Using the required holiday between Christmas and New Year to give the bike an airing, I ticked another couple of destinations off the 'must-go-there-some-time' list; source of the Thames (or one of them, at least) and Adlestrop, both requiring a pleasant amble around the Cotswolds.
The poem inspired by an unscheduled stop at Adlestrop railway station kinda captures that odd sense of hiatus you sometimes get; little moments out of time when the world seems to stand still for no particular reason, allowing one to be for a short while as a break from the do
of the everyday.
Yes, I remember Adlestrop --
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop -- only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
Note to self: don't bother putting any more 'source of the ...' destinations
on the 'must-go-there' list. They are invariably anticlimactic. The feint trough in this Cotswolds meadow is, according to some, where the Thames starts. There's an inscribed stone marking the 'exact' spot.
A much more satisfying - and apt - spot for a pause on a ride out on a sunny Winter afternoon is this bus shelter in Adlestrop. The sign is from the station that was once nearby and was immortalised by Edward Thomas.