  
The Walk to the Figure of ThreeFriday 16th June 2000
  
LOOK DOWN FROM THE BRIDGE and there's so much more space now the river has dwindled. Twelve days ago it was in full flood, today it is low enough for the jumbled rocks of an old weir to show, stirring up short trails of foam downstream. A Heron stalks at the foot of a stone-walled embankment in the shade below an overhanging Ash. Twelve days ago the wall and much of the trunk of the ash were submerged. It flies over to the little rocky island in the middle of the rapids that the Goosanders used this spring. By the opposite bank, below a large willow, a Moorhen swims mincingly in the calm backwater, like a teapot twirling and bobbing on a boating lake. We take an evening walk along the towpath to the Figure of Three lock, which, I assume, gets it's name from the shape of the double lock as it would appear from above.
A large olive Toad pauses on the path. As I sit at the computer typing, the sun is going down while the full moon appears just above the trees of the valley. Seen through a veil of cloud its a pale shade of coral, as delicate as a Chinese lantern. Soon the cloud blots it out altogether.
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There's a vigorous maturity about the landscape now that we're into summer. The first freshness may have gone, but you couldn't say that the waysides have gone to seed just yet. Bracken has unfurled and its fronds and now form a canopy above the pathside buttercups. The Hawthorn blossom is over, replaced now with sprays pearl-sized green haws, but Blackberry is now in blossom, overhanging the water.
Heads of White Clover are dotted amongst the grasses on the sunny side of the path while tall, purple-blotched stems of Hemlock stand in the shade by the hedge.