5/ 24

No rain today! Sad to start a writing with that weather report but after 10 days in the UK I am slipping into the local’s habit of beginning each conversation with a sentence about the weather. (Today, Sunny, 72 degrees) I peddle a rented comfort bike along the dirt tow path along the Thames River. It runs  for hundreds of miles. I settle for the ten between Windsor and Maidenhead.

Masses of fat swans and Canada Geese crowd the Windsor water front near the bridge connecting Windsor and Eton town. They look for handouts from folks there to enjoy the big birds and to eat ice cream cones sending drips to the pavement in this hot weather. Things turn wilder when I pass under the brick railroad aqueduct and cross to the Eton side of the river where the path becomes a wagon rut on a rich grassy verge. A fat and low self propelled canal barge moves up river. The name, “Ironclad” is painted in large old fashion script across the bow and stern. Small knots of locals wait for Ironclad at a lock to watch the great gate doors open to welcome it and then close to hold river water  that floods in until Ironclad floats to the same level as the river upriver of the lock. Then the lock keeper releases the boat by opening the other gates. I wonder if the other landlocked witnesses to the passage also think of Water Rat and his understandable desire to gain joy by simply messing about with boats.

Just above the lock a full family of white swans feed at the inlet of a small stream. No tea cake scraps for them. The signets still fuzzy from the egg remind me that we have only reached late spring. 

After the trail takes me then through tunnels of green growth and past an ancient church that stands alone, far from the nearest source of parishioners. No longer a house of worship, its keys are held by the “Friends of Churches,” a group interested in preserving history not in deepening man‘s relationship with God.

I take another path home, one that cuts lightly cross a grassy enclosed commons then around the lake that Eton College uses for rowing practice. Other than two rabbits and some very musical birds I see only flora, the sun and the blue sky it rides across. Soon I am lost in a tangle of paths and some small roads that dump me in the heart of Eton College at the moment school lets out for the day. A mob of young men, most dressed in black suits as if for formal dinner pass around me like I was an inert rock in their stream. A few of the boys wear lighter  colored blazers made with long thick stripes. Escaping this flood of youth I remount and cross the bride to Windsor where the Queen’s castle looks lovely bathed in the late afternoon light.