Hot on the heels (if you'll excuse the pun!) of my August Ridgeway walk the first weekend of September took me on another canoe Microadventure.
A day through Cambridge on the Cam and then a day on the Stour.
Having canoed through Cambridge with all the beauty of the City seen from the river...
...and the frustrations of maneuvering through punting congestion we ended up at Grantchester.
Somewhere in the depths of my very un literary mind the place rang a bell so I looked up Rupert Brookes poem. Somehow his words seemed to resonate......
'Grey heavens, the first bird’s drowsy calls,
The falling house that never falls'.
'Ah God! to see the branches stir
Across the moon at Grantchester!
To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
Unforgettable, unforgotten
River-smell, and hear the breeze
Sobbing in the little trees.
Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
Still guardians of that holy land?
The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
The yet unacademic stream?
Is dawn a secret shy and cold
Anadyomene, silver-gold?
And sunset still a golden sea
From Haslingfield to Madingley?
And after, ere the night is born,
Do hares come out about the corn?
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?'
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