Novice consultants are warned: fail to prepare, and prepare to fail. Trite it may be, but its truth is repeatedly demonstrated. I had not anticipated the obvious opening gambit of fellow holidaymakers: had I been on an HF holiday before? I trawled my memory and recalled a week in the early nineties at Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight. It was not a success. Hermione didn't suit a walking holiday, she was too heavy to carry and too young (or inadequately motivated) to walk. So when pressed I murmured something non-committal about a faintly remembered week long ago. It was Bob Morris, a rather self-consciously worthy fellow, typically Quaker, who I think first mentioned HF to me and in those days the properties still retained the faintly ascetic atmosphere associated with their founder, Thomas Arthus Leonard, whose admirable mission was to bring the benefits of outdoor activity to the masses.
Newfield Hall, magnificently refurbished with a well-stocked bar and heated indoor pool, has moved with the times and the expectations of its clientele. Despite, or more likely, because of the modernisation, HF boasts a loyal following. No one I met admitted to being a first-timer and many, including my erstwhile walking companion Eileen, had a dozen or more venues under their belt, in the UK and abroad.
I boarded the bus promptly the next day and identified my walk leader; I didn't want a repetition of the previous day's blunder. The three groups all set off in the same direction towards Janet's Foss, a waterfall that delighted many of the party but which the taciturn Dutchman and I regarded with disdain; we had both been to Iceland and it's hard to compete with those cataracts coursing down mountains, wreathed in the sulphurous smell of geysers. Moving away from the water I noticed two of the leaders locked in conference and looking worried. I sidled up and heard them say that one of the group had been left behind at the hotel. Evidently there was some confusion about whether the group size was 29 or 30. It reminded me of the old joke about mathematicians: there are three types, those that can count and those that can't.
The highlight of the walk would be Gordale Scar, an immense limestone gorge guarded by boulders the size of bungalows. As we approached, we saw a party of Scouts ascending with the use of ropes. HF doesn't do climbing, so in an outbreak of newspeak worthy of Orwell, we had been informed that 'scrambling' would be required to conquer the gorge. As planned, the three groups split at this point, those with friends and relatives who might mourn their loss skirted the gorge and headed for a cream tea, while the rest of us looked at one another, raised our eyebrows and mentally checked the provisions of our wills. We approached the base of the rocks across the shallow river, littered with small rounded rocks which formed slippery stepping stones, offspring of the colossus we were to climb. The roar of the water was deafening as the group gathered at the start point and we could barely hear the leader, querulously brisk, announcing he would go first to show they way. He reiterated the mantra: three points of contact, meaning that you should only move one hand or foot at a time, leaving the remaining limbs holding the rock face. I recalled a similar injunction from my mother when I used to climb trees and, momentarily, found comfort in the memory. I duly followed after the leader but after a moment he was out of sight, leaving me with only guesswork or intuition to determine the next move. All I knew was that it had to be upwards; the rest of the group was watching so, despite the alarms bells of my self-preservation instinct, I couldn't turn back. Unbidden, a jumbled recollection of the words of Macbeth came to mind: I am in blood steeped so far, etc. I flailed for a handhold and found one. The next foothold was less obvious but gradually I gained confidence and managed to clamber inelegantly to the top. The rest of the group followed and we stood at the summit, admiring the view and congratulating one another on our achievement. Then we saw something curious. A man was following the route we had come, ascending the rock. But unlike us, gingerly clawing our way up while religiously observing the three point rule, he was gaily ascending while carrying his dog.
The 'hard' group had grown from three to nine and I spent some time in conversation with a German from Cologne. He riffed on the social changes engulfing the country and, in particular, how young women were now obliged to work since as well as supporting their children, increasingly they would be under pressure to supplement the inadequate pensions of their parents. The squeezed middle, to adapt a Milibandism. He went on to describe the influx of immigrants into Germany. While young Spaniards fleeing high unemployment (just over 49% at the time of writing) are well placed to get work since they are educated, refugees from central Africa typically had few marketable skills, but, in a civilised society, their needs could not be ignored, with the attendant financial implications. I pointed out that the problem is not new. Poverty and deprivation, exacerbated by periodic famines and wars, have been endemic in central Africa for decades, as evidenced by the fundraising efforts of charities such as Oxfam. All that has changed is the proximity of the problem. While it is simple to ignore the tribulations of peoples on another continent, it offends western sensibilities when they are in our midst. I expanded on the theme. Altruism is attenuated by distance, whether geographical or generational. This is why craven politicians, motivated primarily by reelection prospects, laud the benefits of policies accruing to their constituents and immediate families, not the wider community or our descendants who in a century's time will occupy a world looted by their forbears. He listened politely but seemed unmoved.
Towards the end of the day we joined the Pennine Way, looping past Malham Tarn and across the famous limestone pavement. We were proceeding in the opposite direction to my epic journey and combined with better weather and companionship it felt less gruelling. We passed the guesthouse where I'd spent two nights having taken a rest day in Malham. Rewalking the path made me thoughtful. What had I accomplished in the intervening three years? Angling for melancholy, I dredged up achievement. There were at least two successes to celebrate in different ways: Sally and Xanthia.
© David Thompson 2015
Monday, 13 July 2015
Simons Seat
An enormous coach, looking as out of place as a parking meter on a fell, dwarfed the limestone portico of Newfield Hall the next morning. Visitor numbers had swelled overnight and close on forty people surged into the venerable charabanc. Like a whale in a canal, predictably this colossus caused major blockages in the narrow Yorkshire lanes. At one point, confronted by our stationary and intransigent conveyance and faced with the prospect reversing between unforgiving drystone walls, a nervous lady driver relinquished the driving seat to her husband and scurried round the back to hop into the passenger seat. After annoying a Chelsea's worth of 4x4 drivers, intent on bagging prime parking spots at local viewpoints in time for lunch, the result of these antics was that we were 15 minutes late arriving at the designated start point.
Now 15 minutes here or there starting a country walk may not seem much to you or me (Sally wouldn't know the difference anyway as her achingly stylish watch eschews numbers) but in the precision world of HF, that makes all the difference between a tea stop and, well, no tea stop. After an hour in cocooned in the coach, we trooped into the toilets in the adjacent pub before joining the group leader for the walk we had chosen. Mine was nowhere to be seen, and one of the other group leaders cheerfully informed me that, being the 'hard' group, they had already set off, believing everyone was present. There aren't many imperatives associated with being a walk leader but ensuring your party is complete at the start is, not unreasonably, one of them. I started in the direction indicated, up a steep and winding track, with no idea how far they'd gone, hoping at least they were still on the same path. When I spotted them, the leader trotted down to meet me, effusively apologetic and muttering that it was difficult to distinguish between guests' markings of 'M' and 'H' on the sign up list for medium and hard walks and consequently they were uncertain of the numbers on each. He seemed a decent chap and bumbling is not a hanging offence so my annoyance dissipated, a tribute to my holiday mood.
I spent much of the walk talking to Eileen with whom I'd shared a taxi from Skipton station. She was recovering from an ankle injury and wanted to test her capabilities before an upcoming walking holiday in the Dolomites. She was using two poles, often the sign of a less confident walker and, to establish the pecking order, I mentioned airily some of my previous treks, such as the Pennine Way. She listened attentively. Had I been to Jersey, she wondered? Oh yes, I'd walked the entire coastal path, it's about 55 miles, I explained, so it takes about a week. She'd done it too, but for charity; they started at 3am and finished at 9pm. I was confused. You mean, you did the whole thing in less than 24 hours, I spluttered? Yes, they'd got lost a couple of times, she said regretfully, that's why they finished so late.
With only four of us, including the leader, we made reasonable time, and stopped for lunch at windswept Simons Seat, very welcome after half an hours steep climb, the only part of the day which generated any sweat. I'd noticed one of our party, a taciturn Dutchman, sneak occasional glances at his GPS and assumed that his confidence in our leader had been somewhat eroded by the earlier faux pas, but while we ate lunch he explained he did geocaching. He had located a cache nearby and wanted to find it if we were game for a short detour. Geocaching has always struck me as a rather elegant fusion of the archaic treasure hunting urge and the challenge of finding new ways to harness the capabilities of modern technology, so I was intrigued to see the process in action. The GPS took us to the base of the imposing rocky outcrop which comprises Simons Seat, on top of which is the trig point. But amongst large boulders, small rocks and stones there was no obvious clue as to the whereabouts of the cache. The Dutchman found it in seconds. Behind a group of artfully arranged stones, which his practiced eye immediately distinguished from the general debris, there was a small plastic box of the type used for sandwiches. As well as a logbook, in which he entered his name, there were various trinkets and also a 'geocoin' which he explained you could take and relocate to another cache and whose trajectory could be tracked online.
The landscape reminded me of the Pennine Way, not surprisingly as Newfield Hall is itself minutes from the trail, and this first walk evoked unpleasant memories of endless trudging across featureless muddy moors. However the last section passed through woods by the river Wharfe, finishing at Bolton Abbey. Day trippers had parked their cars in semicircles, like the wagoners of the Wild West, creating a barrier of privacy within which to enjoy their barbecues and beer. No such sustenance for us. Despite making good time, we'd barely made up the stolen 15 minutes and we headed back to the coach, dozing as it trundled through country lanes, irritating the lesser minnows.
© David Thompson 2015
Now 15 minutes here or there starting a country walk may not seem much to you or me (Sally wouldn't know the difference anyway as her achingly stylish watch eschews numbers) but in the precision world of HF, that makes all the difference between a tea stop and, well, no tea stop. After an hour in cocooned in the coach, we trooped into the toilets in the adjacent pub before joining the group leader for the walk we had chosen. Mine was nowhere to be seen, and one of the other group leaders cheerfully informed me that, being the 'hard' group, they had already set off, believing everyone was present. There aren't many imperatives associated with being a walk leader but ensuring your party is complete at the start is, not unreasonably, one of them. I started in the direction indicated, up a steep and winding track, with no idea how far they'd gone, hoping at least they were still on the same path. When I spotted them, the leader trotted down to meet me, effusively apologetic and muttering that it was difficult to distinguish between guests' markings of 'M' and 'H' on the sign up list for medium and hard walks and consequently they were uncertain of the numbers on each. He seemed a decent chap and bumbling is not a hanging offence so my annoyance dissipated, a tribute to my holiday mood.
I spent much of the walk talking to Eileen with whom I'd shared a taxi from Skipton station. She was recovering from an ankle injury and wanted to test her capabilities before an upcoming walking holiday in the Dolomites. She was using two poles, often the sign of a less confident walker and, to establish the pecking order, I mentioned airily some of my previous treks, such as the Pennine Way. She listened attentively. Had I been to Jersey, she wondered? Oh yes, I'd walked the entire coastal path, it's about 55 miles, I explained, so it takes about a week. She'd done it too, but for charity; they started at 3am and finished at 9pm. I was confused. You mean, you did the whole thing in less than 24 hours, I spluttered? Yes, they'd got lost a couple of times, she said regretfully, that's why they finished so late.
With only four of us, including the leader, we made reasonable time, and stopped for lunch at windswept Simons Seat, very welcome after half an hours steep climb, the only part of the day which generated any sweat. I'd noticed one of our party, a taciturn Dutchman, sneak occasional glances at his GPS and assumed that his confidence in our leader had been somewhat eroded by the earlier faux pas, but while we ate lunch he explained he did geocaching. He had located a cache nearby and wanted to find it if we were game for a short detour. Geocaching has always struck me as a rather elegant fusion of the archaic treasure hunting urge and the challenge of finding new ways to harness the capabilities of modern technology, so I was intrigued to see the process in action. The GPS took us to the base of the imposing rocky outcrop which comprises Simons Seat, on top of which is the trig point. But amongst large boulders, small rocks and stones there was no obvious clue as to the whereabouts of the cache. The Dutchman found it in seconds. Behind a group of artfully arranged stones, which his practiced eye immediately distinguished from the general debris, there was a small plastic box of the type used for sandwiches. As well as a logbook, in which he entered his name, there were various trinkets and also a 'geocoin' which he explained you could take and relocate to another cache and whose trajectory could be tracked online.
The landscape reminded me of the Pennine Way, not surprisingly as Newfield Hall is itself minutes from the trail, and this first walk evoked unpleasant memories of endless trudging across featureless muddy moors. However the last section passed through woods by the river Wharfe, finishing at Bolton Abbey. Day trippers had parked their cars in semicircles, like the wagoners of the Wild West, creating a barrier of privacy within which to enjoy their barbecues and beer. No such sustenance for us. Despite making good time, we'd barely made up the stolen 15 minutes and we headed back to the coach, dozing as it trundled through country lanes, irritating the lesser minnows.
© David Thompson 2015
Sunday, 12 July 2015
Newfield Hall
Walking is a sport for the cautious. Climbing, cycling, white water rafting, even ballroom dancing offer spicier fare, a higher risk/reward quotient if you like, than traversing the land by putting one foot in front of the other. Thus it is a pastime for the elderly, physically challenged or simply unimaginative. Gradually, I'm beginning to tick all three boxes. So the selection of a walking holiday is a simple trade-off: what's the most stimulation available for the lowest anxiety premium? Our holiday in Las Chimineas illustrates this well. The scenery was spectacular but the prelude to all walks was Land Rover incarceration for mouth-desiccating ascents on roads scarcely wide enough for a mule, with more hairpins than a fifties hairdresser. The prospect of a sojourn in Arran in July was discarded for different reasons: voracious midges, according to the reviews, are the walkers' bane and susceptible to no amount of chemical armour. In his hilarious account of walking the Appalachian trail, Bill Bryson enumerates the hazards awaiting unprepared novices ranging from from black bears to deranged hillbillies. Having discarded most of the remaining summer walking venues through metereological factors (ie any hint of temperatures over 20C) the process of elimination yielded northern England. There 18C qualifies as sultry, nowhere is more than an afternoon's stroll from a tea shop and the most apprehensive traveller would hard-pushed to raise a tremble.
Newfield Hall, originally a manor house, has been sympathetically restored by HF Holidays (HF no longer stands for Holiday Fellowship - in these secular times the associations are deemed offputtingly devotional) and taut-sinewed guides stood ready to escort our party of elderly gentlefolk, plus a couple of Americans, on an introductory stroll. In an unaccustomedly warm late afternoon it seemed the perfect introduction to a week of Dales dallying.
As a seasoned Ramblers walks leader, I respect the need to brief groups on safety matters and the tanned northerner took this duty seriously. There might be horseflies, he cautioned. They land 'on their teeth' he claimed so we should give them no quarter; attack was the best form of defence and we were encouraged to swat freely, an appropriate sentiment in the week parliament is poised to overturn the ban on hunting foxes with hounds. Ticks, too, were a problem and long sleeves and trousers were advised. I could already feel the skin crawling on my bare arms but before I could decide whether to retrieve a shirt from my room, the catalogue of terror continued. Fierce water buffalo has been spotted on a local footpath recently and although the farmer had been castigated by the council, there was no guarantee they would have been moved. The final flourish in this awful menagerie was the local Hereford bull, recent proud father to half a Smithfield's worth of prime beef and there was a stern injunction not to make eye contact, let alone enter the field where he resided with his harem and progeny. Eventually we set off. I half expected the leader to offer additional life insurance before we left the car park but he contented himself with scowling at my rucksack and muttering that a walker 'in the south' had recently been snagged by a passing car as a result of injudicious backpack management.
The walk was idyllic: a small river bordered by meadows seemed to offer little in the way of terrifying hazards. Then a German member, unused to the natural history of Britain, brushed against a stinging nettle. Our leader rose to the occasion. Brandishing a handful of dock leaves he grabbed her arm and rubbed it vigorously, assuring her that the antihistamines in the leaves would sooth her, although possibly the Chinese burn he gaily appeared to be inflicting simply masked the earlier insult. Botany again triumphed where zoology fell short. Soon we encountered some giant hogweed whose legendary toxicity made it a miracle that humankind had survived at all within a 100 mile radius. In case we were not adequately intimidated, our leader recited a cornucopia of dangerous plants, including foxgloves, none of which were in the vicinity. Against the odds, the party returned intact to the Hall. Of the three walks offered for the next day, I couldn't help noticing that his route
had the fewest takers.
© David Thompson 2015
Newfield Hall, originally a manor house, has been sympathetically restored by HF Holidays (HF no longer stands for Holiday Fellowship - in these secular times the associations are deemed offputtingly devotional) and taut-sinewed guides stood ready to escort our party of elderly gentlefolk, plus a couple of Americans, on an introductory stroll. In an unaccustomedly warm late afternoon it seemed the perfect introduction to a week of Dales dallying.
As a seasoned Ramblers walks leader, I respect the need to brief groups on safety matters and the tanned northerner took this duty seriously. There might be horseflies, he cautioned. They land 'on their teeth' he claimed so we should give them no quarter; attack was the best form of defence and we were encouraged to swat freely, an appropriate sentiment in the week parliament is poised to overturn the ban on hunting foxes with hounds. Ticks, too, were a problem and long sleeves and trousers were advised. I could already feel the skin crawling on my bare arms but before I could decide whether to retrieve a shirt from my room, the catalogue of terror continued. Fierce water buffalo has been spotted on a local footpath recently and although the farmer had been castigated by the council, there was no guarantee they would have been moved. The final flourish in this awful menagerie was the local Hereford bull, recent proud father to half a Smithfield's worth of prime beef and there was a stern injunction not to make eye contact, let alone enter the field where he resided with his harem and progeny. Eventually we set off. I half expected the leader to offer additional life insurance before we left the car park but he contented himself with scowling at my rucksack and muttering that a walker 'in the south' had recently been snagged by a passing car as a result of injudicious backpack management.
The walk was idyllic: a small river bordered by meadows seemed to offer little in the way of terrifying hazards. Then a German member, unused to the natural history of Britain, brushed against a stinging nettle. Our leader rose to the occasion. Brandishing a handful of dock leaves he grabbed her arm and rubbed it vigorously, assuring her that the antihistamines in the leaves would sooth her, although possibly the Chinese burn he gaily appeared to be inflicting simply masked the earlier insult. Botany again triumphed where zoology fell short. Soon we encountered some giant hogweed whose legendary toxicity made it a miracle that humankind had survived at all within a 100 mile radius. In case we were not adequately intimidated, our leader recited a cornucopia of dangerous plants, including foxgloves, none of which were in the vicinity. Against the odds, the party returned intact to the Hall. Of the three walks offered for the next day, I couldn't help noticing that his route
had the fewest takers.
© David Thompson 2015
Friday, 10 July 2015
North
Poised between an election victory and a two month parliamentary recess, a triumphalist government tried to galvanise the economy and mollify the natives by coining the opiate 'northern powerhouse' which, depending on your perspective, can be either patronising or comforting. A veil of impenetrability is essential for political phrase makers: if no one comprehends the meaning, how can they challenge it?
Denied the opportunity to go further north, I had already decided on Yorkshire for my walking holiday, and jocularly referred to it as 'going North'. When weekends trips to Budapest or Dubai are commonplace, there is an enduring poetry to travelling by reference to the points of the compass. Why else would a celebrity name a child North, or a pop group entitle itself The Beautiful South?
Londoners are burdened with a new connotation for East. No longer does it conjure oriental exoticism; now it signifies the burgeoning arriviste East End, still the cheapest (so necessarily the coolest) zone in the capital. Of the four compass points, confusingly South is the most alluring to Londoners for holidays, but the least for residing. The Thames is London's unforgiving hinge: those living above it disdain the South as fervently as the superior Eloi enslaved the subterranean Morlocks. Denizens of those lower reaches, bereft of efficient public transport merely through geological happenstance, are abandoned by friends on the favoured side of the great divide. As Will Self has observed, they cling to the comforting illogic that it must be simpler for their acquaintances to amble northwards than for them to trek to a wilderness serviced only by buses and, probably, stage coaches.
Unpacking the concept of West is more complex. My schoolfriend aspired to be a rocker - as the biker gangs of those days were known - but he was a timid chap with a weak heart and his most dastardly exploit was going 'Up West' on a Saturday night where he would join co-religionists revving their machines on Chelsea Bridge and glaring at passers by. Occasionally I would see him on his way home visiting the Blackheath tea hut, a traditional biker haunt, looking disconsolate. The West is London's exit door. In the fifties we would embark on the interminable journey to Cornwall's dank beaches, condemned to driving through the night along ribbon-developed A roads before the relief of the motorways. In the sixties, West London Air Terminal in Cromwell Road was the anteroom for Heathrow. My mother would deposit my father there for his annual trip to Chicago, solicitously ensuring he bought life insurance from a self-service machine in the ticket hall before departure. Comets, with their fatally flawed windows, were still flying then and the chances of getting safely across the Atlantic were only slightly greater than winning the pools, or so the machines dispensing comforting reassurance would have you believe. And now the West still means Heathrow. More and more of it if runway 3 gets built, so that as the city becomes more accessible, by a delicious irony, there is less and less point in going there: tarmac in London much resembles that in New York.
My North is a concatenation of childhood stories and adult experiences. I sense the freezing blast of the Snow Queen, the lattice landscape of ice, valleys and summits air-conditioned to within an inch of their life, like a summer office in the US, the only time it's necessary to wear more than a teeshirt indoors. The air in my North jangles with the clatter of ice-sheathed branches tickled by the wind. I glimpsed this North briefly in a Swedish Christmas and a New England winter solstice. But as my train rattles through lurid green English farmland, irredeemably agrochemicalled by ejaculating sprayers, the fantasy subsides and grim reality takes hold. This North will be damp and windy, poverty-stricken and hopeless. So far forgotten is the North that the idea of releasing London as a separate sovereign entity is gaining traction. There may be brass where there's muck, but where there are bankers there's gold. Hence the need for the soothing phrase 'northern powerhouse'. Despite the abandonment of steel manufacture, the slaughter of coal mining and the migration of ship building, the UK's economy, we must believe, can still be resuscitated by dour sons of toil in overalls and flat caps. Decades of under-investment and denial of existence, in no way prejudice this fantasy. In this island, North it seems, is misspelt: the 'r' and 'h' are superfluous. For everything that the South is, the North is not; everything the South has, the North has not.
© David Thompson 2015
Denied the opportunity to go further north, I had already decided on Yorkshire for my walking holiday, and jocularly referred to it as 'going North'. When weekends trips to Budapest or Dubai are commonplace, there is an enduring poetry to travelling by reference to the points of the compass. Why else would a celebrity name a child North, or a pop group entitle itself The Beautiful South?
Londoners are burdened with a new connotation for East. No longer does it conjure oriental exoticism; now it signifies the burgeoning arriviste East End, still the cheapest (so necessarily the coolest) zone in the capital. Of the four compass points, confusingly South is the most alluring to Londoners for holidays, but the least for residing. The Thames is London's unforgiving hinge: those living above it disdain the South as fervently as the superior Eloi enslaved the subterranean Morlocks. Denizens of those lower reaches, bereft of efficient public transport merely through geological happenstance, are abandoned by friends on the favoured side of the great divide. As Will Self has observed, they cling to the comforting illogic that it must be simpler for their acquaintances to amble northwards than for them to trek to a wilderness serviced only by buses and, probably, stage coaches.
Unpacking the concept of West is more complex. My schoolfriend aspired to be a rocker - as the biker gangs of those days were known - but he was a timid chap with a weak heart and his most dastardly exploit was going 'Up West' on a Saturday night where he would join co-religionists revving their machines on Chelsea Bridge and glaring at passers by. Occasionally I would see him on his way home visiting the Blackheath tea hut, a traditional biker haunt, looking disconsolate. The West is London's exit door. In the fifties we would embark on the interminable journey to Cornwall's dank beaches, condemned to driving through the night along ribbon-developed A roads before the relief of the motorways. In the sixties, West London Air Terminal in Cromwell Road was the anteroom for Heathrow. My mother would deposit my father there for his annual trip to Chicago, solicitously ensuring he bought life insurance from a self-service machine in the ticket hall before departure. Comets, with their fatally flawed windows, were still flying then and the chances of getting safely across the Atlantic were only slightly greater than winning the pools, or so the machines dispensing comforting reassurance would have you believe. And now the West still means Heathrow. More and more of it if runway 3 gets built, so that as the city becomes more accessible, by a delicious irony, there is less and less point in going there: tarmac in London much resembles that in New York.
My North is a concatenation of childhood stories and adult experiences. I sense the freezing blast of the Snow Queen, the lattice landscape of ice, valleys and summits air-conditioned to within an inch of their life, like a summer office in the US, the only time it's necessary to wear more than a teeshirt indoors. The air in my North jangles with the clatter of ice-sheathed branches tickled by the wind. I glimpsed this North briefly in a Swedish Christmas and a New England winter solstice. But as my train rattles through lurid green English farmland, irredeemably agrochemicalled by ejaculating sprayers, the fantasy subsides and grim reality takes hold. This North will be damp and windy, poverty-stricken and hopeless. So far forgotten is the North that the idea of releasing London as a separate sovereign entity is gaining traction. There may be brass where there's muck, but where there are bankers there's gold. Hence the need for the soothing phrase 'northern powerhouse'. Despite the abandonment of steel manufacture, the slaughter of coal mining and the migration of ship building, the UK's economy, we must believe, can still be resuscitated by dour sons of toil in overalls and flat caps. Decades of under-investment and denial of existence, in no way prejudice this fantasy. In this island, North it seems, is misspelt: the 'r' and 'h' are superfluous. For everything that the South is, the North is not; everything the South has, the North has not.
© David Thompson 2015
Friday, 21 November 2014
South West Coast Path
The South
West Coast Path starts in Minehead, Somerset and snakes its way around the coastal
inlets for some 630 miles before arriving at Poole in Dorset. No doubt some attempt the entire route in one
go, maybe in carpet slippers or riding a unicycle to spice up the challenge,
but most normal folk attack the UK’s longest walking trail in bite-sized chunks.
My friends
live in Exeter which enables them to supplement week-long assaults on the more
distant reaches on the path with day trips to closer stretches. I had previously accompanied them on a sally
to North Cornwall, starting at Tintagel.
I associated this area with fading childhood memories of indolent rock
pools and lonely coves. Walking the coastline is a somewhat less languorous
experience. Climbs of cliffs so steep
that steps are cut into the surface are followed immediately by knee-wrecking
descents; and no sooner is one cliff conquered than another appears. The whole enterprise resembled trying to
cross a London suburb by climbing the front of each house, descending the back,
crossing the garden and repeating the process on the next terrace. Not only was it gruelling (some days we
covered barely 6 miles) but the usual sense of achievement associated with
summiting a hill is tempered by the immediate prospect of several more.
So it was
with some trepidation that I accepted the invitation to accompany my friends on
another South West Coast Path jaunt over Easter. In the intervening period, they had covered
some 400 miles, so we were scheduled to walk part of the southern side of the
peninsular.
To secure
the cheapest train fare, I booked soon after Christmas, peering at the map to
discover the closest railway station to the house, selected to accommodate a
party of seven, which appeared to be about as remote as is possible in mainland
Britain. The week after buying my ticket
a series of winter storms of unprecedented ferocity commenced. The west-facing roof of my flat, always
susceptible to rain when accompanied by westerlies, developed several leaks. More worryingly, a chunk of Brunel’s massive
seawall supporting the railway track at Dawlish was washed away. Attempts to repair it were hampered by
further storms. Pictures of the railway
track dangling in thin air reminded me of my inadequate boyhood engineering
skills when ambitious viaducts in my Hornby layouts tumbled to the floor. These were not comforting thoughts and the
chances of the Dawlish wall being repaired by Easter seemed remote. In the event, Herculean efforts, spurred on by
huge losses to the west country economy through having its only rail link with
the rest of the UK severed, ensured that repairs were completed in less than
the forecast time, just two days before my planned trip. As we traversed the newly laid section, I was
glad we were not the first train to make the passage: it was clear that,
although passable, the work was far from finished.
Although
the holiday was scheduled for a week, I had to miss the first day owing to a
previous commitment to lead a Ramblers walk. I managed to get an earlier train than I was
booked, having slightly overestimated the time required for the Ramblers
walk. Consequently I needed to check the
arrival time at Lostwithiel where I was being met. The guard printed off the times which also
showed I need to change at PAR. I was
used to the notion of these three letter abbreviations which originated with
airports (Heathrow is LHR, for instance) and had now been adopted by the
railways and assume that this was the code for Exeter, which is where I would
have had to change according to my original itinerary. However I thought it best to confirm my
interpretation with the guard. He gave
me an old-fashioned look and explained to the stifled amusement of the other
passengers that it is the name of a place: Par.
Obviously I was a Londoner abroad.
I consulted the map and discovered that Par is actually beyond
Lostwithiel and that I would have to wait nearly an hour there in order to get
a train in the opposite direction which would then take less than ten minutes
to reach Lostwithiel. This seemed pointless
so I texted my friends to suggest they collect me from Par instead, which would
have the added benefit of enabling us all to eat dinner at a more civilised
time. Several days later, as we walked
though Par, a bleak post-industrial wasteland, the name became the occasion of
much feeble punning which I will spare you.
The house
nestled in a lush green dell and had been architect designed with all the
idiosyncrasies that implies, the most annoying one being that there were no
opening windows. Instead, every room had
floor to ceiling French doors, including the bedrooms which were all on the
ground floor, so that to get any fresh air these needed to be opened. In one of the bedrooms (fortunately unoccupied
as two of our party were unable to join at the last minute) even this facility
was missing while in my room the French doors were jammed shut. Despite these shortcomings, the place was
generally well-appointed and, most importantly, well-situated as a central
pivot for our walks. Nevertheless, the
physical challenge of the walks pales into insignificance compared to the
logistical challenge of actually reaching them.
Linear walks either require ready access to public transport, which is
generally paltry and unreliable outside cities, or a complicated,
time-consuming and carbon-intensive car shuffling. On some days, it seemed we spent almost as
much time driving as walking and on more than one occasion, one of the cars was
abandoned until the following day.
During an indulgent lunch on
a rare "non-walking day" during which we covered almost as much
ground as on a "walking day", the restaurant was invaded by a large
party of hooray Henrys accompanied by noisy children. The kids we could stand,
the braying adults we couldn't. Our peaceful reverie was disturbed and
several other diners, we noticed, left quickly. Two of us were content to
mutter about the bad behaviour of the moneyed classes and ignore the matter but
our leader bravely decided that, for the greater good, these people needed to
understand the disruption they had caused. We stood well back to watch
the fray. In the event, she handled her admonishment so well (beginning
by saying she understood that they were a large party with children so that
some noise was inevitable and thus pre-empting an obvious retort) that they
were completely contrite.
Long distance paths provide
an interesting insight into people’s personalities. When I walked the Pennine Way, surely the
dullest of all the UK long distance footpaths, I cheerfully abandoned a section
across waterlogged fields for a path by a narrow gauge railway. SWCP adherents are made of sterner stuff and
one of our party insisted on covering every inch, on one occasion doubling back
to bag a hundred meters which fell between the end of one day’s efforts and the
start of the following day owing to the location of the car park. I devised a set of criteria to determine
whether a diversion was acceptable.
First, the alternative route had to be virtually the same length as the
original. Second, both routes should
present a similar level of challenge.
Third, the two paths needed to be within sight of one another. After considerable discussion, no agreement
was reached but as most diversions were the product of judicious adjustment of
the route by the authorities to avoid recent rock falls or storm erosion there
was in any case no option but to follow them.
© David Thompson 2014
Saturday, 19 April 2014
Capital Ring: Wimbledon Park to Richmond
It wasn't any surprise that this section of the walk was the most pleasant so far. Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common together form one of the largest open spaces in London while Richmond Park, where it would not seem out of place to encounter a stray sheep, is the largest urban park in Europe. Yet this section of the walk was also freighted with unexpected memories so the rural idyll was embroidered with unbidden glimpses of long-forgotten past.
Being largely the preserve of the affluent, one would expect tennis clubs to be located in the most desirable neighbourhoods so it is entirely logical that the All England tennis club, representing the zenith of the sport, should make its home in the relentlessly middle class enclave that is Wimbledon. Large, solid houses coyly visible behind specimen trees placed amid manicured front gardens set the scene, but it was the sight of a home delivery van specialising in fresh fish, that completed the picture. Such a phenomenon bespeaks quite a different class milieu from the Tesco trucks plying lowlier neighbourhoods. It also put me in mind of the world of the 1950s, before the advent of the supermarket, when tradesmen would deliver my mother's various household requirements on weekly rotation. In the days before universal car ownership, retailers felt obliged to bring their wares to customers in much the same way that Amazon would decades later. The daily milkman, until quite recently a feature of most areas, headed a procession which included a baker, a greengrocer and a fishmonger. The Kleeneze representative would pitch up on the doorstep regularly, laden with all manner of cleaning apparatus and consumables which, after much wheedling and cajoling, she would occasionally condescend to buy.
At Wimbledon Common, a cluster of low buildings nestles around the apparently famous hollow-post windmill. It included a cafe with the most appealing range of food and drink and comfortable seating I've seen in such places. Sadly it was too early for my lunch but the place was well-patronised by women with small children and dogs the size of ponies. A significant area of the adjacent common is given over to a car park, evidently for the exclusive use of Range Rovers. Behind the cafe, horses were being exercised at the riding school. I reflect that the transition which was embryonic in the previous section of the walk is complete: neither of those forms of transport would be much in evidence in the easterly reaches of the Capital Ring.
Passing golfers from the London Scottish Golf Club resplendent in their mandatory red tops and then descending into caliginous woodland, my earlier associations with southwest London started to resurface.
London is so large and sprawling that most residents carve out small localities with which to identify. The most notorious boundary is that between north and south London. A south London acquaintance complains that her north London friends insist she visits them rather than vice versa as the journey is so tiresome, the implication being that it's somehow less stressful for her to travel northwards than for them to endure the same journey southwards. Or maybe they deem it an entirely justifiable penalty for her choosing to live in such a declassé area. My familiarity with southwest London was for many years confined to memories of day trips to Kew Gardens during languorous summer holidays, chaperoned by a succession of Dutch au pairs. The trip involved a boat from Greenwich to Charing Cross, then the interminable District line. Acknowledging my indifference to exotic plants and needing to find some effective distraction, they fed me ice lollies ad libitum. My favourite was the Mivvi, an ice-cream centre with a fruit ice outer shell. Curiously, the name forms a link with my next association with the area.
During a French camping holiday, I met Mimi, a fey and distant creature to which my gauche sixteen year old self formed an urgent and unrequited attachment. I had no way of apprehending the extent to which this product of the knowing and sophisticated circles of southwest London outstripped me. Our lives, although superficially congruent, both being the offspring of liberal professionals, could scarcely have been more different. She was effortlessly accustomed to life at the epicentre of the cultural and political world (her father was a cabinet minister, mine was a reclusive academic) she was glamorously urbane. It took just a single visit to Blackheath to expose the gulf and sever the link, and without the benefit of modern social networks we lost touch. Nearly half a century later, five minutes research on the internet reveals that she now lives in Stoke Newington; doubtless she frequents Fresh and Wild.
Emergence on to the Thames path was a welcome respite to these family memories. This was an area unburdened by associations and I enjoyed the sense that in being by the Thames there was a palpable link with home, as well as marking the geographical halfway point on the Capital Ring.
© David Thompson 2014
Being largely the preserve of the affluent, one would expect tennis clubs to be located in the most desirable neighbourhoods so it is entirely logical that the All England tennis club, representing the zenith of the sport, should make its home in the relentlessly middle class enclave that is Wimbledon. Large, solid houses coyly visible behind specimen trees placed amid manicured front gardens set the scene, but it was the sight of a home delivery van specialising in fresh fish, that completed the picture. Such a phenomenon bespeaks quite a different class milieu from the Tesco trucks plying lowlier neighbourhoods. It also put me in mind of the world of the 1950s, before the advent of the supermarket, when tradesmen would deliver my mother's various household requirements on weekly rotation. In the days before universal car ownership, retailers felt obliged to bring their wares to customers in much the same way that Amazon would decades later. The daily milkman, until quite recently a feature of most areas, headed a procession which included a baker, a greengrocer and a fishmonger. The Kleeneze representative would pitch up on the doorstep regularly, laden with all manner of cleaning apparatus and consumables which, after much wheedling and cajoling, she would occasionally condescend to buy.
At Wimbledon Common, a cluster of low buildings nestles around the apparently famous hollow-post windmill. It included a cafe with the most appealing range of food and drink and comfortable seating I've seen in such places. Sadly it was too early for my lunch but the place was well-patronised by women with small children and dogs the size of ponies. A significant area of the adjacent common is given over to a car park, evidently for the exclusive use of Range Rovers. Behind the cafe, horses were being exercised at the riding school. I reflect that the transition which was embryonic in the previous section of the walk is complete: neither of those forms of transport would be much in evidence in the easterly reaches of the Capital Ring.
Passing golfers from the London Scottish Golf Club resplendent in their mandatory red tops and then descending into caliginous woodland, my earlier associations with southwest London started to resurface.
London is so large and sprawling that most residents carve out small localities with which to identify. The most notorious boundary is that between north and south London. A south London acquaintance complains that her north London friends insist she visits them rather than vice versa as the journey is so tiresome, the implication being that it's somehow less stressful for her to travel northwards than for them to endure the same journey southwards. Or maybe they deem it an entirely justifiable penalty for her choosing to live in such a declassé area. My familiarity with southwest London was for many years confined to memories of day trips to Kew Gardens during languorous summer holidays, chaperoned by a succession of Dutch au pairs. The trip involved a boat from Greenwich to Charing Cross, then the interminable District line. Acknowledging my indifference to exotic plants and needing to find some effective distraction, they fed me ice lollies ad libitum. My favourite was the Mivvi, an ice-cream centre with a fruit ice outer shell. Curiously, the name forms a link with my next association with the area.
During a French camping holiday, I met Mimi, a fey and distant creature to which my gauche sixteen year old self formed an urgent and unrequited attachment. I had no way of apprehending the extent to which this product of the knowing and sophisticated circles of southwest London outstripped me. Our lives, although superficially congruent, both being the offspring of liberal professionals, could scarcely have been more different. She was effortlessly accustomed to life at the epicentre of the cultural and political world (her father was a cabinet minister, mine was a reclusive academic) she was glamorously urbane. It took just a single visit to Blackheath to expose the gulf and sever the link, and without the benefit of modern social networks we lost touch. Nearly half a century later, five minutes research on the internet reveals that she now lives in Stoke Newington; doubtless she frequents Fresh and Wild.
Emergence on to the Thames path was a welcome respite to these family memories. This was an area unburdened by associations and I enjoyed the sense that in being by the Thames there was a palpable link with home, as well as marking the geographical halfway point on the Capital Ring.
© David Thompson 2014
Friday, 18 April 2014
Capital Ring: Crystal Palace to Wimbledon Park
An unexpected bonus of solitary retirement is being able to indulge passing whims or even forming and reversing decisions at will. Thus it was that when I woke to a photoshop sunrise spontaneously decided to tackle the next phase of the Capital Ring.
These westerly sections necessitate more arduous train journeys. On this occasion, I was rewarded with a strange visual pun. A passenger boarded the train carrying a clothes airer - not a common sight - and two stops later I noticed a different person wielding an identical object on the platform. It could have been an obscure coded message, I suppose, but more likely a coincidence and it reminded me of a piece I'd read explaining that coincidences are more common than we expect since we unconsciously stretch the variables. Running into a cousin unexpectedly on a visit to Vienna is declared a strange coincidence, but so too would be hearing that he had visited the week before...or the week after...or that his father had recently been there. You get the point. The only lasting impact of the clothes airer episode was to remind me that I'd forgotten to take my laundry out of the washing machine.
The station at Crystal Place is excessively grand but more importantly also features toilets, a comparative rarity in the tube network. Having availed myself of the facilities, I churlishly bypassed Crystal Palace park and its resident dinosaurs but couldn't avoid the blue-plaqued home of their creator, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. He lived on a steep hill, which shocked my legs more accustomed to easy ambles around flat Docklands and didn't bode well for my forthcoming walk along part the South West Coast Path, notorious for its endless rollercoaster ascents and descents.
In Streatham a eucalyptus tree in a front garden reminded me of the ghost eucalypts in Melbourne and my favourite specimen standing sentinel at the entrance to a park. I recalled the bark folded neatly where each branch joined the trunk, like the malleable flesh of an animal, and the delicate papery layers peeling off the trunk.
The form of transport used to traverse the suburbs largely determines the traveller's experience. Buses ply shops and the fronts of houses: this is the public face of the district. Viewed from a train, the suburbs are defined by rears of houses since railway lines intersect the ends of back gardens. The true nature of the area can be discerned by their content: nail-clippered lawns tell a different story from jagged piles of household detritus. My journey on foot enabled me to sample both perspectives. Bereft of tubes, this part of south London is covered in a skein of railway lines, which I crossed through fetid underpasses and over rusting bridges. Trudging the endless suburbs, I am suddenly struck by the disparity between London's centre where street life abounds and these dreary streets populated only by seemingly empty houses. For an absurd moment it appears as if people and houses are incompatible alternatives: you can have one or the other, but not both together.
Although there are pockets of larger well-kept Victorian houses and executive homes scattered throughout this section, approaching the more salubrious western zones there is a gradual but inescapable trend to increased prosperity. Reaching Wandsworth, it was clear that an invisible boundary had been crossed: I hadn't seen any signs requesting the public to keep off cricket squares in Woolwich.
Having read that this section was principally on tarmac paths, I'd elected to wear my Gortex boots rather than the leather ones I favoured previously. Towards the end of the day, I regretted my choice. Either the boots had shrunk or my feet had grown. Both seemed equally improbably, but I decided to revert to the other pair for the next outing.
© David Thompson 2014
These westerly sections necessitate more arduous train journeys. On this occasion, I was rewarded with a strange visual pun. A passenger boarded the train carrying a clothes airer - not a common sight - and two stops later I noticed a different person wielding an identical object on the platform. It could have been an obscure coded message, I suppose, but more likely a coincidence and it reminded me of a piece I'd read explaining that coincidences are more common than we expect since we unconsciously stretch the variables. Running into a cousin unexpectedly on a visit to Vienna is declared a strange coincidence, but so too would be hearing that he had visited the week before...or the week after...or that his father had recently been there. You get the point. The only lasting impact of the clothes airer episode was to remind me that I'd forgotten to take my laundry out of the washing machine.
The station at Crystal Place is excessively grand but more importantly also features toilets, a comparative rarity in the tube network. Having availed myself of the facilities, I churlishly bypassed Crystal Palace park and its resident dinosaurs but couldn't avoid the blue-plaqued home of their creator, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. He lived on a steep hill, which shocked my legs more accustomed to easy ambles around flat Docklands and didn't bode well for my forthcoming walk along part the South West Coast Path, notorious for its endless rollercoaster ascents and descents.
In Streatham a eucalyptus tree in a front garden reminded me of the ghost eucalypts in Melbourne and my favourite specimen standing sentinel at the entrance to a park. I recalled the bark folded neatly where each branch joined the trunk, like the malleable flesh of an animal, and the delicate papery layers peeling off the trunk.
The form of transport used to traverse the suburbs largely determines the traveller's experience. Buses ply shops and the fronts of houses: this is the public face of the district. Viewed from a train, the suburbs are defined by rears of houses since railway lines intersect the ends of back gardens. The true nature of the area can be discerned by their content: nail-clippered lawns tell a different story from jagged piles of household detritus. My journey on foot enabled me to sample both perspectives. Bereft of tubes, this part of south London is covered in a skein of railway lines, which I crossed through fetid underpasses and over rusting bridges. Trudging the endless suburbs, I am suddenly struck by the disparity between London's centre where street life abounds and these dreary streets populated only by seemingly empty houses. For an absurd moment it appears as if people and houses are incompatible alternatives: you can have one or the other, but not both together.
Although there are pockets of larger well-kept Victorian houses and executive homes scattered throughout this section, approaching the more salubrious western zones there is a gradual but inescapable trend to increased prosperity. Reaching Wandsworth, it was clear that an invisible boundary had been crossed: I hadn't seen any signs requesting the public to keep off cricket squares in Woolwich.
Having read that this section was principally on tarmac paths, I'd elected to wear my Gortex boots rather than the leather ones I favoured previously. Towards the end of the day, I regretted my choice. Either the boots had shrunk or my feet had grown. Both seemed equally improbably, but I decided to revert to the other pair for the next outing.
© David Thompson 2014
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