MissTick
Thingish Things

Last weekend I had an exiting adventure. A friends of mine came over and we went to explore The Beginning…of the river Thames. To be honest, I’ve never asked myself do I have to know where any river starts, but next doors’ kids had this assignment at school and they went on discovery trip and told us afterwards that, apparently, the beginning of the famous british river is almost around the corner. Now, that is a chance not to be missed, isn’t it? After all, Thames is indeed the river well known to the outbritish world. And so off we went to see with our own eyes where all this fame starts…

It took us about 1.5 drive through a pretty Cotswold’s countryside, 15 min walk along the narrow footpath in the fields and life-threatening encounter with the mean cows…well, not life threatening, of course, but the cows although did give us the way, were making very mean faces and rather aggressive sounds indeed. They were big and way outnumbered us on the count…The Source of Thames turned out to be a pile of stones, absolutely dry with no visible sign of the water. It looked pretty much as abandoned campfire place, if not for the big marker stone nearby where the plague says: 

THE CONSERVATION OF THE RIVER THAMES 1857-1974
THIS STONE WAS PLACED HERE TO MARK THE
SOURCE OF THE RIVER THAMES 


Well, we’ve been warned not to expect the water in Thames anyway…to be honest, I doubt if this is the right place. The riverbed (if you can imagine it is the riverbed) didn’t seem being used to be wet, lush greens filled the valley and although I can vaguely imagine what the river bed should look like, this was definitely not the picture I have in mind. But, guess, we should trust the officials so unless the marker stone has been stolen from the real place and brought here to confuse explorers, I have to tick the box in my travel list, that I’ve seen the Thames Head.

Despite from disappointment from Thames, our day trip had other highlights that made it a great day out. When we were making our way to the Thames Head in the morning, we managed to get “paraded over” by the village festivities in the little town of Fairford. The town was very cute and the paraders were very friendly and cheerful, as they were passing by throwing smiles and sweets around…Literally. I’ve got hit by the couple of mini-Toblerons. 

On our way back we stopped in another cute town of the Cotswold’s – Lechlade-On-Thames. Just because it was too picturesque to miss. In Lechlade Thames already gained plenty of water and we enjoyed lunch in the riverside pub. We also experienced the change of the seasons – walked into The Christmas Shop and suddenly found ourselves in the winter fairy tale…ahhh…it was so magical, I even bought a little fairy there. One of the other special features of Lechlade were the flags displayed on the houses – made locally, each one is unique. For strange reason they featured some funny characters from kid’s stories or else…very cute...

Our last stop for that day happened to be at a White Horse Hill. And I think, I’ve described it already few times before. It’s a hill with the magnificent views over the countryside and with a white chalk shape of the running horse engraved into the hill. I have nothing to add about it. We had a great time there, as you would expect in such a wonderful place. So that was the weekend delight. Once again – a proof that we are the makers of our own day – how we choose it to be will be how the day will roll out for us.