Author: Simon

Today was a milestone day for three reasons.

First, sometime today, I passed the halfway point between my starting point and Canterbury. While the English leg of my trip is the shortest leg, the fact that I am now more than halfway through this leg still feels significant.

Second, I turned left. Up to today, my journey had taken me generally southward. Today, and from now on, I head generally eastward, aiming more directly for Canterbury.

Third, I passed the test. Today was a very tough day. Not only was it the longest day so far, but the going was tough. Most of the day was spent going along a broad river valley that had clearly had a lot of rainfall in recent days and weeks. At best, the ground was wet and slippery – there were any number of times that only my poles kept me from taking a tumble. For long stretches, the trail had deteriorated into bog, with the mud ankle-deep or worse.

In some places the trail had completely flooded (yes, that is a trail marker).

But partway through the day I realized, with some surprise, that I was coping physically and mentally in a way that I could not have done even a couple of weeks ago. This journey is changing me, making me both fitter and more resilient. No doubt there will be tougher challenges along the way, but I can face that prospect with more confidence now.

Rome suddenly seems much closer than it did a day ago.

Day 18 Route: Stow-in-the-Wold to Charlbury via Heart of England Way and Oxfordshire Way. Terrain: river valley; field paths , tracks and roads. Weather: sunny with blustery winds. Daily distance: 34.5km/21.3 miles. Cumulative distance: 429.1 km/266.0 miles. Accommodation: The Bell, Charlbury.

Today I was walking across the Cotswolds, which is officially an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. However, the real beauty of this landscape isn’t its natural features. It’s the softly golden stone that has been used for hundreds of years for building in this area. So, no deep thoughts today, just some pictures to enjoy. Happy Easter.

 

Route: Mickleton to Stow in the Wold via Heart of England Way. Terrain: rolling hills; field paths, tracks, and roads. Weather: blustery with a mix of sun and showers. Daily distance: 23.4 km/14.5 miles. Cumulative distance: 394.6 km/244.7 miles. Accommodation: The Grapevine, Stow on the Wold.

 

 

 

 

 

Today was my first stormy day, with gusty wind and showers blowing through.

Fortunately I had a short day planned, by luck rather than judgment. I’m entering the Cotswolds, a pretty and popular part of England, and it’s Easter weekend, so accommodation has been difficult to find. Today was short, but tomorrow and particularly Monday will be long days.

As I walked, I was thinking about Jo’s comments a few days ago about walking alone versus walking with others. While I enjoy walking with other people, I think in many ways it’s easier to tackle a long walk like this alone. Things like pace, how often to take rest breaks, how long to make the days, whether to talk or walk in silence, and so on, are very individual. It would be hard to find a walking partner who would be sufficiently compatible for four months.

As well, I find that I generally don’t get either bored or lonely when I walk on my own. The sights, sounds, and smells of the landscape are there to enjoy. There are always things to think about, whether it is practicalities like navigation or placing my feet, planning the day’s blog post, or simply letting my thoughts wander. Increasingly, as my body gets used to the routine of walking, the days seem to pass more and more quickly. And then there is the unique exhilaration that comes with hitting stride on a ridge or edge, alone in the landscape, and being able to see for miles.

I will actually have the best of both worlds on this walk. I have people planning to join me me on certain sections, which will provide some welcome company, but I’ll be doing most of the walk on my own.

And, as happened today, I could always pick up a few companions along the way

Day 16 Route: Broom to Mickleton via Heart of England Way. Terrain: mostly flat; field paths. Weather: cool, windy, showers. Daily distance: 15.2 km/9.4 miles. Cumulative distance: 371.2 km/230.1 miles. Accommodation: Three Ways House Hotel, Mickleton.

 

 

We don’t know many details about Shakespeare’s daily life. Oddly, we do know where he was, and what he was doing, exactly four hundred years ago to the day today: he was in Stratford-on-Avon, just a half-dozen miles east of where I am now, finalising his will.

I didn’t go through Stratford, or visit any of the honeypot Shakespearean attractions, but he would have known the landscape through which I walked today, just north and west of Stratford. The Forest of Arden that he mentions in some of the plays no longer exists, except in small thickets. The fields and the landscape, however, cannot have changed that much from the countryside he would have known as a boy, and to which he retired to live late in his life.

For me, geography and history enrich one another: places are more interesting for knowing the times and events they have seen, and history is more tangible when standing where it happened. I suppose that is one reason why I chose the Via Francigena for a long walk. There is, perhaps, no other walk in Europe with such a rich historical context.

Route: Henley in Arden to Broom via Heart of England Way. Terrain: rolling farmland and small woods; mostly field paths. Weather: sunny and warm, clouding over later. Daily distance: 19.9 km/12.3 miles. Cumulative distance: 356.0 km/220.7 miles. Accommodation: Broom Hall Inn, Broom.

 

The most famous pilgrimage story in English mentions showers in its first line. So, I had about six hundred years’ warning of today’s weather.

It started almost imperceptibly, with tiny intermittent drops that I told myself that I was imagining. Then it got to the point that I could clearly see spots on my shirt, and cold delude myself no longer. By midmorning, it had settled into a persistent drizzle that lasted for the rest of the day’s walk.

Oddly, I found that I didn’t mind the rain. It wasn’t hard enough to limit visibility and make navigation difficult, and I have good wet-weather gear so I was able to stay warm and dry. And knowing that I would have a roof over my head at the end of the day made coping mentally so much easier – it would have been a different story if I had known I would be setting up a campsite at the end of the day. If anything, today’s rain was a confidence booster, showing me that adverse weather, like fatigue and aches and pains, is something that I have the physical and mental resources to push through.

This part of England is well-supplied with wonderfully well-preserved period properties, but the manor house at Baddesley Clinton, now owned by the National Trust,  stands out as special. It’s not just the buildings – the fields around it have a wonderful feeling of timeless tranquility.

The photos don’t do it justice. I blame, of course, the rain.

Day 14 Route: Balsall Common to Henley in Arden via Heart of England Way. Terrain: rolling countryside; field paths, tracks, and roads. Weather: cool, light breeze, rain from midmorning on. Daily distance: 19.9 km/12.3 miles. Cumulative distance: 336.1 km/208.4 miles. Accommodation: Best Western, Henley in Arden.  Continue reading “March 24: The first rainy day”

If yesterday was the relatively easy hard day, then today was the relatively hard easy day. The walk seemed to be an interminable slog from field to field (there were over sixty – I went back to the map and counted).

The biggest problem with going from field to field is that it’s impossible to get any rhythm going. Up on the moors, or on good tracks like yesterday, you can hit stride and the miles seem to fly by almost effortlessly. Today, by contrast, I seemed to stop every few minutes to negotiate another gate or stile, and to check the map to see where on the far side of the next field I needed to aim. Imagine running a half-marathon where you have to stop every 300 metres to stop for directions, and you’ll have some sense of my frustration.

And then, near the end of the day’s walk when my mood was at its foulest, I came to the edge of Meriden with its simple Norman church and, just across the lane,  Moat House which is more than 400 years old and still someone’s home.

I spent a contented few minutes wandering the churchyard and enjoying the ambiance of a scene that would have changed very little since Shakespeare’s time.

And, just a couple of miles further on, I saw my first thatched cottage of the walk.

This may be difficult countryside for the walker,  but it has its consolations.

Day 13 Route: Whitacre Heath to Balsall Common via Heart of England Way. Terrain: gently rolling fields. Weather: overcast, mild. Daily distance: 23.3 km/14.4 miles. Cumulative distance: 316.2 km/196.0 miles. Accommodation: Haig’s Hotel, Balsall Common.

 

I generally have an idea how tough a given day is going to be when I set out, as my maps give me an idea of the distance I have to cover and the terrain. But so much is dependent on the conditions on the ground: whether the ground is muddy, whether there are routefinding problems, whether there are lots of stiles, whether a field is short grass (bliss) or recently ploughed and tough going, and so on. Those are details that only become apparent through the day, but they make a major difference to the overall difficulty.

Today was a pleasant surprise: a day that I expected to be rather hard due to distance turned out to be easier than I had expected.  I knew I was in for mostly rolling farmland, and that is what I got.

But the going was mostly on good tracks, the navigation on the ground was mostly straightforward (apart from the need to improvise a route around a field with what looked like a lone bull – a potentially dangerous situation), and I had an easier day than I expected.

Of course, ease is relative. I’ve been going at a quicker pace than I had anticipated, and my feet know it and are protesting – by the end of the day, every footfall hurts. Fortunately,  because of the difficulties finding accommodation over the Easter weekend, I have some shorter days coming up.  That should let me put my feet up, literally and figuratively, much earlier in the day.

The saving grace on the tough days has been the “full English”, which I’ve been able to get most mornings.

It may be a dietician’s nightmare, but it’s the ideal start for a day’s walk. Helpfully, it takes care of any need to worry about lunch: with a couple of granola bars through the day, it will carry me through to dinnertime. As delicious as it is, I don’t think pain au chocolate will provide quite the same sustenance.

Day 12 Route: Lichfield to Whitacre Heath via Heart of England Way. Terrain: tracks,  roads, field paths. Weather: overcast, cool. Daily distance: 30.5 km/18.9 miles. Cumulative distance: 292.9 km/181.6 miles. Accommodation: Langley Cottage B&B, Whitacre Heath.

Today was the first day of my walk that was primarily through or near urban areas, rather than through countryside.

Living as I do in a rather remote and empty part of England, it’s easy to forget that England manages to squeeze more than 50 million people into a relatively small country. The fact that it can do so, and still preserve so much countryside even close to urban areas, is a considerable achievement (although not an uncontroversial one: the green belt legislation that preserves countryside close to major cities is said to push up house prices, particularly in London). You can see from the map link on the front page of this blog how the route I’m following carefully threads its way between urban areas.

More signs of spring today: the gorse is blossoming.

Day 11: Route: Colton to Lichfield via Staffordshire Way and Heart of England Way. Terrain: streets, heathland, wooded hills, fields. Weather: cool and cloudy. Daily distance: 21.0 km/13.0 miles. Cumulative distance: 262.4km/162.7 miles. Accommodation: Premier Inn, Lichfield.

 

 

My friend Kirsten would have enjoyed the strange – but friendly – creature that I met near the start of the walk this morning.

And if that seems like the perfect pony for a hobbit, the landscape this morning could have been what J.R.R. Tolkien had in mind when he described The Shire.

In fact, it may have been exactly what he had in mind. He grew up in Birmingham which is quite near here. Even the ridges of northern Staffordshire are out of sight now, never mind the high Pennines that I could see only a couple of days ago. The landscape is all gently rolling hills and flat water meadows. For the first time today, I walked the edges of cultivated fields, and saw crops growing.

The bane of my existence is becoming stiles.

While you find these wherever you walk in England, the type varies from place to place.  In the Dales, where they have to get you across walls, they tend to be either stone steps or stout wood ladders. The key features of a Staffordshire stile, as far as I can tell, are a high barrier to step over, rotting wood, general disrepair, and some special treat to add variety (encroaching holly, barbed wire, an electrified fence, etc.). Add the fact that small fields mean that you might cross several dozen in a day’s walk, and they become a serious menace.

Today was a rather warm and sunny day – a hint of what I’ll need to be acclimatised for when I reach Italy in June.

Day 10 Route: Alton to Colton via Staffordshire Way. Terrain: field paths over rolling countryside and water meadows. Weather: sunny and warm. Daily distance: 31.5 km/19.5 miles. Cumulative distance: 241.4 km/149.7 miles. Accommodation: Ye Old Dun Cow, Colton.

Today was spent mostly on canal towpaths. In fact, thanks to a silly navigation error, I spent rather more time on canal towpaths than I should have done.

It seems odd, in a way, to remember that this tranquil setting was a vital part of England’s industrial heritage – a folk song describes building the canals as “scarring the face of England”.

I continue to be impressed with the ingenious simplicity of the canal system. Although modern narrowboats have engines, originally the canal boats would have been pulled by horses – this explains the presence of towpaths aLongside the canals. A horse could pull far more in a boat than on a wagon, particularly given the appalling state of 18th century roads. The other ingenious feature of the canals is the locks.  England is not flat. To get around this,  the canal builders used locks – essentially a short length of canal with a gate at each end separating two different levels of canal.

To move to a lower section, the narrowboat would open the gate at the higher end, pull into the lock, close the  gate behind it, and slightly open the gate at the lower end.  The water would drain out of the lock and lower the narrowboat down. To move from the lower section, the narrowboat would open the gate at the lower section end, move into the lock, and close the gate behind it. The gate at the higher section end would then be opened slightly, and water would flow into the lock and lift the narrowboat to the level of the higher section (the photo is taken from the closed lock gate at the higher end – the higher section water level can be seen as the dampness on the lock walls). Of course, the system ultimately depended on collecting sufficient water to keep the higher levels full, but in rainy northern England that would not be a problem.

Being Saturday, it was also a day for couples to be out along the canal.

Route: Leek to Alton via Staffordshire Way and Churned Way. Terrain: canal towpath, low wooded hills. Weather: mostly overcast, pleasantly cool. Daily distance: 31.0 km/19.2 miles. Cumulative distance: 209.9 km/130.1 miles. Accommodation: The Maltings  B&B, Alton.