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Starting on the outskirts of ashton keynes the river ray covers aproximatley 14.3 miles. Its journey takes it through the outskirts of cricklade and north swindon, Finishing between bridgemead and westlea, swindon. The river starts at 275 ft above sea level, yet finishes 310 ft above the sea, making it one of the few rivers in the world to actually flow uphill

 I'm liking your work Dave, but that is indeed bollocks with a big b

and it doesn't end  at westlea does it?i thought it met up with the thames eventually?

  Indeed the the Ray does flow into the Thames as do all streams and rivers in its watershed.  I once did a walk specifically to locate the place where the Ray joins the Thames and a very fine quiet spot it is...couple of K east of Cricklade.

i'm presuming that its a few miles before castle eaton where the thames flows through.

i went on a map and assumed it started near ashton keynes, then had a sort of T-junction where it one way carried onto lechlade and the thames, the other towards swindon. Must admit i was abit puzzled why it suddenly stopped in the middle of westlea on the map, but my dad just told me it goes underground. Is this true reg?

It took me 45 minutes to plot all the points on the map, and even then i got it going the wrong way  :x

I admire your desire to find out about these interesting things...this is my take.  The Ray flows from springs where the the lower greensand meets the clay roughly at the base of Ladder Lane...it then expands and flows across the Front Garden roughly parallel with the Old Town cycle path, crossing Wooton Bassett Road by the Running Horse.....meandering round the edge of Mannington before heading for the back end of Hreod Burna playing field, roughly where it picks up the waters of the aforementioned stream and so expands noticeably where it flows around by Moulden Hill.

 Now noticeably a river it meanders  on in a roughly northerly direction to meet the Thames.

  The Ray shouldn't be confused with Cole, whic starts from a similar source is dammed to make Coate Water....then flows to Coleview ....out by Lotmead Farm, where it can be followed on the River Cole Path.....onto Coleshill and entering the Thames at St John's lock near Lechlade.

Now the Bus avatar is beginning to make sense.

Do you go to Swindon train station with a notepad, pen and a tick list of trains that you have seen?

 :soapy tit wank:

The Cole feeds Shaftesbury Lakes, my Nan lives 5 minutes from there and I remember well catching stickle backs in the Cole.

Do you remember that somebody used to keep goats around there Reg? He had about five and usually tied them about close to the coate roundabout.

  Don't remember the goats....may have been in the years when I lived elsewhere, but I do remember as a kid when beyond Shaftesbury Avenue to the east was all fields.

   Not so long ago I saw a kingfisher down Shaftesbury lakes.....kingfishers are ace.

they get woodpeckers and herons down there too reg. 8)
and cunts with dogs laughing as the dogs chase the wildfowl. :evil:

Are the Swans back yet?

A year or to before I left blighty the swans had not returned from migration for a year or two.

I saw a pike (I'm assuming it was a pike) once take a cignet from Shaftesbury.

Big up on the Kingfisher, I saw one once on a school canal trip, it was yonks ago but I still remember him looking all regal and stuff.

I walked from Rodbourne up the Old Town Cycle path down and around Coate Water, round the side of the Golf Course (Broom Manor I think?) through Old Town back down the Old Town Cycle Path along the canal and back to the Dolly Saturday 8)

It was great but couldnt help but feel a little sad that the Front Garden is being butchered :| I shall carry on to Wroughton from Coate next time.

 Big fan of woodpeckers....just seems such a pointless thing to do.

  Agree about the chavs mind.....it was so much better  when still fields.

Proper cunt, he could get knicked/fined for that (I think).

There have always been tons of Mallards at coate, they where cool.

I keep mine on their leads

A lot of women Joggers have enormous bums.Does jogging give you a big arse?

I remember once in Lawn woods that there was some chav letting his dog have a field day with the swans, (The swans where out of water at the time)

Clearly the dumb cunt didn't know that swans are big beasts and they fight back.

Felt sorry for the dog who got a bit hurt, but not the chav.

I have never jogged and have a tiny/non-existant arse. I guess that's conclusive,

  Great walking weather at the moment....I put in  a few miles today, nothing epic, just trying to shake out a few cobwebs.

I also saw 2 Deer , a massive  proper country Fox and a fat Rat (shuudder) My dogs tried to catch the rat :shock:

i used to love the cycle path as a kid.i used to ride my bike from toothill where i lived, to go to my cousins house at the lawns and would only need to cross 2 roads to get there.
same when i'd go to park south to cut my nans lawn for her.
aint been along there for a while, so will dig me bike out in the summer and go back along there

That's one thing that I miss about blighty, is the walks and that.

Being in Bangkok it is too much of a bind getting into the countryside, beraing in mind that Bangkok is mostly surrounded by Paddy fields and stuff.

In saying that though. Big Big BIG bats are fairly common out here, I used to think that they where fruit bats but I think that fruit bats come from Africa, not sure but anyways these bats are pretty fucking big. A house that I stayed in once had a tree in the front garden that was home to one (Only one) of these bats and I could sit there all night watching the big fella up to his batty antics.

Another house that I lived in which was right out in the sticks of Bangkok had a stream running behind it, from my rear balcony there where goats galore (It was a Muslim area, hence the goats), maybe nothing overly exotic but time consumbing none the less. A much more exciting visitor was a fully grown monitor lizard, him and the goats seemed to know each and always seemed to have a bit of a stand-off without fighting. Proper David Attenborough stuff.

Whilst staying at the same house once I had to stop for a Python which was crossing the road in front of me, whilst not being an adult (Only about 8 foot) it was still an impressive sight watching this wild constrictor crossing my street. The taxi behind got a bit stressy wiv me for stopping until I pointed out what I had stopped for.

Iv'e also seen Dolphins in the wild, COOOLL   8)  8)  8)  8) , which is a rare luxury, but a luxury I can assure the.

Proper country fox, Foxes THRIVE in towns and cities, I cannot count how many I have seen.

Oh, and rats make outstanding pets. FACT.

That sounds so wrong

  Big snakes and stuff you get in foreign countries are proper scary.   I was once in the Atlas Mountains, staying in this small village....there was a  flash flood,  a wall of water came down through the village ripping out bits of fields etc....a load of snakes were slithering out, trying no doubt to escape.  The local kids thought this was fun and started picking them up and waving them around......Reg :run:

I came across a brown snake at a farm in australia, the farmer's son just came up and twatted it with a rake. I stood very very far back at the time.

   Just as well he could tell the difference between the ophidian and your nob.

Iv'e think I have posted this several times.

But I was once staying up-country Thai style, Paddy fields, Wooden huts wiv corrigated tin roofs, that kind of thing that you see on Vietnam movies.

I was (Half) sleeping in the floor, and was woken up by a sound similar to tapping yours finger nails quickly on a hard surface.

I opened my eyes and no less than one foot away from me was a Giant Centipede, this thing was a monster, easily 1 foot long (maybe more) and 3 inches wide. Brightly coloured in blue, purple and red.

On seeing my I must have woke up the whole fucking village with "What the fuck, what the fuck, WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT"

Our host for the night picked up a carving knife and promptly chopped the thing in half, which only doubled the problem because then we had two halfs of centipede running around all pissed off and the FRONT HALF WAS SPITTING VENOM FOR FUCKS SAKE, and in mean spitting I mean spitting it to about a FOOT IN FUCKING DISTANCE. It was also hissing very very loudly and was clearly very very pissed off.

I also was very very quickly.....  :run: , along with a few others.

I'm trying to find a piccie of said beast on the web, I'll post it when I do.

you just wanted to use the word ophidian didn't you.  :D

gah, i thought the river started round ashton keynes area, not finished their. That'll be where i went wrong.

Theres a quality bend at mouldon hill for fishing though. Once caught a 3lb perch, and theres allegedly a few pike lying around too.

 The Thames flows through Ashton keynes, but you've also got the Swill Brook and Derry Brook, which flow into it there.  In fact its generally mental trying to do walks and stuff around AK, because the landscape is continually changing with gravel extraction

Walk to ashton Keynes! I doth my cap, i got knackered riding a bike there. They do have the best street name in the world though

 That'll be Happylands.,,

:D

http://file023b.bebo.com/15/large/2007/04/08/19/1321858952a4046952842b672187630l.jpg

Near enough... :D

yeah, i remember those goats, i think they were owned by a bloke
who lived in Loxley walk, off amersham road. He used to keep shit  loads of animals.

He was always in trouble with the council for not looking after them properly, and was banned from keeping them several times.

Did you know that Liddington was once named Lidenton after the river Liden that runs close by,not sure if the river runs near Liden in Swindon.

Anybody else think it would be ace to combine a wildlife program where Bill Oddie and David Attenborough find Wiltshire's most amazing natural wildlife and landscapes. Then Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and that survival expert follow along and combine their talents to do the best barbecues ever out of this random wild meat, maybe with post bbq rave put on by one of those ravey people. And drug dealers and stuff.

this thread is great . i ran into a few snakes out in the country in mexico, but worse were the bloody scorpions local kids used to stamp on them with bare feet !!

had a close shave with a fuck off massive sea snake in koh samed, that wasnt pleasent.

 Maybe you should write to Head of Programming BBC.....after all you pay for the service (well you probably don't )  The animal  unit is in Bristhole and you go there sometimes,  so perhaps you could just walk in and talk to them.

I'm going to email BBC Three. They seem to be going for trendy youth relevant programs at the moment.

 Interesting.....never heard of this.  Liddington is up on the chalk,  which is characterised by dry valleys....of which the nearby Medbourne is a text book example.

  Nevertheless,  there are seasonal chalk streams when the water table is high, which flow for maybe a  month or two, before disappearing.....hence the common name Winterbourne.

   My favourite is the Og....got to be the best river name ever.

I was never much of a walker, but you can go on those swan pedal boat things in Exeter. I presume it's on the River Exe. 3 of us went on and drank Pimms out the bottle. I had an exam the next day. I think it was one of the years I passed.

 Its not too late,  the Exe estuary is one of my favourite places for bird watching.   At least you knew you had an exam the next day....the  8)  trick, is not to know, until someone mentions you have an exam that day.

I'm not smooth enough for that to work out, and I'd already failed that year once. Happy times though.

I like to think back on those times as care free and fun, but in reality I spent a good proportion of it panicking about how I was failing my degree. Although never enough panic to do anything about it. The day in my last year when I finally admitted to myself that I'd pretty much gone past the point of it being worth worrying about was a happy one.

On a more related note; when drunkenly trying to get back to halls from one of the pubs/clubs on the quay, keeping an eye on the river was a good bet when making your way over the maze of roundabouts and main roads.

Or you could risk the walk via town for some kebabery action.

 *bump*  can I pick the brains of Dave, the guru on all matters Ray? Or any other norvern dwellers.

 Out walking today  :bye: Yeovil  thought I'd explore a bit of the Ray, now as a southerner, I don't get out that way too often, the last time in fact I was following the old railway from roughly South Cerney. On that walk to my dismay, the railway route got obliterated by Priory Vale, in a jumble of roads....at the time something called Moulden Hill, was earmarked for a country park.

So today I thought I'd avoid the road mess, and followed the North Wilts canal, which even had a small aquaduct at one point over the Ray...this led me into what I took to be Moulden Hill and what a pleasant surprise it was...now I figured that it should be possible to wander around this and meet up with the railway.  This used to be walkable no probs, but I ran out of time having to walk back to OT, I know the S and C have some plans for extending to Moulden Hill....is anything happening with that?

Is it possible to follow the Ray up to the S and C station, even though no paths are marked on maps?

S and C?

Swindon and Cricklade, Daffyd.

I have no clue what that is, let alone where it is. Sorry reg.

A quick look on Google maps suggests it's possible, Reg.

Simon Cox followed his 'offside' goal against Hereford this season with a fine hattrick against Northampton.

Are you sure? He still wont score another.

I think i may know what your on about come to think of it. Is it by a little hill/ridge in the road. I rode my bike past it once back in t'day. I went on all the little roads though, not sure about walking there.

Oh well...no harm done by asking...sometimes you can't beat a little local knowledge.

 I might ride my bike out there sometime for a further exploration. :)

As i remember it i rode to purton and then tried to go to cricklade and got lost. It was a long time ago though, so memory may have dimmed since then. Hope that helps

OK I'll remember next time I cycle from Purton to Cricklade the potential for getting lost.

I did notice a thing called the Purton Timberland Trail, links into Moulden Hill, could be useful for linking up footpaths of which there plenty around Purton. Do you know Ringsbury Camp....it's a hillfort, bit of a land that time forgot out there?

Ringsbury Camp is ace. Affectionately known as the "Roman camp" to villagers, but it's actually Iron Age. Spent many a day up there as a kid. Some good rope swings across the double banks.

I'm guessing it's still the case, but there are some ace meadows out around Ringsbury, which have survived because of traditional farming methods.

Think I've walked around by Brockhurst Wood, and had it down as a remnant of the ancient Braydon Forest....access isn't much good though.

I have a similar memory.  Used to live in Freshbrook when I was a teenager and, for a while during holidays, I had a job working in the kiosk at Coate Water.  The cycle path from Toothill to Old Town was brilliant.  I used to be able to get home on my bike in less than 20 mins with a following wind.

It's a shame to think that the countryside along side the path is being built on...but people have to live somewhere, I suppose.  Strange to think that during our lifetimes we can all think of parts of Swindon that used to border countryside that are now completely surrounded by other suburbs/areas.  How many folks in Greenmeadow, for example, are now regretting the fact that the countryside is 30 mins further away than it used to be?

  I dont, i was born in Reading.(but saw the light as i came out)

I am not from Swindon, but do remember as a child when we used to come to Swindon that it was all countryside until we reached the Running Horse pub - the pre "west Swindon" days.