Waterscape

Purton and the River Severn Walking around Purton on the River Severn is almost literally rather than figuratively a pop-up experience. The biggest riverine boat-grave in Britain: old boats and barges rammed into the river bank to try and keep it stable. And there are the boats: rusting, mouldering, skeletal and cadaverous, beached in a liminal half-solid, half squelching aqueous mud-scape. There they lie, some staring out mutely at the rushing river. Others are slip-sliding away to oblivion. After our trip in the Bongo, we drove back along the A38 to find a spot for the night. Where better than Arlingham? We camped at Weston Farm, right next to field after field of orchards, and field after field of medieval ridge and furrow: an open-air pop-up of corrugated pasture, and sea-waves of grassland rolling between and across the hedgerows (in a manner or manor of speaking). After a day’s walking near the river, we sat on the Severn’s banks, as the sun set, with Billy the horse a haunting silhouette against the red-streaked sky. We lay back and listened to the waters, stared up at the swallows, still high in the sky, until our reverie was disturbed by the pounding of feet. “Is the tide coming in or going out?” We said we weren’t sure. He said, “I run across the river near here.” This seemed improbable but who are we to doubt the words of a local: an almost strangely mythopoeic figure, redolent of ‘The Other’ in the walks, accounts and poems of Edward Thomas. Preoccupied by that quicksilver reflection, I forgot to ask him how had he learnt the safe route across this treacherous...