Today, as the legal property of Queen Elizabeth II - who has the right to claim ownership of all unmarked mute swans swimming in open water, though maybe has more pressing tasks - they remain a regal sight. And they find a suitably majestic waterway in the Thames, that noble artery that rises in a puddly field in the Cotswolds and flows for 215 miles to reach the coast, passing palaces, castles and cathedrals on its way. It runs through nine counties, drifts under 134 bridges and spends much of its time carving a scenic, serpentine course through the countryside. In his book Thames: Sacred River, historian Peter Ackroyd calls the vast waterway "a museum of Englishness itself".
Among it all, from the whisper of the upstream reeds to the clatter of central London, the river's links with the monarchy have long been prominent. This year is the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, marking a decade since the huge, 670-boat royal pageant of 2012 and well over a millennium since Alfred the Great held the first English parliament in a riverside meadow in Shifford, Oxfordshire. Today, burnished tales and princely residences still clasp to the Thames like jewels to a necklace.
This story is from the June 2022 edition of BBC Countryfile Magazine.
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This story is from the June 2022 edition of BBC Countryfile Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Guilt-Free Meat? - Should the world stop eating meat to tackle the climate crisis? Chris Baraniuk meets an experimental farmer who says we don't all have to become vegetarians
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