Hell, it's hazy out there...a common problem at this time of year in Chiang Mai after months of no rain and dry season burn-off. Gets me to musing on one of my favourite topics – SEARCHING FOR SHANGRI-LA.

I guess we're all searching for Shangri La in one way or another, whether it's the perfect job, the perfect partner or the perfect place to be; maybe even all three. I'm no exception, and I suppose the entire trajectory of my life since I left England in 1975 has been guided by an underlying drive to find that special somewhere that I can really feel at home. I thought I'd found it a couple of decades ago when I started living in Chiang Mai, an exotic and historic city of manageable size, with a friendly population and excellent climate – for most of the year at least. 

Then a few years ago we started getting the March haze, when visibility drops to almost nothing and the nose clogs with large particles of dust in the atmosphere. This year it's come a few days early, this utopia-destroying smog. Time to don a face mask, or shut the windows and put on the air-con; hibernate for a while, and contemplate my next step in the search. And while I'm hibernating, I'll share a few steps on my personal search for Shangri La.

By 1975 I'd become a bit fed up (to use an understatement, as we Brits are bound to do) with British sub-culture. I'd been beaten up as a Mod by gangs of greasy Rockers and had my long-haired Hippie head kicked in countless times by Skinheads. So I thought 'Fuck this for a game of soldiers – I'm running away to the place I know least about on the planet'. A few days later a 2-line ad appeared in the paper asking for volunteer teachers for the Sudan, and next thing I knew I was Sahara-bound. What really attracted me was that when I saw the name of the country in the ad, I didn't have a clue what continent it was on, so I guessed I'd have lots to learn there.

Since I hadn't lived anywhere really different to my native UK (short spells in other European countries don't count, it's just another language), I had nothing to go on in my quest for the elusive Shangri La apart from the fact that my homeland seemed to be full of privileged people who grumbled all the time, and I wanted to experience the opposite. In this sense, I lucked out incredibly by landing in the largest country in Africa, and one of the poorest in the world. My immediate impression was that the Sudanese might be much poorer than my British compatriots in terms of wealth, but they seemed so much happier, so much more generous of spirit, and so much more alive. Since then I've believed that there is a close relationship between material wealth and happiness, but it's the opposite to what most other folks believe.

Long story short, nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to spend my life there. So after a quick attack of malaria, I packed my bags and headed back to England's soggy shores. Not for long, though. I sensed I was getting the hang of this Shangri La thing. My Sudan guess had been a bit wide of the mark; what I needed was a third-world country that was at least partly developed, but that had an out-going, open-minded culture and (hey, why not since I was making the criteria?) some good music too.

After a crash course in teaching English as a Foreign Language at some school on Piccadilly, I set my sights on Venezuela, still in the Tropics but with a healthy economy based on oil, and a coastline stretching for thousands of kilometers beside the Caribbean Sea that I imagined to be peppered with pristine, undiscovered beaches. 

It seemed at first I had hit the jackpot. Caracas was a buzzing city and my colleagues at the language school were all interesting travellers who had been around a bit. The music, mostly salsa, was fantastic, parties were regular, and each weekend saw a pilgrimage to one of the country's far-flung beaches, which never failed to disappoint. Trouble was, neither I nor my friends knew when to stop, so those wild weekends became even wilder until no-one was ever in any shape drive when it came time to go home.

When I arrived in Venezuela, my vague plan was to save some money for a couple of years, then travel down through the Andes and back up the east coast of South America, taking in all of that continent's diverse lands. Before I left, however, I had a whole new revelation about where Shangri La might be, and it wasn't to the south, it was to the north – in the USA. Perhaps it's a bit extreme to say I thought this big, bullying nation, which I had never had the slightest interest in visiting, could be the answer to my prayers, yet I somehow sensed that my quest would be long and winding, and that a period spent in the world's self-appointed guardian nation would be instrumental in helping me decidemy decision as to which qualities I needed in my dreamed-of ideal home.

My list of qualities was mostly negative (not competitive, not assertive, not egocentric, etc) but I still had fun in the States, doing a few classic road trips (LA to Vancouver, Grand Canyon/Death Valley kind of thing) and meeting a surprising number of non-egocentric, non-assertive and non-competitive people. In fact, I was just that far (finger and thumb almost touching) away from getting my green card and settling into suburbia as a Yellow Cab driver. Then I fled a relationship that was unbalancing my life, and rather than move around the corner in San Francisco, I hopped on a plane back to base, the UK.

Trouble is, when you've been travelling so long, there really is no place like home, as everything has changed so much that even home doesn't feel like home any more, and so I hatched my plans not according to whether I would leave the UK again, but when and where to? I had visited Thailand while living in the USA, and remembered it as tropical, warm and welcoming. Besides, it was a Buddhist country, a belief system towards which I leaned myself, so I got a teaching job there.

I survived a year on the crazy streets of Bangkok before being transferred to work in Chiang Mai, where I immediately began to feel at home. I had spent my years travelling becoming more and more cynical about the existence of Shangri La or its equivalent (there's a town called El Dorado in Venezuela but it doesn't match the dream), so I wasn't about to go putting down roots, and even avoided major purchases to make things simple when the time came to move on. But then the years just rolled by, I kept signing my teaching contract for another year and started getting a few stories published, and I realized I wasn't planning to move on any more. Accepting my new role as an inhabitant of Shangri La, I even went so far as to have bookshelves built to hold my scant collection of books.

Now it's time for a garage sale; time to escape the dust; time for another step along the never ending road to Shangri La. Though I have a hunch that this time I may really have found it, perhaps a reward for a lifetime of seeking the signs. You see, I've always been looking in literature for Shangri La, for El Dorado, but now I only need to open my Oxford Atlas of the World to page 228, and there it is, crumpled up among the purple contours that form the Himalaya; Shangri La. Formerly known as Zhongdian, in Yunnan Province, China, this town is a wonderful example of reality imitating art and has already started attracting tourists looking for a slice of perfection on Earth. I'm buying my ticket there tomorrow. 

SEEKING THE SOURCE OF THE THAMES...


As my book Walks along the Thames Path has just been released in its fourth edition, I got to pondering the magical attraction that the source of a river has, and in the case of the Thames, the nagging doubts about its true origin. Then the pondering turned into a story, called

SEEKING THE SOURCE OF THE THAMES

Locating the source of a river is not as simple as it may seem. For a start, most rivers have dozens of tributaries, all of which originate at springs, so just how do you decide which is the main source? Interestingly, there is no internationally recognized method of determining such an essential fact, though logic would suggest it is the spring that is furthest from the mouth of the river, or at the highest elevation above sea level, or that produces the greatest volume of water; yet this logic does not always apply.

The source of the River Thames is a case in point, and an exploration of what should be its source, what is its official source and what is its most common source in reality provides a great excuse for a ramble through the Cotswold Hills. All that’s necessary is some form of transport, a decent map, a good pair of walking shoes (or Wellington boots after heavy rain) and waterproofs in case of rain along the way.

This rural adventure begins in Cheltenham Spa, which is famed for its rejuvenating mineral springs. Only one of these springs concerns us here, and it lies around three miles (5 km) south of town, just west of the junction of the A435 and A436 roads. On the north side of the A436 is a lay-by, and in the dense woodland next to it, stone steps lead down to Seven Springs, from which water flows year-round. Above the clear, sparkling waters is a Latin inscription that reads “Hic Tuus O Tamesine Pater Septemgeminus Fons”, meaning ‘Here, Father Thames, is thy sevenfold fount (source)’. 

Given the fact that Seven Springs is 190 miles (305km) from the Thames Barrier and is 700 feet (210 metres) above sea level (further from the mouth and higher than any other tributary), our quest should be over before we even start walking. But things aren’t so straightforward; the stream that flows from here through Cirencester to Cricklade has been called the River Churn for as long as anyone can remember. So, having looked at what should perhaps be considered the source of England’s principal river, it’s time to head for the official source, as decided by the Conservators of the Thames in 1958.

From Cheltenham Spa, drive south on A417 to Cirencester, just a few miles away, then head about three miles (5 km) southwest of Cirencester on the A433, which is an old Roman Road also known as the Fosse Way. When the road dips to pass under a railway bridge, turn right immediately after the bridge and park at the entrance to an old railway siding. Walk past the siding to a point where you can cross the railway track to a stile beside a dry-stone wall. From the stile, follow the footpath down a sloping field and then branch left to a copse, where a cluster of stones in a depression in the earth beneath an ash tree marks the official source of the River Thames in Trewsbury Mead, often referred to as Thames Head.

This is where all maps mark as the source of the Thames, though it seems a most unlikely spot since all the surrounding land appears higher. At 184 miles (294 km) from the Thames Barrier and 356 feet (107 metres) of elevation, it doesn’t qualify as the furthest nor highest source. Whether the stream that flows from here carries more water than the River Churn is also debatable, since at their confluence in Cricklade, a few miles downstream, it is difficult to tell which is the greater flow.

The official source is almost always dry, except after very heavy rain, when the entire field gets flooded. An inscription on a stone tablet here reads “The Conservators of the River Thames, 1957-1974. This stone was placed here to mark the source of the River Thames.” Before 1974, the location was graced by a much more romantic symbol to mark the source – a statue of a reclining, bare-chested and long-haired Father Thames, sculpted by Rafaelle Monti for the Crystal Palace in 1854. The statue had to be removed as it was being vandalized in this remote location, and it is now under the watchful eye of the lock keeper at St John’s Lock, Lechlade, the first lock on the river. 

There is no evident channel leading from this point, so it’s just as well that there’s a signpost pointing river seekers southward along the Thames Path. Inaugurated in 1996, this path now makes the entire river accessible to walkers, whereas before many sections were impossible to see except from a boat. The undulating hills around here are used for crops and grazing cattle, and the landscape is too gentle to be dramatic, though the dry-stone walls that are a strong feature of this part of the countryside bear closer inspection.

Dry-stone walls exist in various parts of Britain, but Cotswold stone lends itself particularly well to this type of structure. The walls are made entirely without mortar and are formed of stones of uneven sizes, slotted together like a jigsaw puzzle that forms an irregular but attractive pattern. A technique called ‘battering’ is employed, by which the wall is wider at the bottom and tapers towards the top, which affords stability, and stones are set to slope slightly outwards to allow water run-off. Gaps between the stones draw air through, keeping the walls dry. As such they can stand for hundreds of years with no maintenance, an ideal combination of functionality and aesthetic design.

Follow the Thames Path, which is signposted at regular intervals, across a couple of fields until you come to the Fosse Way again. Before crossing the road, take a peek at the lowest point in the field, about 65 feet (20 metres) to the left of the path, where a tiny culvert passes under the road, often obscured by bushes. Though there is still no discernible channel here, this is technically the first bridging point of the Thames.

Go back to the path, cross the road carefully and follow the path into the next field. The track may not be distinct, but you should head towards the distant spire of Kemble Church. At first there is no sign of any riverbed, but a short way into the field, a shallow ditch runs beside a few hawthorn trees to the left. Towards the end of the field the channel becomes more distinct and, if it is dry, you have a rare opportunity to walk along the bed of a river.

On entering the next field, look for a low dry-stone wall to the left in front of a dense copse of trees. The trees conceal a magical dell, which contains the Thames’ most common source - Lyd Well. After rain, this well is everything you’d imagine the source of a river to be – a hole in the earth from which clear water surges up, spirals away and flows through gaps in the dry-stone wall into the nascent channel of the Thames. However, it is a bore-hole rather than a natural spring, and after long dry periods, it also dries up and loses its magical aura.

From Lyd Well, continue south, then east, along the Thames Path towards Ewen, just a couple of miles (3 km) away. ‘Ewen’ is an old Saxon word that means ‘source of a river’, and even if you are walking at a dry time of year, you will almost certainly see the river’s first trickles before you reach the village. In Ewen make for the Wild Duck Inn, a welcoming tavern which dates back to 1563 and provides hearty meals, local ales and open fires in winter. This is an ideal setting in which to rest weary limbs and debate the merits of the contenders for the title of source of England’s principal waterway, before retracing your steps (or taking a cab) back to the car at the railway siding.