WALKING THE THAMES TO LONDON #4

Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust

In association with the cyclists’ group from The Prince Albert

Day Two: Cricklade to Lechlade 11 miles

William Cobbett visited Cricklade in 1826 on his Rural Rides: ‘the source of the river Isis … the first branch of the Thames. They call it the “Old Thames” and I rode through it here, it not being above four or five yards wide, and not deeper than the knees of my horse … I saw in one single farm-yard here more food than enough for four times the inhabitants of the parish … the poor creatures that raise the wheat and the barley and cheese and the mutton and the beef are living upon potatoes …’
Plus ca change …

A haiku exploration:
Ridge and furrow fields,
Once beyond the river’s reach,
Now puddled and drowned.

Peasants till the fields,
Barefoot ghosts and revenants
Follow in our steps.

Silhouetted trees,
Pewter sky and silver clouds,
The water’s canvas.

Swans glide the field-flood,
A limitless lake’s expanse,
Burnished willow boughs.

And at Inglesham,
A medieval village,
Lost to Time’s waters.

Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust

In association with the cyclists’ group from The Prince Albert

Day Two: Cricklade to Lechlade 11 miles

William Cobbett visited Cricklade in 1826 on his Rural Rides: ‘the source of the river Isis … the first branch of the Thames. They call it the “Old Thames” and I rode through it here, it not being above four or five yards wide, and not deeper than the knees of my horse … I saw in one single farm-yard here more food than enough for four times the inhabitants of the parish … the poor creatures that raise the wheat and the barley and cheese and the mutton and the beef are living upon potatoes …’
Plus ca change …

A haiku exploration:
Ridge and furrow fields,
Once beyond the river’s reach,
Now puddled and drowned.

Peasants till the fields,
Barefoot ghosts and revenants
Follow in our steps.

Silhouetted trees,
Pewter sky and silver clouds,
The water’s canvas.

Swans glide the field-flood,
A limitless lake’s expanse,
Burnished willow boughs.

And at Inglesham,
A medieval village,
Lost to Time’s waters.

While we ooze and splash
Through rising water tables,
To a drowned future.

Postscript from Kel Portman

walking through water
in winter’s delicate light
so many more clouds

From field to wetland
Submerged ridge and furrow fields
Only geese rejoice

Newbuilds encroaching
On ox-ploughed ridge and furrow
Built on old floodplains

Connecting pathways
Link old fields and new town
Concrete covers soil

Hungry water floods,
Transforming land into lake.
Soil becomes mirror

Across old-ridged fields
Footpaths lead dogwalkers home
To flood-prone newbuilds
New rugby pitches

All fresh-white-lines and mown grass.

Lost, the ancient fields

Two new waterscapes
Made by this flooded river
Which of them is real?

Trees stand in water,
Surrounded, up to their waists.
Waiting for summer

Threat’ning Iron grey skies
Bring more rain to fill the Thames.
Filling forlorn fields

Lechlade where time and paths confluence
At the young wander of Thames.
Neolithic cursus monuments
ghost lines hinted in the plough soil,
the spectral signs of people here four thousand years before.
Always people returned
to Lechlade’s river land
where ways went from oolitic Cotswold upland
or towards chalk hills over claggy bottom vale.
All took the Thames track where fish tremble like strange sonnets
to seek further: teased by the twists of Thames.
There is much promised here for a life of ample gains,
Yet why halt now with paths and ways leading on?
Thames is a coming and going,
Lechlade wavers beside its bank.
Perhaps Britain is not an island,
but hundreds of flowing rivers carrying us all to the Sea.
Robin Treefellow

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