  We present an experimental study of thermally activated flux creep in a
superconducting ring-shaped epitaxial YBCO film as well as a new way of
analyzing the experimental data. The measurements were made in a wide range of
temperatures between 10 and 83 K. The upper temperature limit was dictated by
our experimental technique and at low temperatures we were limited by a
crossover to quantum tunneling of vortices. It is shown that the experimental
data can very well be described by assuming a simple thermally activated
hopping of vortices or vortex bundles over potential barriers, whereby the
hopping flux objects remain the same for all currents and temperatures. The new
procedure of data analysis also allows to establish the current and temperature
dependencies of the flux-creep activation energy U, as well as the temperature
dependence of the critical current Ic, from the flux-creep rates measured at
different temperatures. The variation of the activation energy with current,
U(I/Ic), is then used to reconstruct the profile of the potential barriers in
real space.
