Once more, the forecast on my phone said that it was almost certain to rain every hour. Yes, but not every minute of every hour. The sun shone, and I often turned round to see if there was a rainbow.
The route followed the Thames-Severn canal, running alongside the river Frome, past demolished locks. At Sapperton, it disappeared into a tunnel, reappearing several miles later, and drying up altogether at a place where the path was covered in puddles every few yards.
Soon after leaving the canal bed, I saw a Thames Path waymark. The supposed source was just round the corner. But where?
A sharp hailstorm then struck, and I lost my connection with OS maps. It was too wet to keep looking at the guidebook, and where I was supposed to leave the Thames Path for Kemble Station, I couldn’t face struggling with another steep stile and soggy meadow. Walking along the road wasn’t much better, with heavy lorries splashing through deep puddles.
With 50 minutes to wait for the next train, I took refuge in the pub opposite, and over a weak and expensive cup of coffee, reorganised my rucksack to make room for wet boots and overtrousers.
As Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.” But I did reach the source of the Thames, and there was a visible flowing river much closer to the source than on my previous visit last April.
emeritablog: life after work 