Walking to Camelot

by John A. Cherrington

  “It sounds execrable,” I say. The server laughs and says that she often buys it at the Tesco supermarket in a packaged, microwaveable format.

  The pub performs an extremely important role in rural English social life. Labourers, businessmen, professionals, and homemakers all drop in to their local watering hole in the evening to have a pint, talk about the latest soccer scores or politics, or simply to gossip. I once found myself in avid conversation at a bar with a couple, and it transpired that the bloke was a barrister and his wife a High Court judge. No matter. The pub levels social distinctions. Richard Jefferies called the alehouse the labourer’s “stock exchange, his reading-room, his club, and his assembly rooms.”

  The local pub has also from time to time acted as the rallying centre for political agitation and a haven for smugglers and fencers of stolen goods. In the 1830s, when rural violence erupted over the displacement of jobs by new machines, public houses were at the very centre of agitation as, it was often said, “nurseries of naughtiness.”

  What can compete with the joy, colour, and ambience of the English pub? The sheer outlandishness of the names numbs the mind. How about this little sampling: The Gallows Inn, The Dapple Cow, The Merry Mouth, The Hatchet Inn, The Maid’s Head, Barge Aground, Cat and Bagpipes, The Tippling Philosopher, Trouble House Inn, The Indian Queen, The Trip to Jerusalem, The Book in Hand, The Mortal Man, The Saracen’s Head, The Quiet Woman, The Jolly Taxpayer, The Man in the Moon, The Foaming Jug. Pubs change their name from time to time; in Great Brington, following the death of Princess Diana, the Fox & Hounds quickly became the Althorp Coaching Inn.

  Until 1550, British taverns and inns were unlicensed. Anyone could open a public house, though if it became disorderly, the local JPs could close it down or debar the proprietor from selling ale or spirits. The beginning of a licensing system carried a fixed code of conduct. In the sixteenth century, a tavern keeper was forbidden to shelter travellers, while an innkeeper was forbidden to allow people to “tipple” in his house — tippling could occur only in the alehouse. Even today an innkeeper is required by law to get up and supply a traveller with food and/or shelter at three in the morning, whereas a tavern keeper has no such obligations. A “free house” may sell all brands of beer and is not tied to one supplier.

  OUR QUIETUDE on the trail this morning is shattered by the pop-pop-pop of guns blasting below us in the Nene Valley. The noise is from a rifle range. A few moments later a much louder explosion breaches the calm of the hedgerows, and several wood pigeons crash out of the hawthorn in fright. We are puzzled; it sounds like artillery shelling. Upon emerging from a copse into orchard fields, it becomes apparent that the three explosions in close succession emanate from the nefarious “crow cannon,” which I recognize from my twenty-eight years of living on a hobby farm in British Columbia.

  Propane-fuelled bird cannons have stirred controversy in rural areas around the world, and in North America have led to petitions, civil suits, even bloodshed. They are the only reasonably effective way of keeping starlings, rooks, pigeons, and crows from devouring field crops. In Australia, residents had to petition the government to stop the cannon firing on Christmas Day. Man can send spaceships to the moon, but thus far the birds have outwitted us in harassing our crops — even falcons have been tried in Britain and North America, with varying degrees of success. Other methods, such as scarecrows and flashers, are ineffective. The only alternative remedy is netting, but this gets very expensive with large acreages and the nets must be replaced every five years or so. That said, the crow cannon only reduces crop destruction. Up to 30 percent of some crops are lost even with the cannons in action.

  Though wood pigeons are vilified for devastating crops, rooks are more common, descending in vast flocks to eat cultivated cereal, fruit, and earthworms. This makes for much Sturm und Drang drama in English fields. The rook differs from the North American crow — it has a bluish-purple sheen, grey-white skin near the eyes, and shaggier feathers. Rooks are colonial birds that nest together in groups of up to thirty.

  I asked a farmer at our B&B the previous evening about the rook problem. He replied that the rook, though much hated by farmers, is a more dignified bird than the crow — a carrion crow prefers the eyes of live lambs to earthworms and is the ultimate murderer. Rooks cluster together for the greater good, and the phrase “rook parliament” originates from the almost human manner in which an avian trial is held for a wayward or sick rook. Just before clawing the feathered victim to death, the entire rookery empties into the sky like in Hitchcock’s The Birds, in a cacophony of cawing and furious beating of wings. Farmers also regard mass desertion of rookeries as a sure prelude to disaster — climatic or otherwise. That said, an annual cull of rooks with 12-bore shotguns and .22s barely makes a dent in the population.

  The nursery-rhyme stanza “four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie” actually refers to rook pie, which until the twentieth century was a staple dish of the poor. Dickens refers to it in The Pickwick Papers. The landlord of the Fox & Hounds in Acton Turville, Gloucestershire, hosts an annual rook pie night, complementing the rook flesh with sausage, brandy, sherry, and spices. The travel writer Paul Theroux enjoyed rook pie at the Crown Inn near our destination at Abbotsbury, Dorset; but recently the proprietors of that inn received several poison pen letters and threatening emails from birds’ rights activists, which made them so distraught that they have ceased offering this traditional country delicacy to their guests.

  The third noisy encounter of the morning unfolds as we leave a copse via a kissing gate and stand on an overpass staring down at the twelve or so lanes of the frenetic M1, the great motorway connecting London with the North, which resembles a speedway track. This stretch experiences a daily volume of 100,000 vehicles. I must be dazed from the bucolic world in which I have been cocooned, because I cannot relate to this motorway scene — it must be in some twilight zone — and I hustle in panic across the concrete span to reach a spinney on the far side, like some recluse hastening to his primeval cave or Ratty retreating to his riverbank.

  The spinney holds an unexpected surprise. A tall, rather seedy-looking bloke stoops bathing in a brook, completely in the buff. His rusty red Cortina rests on a green lane nearby. Through the hatchback, I can see clothes and paraphernalia completely jamming the vehicle. The poor chap seems slightly bewildered, and makes no attempt to cover up his crown jewels as he pauses to talk with us.

  “You blokes sound foreign.”

  “We’re from North America, walking the Macmillan Way.”

  “Ah, and where would that be?”

  “Er,” I stammer, “it’s a long-distance path.”

  His eyes dart from Karl to me and back; he seems a little wild, but not exactly dodgy.

  “Blimey! Fancy that. Can’t say as I like walking much. Not now, at any rate. The wife and I had a big row last night; she told me to sod off. So I packed up all my clothes and left. Don’t know where I’ll go.”

  We wish him well and leave him to his morning ablutions.

  “The poor fool,” Karl says after an interval. “Wonder where he’ll bed down tonight.”

  “Likely right where we left him — in his car on that green lane.”

  The lonely village of Flore is approached through a field of barley along a red-soiled path. We stop for a moment to view the Adams Cottage, a thatch-roofed building reputed to be the home of the ancestors of John Adams, second American president. Then we cross a bridge over the River Nene and skirt the town of Weedon by walking along the Grand Union Canal.

  Radar was first demonstrated and proven effective near Weedon in 1935. A memorial plaque south of the village commemorates the trial runs of a Handley Page Heyford biplane piloted by Robert Blake on February 26 of that year, whereby the repeated passage of his plane disrupted the electromagnetic energy field transmitted from a nearby radio mast such that the position of his aircraft could now be tracked. When one considers how close Britain came to succumbing to the Luftwaf
fe in the Battle of Britain in 1940, it can be argued that radar may have made the crucial difference between victory and defeat.

  Just outside Farthingstone, we arrive at a rolling expanse called Glebe Farm, our B&B. A hot soak in the big clawfoot tub eases the blisters somewhat. After ablutions, Karl and I go for a stroll on the grounds and meet up with Colin from Derbyshire, a young man in his twenties, who is camping out in his tent here for the night. He jumps up to greet us. I notice his freshly washed socks hanging out to dry. We had met this tall, lanky walker briefly on the trail in the late afternoon. His long legs take enormous strides, and he is planning on completing Macmillan at the rate of twenty-four miles a day — about twice our pace. He should arrive at Abbotsbury and the sea after only twelve days’ journeying! It turns out that the distinct boot marks Karl and I have been following belong to Colin.

  Colin is well equipped to cook his own food, but we persuade him to join us for dinner at the local pub. The proprietor of Glebe Farm kindly offers to drive the three of us to the village, so we all pile into his Land Rover. We don’t mind the friendly collie that accompanies us, nor the dog hairs.

  Over hearty plates of lamb stew, we learn that Colin lives with his mother and works in the computer maintenance field. He loves walking and has conquered many of the high reaches of Derbyshire, the Lake District, and Wales. He is also curious about hiking the mountains in Canada, where he would like to explore the wilderness. The dinner is memorable. We enjoy the amiable companionship of Colin, and also discover English country wines. We consume first a bottle of elderberry wine and then a bottle of elderflower wine, both made from the elderberry bush.

  Karl makes raspberry wine himself, and when he asks the publican how the elder wine is made, the fellow points to a rather grizzled old man at the next table. “Ask Harold, he’s the local connoisseur for the country wines.”

  Harold promptly joins us, samples some of our elderberry, and pronounces it as “not bad, mate, though it could have stood a bit longer, but not bad. We here call it the Englishman’s grape; it’s been used in wine for hundreds of years. My missus also makes elderberry pie, jam, tarts, and jelly. Some country folk still call elder the Judas tree.”

  “What about North American elderberry? We have lots of it in our West Coast forests.”

  Harold scratches his thin beard. “Don’t rightly know about that, mate; but I would think any variety should make for good wine. Try making the elderflower as well. My missus swears by it. Some farmers still carry an elder branch around when the flies are bad in the barnyard.”

  Colin adds, “Me mum makes elderflower cordial in summer — she calls it ‘elderflower champagne.’ She makes it bubbly, all effervescent like. Better than the store stuff.”

  Next morning, our friendly Glebe Farm landlady serves us a wonderful breakfast, full English without the grease, and lovely hot rolls. Even Karl succumbs.

  Conscious that Colin hit the trail before eight o’clock, we reluctantly leave Glebe Farm, only to stop abruptly in our tracks a few hundred yards along. A weird radio beacon has popped into view — a flat, glistening steel apparatus that looks extraterrestrial. We decide to investigate and find a tarmac path leading to a chain-link fence guarding an ugly little white building supporting a gargantuan mushroom cap above hundreds of metal rods extending in every direction — and no one around for miles. Have the Martians landed? Perhaps it’s an MI5 listening post?

  We soon reach Canons Ashby, named after the Black Canons, Augustinian monks who built a priory here in the twelfth century. The priory became a popular stopover for pilgrims and students from Oxford University. It was closed in 1536 with the Dissolution, and the remaining Black Canons were evacuated. A John Dryden, ancestor of John Dryden the poet, later inherited the priory and built the present manor house, now managed by the National Trust. Dryden the poet often visited his uncle here and enjoyed the unspoiled view of formal gardens and extensive woodlands.

  “I don’t know much about John Dryden, Karl, other than what I learned in high school — he was a poet and a satirist. But I do remember one line of his that I rather cherish.”

  “And what line is that, John?”

  “ ‘Beware the fury of a patient man.’ ”

  “Are you making a dig at my impatience again?”

  “No, but if the shoe fits, you know?”

  “Ha! Life’s too short to dawdle.”

  We wanted to visit Canons Ashby House, but it is closed. However, the Trust kindly allows walkers to pass through the grounds without charge. A famous statue of a shepherd boy playing a flute stands on the front lawn.

  While lingering in the sunshine here, we cannot help but observe several National Trust workers on the grounds trying to fire up a weed-killing machine that belches a lot of smoke but kills no weeds. Seven workers move along at a snail’s pace with this monstrous devil, but the weeds are still very much present after they pass. If all seven workers used a simple handheld weed-eater — even an old-fashioned scythe — they could have finished the job in under an hour.

  That said, the National Trust has become the driving engine for preservation of hundreds of heritage buildings and sizable tracts of nature reserves. Incorporated in 1895, the Trust’s purpose is “the preservation for the benefit of the Nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest, and, as regards lands, for the preservation of their natural aspect, features and animal and plant life. Also the preservation of furniture, pictures and chattels of any description having national and historic or artistic interest.” It boasts the largest membership of any charity in the country, with 3 million paid subscribers and 40,000 unpaid volunteers. The Trust owns more than 6oo,000 acres of countryside, 600 miles of coastline, and over 250 heritage buildings, and 13 million people visit its properties each year.

  The writer A.A. Gill decries the Trust as a backward-looking keeper of the nostalgia industry, but it is hard to be critical of the one agency in the world that works indefatigably to not only preserve historic structures but keep the countryside green and frozen to development. It may be that the Puck of the garden has replaced the Green Man guarding the ancient forests, but one can only work with repairing, redressing, and preserving what we have left to us. Bemoaning the sins of one’s ancestors is surely a nihilistic exercise. The Trust is the envy of like organizations in countries such as Canada, where it is difficult to find patronage beyond meagre government resources to conserve heritage sites.

  Our route out of Canons Ashby takes us down a steep hill on a minor road that leads to the valley below, where we cross over a stile, then a narrow plank over a stream, known as a “sleeper bridge,” to enter the derelict village of Moreton Pinkney. This place has seen better days, though there is a pretentious manor house with a Victorian tower and a couple of pubs: The Crown and England’s Rose, renamed from Red Lion in honour of Princess Diana.

  A footbridge leads over a gentle stream to follow a hedge-lined track. A sign at a farm gate warns: “Danger — Guard dogs loose.” A little later on, another sign: “Trespassers may be seriously injured.” We stop to consider.

  “Somebody’s trying to tell us something, Karl. Maybe walkers have strayed too often off the path here.”

  Karl just gives me that half-smile of his, takes a swig from his Thermos — he won’t admit it, but I know there’s ale in there — and sallies forth, oblivious to the fierce barking that erupts from kennels halfway across the next field.

  The path continues relentlessly downward to become a wickedly wet bridleway. At the bottom is one vast series of mudholes. From this fetid primeval ooze it is a long, long climb up a slippery scarp to the pleasant village of Eydon. It seems that every cottager is in her front yard this Saturday, edging herbaceous borders, killing weeds, and generally cleaning up. We pass a village green where the medieval stocks are still intact. I cast them a nervous glance, for I am dirty, grungy, and dishevelled enough to be ensconced there as some tramp despoiling the spiffy village vis
ta.

  We quench our thirst on an outdoor picnic table at the Royal Oak. A farmer on a tractor wielding a huge, yawning bucket motors down the street and loads up people’s excess sod. A bloke at the next table tells me that the village elders appoint a specific day in spring to spruce up the place, and that most cottagers join in. Some poor lad we watch is being excoriated for spraying rat poison all over his mother’s flower garden.

  John Grindlay runs the Eydon Kettle Company from his home here. His STORM kettle is portable and allows one to boil water anywhere, being an improvement on a design that originated in Ireland. If we were English and absolutely had to have a cuppa every hour along the trail, this would be a necessity for the backpack. I point this out to Karl, who is singularly unimpressed.

  “To hell with tea — where’s our next real drink?”

  “Coming right up, at the Griffin in Chipping Warden.” With that, he quaffs the last dregs of his Guinness and hoists his pack.

  At the other side of the village, we begin our descent into the valley of the infant River Cherwell. “Infant,” says the Guide —I’ll say! When we cross over a footbridge, this majestically named stream is no more than a ditch clogged with willows, alder bushes, and bulrushes. This is the first stream on our journey that flows southward, emptying into the Thames at Oxford.

  I remark to Karl on a large herd of cows in the field we are approaching.

  “Stop calling steers ‘cows’ — steers are castrated male bulls,” he says. “Cows are female.”

  “Then what are bullocks?”

  “Bullocks are the same as steers.”

  “What about castrated females, then — are they heifers?”

  “Dammit, no! They don’t generally castrate the females — a heifer is just a young female that hasn’t yet given birth.”