Source of a very English jaunt

A summer's day on the River Thames means a leisurely pace and plenty of places to stop for refreshments. Picture / Visit Britain

Years of looking at maps of England instilled in me an urge to see where the River Thames began.

On these maps the Thames wriggles and loops its way across England, then meanders through London before debouching into the North Sea.

Most showed the Thames starting as a squiggle in Gloucestershire but I wanted to find out about the details of that squiggle. Did it emerge as a spring? Did it burst from the hillside? For how long did the squiggle go before it grew into a proper river?

At 346km, the Thames is far from being the mightiest river in Europe. It is a mere dribble compared to the Danube (3688km) or the Volga (2850km), and even the Seine is more than twice its length - but no other water course is so saturated in history.

By the time the waters of the Thames reach the western outskirts of London they have already flowed past some of England's most venerable landmarks, including Oxford University, Runnymede, Windsor Castle and Hampton Court.

Downstream from Oxford the Thames is a considerable river and a vital artery. Along its lower reaches it has been tamed and modified, used as a pleasure boat playground, a source of reservoir water and - from London to the sea - a shipping highway.

The London Thames is featured everywhere, especially on postcards and travel brochures, so that the river is virtually synonymous with the city it bisects from west to east.

But what is the river like upstream from Oxford? England's wonderful ordnance survey maps provide an essential reference in the planning of the source-seeking project.

They show every footpath, towpath, tributary, lock, lane and pub along the river. The maps also show that along all its banks runs the wonderful Thames Path. It's possible to walk alongside the river for almost its entire length.

The trail allows visitors to leave their cars and stroll along the river on selected sections, to savour the rural bird life, wildflowers, riverside pubs and villages.

Upstream from Oxford, the Thames meanders towards the West Country, passing villages such as Shifford, Duxford, Radcot and Buscot. Here the river forms the border between the counties of Oxfordshire to the north and Berkshire on its south side.

Studying the map, I see I'm still some way from my goal, the source.

Feeling like the intrepid Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton in search of the source of the Nile, I drive west, taking roads as close to the Thames as possible, crossing a broad basin into which the river has incised itself.

On the southern side are meadows and woodlands, crop fields and ancient stone farmhouses. On the north bank lanes wind lakes and reservoirs.

The Thames here is still broad - about 20m across - and slow-flowing, its sedgy edges blending with willows, hawthorn, chestnut and oak trees.

It's early summer, and the land is lush and leafy, brimming with fresh growth. Beyond the banks are juicy pastures, grazing dairy herds and fields of young "corn" (i.e. wheat) and golden-flowered rapeseed.

The square towers of medieval village churches stand out among the pale green of the spreading oaks and chestnuts, sylvan scenes which could have come from a Constable painting.

First stop, the hamlet of Radcot. Here the river splits in two briefly and the Thames Path crosses from the south bank to the north.

One of the two bridges at Radcot was built by the Romans, and is the oldest of all the Thames' bridges. Humpbacked and one-way, it sprouts traffic lights at both ends, an incongruous sight.

When the light turns green, I drive across the bridge, watching out for chariots coming the other way.

About 8km upriver from Radcot, and backing on to the Thames, is Kelmscott Manor, a dignified 15th century manor house which was home to the noted poet, designer and socialist, William Morris (1834-1896).

He founded the Kelmscott Press here in 1890, and for a time shared the manor with the pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. However an over-familiarity with Morris' wife Jane, who Rossetti used as a model, led to an estrangement between the two men.

Kelmscott Manor contains many examples of Morris' superb fabric designs, and the gardens around the house are delightful. On the way from Kelmscott to the next village on the river, Buscot, I also pass from Oxfordshire into Gloucestershire.

At Buscot is the first lock on the Thames, St Johns, and the Old Parsonage, an early 18th century house of honey-coloured stone. A wharf at Buscot is a reminder that the Thames is still navigable to this stage. Locally made brandy was once sent from here downriver to France for distillation.

Beside the lock is a pretty lock-keeper's cottage, a dizzying weir and an impressive sculpture of a reclining Father Thames, originally made for the 1851 Great Exhibition in London.

Lechlade, just a meander away from Buscot, is an attractive market town on the river and marks the upper limit of the navigable Thames. A canal, now disused, once linked the Thames with the Severn River and made Lechlade one of the busiest inland ports in England.

Here are many antique shops and one of the best-known Thameside pubs, The Trout. The river at Lechlade is home for a long pod of house boats, tucked up against the riverbank or moored inside a small marina.

Just up from Lechlade the teenage Thames is joined by one of its larger tributaries, the Coln, at a junction overhung by willows and guarded by a 17th century millhouse. The Thames here is sluggish, its bronzy-coloured waters disturbed only by gliding swans and ducks.

Now the Thames, flowing directly from the west, becomes the frontier between Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, but is navigable only by very small launches.

About 14km further upriver from Lechlade is Cricklade, an agreeable little town built on a Roman road and dating back to Anglo-Saxon times. Above Cricklade there is no statutory right of navigation on the Thames because for now the river is considerably narrower.

Standing on the bridge on Cricklade's High Street, I can see that here the river is only about 5m wide. But it's swift-flowing, deep and perfectly clear, its bed trailing long green weeds which wave about like streamers in the brisk current, like the river in Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott.

There's definitely something hypnotically beautiful about the river at this, its juvenile stage. This same water that I'm watching will later flow past the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London, under Tower Bridge and past Greenwich, on its journey to the North Sea.

Upstream the Thames' banks are thick with brambles, hawthorn, Queen Anne's Lace and beds of nettles which burn me as I brush past them. Now I really feel like Sir Richard Burton, suffering to find the source.

Studying the ordnance map very closely, I see that it shows the river swinging back into Gloucestershire, then flowing through the straggling village of Ashton Keynes.

But from the road the Thames is now much more vaguely defined. The surrounding land is so low-lying it's marshy, the river has broadened again and its bed is so weedy it's almost part of the marsh.

As the lane swings away from the river, and as there's no time to walk the Thames Path before darkness falls, I decide to try to reach the source by road. Easier said than done.

Most roads in this part of England lead to Cirencester, but on my map the Thames' source appears to be a few miles to the west of the Roman town.

Skirting around Cirencester, I drive in the general direction of the source, Thames Head. On either side of the busy road there are meadows. Glancing left and right through the hedgerows that line the road, I can see no sign whatsoever of a river, just the buttercup-studded fields.

Then, halfway along a stretch of the road, I see a sign pointing right. "Source of the Thames". Another sign also points right and declares, "Thames Path". This is it!

Leaving the car in a lay-by, I climb a stile into the meadow. But there's no watercourse here, no spring bubbling out of the meadow magically from a cleft in a rock, as I imagined.

There's a sign pointing towards a low hill, though, and a footpath that crosses a muddy field where black and white cows turn skittish at my approach. A kilometre further on, there's a small depression in the ground, filled with flat stones. A nearby notice proclaims, "Source of the Thames".

But it's an oxymoron as well as an anti-climax. The source of the Thames is dry. Evidently, beneath the stones is a spring, at the moment not springing, and that is the official source of the river. The Romans, the notice adds, called the river the Isis.

Later, studying yet another map of the river's course, I read a revealing footnote. "The source of the Thames is disputed".

Evidently there are several rivulets draining down from the Cotswold Hills, and one had to be chosen as the official source. Someone picked the pile of flat stones and the subterranean spring, then declared the district Thames Head.

There the Thames conservators first placed that sculpture of Old Father Thames, after the 1851 Great Exhibition.

But when the source of the great river became contentious, a compromise was reached and Old Father Thames was moved to St Johns Lock at Buscot, where the Thames is indisputably the Thames.

In every respect, the Thames and its source is a very English story.

* Graeme Lay paid his own way and the story of his search for the Thames' headwaters will also appear in his next collection of travel stories, to be published in April by New Holland