the battle, and he suggested Stephen W. Sears’ Gettysburg, which I duly noted and later very much enjoyed.
I didn’t take as many pictures that afternoon, partly because we were talking, and partly because the scenery was much as it had been approaching Ashton Keynes. The trail wove between further ponds created from flooded gravel pits, and at the edge of another pasture or two. The Thames-or-Isis was a bit larger but still far from navigable. It reminded me in size of Verde Creek which runs into the Guadalupe near my home, and which I have to cross every time I go anywhere. Nobody living more than a few miles away has ever heard of the Verde, although Camp Verde higher up the stream is historically interesting as the site of the Army’s experiment with using camels in 19th century Texas.
The sky had clouded up with a light rain as we approached Cricklade, and the rain turned heavy as we turned up the High Street to the White Hart Hotel where I was staying. Fred joined me for a pint, and to wait out the rain. I had really enjoyed having a companion for this stretch. I had walked with a local for perhaps 2 miles approaching Richmond, on my last stretch, but otherwise had done this trail solo. I’m very glad that Fred and I have kept in touch; he emailed me in July of 2016 about having finished the Thames Path himself.
This White Hart is a very pleasant 17th century inn; I didn’t run into any mad scientists here, either, but couldn’t swear there were none around. (I gather that Clarke’s stories were actually inspired by a pub he and friends frequented in Fetter Lane, named The White Horse.) As you would expect, plumbing was retrofitted here, and involved a shredder and pump in the toilet drain to accommodate the need for s*** to flow uphill, contrary to normal expectations and the famous metaphor.
The food looked excellent, but my eye had been caught by an Indian restaurant The Ancient Raj across the street, so that’s where I headed for supper.
A note on my day numbering: I walked the Thames Path in an odd order of segments, starting with a day right in the middle near Reading, then a few near London, jumping around until finish up with the first four days from the Source to Oxford. I’ve decided to post blog notes in the geographical order of the segments starting from the source, but with a note of which year I was hiking that stretch, and also which segment number it was in terms of my personal chronological order. So that makes this 2013 Day 1/11, the first segment from the source, but the 11th (out of 15) for me. Among other benefits, that defers the need for me to scan photos from my earliest hikes, before I had a digital camera.