The Thames Path Day 1

For all you fans of the English language I’d like to give you a little insight into the first two days of our trip.So watch out for those tenses and here we go. As we were approaching Heathrow we were lucky to be able to catch our first glimpse of the Thames. We waved goodbye and said see you in 2 weeks after having taken the first pictures of course. After a good night’s sleep , we started our walk in the roman town of Cirencester.
We took the bus from the pretty town square to Kemble and then set off on foot to find the source of the Thames. After negotiating some fields with friendly but also curious cows we found the the old Ash tree and marker stone which is the official source of the Thames. But where was the water? After we’d walked about 1km we found the first signs that there was water very close … wet boots! And then quite suddenly there it was, a small underground spring creating a pool of water which would eventually travel 300km to the sea. So we followed the first trickle of water through beautiful luscious green fields with wonderful views of the Cotswolds. With glorious sunshine to help us on our way we experienced some lovely encounters with cows and sheep. At lunchtime we spent some time in the Wild Duck Inn in Ewen which is to be highly recommended. I ate a very interesting version of Ploughmans a typical pub lunch of cheese, salad an bread). This one Name with 4 different chutneys which were truly delicious. I’ll remember the first day for its rural tranquility and for walking with so many small blue dragonflies. Towards the end of the first day we found ourselves quite literally surroundrd by water. The Cotswolds Waterworld is made up of 140 lakes which were created after gravel was removed for building. We arrived in Ashton Keynes in the afternoon after having started our trip with a ‚leisurely‘ 16km. We stayed at the Longhouse with Lizzie and Peter and at this point I’d like to say a very big thank you to Peter who made it possible for me to see a dentist to get some antibiotics. I’d had a big dental appointment 2 days previously and I was in a lot of pain.So armed with painkillers and antibiotics and the wonderful memories of the remoteness and rural tranquility we had an early night and slept soundly.