Running the rapids

We had walked mile upon mile of oak leaf lined, weeping willow draped riverside ways, through flower infused meadows, over well designed stiles but midge ridden, cow-shit filled fields and stinging nettles followed a bad turn.

The Thames meandered away.

“It will come back.” we said more to reassure ourselves than from outright belief, our feet getting heavy with mud and the wrong path that turned to a lane and the lane to a road; before we knew it the drone of low pitched juggernauts screamed past.

We had left the Tolkien Hobbit Telegraph Oxfordshire the night before on our long riverside trek back to London.

When the ogre Inn keeper’s untrusting face, broken and blotched, traced with red vessels of cruelty, snarled at us for raw cash – “NO credit or debit cards”, we knew something had changed.

As the red crossed flagged pubs professing wide screen plasma world cup football became too frequent to avoid it was clear we were deep within the Daily Mail Goblin realm: the suburbs of Reading.

We had to get back to the river.

Our map, its PDF gleamed off the internet and printed out, was no help. It had a big purple square, describing a point of interest, somewhere else, covering up where we were.

Above the square was the way out. North of the river the correct Thames path leafily beckoned and the map showed two ways across: a private barbwire guarded weir and lock called Shiplake or an alternative and controversial dangerous run of the gauntlet across a railway bridge. If we could only navigate the unknown way through the purple square obscured suburbia we may get back to government endorsed footpaths.

We were a fellowship. A trusty band of progressive urban yuppies. People like us had made inner city London too expensive for any mortal to live in – no suburbia could stop us….