I woke up feeling chipper, increasingly confident that I'd nailed this long distance walk caper. The previous evening I'd trudged the extra couple of miles to my lodgings, but after breakfast in a rather flyblown conservatory, my host offered to drive me to the start of the day's section. He appeared in a great bruiser of a 4x4 of the type whose proper calling, I thought, was ferrying middle class children to and from school. He deposited me by a small reservoir with the stern injunction to set off in the right direction. Having read that this section of the PW is well-marked and feeling buoyant in the crisp morning, I decided to dispense with the GPS. After a mile, I found myself following a gentle downhill lane when I was pretty certain I should have been ascending to the ridge. I resorted to the GPS only to discover that the wretched device did not relish being ignored. In its vengeful cruelty, it would display either the map or my carefully downloaded PW route, but not both together. No amount of cursing and rebooting would coax it to obedience, so I was reliant on my rudimentary map and compass skills, plus the guidebook. Eventually I regained the path, which was thankfully reasonably straightforward for the rest of the day.
The photo below, taken near Stoodley Pike (also pictured, with a daredevil hang glider ) shows an abandoned Land Rover which is such a permanent feature of the landscape that it is mentioned in my guidebook. This set me thinking about the differences between city and country behaviours. In the city, neighbours will complain and officials intercede if people leave piles of rubbish about, although some art galleries appear to have a special dispensation. In the countryside, the convention is different. In one field, I counted five tractors in various stages of decay or cannibalisation, and no farm feels secure without an encircling armory of rusting agricultural machinery. But the greatest contrast is to be found in the treatment of buildings. Barring bomb sites and the like, towns and cities minutely monitor and account for their allocation of real estate. The very term "built-up area" is a synonym for a town. In the back country, order and audit are trumped by the combined forces of individualism and clannishness. If I want to add an extension here or demolish a barn there, I'll just do it, or get my brother-in-law to fix it. The result is a melee of buildings which are either collapsing through neglect or erected without consent. In contrast, the rural social mesh is finer, so that what might pass without comment in a city attracts attention in a village. Not normally self-conscious, as a stranger I am aware of baleful glances when I go to the local pub for dinner. And of course, one senses in remoter parts the throb of a parallel economy, not the illegal workers and drug dealers which are an established part of the cityscape, but the marginal activities exemplified by the Grundys of Ambridge. Maybe, in a strange way, it is these differences which account for the appeal of the countryside to the city dweller. Or maybe my prejudices will be dispelled by the time I reach the end of the PW.
© David Thompson 2012
The photo below, taken near Stoodley Pike (also pictured, with a daredevil hang glider ) shows an abandoned Land Rover which is such a permanent feature of the landscape that it is mentioned in my guidebook. This set me thinking about the differences between city and country behaviours. In the city, neighbours will complain and officials intercede if people leave piles of rubbish about, although some art galleries appear to have a special dispensation. In the countryside, the convention is different. In one field, I counted five tractors in various stages of decay or cannibalisation, and no farm feels secure without an encircling armory of rusting agricultural machinery. But the greatest contrast is to be found in the treatment of buildings. Barring bomb sites and the like, towns and cities minutely monitor and account for their allocation of real estate. The very term "built-up area" is a synonym for a town. In the back country, order and audit are trumped by the combined forces of individualism and clannishness. If I want to add an extension here or demolish a barn there, I'll just do it, or get my brother-in-law to fix it. The result is a melee of buildings which are either collapsing through neglect or erected without consent. In contrast, the rural social mesh is finer, so that what might pass without comment in a city attracts attention in a village. Not normally self-conscious, as a stranger I am aware of baleful glances when I go to the local pub for dinner. And of course, one senses in remoter parts the throb of a parallel economy, not the illegal workers and drug dealers which are an established part of the cityscape, but the marginal activities exemplified by the Grundys of Ambridge. Maybe, in a strange way, it is these differences which account for the appeal of the countryside to the city dweller. Or maybe my prejudices will be dispelled by the time I reach the end of the PW.
© David Thompson 2012
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