On a recent visit to London I decided to visit Kew Gardens to see the early Spring flowers. In the autumn last year I planted a lot of crocus corms in my lawn here in the Yorkshire Dales, but they’ve only just begun to send out shoots and buds, whereas in London I thought the Spring display would be well underway.

Kew was glorious, carpets of pale purple crocus mixed with snowdrops giving stars of white; and lots of other plants flowering too. Hellebores, witch hazel, alpines too numerous to mention.

By the late afternoon I was ready to leave and decided to walk along the River Thames towpath to Richmond Lock, which had recently opened after a lengthy closure due to collapse of the path between the river on one side and the tidal pond on the other. It’s a lovely wooded walk with views of Syon House, the islands or ‘Aits’, and Old Isleworth.

I got to the new section where the repairs had been done and a runner who had passed me earlier stopped and said that the path ahead was flooded because the tide was high, so they were turning back. A couple of women who were walking just in front of me deep in conversation also stopped, took some pictures of the underwater path, and turned back.

I had a look and thought, well it can’t be flooded very far, it must just be this bit, and it’s never going to be very deep because the river will flow over into the tidal pond. So I decided that I would paddle until I got to the dry path again. A young man who had just arrived at the group decided to do the same, so we took off our shoes and socks and waded in.

The young man was soon well ahead of me, but after a few hundred metres stopped and turned back. We had a chat and he said he was on the way to Ham, but the path was still flooded ahead so he was going to return to Kew and catch a bus instead. So now I was on my own.

Again I thought, it can’t be much further to a dry section of the path and I didn’t want to walk all the way back. It was wonderfully quiet except for some bird calls, the flap of a heron taking off from the flooded path ahead of me where it had been fishing, and the occasional rhythmic clunk-swish of rowing crews passing on the river. So I continued.

Dear Reader, the path was flooded all the way to Richmond Lock. The water was rather cold and the path gravelly under my bare feet. I don’t know how far it was, but I just kept paddling along steadily and eventually got there. My feet were cold and a bit sore, but I felt as if I’d been in another peaceful world far from the nearby big bustling city. If I’d known it was going to be such a long way of cold water and gravel I would probably have turned back at the start like the other people I met. Having completed the walk I felt a strange sense of accomplishment as if I’d travelled to another time and country.

Have you ever started doing something and then realised that it wasn’t such a good idea but had got a bit too far to turn back and thought well it will be alright in just a moment?

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member