By this time, Karl has found some eggs and a frying pan and soon things are sizzling, toast is popping, and the orange juice is flowing.
“So how long, ah, has this place been servicing certain local needs?” I ask.
Drew gives a start. Marnie is standing smoking in the doorway, and she looks like hell — pale with no makeup, dressed in a long, flowing, frayed Chinese silk robe.
“Drew,” she says calmly, “leave these gentlemen in peace and go up and fetch your clothes. I hope you have learned your lesson.”
Drew averts his eyes from us and trundles past her.
“And Drew,” she shouts after him, “you are on probation. You hear, mate?”
Marnie shakes her head, her red curls falling all askew over her forehead as she pads about the kitchen in her soft pink slippers.
“Sorry about all this,” she says, pulling out another cigarette. “Some blokes just get out of hand.”
I quickly finish my eggs and toast, settle up with Marnie,and Karl and I tread down the path past the debris-laden wheelbarrow still teetering by the algae-covered pond. From the street, I cast a last lingering glance at Liberty House.
We take a shortcut to reach the far end of Bradford, but I am apprehensive. In the field we have to cross, there is a herd of dairy cows, amid which lolls a huge black bull.
“Come on, John, that old guy is so engrossed with his harem, he won’t bother us.”
I clamber over the stile. “Seems like the entire male species is well serviced in these parts, Karl.”
Karl laughs and bounds forward with his customary sang-froid. He scares me by raising his walking stick as if to swat the old bull’s rump as we traipse by.
9
Alfred’s Tower and Steinbeck’s Quixotic Quest
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
—LEWIS CARROLL—
Alice in Wonderland
KARL CUTS A RATHER picaresque figure this morning. He is deeply tanned, hair rather shaggy, Tilley hat misshapen. We both need haircuts. Our visages are probably making the rounds of MI5 at this moment, given our scruffy appearance and the sheer number of surveillance cameras we have seen in and around Bradford. Britain has more security cameras per capita than any other country in the world — ironic for a country that is so obsessive about the privacy of one’s person, one’s thoughts, and one’s home.
We join the Kennet and Avon Canal towpath that forms part of the 84-mile-long National Waterway Walk that runs from Reading to Bath. A short path diverts us to view one of the largest surviving tithe barns in the kingdom. The impressive fourteenth-century structure boasts fourteen bays projecting into porches. It measures 168 by 33 feet and is unique in possessing a stone roof braced by a huge A-shaped set of wooden trusses, also known as a “cruck” support. The barn stored produce brought here from the abbey estates around Bradford by the serfs, villeins, and others who owed tribute. Tithe barns were built throughout northern Europe in the Middle Ages. A tithe represented one-tenth of a farm’s produce, which had to be given to the church to help support the priests.
Just south of Bradford, we become lost and stumble onto the grounds of a dilapidated Georgian mansion surrounded by rickety outbuildings and a shabby, unkempt garden. Just as we near the entrance to the mansion on a faint field path, cars begin arriving and strangely garbed people alight — young people with tattoos, capes, and dark robes, including spike-haired punk rocker types and some goths. I nod at two angular druidesses wearing long black dresses and conical black hats. A six-foot-tall magician with dreadlocks and a nettled expression looks to be in charge, greeting the guests curtly as they straggle down the walkway to the mansion. It seems a trifle early in the day for a costume party.
Dreadlocks approaches us with an angry scowl. I point to my Macmillan Guide and ask him where the path might be.
“You’re not coppers?” he says, frowning.
“Would cops have Canadian accents?” growls Karl, crossing his arms and placing his legs akimbo.
Dreadlocks sizes us up for another moment or two. Then he turns and motions to one of the druidesses, who struts forth, marches us perfunctorily down the driveway — and then tells us to get lost. The sweet aroma of marijuana wafts off her cape, mingling with the honeysuckle scent emanating from the tangled hedge of the driveway.
“Friendly natives,” laughs Karl.
“I wouldn’t want to run into any of them in a dark alley.”
“Ah, they are all harmless sods — soon will be, anyway. I give them an hour before they’re all completely zonked.”
Twenty minutes later we reach the outskirts of Avoncliff village, a popular commencement point for scenic walks along both river and canal. The key object of interest here is the Cross Guns, said to be the most haunted pub in Wiltshire. The Blue Lady is the most commonly seen ghost, but there are others. And yes, this is all taken in dead earnest by the owner, who, after the disturbances became too frequent, called in the Dean of Salisbury to bless the pub. Staff workers swear that the hauntings continue, and that in addition to the Blue Lady, a monklike figure is sometimes seen standing close to a cellar door that opens to a tunnel leading to the nearby canal.
We pass under the Avoncliff Aqueduct, a triple-arched, 330-foot structure completed in 1801 that still ranks as one of the country’s most splendid waterway edifices. It actually carries the open canal across the River Avon. It must have served as inspiration for the waterparks that kids enjoy today.
The path takes us across the River Frome on a delightful stone bridge boasting a finely hewn statue of Britannia at mid-span. The sculpted figure looks toward Iford Manor and its renowned yew topiary gardens. A few hundred yards beyond, I stand by a wire fence to take a photo of the winding river. Suddenly I feel a sharp pain in my leg and realize I have been nipped by a goose that has stretched its neck through the fence, obviously resenting my presence. Karl starts laughing and I curse.
The first goose is joined by a second one, who also wants to have a go at me. These are Chinese swan geese, a popular species as they are usually of good temperament — the golden retrievers of the geese world — but will fiercely protect their owner’s property. One goose is brown-feathered and the other white, both with orange beaks.
“You’re the only person I’ve known to be bitten by a goose while out walking,” Karl chortles.
Fortunately, my jeans have absorbed most of the bite.
“Better a goose than a bull, Karl.”
The River Frome is now to our immediate left as we pass a weir and enter Somerset. Waves of black clouds stack the sky menacingly to the northwest, and Karl fears that we are in for some dirty weather. The rugged castle ruins of Farleigh Hungerford loom ahead. This castle from the fourteenth century was built by Sir Thomas Hungerford, steward to the powerful John of Gaunt. It played a role in the English Civil War but fell into disrepair in the early eighteenth century, after which the locals removed most of the stones of the crumbling structure as “salvage.” Only the chapel and its crypt survives.
The locked crypt here reputedly contains the finest collection of anthropomorphic lead coffins in Britain, and it is open to the public — but only on Halloween! The chapel displays one of four extant ancient paintings of St. George and the Dragon. The tomb of Sir Thomas Hungerford is impressive. But there is a feeling of unease in the air, accentuated by the storm gathering overhead.
Morbidity rules here. The blackberries, brambles, and nettles are gaining ascendancy. The Halloween ritual of opening the crypt reeks of necromancy. Though it’s a beautiful setting with the Frome Valley winding below, the history of this place is replete with much violence, disease, and military conflict from the Wars of the Roses through to the Civil War. I se
nse bad karma.
We wander down the desolate main street of the nearby village. Ugly gargoyles adorn the church. Worst of all, the Hungerford Arms pub is closed.
“Not terribly inviting, John; all these desolate ruins — who really wants to see a bunch of half-human-, half-animal-shaped coffins anyway? Hell, there’s not even tonic for a walker’s parched throat. Let’s keep moving. There’s a wicked storm brewing.”
“I thought you had your Tiger Beer from the Bradford Tithe Barn?”
“That was quaffed way back on the path.”
Blazing flashes of lightning dazzle my eyes, followed by a booming clap of thunder. Then the downpour commences. We button up the Gore-Tex and lower our heads with chins tucked into the wind — much like Karl’s white bull assumed his position just before his charge. The thunderstorm lasts for a good twenty minutes as we trudge onward in the deluge, leaving Farleigh Hungerford to its coffins and ghosts. A BritRail cobra speeds past nearby, a blazing silver behemoth of metallic foam and fury that wakes us from our stupor. Modernity intrudes again moments later, when in the distance we observe the hideous hillside slash of the M5.
Karl and I emerge sodden and dripping onto a tarmac lane, which leads to a path with a hornbeam hedge running along it until Crabb House. Then we cross the Frome again via an alluring arched bridge. A World War II pillbox sits gathering moss on the opposite bank. This particular pillbox was part of a fifty-mile-long string of structures dubbed the GHQ Line, designed to slow the advance of Hitler’s armies up the Frome and beyond.
Tellisford is one of the few “Thankful Villages” — those villages that lost no men in World War I. Only fifty-three civil parishes and thirty-one villages in England had all of their men who fought in the Great War return, though many of the survivors were severely wounded. Only thirteen of those thirty-one villages are considered “Doubly Thankful,” meaning they experienced no military deaths in World War II either.
Our B&B for the night has been booked off trail, so we are obliged to tramp almost four miles to the village of Norton St. Philip. By now the storm has abated, the sun has come out, and all is well, except for fatigue. I am ready to drop by the time we reach our B&B. But after tea and a slice of pound cake, I take a bath, enjoy a nap, and by six-thirty am ready for dinner.
The George Inn boasts of being the oldest continuously licensed inn in England. It was originally built by monks in 1223, as living quarters for their neighbouring priory, and be-came a coaching inn after the dissolution of the monasteries.
Early-bird North Americans invariably find themselves sitting alone in pub dining rooms, since the English practise Continental European habits of late dining. This evening is no exception. We are alone in a vast hall, eating at a battered table that could have been used by Samuel Pepys, who stopped to dine here on June 12, 1668. The famous diarist was en route to the West Country with his wife, Elizabeth, and her maid, Deborah Willet, in tow.
Other luminaries have frequented the venerable George over the ages. The Duke of Monmouth quartered here after his defeat in 1685 at the Battle of Sedgemoor, the final act of the Monmouth Rebellion against King James II. Judge Jeffreys hanged twelve rebels at one of his Bloody Assizes, using this dining hall as a courtroom and conducting the executions immediately thereafter on the village common. The inn has also been used as a film set in three productions, The Remains of the Day, Tom Jones, and Canterbury Tales, plus two TV series, Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
Of all the pubs we have visited, this one certainly merits highest praise for ambience. Old pews surround the bar. The windows are leaded glass, the floor made of old ship’s planking. Then there is the huge stone fireplace. One can easily imagine winter travellers standing in front of the roaring fire warming their hands, the windows frosted with snow, and a black dog lying there too, with the aroma of pipe smoke everywhere, as all the while a servant feeds chunks of maple and beech into the yawning, roaring fire to keep the guests toasty.
Karl and I enjoy a dinner of roast duck with cherry chutney sauce, julienne Grand Marnier sweet carrots, and mashed potatoes. I marvel at the high Tudor-style beams and wall tapestries all about us that portray knightly combat themes. A few small oak barrels hang from the ceiling beams, and numerous colourful medieval shields are displayed. I imagine Pepys sitting with his lecherous eyes peering about him, sizing up his surroundings — especially potential fleshly quarry — while his wife, Elizabeth, sits prim and proper across from him with her maid, who at the time was his secret lover.
A few months after this West Country tour, on October 25, 1668, Pepys was caught by his wife in flagrante delicto with Miss Willet. He expressed remorse and the maid was dismissed, but in characteristic fashion Pepys continued to pursue Miss Willet afterward. He simultaneously carried on an affair with a London singer named Mrs. Knep, who signed notes to him as “Barbary Allen,” a song she sang at theatres, while he signed his notes to her under the pseudonym “Dapper Dickey.”
Over trifle, our private dining hall is invaded by a noisy group of German travellers who sweep in speaking their native tongue and gesticulating wildly at the lances and swords and battle gear hanging about. Karl is amused and sits watching them, nursing his brandy. Surely, such cacophony typifies the traditional English coaching inn. There would always have been travellers from all over Europe mingling here with the natives in one clamorous hubbub. In past centuries, more French would have been spoken than German, of course. But German tourists are wild about England these days.
THE MORNING DAWNS as light and airy as fairy dust, the sky a mackerel sheet of gossamer threads. It’s a long four-mile trek back to the main Macmillan. After a stiff hour’s trek, we discern two miniature spires atop a church in the distance. We are at the entry point to Rode.
Inside the Church of St. Lawrence, we read about an unusual ceremony called “clipping the church,” whereby the congregation forms a circle around the church on Easter Monday evening, then dances to the left and to the right, cheers lustily, sings hymns, and, finally, rushes inside. Only a few other churches in England perform this ceremony, which dates back to pagan times, and only in Rode do the people in the circle face inward, toward the church.
There is another reason Rode has a historical reputation. The town won a countrywide competition to manufacture a unique dress for King George III’s Queen Charlotte, after one of its mills developed a rich blue dye that became trademarked as Royal Blue.
“And there you have it, Karl,” I remark. “Church clipping and a Royal Blue dress fit for a queen.”
“The only thing I don’t understand is the bit about the church clipping.”
“It’s meant to reflect love for both the church and one another. That’s why, I suppose, everyone forms a ring and holds hands. Apparently, everyone sings a song or two, like ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ and ‘Morning Has Broken.’ ”
“Where’s our next refreshment, John boy?”
“The Woolpack Inn, coming right up.”
But the Woolpack is closed, and we have to suffer our thirst in silence for many miles further. On the outskirts of Beckington, we become snarled in a bevy of bowling and cricket pitches. Then we have the most terrible experience of the day — there in the distance on the motorway is the ugly plastic red and white sign of Little Chef, the British fast food chain that serves gluttonous agglomerations of over-salted, cholesterol-ridden fare to weary and unwitting motorway victims. Ugh!
We quickly scurry away from this sordid window into the outside world and dive into a copse, from which we emerge onto a lane entry to Beckington.
In 1766, Beckington was inundated by rioters, who set ablaze a mill and other buildings as part of their rage against mechanization. Fulling mills had been built along the River Frome since before the fifteenth century, and depended upon spinners and weavers working from their cottages. Now all that had changed, with the entire operation moving to large, mechanized mills. A pitched battle ensued in which one
man was killed and several seriously injured.
We opt for a short walking day, as we are booked to stay at Angela Pritchard’s farmhouse near the village. Angela is a warm, chatty, erudite lady who is married to Ken Pritchard, who was the navy’s Director General of Supplies and Transport during the Falklands War, and was later made a Commander of the Order of the Bath for his services. She tells us over hot tea all about the Falklands conflict and how she often met the naval and soldier lads upon their return, some of them dramatically affected by combat.
Angela was named Lady Sponsor at the 1981 launch of the Bayleaf, an auxiliary ship of the Royal Navy. She managed to smash the champagne bottle on the first try! She tells us that the Bayleaf went on to see service in the Gulf War in 1991 and the Iraq invasion of 2003.4
Next morning, we say our goodbyes to Angela and set forth. The hedgerows are festooned with colour — hawthorn, honeysuckle, milkwort, and red dog rose. Chaffinches are singing, rabbits dart across the path, and all is right with the world. I twirl my stick and experience a real joie de vivre.
A mile down the path we encounter signs warning walkers that the resident Highland cattle are neurotic creatures and should be avoided. The path has been altered by the farmer, winding to the left, whereas both the Guide and intuition tell me it should be to the right. We plunge through a copse of firs for ten minutes and decide it’s hopeless, then crash through heavy undergrowth, with brambles, nettles, and burdocks having their way with my legs — terribly so, as I am wearing shorts today. Stung, welted, and covered with burdocks, we finally emerge into a field, where a herd of steers approaches at speed. We wiggle beneath a barbed-wire fence to escape their clutches. Below I spy the Frome Valley, dark and mysterious.
Nothing looks familiar. Damn those Highland cattle!
Walking to Camelot Page 20
