Welcome

Ithink footpaths are magical – the little stitches which join known to unknown and which we instinctively trust to expand our horizons safely. I don’t think there’s a more delicious itch than the one I feel when I look at a footpath – whether it’s a dotted line on the map or a dent in the grass – and wonder ‘Where do you go, and what’s it like there?’. Footpaths belong to us, of course, and they join us to our ancestors as much as they join us to other places. Whatever other stories they will tell, they always tell the reassuring one that other humans have walked this way before. A river is both more reliable and more strange. We know more certainly than any path where it’s going, but its route there hasn’t been carved for our convenience. We have little in common with the alien creatures who call it a home or a highway. Yet to look at a river, at any stage of its journey from spring to sea-mouth, is to set your mind swimming along its inexorable course – both daunted and inspired by the example of single-mindedness it sets getting from where you both are to where it wants to be. However long you spend together you know it will make the best kind of companion – one ready to make unceasing offers of refreshment, recreation and (yes) reflection. Who could resist a walking mate of such high spirits and unsuspected depths on a hot summer’s day?