Icons of England

by Bill Bryson

  ‘Look,’ says Greg. ‘That wren is so small, yet his call is so loud.’ We watch a fisherman catch a tench. Greg smiles. ‘See the small red spots on its scales. In Henry IV Part I, a traveller complains about the fleas in his inn: “I am stung like a tench!

  The walk lasts exactly an hour. At the end, you feel like you’ve taken some magic tonic – Essence of Shakespeare, maybe – setting you up for the day’s work ahead.

  When we’re based back in London, I don’t know how I do without it.

  IN DEFENCE OF TOTNES

  Lucy Siegle

  on Totnes Castle

  GIRLS, IF YOU WANT to start an argument with a boy, try taking said male to Totnes Castle. ‘Actually, this is a motte and bailey structure,’ my paramour will say, finessing my blunt usage of ‘castle’. This is because he spent too much time reading Asterix. ‘Why does it say “Castle” on the sign then?’ I reply. And so it continues.

  Granted, it is not a castle in the Caerphilly or Caernarfon sense of the word. Those Welsh versions verge on Disney, with lots of turrets and outposts. Totnes, meanwhile, is a rather straightforward circular keep with some impressive wooden doors. Those Normans didn’t mess about with architectural flourishes. Unlike Glastonbury Tor – where, in order to get the full effect, you have to use your imagination to envision the plains below flooded – Totnes has no pretensions. It is the WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) of the castle community. And it is perfectly possible to soak up its vibes without any imagination at all.

  Vibes are very important in Totnes, which has more than its fair share of crystal shops; more than anybody’s fair share, in fact. The castle – presumably constructed originally for bellicose reasons – these days gives positive vibes. It is accepting, gender-unspecific (I normally think of castles as being male), and provides the perfect acoustic for playing a didgeridoo (there are many of these in Totnes).

  To be quite honest, nobody really makes a fuss about the castle; and that in itself is quintessentially Totnesian. For years the youth of Totnes (a demographic that once involved me) have traipsed around the neat grass inside the circular perimeters getting up to no good. The castle, therefore, forms nothing more than a Norman-style youth club. You certainly won’t find a gift shop, any loos, or statues of Mel Gibson like those that surround the William Wallace monument.

  Everything of interest in south Devon is at the top of a hill, which means we all have sturdy calves and ruddy cheeks. The castle, however, is worth the walk. These days, Totnes is a transition town – one preparing for life after oil. Meetings are held in the church across the bridge discussing the re-skilling of the local community, which must learn to do without Morrisons, turn car parks back into market gardens, and learn to comb and spin greasy wool into garments in the event of global collapse. Totnes even has its own currency – the Totnes pound. The way the transition movement tells it, everyone will have a part to play when the oil wells run dry. The castle will form a splendid headquarters for transitioners, although it could probably do with a roof.

  FOREVER TRANQUIL

  Mary Smith

  on Devon lanes

  (Daily Telegraph ‘Icons of England’ competition winner)

  SHELTERED FROM THE BRIEF spring squall by the high banks on either side of me, I walk briskly to keep warm. Above me, clouds scud swiftly, framed by the bare branches of overhanging trees; seagulls, buffeted inland by the storm, slip sideways in the wind.

  A gateway on my right draws me from the road. I lean on the top bar and survey the ploughed field. Newly turned soil lies glistening in long furrows – the rich red clay of south Devon.

  This country lane was the scene of Sunday afternoon strolls during my childhood when, every week, we had to ‘walk our Sunday lunch down’. Fifty years on, instead of my brother and parents I am accompanied by a walking stick. But the lane remains unchanged. Goose grass still grows along the hedgerow bottom, the same ‘sticky willy’ that I used to pick and plant on my brother’s back.

  The lane climbs gently upwards. The road has dried in the breeze, but the base of the bank is damp. It is always damp. It’s where the ferns flourish and the grass is lush, where dog violets hide shyly in early spring and where frogs can be found.

  The deep lanes of Devon remain untroubled by traffic. Fortunately drivers prefer the speedy routes via motorway or trunk road. Apart from the distant tractor sound, it’s birdsong, not traffic noise, that keeps me company.

  There are treasures in a Devon hedgerow. Obvious ones, like wildflowers, and hidden ones, like birds’ nests in spring or a basking lizard in high summer.

  I think of the flowers as stars. Vivid yellow stars are the first to appear – celandines, followed later by the pure white star-like stitchwort. The stars of summer are pink – roses, campion and herb robert, while autumn twinkles with bramble blossom. It shines out in palest pink and white amongst the tangle of other hedgerow plants.

  In summer, the heady scent of honeysuckle adds even more enjoyment to a walk along a Devon lane, while autumn offers a harvest of hips, elderberries, sloes, nuts and blackberries.

  I reach another gap in the bank. From the open gateway I have a view across rolling hills down to the Exe valley. The river is a silver ribbon; beside it parallel silver threads show the route of the railway that follows the river until it reaches the mainline station of Exeter St David’s.

  But Exeter is only a faint smudge in the far distance and here, in the beautiful Devon countryside, I am cocooned from its noise and pollution.

  The lane continues to climb until it reaches Stoke Woods. These wooded heights are the site of a Roman signal tower and, earlier still, a fortified tribal encampment.

  It’s here that I stop and, like my forebears, I soak up the tranquillity of a Devon lane – the ultimate rural icon.

  BRAVE NEW WORLD

  Jon Snow

  on Balcombe Viaduct

  MY EARLIEST AND DEAREST horizon, it was the distant construct that defined where my world ended and the world beyond began. Yet it was no still or inanimate thing. Across it belched the steam of passing trains, together with the flickering lights of passenger traffic that promised destinations I had never seen or imagined.

  For years, Balcombe Viaduct was beyond the point that either my large-wheeled perambulator or my small legs could ever reach. It was a journey of whose conquest my older brother would boast. But in my earliest memories I never got close enough for it to assume a scale much bigger than the one enjoyed from my bedroom window.

  I grew up in the headmaster’s house at Ardingly College, deep in the Sussex Weald. I shared a room until I was five or six, when I was finally allowed my own space. The nursery was divided in two and a window was cut in the wall that looked out on the viaduct. In the battle over rooms, I just knew I had to have the one with the viaduct.

  In the foreground of my new and ever-present view lay my father and mother’s labour of love – the garden. The lawn, the rock garden and the herbaceous border gave way to the orchard and Cox’s orange pippins. The scent of the Magnolia grandiflora wafted up from the terrace. Beyond the garden, the lake and the nine-acre playing fields lay the bluebell woods and, finally, the viaduct. In high summer, the green of the fields was flanked by Farmer Woods’ ripening corn, until the weeks in which I would watch his rickety reaper-binder laying stooks.

  It wasn’t until I turned nine or ten that I – with my two brothers – first walked all the way to the viaduct. Nearing it, its overwhelming scale filled us with fear. Towering a hundred feet above us, the oval openings in the brickwork of each arch were too high for us to clamber into. We counted the thirty-seven massive arches, and wondered how they could have been built as early as 1840 – with eleven million bricks. Every now and then the shattering clatter of a train above us would stir deeper fears. When all was quiet, however, we marvelled at the pinks and greys of what I now know to have been imported Dutch bricks – the creeping yellow splashes of lichen spread like liver spots.

&nb
sp; We never saw a soul there. The viaduct was somehow our private pyramid, our eighth wonder of the world. Yet it was not its daunting, huge thousand metre width span that made it so special to me, or the number of trains that crossed it each day. It was its utter permanence at the rim of my world – somehow always there, the backdrop to my playing, my tricycling, my bicycling and my growing up. Somehow, I imagined that all children had a viaduct in their world.

  It’s still there now, restored, vast and busy. I cross it often en route to see my own child studying in Brighton, I have gazed from it, but not at it, for more than a quarter of a century. In many ways, I do not need to. It is where it belongs – on the edge of my innocence, before I deserted it and found out what lay beyond.

  A SLOW BOAT TO BRISTOL

  Kevin Spacey

  on canal boating

  HAVING LIVED IN LONDON for a number of years, I’ve started to make a real effort to explore a little more of England’s great countryside. The sheer volume of attractions, often peculiar-looking monuments and dramatic landscape, makes any trip beyond the M25 sound pretty exhausting. But, I have to say, I’m never disappointed.

  One of my favourite excursions last year was hiring a double-berth canal boat to cruise up and down the Kennet and Avon Canal – stopping off at every pub along the way. I know the English love to talk about the weather and it was amazing that weekend, with bright sunshine and little fluffy white clouds. It’s a great way to watch the world drift by and it’s a lot more relaxing – if a little faster perhaps – than travelling through London’s streets. What better way is there to experience the spectacular Avoncliff Aqueduct and the nature that surrounds this man-made canal?

  Of course, with every canal-boating holiday comes the obligatory pub stop at one of the many drinking establishments that line the Kennet’s banks. And it was at the Cross Guns pub, next to a beautiful old and deserted mill, with a stream running past the end of the garden, that I developed a taste for cider. In America, we don’t drink much of the stuff – or at least I don’t – so it was a lot of fun to discover that for the first time. It was also where I discovered how hard it is to steer a canal boat after three or four pints.

  Cider wasn’t the only highlight. Forget restaurant dining, eating on the roof of the boat under the stars – which are so much brighter than they are in London is wonderful. And I would certainly recommend getting closer to – if not going in – the water. My friends had brought with them six inflatable dinghys from Asda. One afternoon we ended up floating down the river that runs alongside the canal with our arms and legs hanging over the edge – very Swallows and Amazons. The river was freezing, but when the sun is shining and the water is so clear you can almost see the bottom, nothing else really matters.

  Remarkably, I managed to survive the weekend without falling into the canal. But sadly the same can’t be said for my little dog, Mini. She got elbowed off the boat and, rather amusingly, a friend – who was on the roof when it happened – dived in to save her. By the time he came up for air, however, she was on the bank of the canal shaking the water off her hair. We laughed a lot, but as you can imagine, he didn’t.

  I did get spotted as we were going through Bradfordon-Avon and found ourselves in a rather menacing-looking lock. There were lots of people around drinking in the pubs, and when one of the locals asked if I was Kevin Spacey, my friend thought it would be funny to tell him I was Kevin’s double, Geoff. This became a running joke for the rest of the weekend.

  The thing I love about the countryside is that you never quite know what you’re going to get. The weekend after drifting through the wonderful West Country, I was up to my knees in mud at the Glastonbury Festival. But then, I suppose that’s what makes it such fun. This year, I intend to make it to the Lake District for a slightly less muddy and eventful trip – although I hear it does rain a lot up there. I have been told such wonderful stories about it, and a friend suggested I might be able to hire Wordsworth’s old cottage if I ask the right people. But perhaps I should leave the dinghy at home this time!

  THE WILD DIP

  Rick Stein

  on cold water swimming

  RATHER LATE IN LIFE, I’ve discovered the pleasures of swimming in the cold sea around Padstow where I live. Walking early one winter morning round the Serpentine in Hyde Park two years ago, I saw a couple of wiry people coming out of a little hut wearing only swimming costumes, goggles and rubber caps, and heading straight for the water. In early summer, I joined their club. I was much taken by the advanced age of most of the swimmers, their good humour and rugged good health. I wanted to be like them. I haven’t yet managed the complete initiation of swimming in the depths of January and February, the coldest months, but I do swim in the often chill, brown water out of season, sharing the lake with ducks, coots and Canada geese. Now, like my fellow members, I show an almost imperceptible surprise at those who choose to wear wetsuits

  Soon after this, I started swimming around Padstow at Harlyn Bay and in the Camel Estuary, on which Padstow stands. At low tide the water in the estuary is reminiscent of the Serpentine, in the sense that I share it with many water-fowl, gulls and oystercatchers rather than ducks. And like the London pond it is shallow and has a muddy bottom. The smell is quite different, though, the dead shellfish and seaweed pong of estuarine mud not the best, but compensated for by the distant roar of the pounding on the Doom Bar near the mouth of the estuary. At high tide it comes into its own, and you swim with exhilaration in the swirling clean water, fighting against the strong ebb current which is trying to drag you down to Stepper Point. Eventually you give up, turn round and swim in an arc, hurtling down towards the mouth of the estuary, and then round to the pond-like calm of the water sheltered by a little peninsula of rocks.

  At Harlyn Bay I wade out behind the surf and swim from one end of the beach to the other. It’s always cold, even in the summer, but there is a delightful freshness about the seas around the British Isles.

  Immersing oneself in cold water changes one’s perception completely. One minute I can be preoccupied with worries, not least the absurdity of jumping into twelve degree water, and the next I’m only aware of the clouds, the cliffs, and the dark green trace of bladderwrack disturbed by my moving arms.

  It is good in any season. This morning I watched a cormorant at high spring tide dive down to catch a sprat two yards away from me. The sun had just risen on a cold December morning so that all the windows in Padstow glinted. In summer, I love the early morning light before the sun has risen, the feel of the water; the fear of a wave breaking over you, the power of the white water tumbling you towards the beach or the fullness of the estuary at high tide, the smell of it. In April I pass people with my towel over my shoulder and they look at me as if I’m odd. After a swim at that time of year, almost delirious with the cold of it, I do feel odd, deliciously so.

  THE LIGHT OF DAY

  Roy Strong

  on light and shade

  FOR THOSE WHO LIVE in the country, the two most important days of the year are the winter and summer solstices. The summer one signals that the evenings will henceforth draw in – dusk falling progressively ever earlier until, by December, it can be pitch dark by five o’clock. And, a little before Christmas, comes the shortest day and the winter solstice – a signal that the days will begin to lighten and lengthen.

  All of this passes virtually unnoticed in the city. Country living, however, exposes you to a whole range of natural light and shade effects of a kind unknown to urban man. The shift from getting up in the dark to arising in the light is a dramatic one. The night sky continues to be uniquely experienced in all its spangled glory. And to step out in summer and turn the eyes heavenwards is the source of an unforgettable delight.

  Light conditions one’s whole existence. It influences the orientation of a house – its aspect and which rooms are bathed in morning or evening light. How that light changes with the seasons and falls through the window of each room is a source of much fa
scination. The garden also springs to mind, for light affects where things are planted and whether or not they will thrive. Garden-making is an essay in design in terms of the manipulation of natural light, taking the visitor through contrasting effects, from gloom to dappled to the full glare of the sun.

  Nature has a great way of using light and shade to turn a countryside scene into a work of art. These natural tools give the landscape its depth – establishing foreground and distance – and accentuate the geometry imposed by cultivation. And, because all of this is in a state of perpetual flux from one day to the next, the masterpiece is never the same. Rivers, streams and ponds are animated by the coming and going of light, making the water refract and sparkle or appear dense and mysterious. Each shaft of light catches a different detail; each dawn illuminates an otherwise hidden beauty.

  For the vast majority of the population, light is and will always be something you get at the flick of a switch. It is there at the top of a lamp post, beaming away and dispelling any difference between night and day. The stars hardly exist in the city. But here in the country, I can still give thanks that light is what God intended it to be. Only in a landscape without artificial brightness does his great creative command: ‘Let there be light’ still hold true.