Mention Old Father Thames and the images that come to mind are of the great river at Tower Bridge and flowing past the Houses of Parliament; the grand waterway slipping past Maidenhead; the boating at Windsor, Henley and Oxford; J and his friends (to say nothing of the dog) mucking about in a boat somewhere en route. The river gives out at Oxford, apparently; posterity and geography never go into much depth as to what happened to it on its way from its source to being a grand waterway at the old university town.

The river actually then can be followed on across Oxfordshire and Wiltshire to Gloucestershire; it rises barely twenty miles from the banks of the Severn. And here it is, a young river and mere yards from its source, pootling between green banks through fields just south of the Fosse Way near the village of Kemble.

This is not a section of river for boating races; behind the camera is a ford for tractors to cross in a little under two inches of water. It may look a bit more lively when not engaged in a drought. It is not as stuffy as the Thames can seem further down, passing through rich and crowded oversized redbrick villages; here it bubbles through pure air, past stone houses, under the boughs of trees and down towards Ashton Keynes, Cricklade, Castle Eaton and Lechdale - after which the Old Father runs through largely open country to Oxford.

But it's still nice to lie alongside on a warm spring day.