Wallingford

Significantly cooler nights could mean waking up cold, so Joanna is lighting the first fire of this autumn in Pelangi's solid-fuel stove.

We're now on our way from Whitchurch (where lock-keepers clearly don't rise 'til ten!) to Wallingford - not a great distance, but we have some urgent shopping to do (yeast-extract spread stocks have fallen dangerously low!) at our favourite independent store in this attractive riverside town.

Generally bright, but occasionally showery - the weather, not us! - we make good progress towards the famous 'Goring Gap': an important physical feature in Thames Valley geography ~
Thousands of years ago the Thames' current passage was blocked by the Chiltern Hills escarpment, and actually flowed east to the same estuary as the Great Ouse river! Towards the end of the last ice age, the Thames froze in winter and thawed in summer creating a massive lake that eventually flooded over part of the escarpment creating, over millennia, the gorge we today call Goring Gap, and a new course for the river.

Just before Lower Basildon, Chris spots our first kingfisher, its blue-green streak flashing not twenty yards ahead of Pelangi, crossing to the west Bank. Jo has spotted a cormorant on a riverbank rock, watching us back! We see a kestrel hovering over a field just after Beale Wildlife Park, and later, above Cleve Lock, the very territorial moorhens are fighting over river space - with miles of river up and downstream of them!

A map isn't needed to work out that the Thames' mainly northerly course is still contantly winding - the Reading to Oxford railway line crosses the river twice in less than six miles between Pangbourne and Wallingford. Just after Gatehampton rail bridge, in a stretch of river that they've inhabited for many years, we see two more kingfishers. A good day for wildlife lovers!Read more