Frosty mornings and sunny days, this last week. Eve is on the move eastwards, on our slow journey to the Long Pound for summer. Just now, I'm moored up near Semington, between Trowbridge and Devizes. A good place for watching deer, and the occasional barn owl. And a really good place for getting punctures.
I managed to get two in the one tyre, the other day, in the two hundred yard stretch between my mooring and the road.
Here's one of the culprits; Thurg Thorn, close cousin to Nerg Nail.
The towpath is hedged with hawthorn here, and a combination of hedge trimming and the wind that blows fierce here sometimes in the winter, means that robust tyres are essential, and even then not always proof against these extremely hard thorns.
Going off on a historical side road; hawthorn's been used for hedging since at least the time that the Anglo Saxons settled here; they'd push the thorn twigs into the ground as a fence, and they'd take root and grow into a hedge. Hence the hawthorn's other name, 'quickthorn', from the Old English 'cwic' meaning 'living'. Thus also 'the quick and the dead' in the Creed, which used to have me wondering.
Duly repaired, I put the wheel back on and get going. There's a big supermarket a couple of miles away, and I'm stocking up on picture frames while I can. They're really very good frames, with proper glass in, rather than that awful acrylic that you often get in picture frames now, that scratches so easily.
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| carefully stowed payload |
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| home! and not a single one broken |
