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“This is the Isis isn’t it?”
“Folks say this be the Tamesis .”
“But isn’t ‘Tamesis’ really the Thames?”
“Ar. I do believe it do be. But Tamesis also be Isis.”
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With luck, and a few ales, you might find one of the last bucolic and ancient Anglo-Saxons of Oxfordshire or Berkshire to impart such accurate information in such style.
But only if you’re on a bicycle.
Only on a bicycle can you communicate comfortably with Old Father Thames, who is schizophrenic as well as elderly.
Britain’s longest river – very short by world standards – is so packed with history; so redolent with writers and literature; so wrapped in lore and laws; so ridden with property rights, road traffic bans and water rules, that you can following its fascinating meander only on a bike. Unless, that is, you want to walk for several months. Or change your boat outside of London. But sailing the river can be surprisingly restricting – unless you have a bike on board of course.
On a bicycle you are able to follow, not only the river’s path, but any of countless Thames’s themes. The ‘History of England’s Kings’ for instance, or the ‘Path to Democracy’if you are feeling erudite. You can trace the origins of famous writers along perhaps the richest path in all of English literature. You can cycle from The Globe theatre in one of the Western shires to the Shakespearean Globe Theatre re-created on London’s South Bank.
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Only on a bicycle can you ride through the crowds at Buckingham Palace, down the Mall, beneath the wheeling London Eye, past the Modern Tate and modern Clink “prison”, the Globe, the Golden Hinde ship and HMS Belfast; past Pepys |
Park, the Cutty Sark at Greenwich – and on through the marshes and Thames ports to the sea. You can ride hundreds of miles where no other vehicle – or even a horse – may travel.
The six journalists and ex-newspaper editors of the notorious Tour de Farce decided to tackle the Thames from its source to the sea during the English Spring. The daffodils, we wept to see, had already hasted away, but the Forget-me-nots, the May, the daisies and the blue-bells deep in the forests were blooming like hell. As we pedalled through the meadows or beside the busy locks, the Thames swans were mating; the geese a-gobbling, the ducks were ducking. . .
But I wax too poetical. It rained one day. And, alas, our main theme was neither Nature nor Culture. Our aim was to ride the river from source to sea. Our main task was to ascertain how few pints of beer-per-mile we needed to consume in order safely to reach our goal at Gravesend. Fortunately, the British tourist agency, Visit Britain, guided us to some of the finest pubs along the ancient waterway. Famous inns as old as Henry the Eighth. Places of rare roast beef, smoked salmon and duck pate. A four-poster bed here and there. A London hotel at half the usual prices.
Here is what we found:
The source of the Thames is now a small dry hole in a farmer’s field not far from Cirencester in the Cotswolds. It is so disappointing that its claim is disputed. Most things are disputed in Britain, even this claim stamped with the authority of Thames Conservancy, no less, which named it Thameshead and erected a stone tablet there. Despite this, many say that the source is at another, distant place named Seven Springs.
(“Ar! It do be said that it do be so”.) Artist John Doyle, who spent years painting scenes the length of the Thames, was one of many who opted for Seven Springs as the source. But after doing research himself, he decided that the “inverted cone of pebbles” beside an Ash tree,"in alight depression in a quiet meadow known as Thameshead”, was indeed the real source.
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He found an old man who remembered Thameshead from his childhood, and that “water used to spurt five feet into the air from that now miserable, dry hole.”
Thus the Tour de Farce set off from Thameshead on its mission |
Or rather from the nearby Wild Duck Inn, Drakes Island, Ewen - which made the visit very worth while. After a a wild night dining on wild boar, we left the Wild Duck (est. 1563) on brand-new 24-gear bikes equipped with waterbottles, maps, route directions, panniers, bells, security locks, and even lights that could twinkle.
Our first mistake was to leave from the wrong entrance of the great, rambling inn. Following the first of 270 instructions for the 400km route (“turn left and turn left immediately again”) we found ourselves back at the back door of the inn. Our second mistake occurred at the 1.6mile-mark where our Leader boldly ignored the instruction to “continue ahead at crossroads” and took us on a most interesting ride that finally ended in a farmyard. Our third mistake occurred after three and a half miles (less the distance spent so far on deviations), when a substitute leader – it may have been me - led half the Tour de Farce around some picturesque lakes and then unsucessfully risked a shortcut to catch up with the rest of the party.
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A moment of dispute over destination. It happens often and allows time to rest. With the willpower to get lost, one can add mystery, adventure and surprise to any journey.
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We avoided any further mistakes by forsaking instructions, advice, cellphones, GPS, and all other aids to rely exclusively on instinct. In this way, the entire team uncannily met up at an unmapped inn billed as “the Red Lion – first pub on the Thames”. The miraculous reunion was celebrated with an unforgettable duck pate lunch, and Hobgoblin ale. Wide and continuous research along the entire route established that this refreshment from the 150-year-old Witchwood brewery was the best and strongest.
On we rode, via Lechdale and Kelmscott Manor (evocative of the William Morris era of the 1880s) to The Plough, another first-rate five-hundred-year-old inn in another picture-postcard village, Clanfield. Ah, the luxury of it – and of a hot bath and country feast after a day in the saddle.
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All of Oxfordshire and Berkshire at this time of year are filled with forests and fields of flowers; with smells of cattle pastures and acres of yellow canola; with green-green meadows and maids all in a row.The birds are in full chorus, with the cuckoo singing |
straight out of Beethoven’s Pastoral.
You can hear,see and smell all of this as you gently cycle down the Thames. . . Except that we are not on the Thames. We are – according to every official map - on the River Isis.
The artist John Doyle explains the dichotomy with lyricism that is almost Irish: “The ‘country Thames’, known as the Isis, is really ‘Mother Thames,” he says.
“. . . Mother Thames, calm and beautiful, looks back to the source, while Father Thames, benign and godlike, gazes firmly at the sea.”
By now the Tour de Farce was looking in every direction at once as we pedalled through 4,000 years of history, along some of the 500 miles of public footpaths, down many of the quiet country lanes and on bridleways and dedicated cycle trails. Behind us were the mysterious Roll Right Stones; the Roman villas on the River Tamesis; the ghosts. Ahead were the palaces of Blenheim, Windsor, Hampton Court and Buckingham. All around us, were the settings of famous books, or the haunts of writers such as Chaucer and Bunyan and Pepys. Of Shakespeare, Pope and Jane Austen. Of Oscar Wilde, John Masefield and Agatha Christie. And works of two writers ‘literaturely’ born of the Thames (in a figurative sense): Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, and Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome.
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Hiking, biking, cruising, canoeing - here is one place on the Thames where all converge on the scene of Wind in the Willows
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Here rode the Tour de Farce - twice as many and twice as old as the famous, fatuous Three Men in a Boat - pedalling where they had paddled. What joy. And we hadn’t even reached Oxford yet – where every cyclist should enjoy a day or two. Instead we rushed on, missing the Queen who was visiting that day. Rushed on to the enchanting villages of Nuneham Courtney, Little and Long Wittenham and Dorchester – a Roman fort on a contributary to the Thames (pronouhnced Tems, formally Roman Tamesis) called Tame.
Having shaken that off, we forded weirs and locks to come to Henley, where marquees straddled whole fields in preparation for boat race days. To Windsor, London, and down to the sea. To Gravesend, to which all aging cyclists must ultimately return – much sooner, and faster, than our counterparts in the Tour de France.
Another good reason for us – and you – to get on a bicycle on the open road.
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