Kemble

What to see

Thames Head is the source of the River Thames, in Trewsbury Mead under an old ash tree, and it is where the Thames Path (opens in a new tab) begins its 185 miles (298km) to Woolwich, a few miles from the sea. For much of the year the spring is dry, and the river bed stays dry for some way below it, so in summer you are looking at a stone in a meadow with a plaque; after a wet winter there is water. The statue of Father Thames that stood here from 1958 was moved to St John's Lock at Lechlade in 1974 after vandalism, which is why the source is marked by a stone and nothing else.

All Saints (opens in a new tab) keeps a thirteenth-century tower under a spire of 1824, put up after a storm on 29 December 1823 brought down the fifteenth-century one; the rest was rebuilt from the foundations in 1876 to 1877, and the south aisle used stone from the demolished church at Ewen. Inside is the fourteenth-century effigy of a cross-legged knight, possibly Sir Roger Normaund, who died in 1349. The station (opens in a new tab) itself is worth a look on the way through: the Tudor-style building of 1882 on the line opened in 1845 is listed Grade II and, in Historic England's words, virtually complete as built, with its cast-iron canopies, its water tank on the west platform and a few of its original benches.

Cotswold Airport, south of the village, was RAF Kemble, opened in June 1938 as an aircraft storage unit that stored reserve aircraft before they went to operational bases; it worked on Horsa gliders and Typhoons in early 1944, ahead of D-Day, and its 1939 Type D hangars (opens in a new tab) are listed. Its retired British Airways Boeing 747, Negus, is now a venue for conferences, weddings and private hire, and the airport says it usually opens for public tours on most Wednesdays and Saturdays, booked online through Tickettailor or paid by card at the gate, unless a private event is aboard. Dogs are not allowed aboard, and the steep airstairs rule out wheelchairs. It is a working airfield, not a museum, so check for tour dates before you plan a visit around it.

A morning from the station

Get off the train, cross to the village side and follow the footpath north-west across the fields to Thames Head, about a mile and a half. Stand at the stone, read the plaque, and decide whether the Thames is running today. Walk on to the Thames Head Inn on the A433 for coffee or an early lunch, which is open all day, then come back the same way for an afternoon train, or carry on along the Thames Path towards Ewen and let the river appear beside you.

Walks

The Thames Path is the walk. Its first stage, the source to Cricklade, is 12.3 miles (19.7km) on the National Trail's reckoning, mostly flat, through Ewen and on past the gravel-pit lakes, and Kemble station makes it one of the few long walks in the Cotswolds you can start from a train. We have not yet written the stage up; our nearest Thames walk is Lechlade, Buscot and the Thames, 20 miles downstream at Lechlade, where the river is wide enough for boats.

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Food and drink

The Thames Head Inn (opens in a new tab) on the A433 is open all day every day, with food from 11am to 8.30pm (midday on Sundays), rooms, a campsite and dogs welcome in the bar. The Wild Duck (opens in a new tab) at Ewen, about a mile and a half east of the station, is an inn reputed in part to be of 1563 and listed Grade II. It reopened on 2 March 2026 after a long closure, restored by Sam and Georgie Pearman of Country Creatures, with nineteen bedrooms; its own site gives lunch and dinner from noon to 9pm, Monday to Saturday, a Sunday roast from noon to 4.30pm and Sunday dinner from 6pm to 8pm, and welcomes well-behaved dogs on leads throughout. Back at the station, the Tavern Inn, across the road from the station, is an Arkell's pub that opened in the 1890s as a coffee tavern, because the station had no refreshment rooms, and became a pub in 1946. It opens from Wednesday to Sunday (noon to 10pm Wednesday to Friday, 11am to 10pm on Saturday, 11am to 6pm on Sunday), with food from noon to 3pm and 5pm to 8.30pm, Wednesday to Saturday, and Sunday roasts from noon to 4pm. It has a large garden and its own car park, and dogs are welcome throughout.

When to come

Late winter and spring, after rain, if you want to see the Thames flowing at its source; summer if you would rather walk dry-shod to Cricklade. Kemble has no season and no crowds, only commuters, and its usefulness is the train: our guide to the Cotswolds without a car builds days from here. The 882 bus to Cirencester runs about seven times a day from Monday to Saturday and not at all on Sundays, so a Sunday arrival means a taxi or a walk.