Thames - A Personal Notebook

Courtesy of English Heritage. (see 'Browsing').

Here is a small introduction to help define the river limits. We are at Thames Head here. The year is circa 1880. This is the depression in the meadow where the source of the Thames is supposed to lie. You can just hear the conversation, can't you?

"I say, you there! Fellow! Oh, it's you Sykes..Sykes, where is my bladdy wivver? Eh?"
"Cor, Lumme sir, I dunno. It was here yisterdie sir. I seed it wiv me own eyes, sir and when I gets here this mornin, there it was..gone, sir!"
"Sykes, you, you and those scum from the inn have nicked my bladdy wivver, haven't you?"
"Oh no, sir. No, sir! I wooden do thet, sir, I needs the job, sir. The missus is workin on our fourteenth nipper and she has to have her gin, sir. We wooden nick your river, sir!"
It took a couple of months to resolve and, lo and behold, back it came. All by itself and despite all efforts. Even now, today, it is still doing it.

That was 1880 and before then they were discussing the source and today, believe it or not, we are still discussing it. I am not too sure why, because if you consider that the area is a seasonal swamp and that on occasion you can get this kind of condition, then you can understand fairly easily that the river might surface in an entirely different location after various underground movements. You see?
While we are here we might as well look around the area to get a feel for the type of countryside that we are looking at. Follow through to the monument that indicates the source.
As you might expect, that is not the end of the matter for approximately eleven miles away is Seven Springs, which has an elevation of a further four hundred feet over the Thames Head elevation. Not only that, but these springs do not dry out. The convention is that these springs serve the River Chern but I have not come across any report to qualify that this is indeed the case and, to my mind, I can see no reason why those springs should not also be considered as the source of The Thames.
From my own point of view it is all a little academic for I do not intend to boat futher than Lechlade. If I was an ardent canoeist then I might be interested in the Cricklade navigation (plus the ever-hopeful Severn/Thames Canal) but, as you may well have noticed, a good pair of wellies are more value in these conditions than a canoe.

Now we are going to look at the other end of the river but, before we do, I am going to give you a little definition. "An estuary is a partly-enclosed water body connected with the open sea and filled with seawater which is significantly diluted by freshwater run-off from the land". The question is, "Where you would expect to see that occur on the Thames?" and the answer is very clear, "Teddington Lock.(check this site).
In that it is now a positive barrier, the lock represents the highest point to which the tides can now penetrate. From the lock going seaward, the river is known as the "Thames Tideway" and remains so until it reaches a limit of the aproximate line drawn from North Foreland to Harwich, when it then becomes, the Thames Estuary. However, by definition and from my point of view, the estuary starts at Teddington and the naming of the "Tideway" was simply a convenience to avoid the costs of correction of untold numbers of historical, navigational and administrative documents. It is still unhelpful to the befuddled tourist who is staring, over the parapet on Waterloo Bridge, at a heaving, mud-filled, fast-ebbing, spring tide when he has just seen an Environment Agency blurb claiming that the Thames is "One of the cleanest rivers in Europe!"

So the Riverscope is defined. The real, dyed-in-the-wool freshwater River Thames that runs from Lechlade to Teddington. That is what shall be treated in as much depth as I can muster but, first, I need the means for exploration (see Boating:General).