We cross a stone bridge over the River Gwash. On the outskirts of the tiny village of Brooke lies the twelfth-century parish church of St. Peters, set at an odd angle in a field. The massive oak door creaks; a pigeon flaps in the belfry. Inside is a slanted limestone floor worn smooth by the tread of centuries; rare old box pews denote a well-preserved ancient house of prayer. Outside, we wander the graveyard. Many of the lichen-covered tombs are now bereft of lettering. It’s a lonely spot. A Victorian lamp hangs on a crooked post, resembling a gibbet and serving no apparent purpose.
The utter silence is interrupted by the rumble of a rusty brown pickup down the churchyard track. A young, powerfully built man gets out and greets us. He is the groundskeeper — and is straight out of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. His biceps bulge like sinuous tree roots. He carries a .22 rifle which I assume is for shooting rabbits, for I notice three of his victims lying in the truck bed next to a gas-powered lawnmower. Even his wary aloofness reminds me of the gardener in D.H. Lawrence’s novel.
“You must be finding a lot of rabbits around here,” I remark.
He says nothing and fiddles with his tailgate, obviously impatient for us to leave the grounds. Karl mentions that we are walking the Macmillan Way for three hundred miles.
“Thee’s walkin’ all the way to Dorset and the sea, then?”
“Aye,” Karl says with a smile.
“Can’t say’s I’ve travelled much about, but once took the train down to London, I did.”
“Have you lived in the area for long?” I ask.
“’Tis right. Been huntin’ and tendin’ gardens, field work, whatever a man can find.”
We bid him adieu and leave him to his work.
Walking through Brooke, it is so quiet we whisper, afraid to wake up canines or humans, though it is already midmorning. The appearance of such villages has not changed significantly since the medieval age.
As for the copses, hedges, and flora of the countryside, that is another story. Woodlands have been decimated over the centuries, and the surviving copses are a mere fraction of the size they were in 1850. Hedges too were ruthlessly destroyed after World War II.
The primary hedge ingredient is hawthorn. This genus is shrouded in mystical folklore. The English used to call it the “bread and cheese” because young leaves were placed in sandwiches, much like lettuce today. The hawthorn relies on pollination by dung flies and midges, attracted to the scent and to the brown and purple anthers. Evidently, to a carrion fly these colours resemble decaying flesh. The blackthorn bush is related but is not indigenous to England. A Eurasian shrub with white flowers, its small, bluish-black, plum-like fruits are harvested chiefly for flavouring alcoholic beverages such as sloe gin.
All in all, if you ignore the horrible slashes of the motorways and “A” roads desecrating the country, both Wordsworth and Constable would be able today to gaze across the rolling countryside and receive inspiration. And much barley is still grown, because since Anglo-Saxon times the populace have consumed beer in copious quantities. Nearby Northampton alone boasted 160 inns and alehouses in the eighteenth century — about one for every thirty inhabitants.
In every village, from medieval times, there were three types of occupational rights: the right of every person to roam the lanes, the footpaths, and the church grounds; communal rights, such as the village green, the common oven, the wells and town pump, the stocks, and the open fields; and strictly private rights — the manor house of the lord and the cottages and crofts of the peasantry. The struggle to keep the paths and tracks open to the public has not always been an easy one. The Enclosure movements of the eighteenth century at first severely disrupted the footpaths. There ensued many stormy battles with big landowners. Legislation was passed in 1815 which allowed any two justices of the peace the power to close a footpath that they believed was no longer “necessary.” In a Hansard record of 1831, it was recorded that this power had been regularly abused by the practice of one magistrate commonly saying to another, “Come and dine with me; I shall expect you an hour earlier as I want to stop up a footpath.”
Jane Austen recognized the propensity of greedy landowners to close public paths, and referred in her novel Emma to conscientious nobles doing the right thing by not prejudicing access to the common folk. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote of the hypocrisy of landowners — what we might call the NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) syndrome today — in the speech of Mr. Frankland of Lafter Hall in The Hound of the Baskervilles: “It is a great day for me, sir . . . I have established a right of way through the centre of old Middleton’s park, slap across it, sir, within a hundred yards of his own front door. What do you think of that? We’ll teach those magnates that they cannot ride roughshod over the rights of the commoners, confound them! And I’ve closed the wood where the Fernworthy folk use to picnic. These infernal people seem to think that there are no rights of property.”
There are still problems with farmers ploughing over their fields and failing to demarcate the walking path — which by law they are supposed to do. We are experiencing this problem in some of the rapeseed fields in particular. Thanks to the Ramblers, this issue has been kept in the spotlight. Not that landowners like Madonna and others won’t keep trying to fend off walkers. But most owners accept public footpaths running through their estates as an embedded country tradition and an integral part of rural life.
Villagers are confronted today by many newcomers who dream of quiet but sanitized country living. These newcomers complain about everything from the smell of manure to cattle-truck dust to cocks crowing — even the loudness of church bells. One wealthy car dealer, Frank Sytner, recently retired with his wife to the nearby village of Ridlington in search of the quiet life. But the couple did not care for the sheep, the smells, or the mud associated with a farming community. Mr. Sytner sued a neighbouring farmer for in-advertently spilling some mud on a lane leading to Sytner’s prize horses. Mrs. Sytner also complained in court of the annoying sound of cows in the field. When the judge pointed out that perhaps the cow ruckus was normal for the countryside, she responded: “Yes, it’s unfortunate, isn’t it.” The judge threw out the case.
Ian Johnson of the National Farmers Union opines that tolerance between the wave of newcomers to the countryside and the existing hierarchy of farmers and squires is badly needed. Although many townies adapt well, others, like the Sytners, move to the country, asserts Johnson, “but they don’t want to be near the nasty niffs and noises . . . They don’t want any movement in the country. They want to ossify it, crystallize it, or preserve it in aspic. They want their picture postcard there for immortality.” So put on those designer wellies and get muck on them!
What Canadians would call Red Toryism is described by author Raymond Williams, in his The Country and the City: “In Britain, identifiably, there is a persistent rural-intellectual radicalism: genuinely and actively hostile to industrialization and capitalism; opposed to commercialism and the exploitation of environment; attached to country ways and country feelings, the literature and the lore.” Prince Charles epitomizes this mould.
The squires and the radicals with Tory tastes are now at one with socialists who wish to preserve the countryside. Perhaps this unusual political alliance began in the nineteenth century, when the austere Duke of Wellington joined with the poet William Wordsworth in denouncing the carnage wrought by the ubiquitous railway lines upon England’s “green and pleasant land.” Wordsworth abhorred the intrusion of the smoky, dirty trains into the countryside and declaimed in a sonnet, “Is there no nook of English ground secure / From rash assault?” The Red Tories and socialists, alas, part company on issues like fox hunting.
A mile beyond Brooke we say hello to an elderly, spry lady sitting on her porch who invites us into her garden for a cup of tea. She says that she walks in North Wales and fights to prevent any new roads or despoliation of her hillside there, where she keeps a caravan for part-time rental plus personal use. Her name is Nora.
We sit and chat about the countryside and village life. Nora’s cottage is surrounded by wildflowers, and above our tea table stands a charming Elizabethan-style chocolate and white dovecote with a pigeon perched on a ledge, alert for some tea crumbs.
Nora is a keen observer of village trends: “It’s funny how the new people coming into a village to live want to retain village traditions but always want to improve things. Like here, they want a community centre, as if that will keep young people in the village and in line. The young people will still get in their cars and drive to Stamford for partying.”
“That’s the way with young people all over the world, Nora,” Karl says with a smile. “Young folk love their cars. Thanks for the tea; and maybe we’ll see you one day at your caravan in Wales.”
Refreshed by Nora’s tea and talk, we continue down a green lane lined by a hedgerow blanketed with white mayflowers on one side and open farm tracts on the other. My olfactory senses are pervaded by the pungent, distinctive odour of steaming, newly ploughed fields mingled with hedge blossoms, radiant in the sunshine, that takes me back to weekend jaunts to my grandparents’ farm in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley. Heaven for a ten-year-old city boy was sitting under the horse chestnut tree with Grandfather as he smoked his pipe of Borkum Riff while I sipped Grandma’s iced raspberry-vinegar cordial. Surely there is a thread of kinship here among rural areas the world over: that definable odour of spring — perhaps one of the few occasions when Man’s agricultural activity blends harmoniously with the richness of Nature’s bounty of bursting blooms and the nascent stirring of the land.
The scene before us characterizes much of the landscape each morning: a stile or gate, misty fields of green alternating with cadmium yellow swathes of rape unfolding into the distance. Other than the wood pigeon’s occasional Ooo-oo, there is utter, ineffable silence. But the rapeseed plants are sopping, and the path which runs diagonally through the centre of the field is often hidden by the five-foot-high stalks that we shove aside with our sticks.
Rapeseed has become a dominant field crop in England. In Canada, it is known as “canola.” The plant name derives from the Latin name for turnip, rapa. It is a variety of the Brassica family and the third-largest source of vegetable oil in the world. It was first grown in England in the fourteenth century; in the nineteenth century it became a lubricant for steam engines, and today is grown for vegetable oil, animal feed, and biodiesel. The rapid expansion of rapeseed fields in England is attributable to the European Union’s appetite for ever-increasing supplies of biodiesel for both heating systems and motor vehicle engines.
Finches flutter about as we pass through Prior’s Coppice Nature Reserve, and then it’s onto a bridleway recently churned up by horses. Restored medieval fish ponds flank both sides of the track before we cross the River Chater. Fish ponds formed an important source of the diet of ancient and medieval people in England.
The Way now winds along and over the Eye Brook before ascending a steep hill into Belton-in-Rutland. Cool rain and a slippery track combine to make this a gruelling grind.
We secure lodgings at a stone cottage B&B in Belton. The landlady is pleasant but brusque. I dare not ask her for the heat to be turned on early, despite our damp, bedraggled state. I would like some heat before bed; the last uphill climb exhausted me. A sign in my ensuite warns: “Guests may not wash clothes in the basin.” To hell with that! The only way we can keep clean is to wash our socks and underwear each night.
We have decided to take a cab to Uppingham, as the Crown Inn there has been recommended to us by the landlady. Before we set out for dinner, Karl insists that the cab driver be directed to the green lane where we found Tiffany’s clothing, just to make sure that the Oakham police have picked up the garments.
“Since we can’t seem to rouse anyone at the Oakham police station, John, we have to be satisfied they are doing their job. I have to know.”
“We could just call them in the morning. It must be a good thirty miles back to Tiffany’s lane.”
“No, John, I have to know tonight that they have done their job and picked up the clothing.”
“Okay, Karl. We will go back there.”
And indeed we do. The cab arrives at our B&B around six o’clock. The cabbie is swarthy and sixtyish, sports a captain’s beard, and wears a Greek fisherman’s cap. He resembles Captain Smith of the Titanic. I show him the location of the Tiffany site, marked with an X in my Guide, and off we go. He does not seem to find our request at all unusual, and keeps up a steady stream of conversation about his relatives in Canada, who work in the Alberta oil and gas fields.
We pull up to a spot in the road where it curves. Tiffany’s lane is marked with a bridleway sign attached to which is the familiar Macmillan sticker. Karl and I both get out and trundle up the dark, mucky track, casting furtive glances around us. The cabbie has positioned his vehicle with headlights shining up the lane to give us more light, but it’s a surreal, chilling scene right out of Stephen King’s The Dark Half. This portion of our otherwise delightful walk has taken on a sinister aspect. About two hundred yards in, we search on the right side below the hedgerow and then reconnoitre for another hundred yards or so.
“Karl, the clothes are gone. The police definitely picked them up.”
He just grunts and says he wants to search farther toward the road, but eventually agrees that the clothes are gone. By this time, the rain is pelting down. I can see the cab driver’s dim visage behind the wheel as his windshield wipers kick in.
“Okay, John, I’m satisfied. Now I could use a good stiff Scotch.”
The Crown Inn has great food and two known ghosts. The pub crowd is orderly. It is de rigueur in England for the barmaid to display generous décolletage, and we are satisfied that the Crown has passed muster in this regard. The buxom blonde swinging the Guinness is cheerful and friendly. She also smiles at me without any subtle mockery of my foreign accent when I order Karl’s double Scotch and my half pint of lager. Wherever one travels, the first thing the natives do is analyze your accent. The flip side of this is that to a villager, we are all foreigners unless we live within a radius of five miles. In these small rural backwaters, a Yorkshireman is a source of wonder, even gossip. But a North American is simply beyond comprehension and can be safely ignored.
We both order the beef Wellington, which is delicious — essentially a filet steak lathered with pâté and duxelles, wrapped in a puff pastry and baked. I have mine with a touch of curry. The dish is named after the Duke of Wellington, perhaps because he was known to love a mix of beef, truffles, mushrooms, pâté in pastry, and Madeira wine. Others suggest that it was just a patriotic chef who wanted to assimilate the French recipe for filet de bœuf en croûte during the Napoleonic Wars. Regardless, I could eat this every night, washed down with a spicy Shiraz.
Next morning there is a promise of sun. A winding path leads us out of Belton. There must be horses about, as there is a pervasive odour of horse manure when we emerge from a copse into open fields. In the tiny village of Allexton, the Norman church has been abandoned and is now under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. The churchyard is overgrown; thistles, brambles, and St. John’s wort compete with ivy growing right up the oolite stone walls. Inside, the church is bleak and stark. Little light penetrates, and the black-and-russet tiled mosaic floor is cracked and stained.
Outside, Karl and I poke about a bit in the graveyard. Despite the playful swoop of swallows, there is a problem here. By the vestry door at the north end of the church, the overgrown weeds reach up and partly cover the grand tomb of Thomas Hotchkin, who died in 1774, having, it is stated, “been most miserably cut and mangled, of a fistula.” Hotchkin gained his wealth from his West Indies sugar plantations and slave trading. A rotten smell of decay, redolent of dead rat or mouse, emanates from near his tomb, upon which rests a large urn. Perhaps fitting for a slaver’s tomb, I muse. The panelled vestry door glows magically like the Black Gate of Mordor, evilly beckoning us, and t
here are dark red blotches resembling blood near the old brass door handle. Above us a crow starts cawing and does not cease. I shiver and signal to Karl that it’s time to leave. He doesn’t argue. This is one morbid place.
We footslog through field after field. The landscape is now rolling, and I can see ten miles toward the Northamptonshire skyline. Karl curses the many rabbit holes, as well as the farmers who do not leave the required swathe in their fields for the prescribed path.
“The law evidently says that we can be fined for trespass if we leave the trail, but the bloody farmer can’t be bothered to show where it is,” he says. “So I say to hell with it. Just make for the far stile by whatever route is fastest.”
It is indeed a conundrum, and there are so few walkers on this section of the Way that one can see the farmer lapsing into the habit of ignoring the path with his crop planting. However, we also note the same large boot marks we saw yesterday on the path, and my bet is that the chap who leaves them knows where he is going and we should follow his marks if in doubt.
Both my feet hurt from blisters. The last rabbit hole I stepped into gobbled up my left foot, which is now a tad sprained. The other foot stepped in a wet cow pie while trying to avoid a badger sett, and the boot is bespattered with dung.
Two jackrabbits are so absorbed with boxing one another that they ignore us as we approach to within a few feet — such is the male ego, I suppose, even in the rabbit world. These are, in fact, hares competing to impress the females during mating season. As a former bantamweight pugilist, Karl is highly amused by their boxing antics.
Walking to Camelot Page 6
