Deep in the valley of the Afon Rheidol the air was still and cold, heightening the sound of the water moving under the footbridge. It curled and eddied around the piers of the bridge, with small rafts of foam being captured, released and caught again by the flow. It took me a moment to realise why this picture seemed so familiar, then memory took me to another river, another life and a very different time.
In the early 90s, I cycled to work over the ancient humpback bridge at Pecketsford in Devon, often pausing to look over the low parapet at the curve of the young River Taw where it winds down from the hills of Dartmoor. One bitter February, ice began to form along the fringes of the river, merging with the snow on the banks. Across the slow, wide eddy in the pool above the bridge more ice began to accumulate, building slowly over the days and nights into a disc several metres across.
Sitting within a thickening arm of ice bound to the eastern bank, this perfect circle rotated several times a minute in the flow of the river, accompanied by the murmur of water gently upwelling in the space between disc and socket. It was an impressive sight, and remained so for several weeks before the inevitable thaw weakened the restraining ice and the disc, shooting the bridge, grounded on the rocks beyond where it lay wedged at an angle like a crashed alien spacecraft.
My head full of memories, I walked slowly up the long hill homeward. I took the narrow path between two fields and saw someone coming towards me in the deepening dusk. Not wanting to surprise them, I clicked on my torch. There was nobody there. After a moment’s thought I turned off the torch; the “figure” returned. When I moved, it moved; when I stopped, it stopped. Examining the scene with more logic than I felt, I realised that the remaining light from the sky was creating pools of deeper shadow under the overhanging trees, causing the pale gravelled track beyond to simulate a person. Reassured but shaken, I promised myself a stiff drink when I got home.
