Any summer’s day in England that isn’t rainy is a good summer’s day

This Sunday dawned sunny but, by mid-morning, the wind whipped up and the sky clouded over and acted like one giant flood light.

There was some call for rain showers by lunch, but Robert and I decided to go for a walk on the Thames anyway.

We drove the five field distance to the river instead of having a super long walk and parked adjacent to our local pub The Rose Revived and looked down the Thames to New Bridge. New Bridge has grade II listing making it of extreme historical importance. It was built in the 14C but is called New Bridge because it was the last of three bridges built to span the Thames here in Oxfordshire.

There were a lot of people braving the called-for drizzle and enjoying the river.

There is a beautiful foot path called the Thames path which spans 184 miles along the riverbank so we jumped on our local five miles or so and set off.

We brought our light rain coats but soon had to take them off. It was just too warm.

Several narrow boats passed by. We love narrow boats and Intrepid powerboats and sometimes think it would be an ideal life style to live on one. Wouldn’t it be dreamy to take your house with you and putter around rivers and canals?

About four fields down the path we heard whistling. It was a sharp short whistle or two and I thought it may have been a moor hen, but Robbie thought it was a mechanical whistle sound.

You know what it turned out to be?…..

A man on the other side of the bank exercising his two dogs!

We waved hello, (as you do to everyone here), and watched him for a while.

He had a black lab and a black spaniel and he threw duck-like objects into the water or the reeds, made his dogs sit for a while, and then, with the whistle, sent them out separately to retrieve.

We watched him for a long time then waved goodbye and followed another narrow boat back to the Rose and our car.

By the way, we mentally decided one day we will have dogs again and they will be one flat coated retriever and one German pointer. The retriever will be called Atlas and our pointer will be called Max. Now all we have to do is figure out where and how we’re going to have these two dogs. And incidentally, figure out how to bring our three cats from two countries together and make them all get along.

Details! 🙂