by Gary Hayden
I left her kids the fuck alone, and walked swiftly, non-aggressively, and pseudo-calmly through the farmyard and out the other side.
The young dogs, which moments before had been doting and fawning upon me quite shamelessly, now adopted their mother’s attitude and posture, and escorted me from the premises with growls, snarls, and bared teeth.
The day’s second canine-related adventure occurred an hour or two later. This time while we were walking along a narrow road, near to a small village.
On this occasion, the dog concerned was walking towards us, unleashed, beside a young woman in green wellies and a waxed jacket. As they drew near, the dog, which was a fair-sized beast, came bounding and barking towards us.
Wendy and I had no idea what its intentions were. So we stood quite still, and looked to the young woman for aid.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘he won’t bite!’
I wasn’t so sure. So, recalling some advice from TV’s The Dog Whisperer, I held out my hand, palm up, for the dog to smell.
He sniffed at it for a while, seemed satisfied, turned around to look at his mistress, turned back to look at me, bit my outstretched hand, and then started barking again.
The young woman hurried towards us, clipped the dog onto a leash, and then glared at me. ‘He doesn’t usually bite!’ she snapped. ‘It’s your backpack! He doesn’t like it!’
She held her glare for a few moments, presumably waiting for me to apologize for inciting her dog to violence, and then off she marched, doubtlessly muttering to herself about how many irresponsible backpack owners one has to contend with nowadays.
Late in the afternoon, Wendy and I arrived at Far Coley Farm, just outside Little Haywood, where we had booked a very – almost worryingly – inexpensive night’s bed and breakfast.
Since we had booked the cheapest possible accommodation, we were placed in a four-roomed log cabin rather than in the farmhouse itself. But since we had the cabin and its shared bathroom to ourselves, we were as happy as pigs in clover. We spent the evening, until darkness fell, sitting on the cabin’s pretty little porch, looking out upon the pretty little farmyard and its pretty little duck pond, and gazing further out upon the rolling hills of the Staffordshire countryside.
The next morning, as we sat in the farmhouse conservatory enjoying a leisurely breakfast and not having to pack up our tent, I wondered how long the thrill of comfy beds, soft towels, cooked breakfasts, and leisurely starts would last.
The happiness I felt, by this stage of JoGLE, was of a very particular kind.
In the Book of Corinthians, in the Bible, there’s a passage about love that often gets trundled out at weddings: ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.’
Strange as it may seem, those words capture something of the way the happiness of JoGLE felt. It wasn’t a greedy, egotistical kind of happiness – or, rather, it wasn’t the kind of happiness one feels when satisfying greedy, egotistical kinds of needs. And it wasn’t an exciting or passionate kind of happiness. Instead, it was gentle, steady, and serene.
Readers with good memories will recall the change that came over Wendy when we left the A9 behind us and ventured forth onto the Great Glen Way.
Although I had been delighted to see that change in Wendy, it had come as no surprise, since I know she is an outdoor girl at heart, and is never more herself – that is, the best of herself – than when she is out in the wilds.
But it did surprise me, at this stage, seven hundred miles into JoGLE, to discover that the same change had taken place in me – someone who had previously exhibited no special fondness for the outdoors. It had taken much longer in my case, but Mother Nature had finally worked her magic. I had a new lightness in my heart and in my step.
In The Conquest of Happiness, Bertrand Russell says: ‘[W]e are creatures of Earth; our life is part of the life of the Earth, and we draw our nourishment from it just as the plants and animals do.’
He goes on to say that those pleasures that have in them no element of this contact with the Earth – gambling, for example, or, in the modern world, computer gaming or TV – are ultimately unsatisfying. The moment they cease, they leave us feeling empty and thirsty.
But, Russell continues:
Those [pleasures] that bring us into contact with the life of the Earth have something in them profoundly satisfying; when they cease, the happiness that they have brought remains, although their intensity while they existed may have been less than that of more exciting dissipations.
And that describes my experience exactly. The pleasures of JoGLE, though rarely what you might call ‘exciting’, were, to me, profoundly satisfying.
From Little Haywood, we walked for three miles along the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal to Milford Common and the start of the Heart of England Way. Then we walked an additional fifteen miles southeast along the Way itself, first through Cannock Chase and then through farmland, to the small cathedral city of Lichfield.
Cannock Chase is a vast area of heathland and woodland in the county of Staffordshire, which has been designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Crossing it, on a mid-September day, when early rain has been succeeded by mellow sunshine, I could see why.
The woodland and forest areas were fresh and green, showing only the faintest hint of autumn colouring. And the heathland, which was dominated by heather, gorse, and bracken, and embellished with a few scattered trees, had its own austere beauty. Some traces of mist hung in the air, lending both woodland and heathland an air of enchantment.
It put me strongly in mind of the forests of Merrie England. So strongly that I would scarcely have been surprised (speaking poetically, rather than literally) had I been accosted by Robin Hood and Friar Tuck, or caught a glimpse of an elfish figure scampering through the bracken, or stumbled upon a she-wolf or a wild boar.
There must be something about Cannock Chase that gives rise to such fanciful musings. Since the nineteenth century, sightings have been reported of all manner of strange creatures there: phantom cats, hellhounds, werewolves, and – most recently – a ghostly black-eyed child. Fortunately, we passed through unmolested by any such horrors, and continued merrily onwards to Lichfield.
Lichfield is, by all accounts, a splendid little city, with a magnificent three-spired medieval cathedral and lots of attractive Tudor and Georgian buildings. But, as was so often the case on JoGLE, Wendy and I saw little of it.
We arrived, early in the evening, too tired and hungry to be bothered with history and culture, and made only the very briefest detour to admire the cathedral en route to our city-centre hotel.
We had booked the cheapest room, but for some reason were given a free upgrade to an opulent room about the size of a football pitch. What with that, and with ‘Fish Friday Club’ at the nearby Wetherspoon’s, we began to feel almost guilty about how comfortable and easy JoGLE had become.
From Lichfield, we walked eighteen miles along the Heart of England Way, and then took a three-mile detour, off the trail, to the small town of Coleshill where we had booked a room at a pub-hotel. As the day unfolded, I began to appreciate just how aptly the Heart of England Way is named.
For this was the England of my dreams: the England of quiet lanes and modest footpaths, of steepled churches and genial graveyards, of lush pastures politely bordered by hedges and trees, of shady woodlands vibrating with birdsong, and of slow barges on sleepy canals.
Even now, looking back on it, I feel my heart melting within me for love of England.
Throughout the day, I had those famous lines from Alfred, Lord Tennyson running through my head:
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro’ the field the road runs by
To many-tower’d Camelot.
Which is weird, since we saw no river, and – as far as I know – no fields of barley and rye. But somehow those words expressed precisely what I felt while passing through this bit of England.
Prior to setting off on JoGLE, Wendy and I lived for five years in Vietnam. It was an exciting and exotic place to live, and, on the whole, I enjoyed being there. But sometimes I would feel a twinge of nostalgia for dear old England. And the England I conjured up in my imagination at such times was precisely this England.
Or, to put it another way, this was my England.
If you were to step, for a moment, into my England, you would find William Brown on a half-holiday, Isaac Newton sitting beneath an apple tree, Robin Hood squaring off against Little John, Mr Pickwick beaming upon the assembled members of the Pickwick Club, Lucy Pevensie stepping into a wardrobe, Marianne Dashwood walking through the wet grass at twilight, Mr Crawley walking from Hogglestock to Barchester, The Lady of Shallot making three paces through the room, and Bess, the Landlord’s daughter, plaiting a dark-red love-knot into her long black hair.
This England is, I confess, a fiction. But it is an entirely English fiction. And it is every bit as precious to me as the real England. And the setting for this England of the imagination, which I hold so dear, looks uncannily like the Heart of England Way.
So, on that day, my heart swelled with love for England, and for the countryside, and for churches and footpaths and trees, and for rivers and streams and canals, and for Charles Dickens and Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope . . . and for JoGLE.
At one point, Wendy and I crossed a ploughed field that was so vast, and so perfectly level, and patterned with such precise furrows, and composed of such rich brown soil that I almost wept with the beauty of it all.
But it was a long, hard walk for all of that. And we weren’t sorry, at the end of the day, to reach the Swan Hotel in Coleshill, where we enjoyed the less poetic pleasures of beer and a carvery dinner.
It was strange to think that there, in Coleshill, we were scarcely a mile from the eastern edge of the sprawling industrial metropolis of Birmingham.
We had arranged to stay, the following evening, with our friends Brian and Karen in the centre of the ancient market town of Henley-in-Arden. As luck would have it, they rent a flat there that’s pretty much on the Heart of England Way – certainly within a dozen yards of it.
By this stage of JoGLE, we were such experienced hikers and map-readers that we could estimate with uncanny accuracy the finishing time of any day’s walk, taking into account the distance, terrain, and weather conditions.
Consequently, we were able to inform Brian and Karen with smug self-confidence that we would arrive at their doorstep at some time pretty damned close to six o’clock.
The walk itself turned out to be another glorious romp through twenty-one of the greenest and pleasantest miles of England’s green and pleasant land: mostly field-walking, but with a bit of woodland-, canal-, and village-walking thrown in for good measure.
At ten to six, with just half a mile to go, we were on schedule to impress the hell out of our hosts by ringing their doorbell at six o’clock precisely. But, as we reached the crest of a small hill at the edge of town, disaster struck.
As my right boot came down, it made contact with a slippery wet substance, and went sliding along the grass. At the same time, the unmistakeable aroma of newly passed dog-shit filled the air.
I swore and looked down. There, embedded in the nooks and crevices of my boot-tread was a cloying mass of freshly passed, mustard-coloured crap.
I swore again, and began scraping the sole of my boot back and forth across the grass. But to no avail. Almost all of the mustard-coloured dollop remained embedded in my sole.
I rubbed and scraped some more. But still to no avail. Bizarrely, the words of Jesus, from Mark 9:29, came into my mind: ‘This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.’
I swore again, sat down on the grass, and did the only thing that any reasonable person could have done, given the circumstances. I asked Wendy to find a twig and scrape it off.
Wendy said a few words to the effect that perhaps I ought to scrape off my own dog-shit. Fortunately, however, I was able to convince her that this would be an inefficient course of action, since it would require me to remove my boot.
If you have never scraped clingy-wet dog-shit from the tread of a hiking boot, then you can hardly appreciate what a time-consuming task it is. It kept Wendy and me (she scraping, me holding my foot nice and still) busy for an entire ten minutes.
The net result was that, instead of making a triumphant entrance at our friends’ door at six o’clock precisely, we arrived ten minutes late.
Close, but no cigar.
We stayed for two nights in Henley-in-Arden, and were wined and dined royally by Brian and Karen – even to the extent of champagne on arrival.
We could happily have stayed longer. But, on JoGLE, friendship and comfort, too long indulged, become a snare. So, on the second morning, setting our faces like flint, and bidding our kind friends adieu, we pressed on for fourteen miles to the village of Bidford-on-Avon, which, as the names implies, lies on the River Avon.
It was a typical – and, hence, glorious – day on the Heart of England Way, which took us through woodland and pasture, through ploughed fields and fields of towering maize, and through the ancient Warwickshire town of Alcester with its enchanting Tudor cottages.
It strikes me here – and not for the first time – what a poor hand I am at this travel-writing lark. I have no eye, or ear, or heart for detail. My descriptions are always vague.
I can tell you that I walked through woodland, but I can’t tell you the types of trees. I can tell you that I walked across cultivated land, but I can’t tell you the types of crops. I can tell you that I climbed a crag, but I can’t tell you the type of rock.
I can tell you, right now, that, at various times on the journey from John o’Groats to Land’s End, I saw deer, a mole, a shrew, an otter, wild ponies, and diverse other notable fauna. But I’m damned if I can remember when and where. And I have no doubt that, had I been able to recognize them, I could have told you about a whole host of interesting birds that I spotted along the way. Ditto for flowers, shrubs, insects, and the like.
But I’m ignorant of these things. And therefore, gentle reader, so must you be.
In my defence, I should say that, while doing JoGLE, I never had any thought of writing a book about it. If I had, I’d have kept copious notes. But I hadn’t. And so I didn’t. And I thank my lucky stars that I didn’t, because it would have ruined the experience.
It would have ruined the experience because it would have reduced it to something to be recorded, communicated, and ultimately sold rather than simply lived.
In C.S. Lewis’s allegorical novel The Great Divorce, a number of departed souls, or ‘Ghosts’, are taken on a bus-trip from Hell to Heaven, and are given the option of staying there. One Ghost, who was a famous painter in his lifetime, takes a look at the heavenly landscape and is seized with a desire to paint it.
His guide – a former friend and fellow painter, now a Spirit – tells him that, for the present, he should forget about all of that and concentrate on seeing.
The Ghost is unhappy about this. He wants to get right down to painting. So the Spirit tells him, ‘Why, if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you’ll never learn to see the country.’
Sadly, the Ghost, who is driven by his ego, is interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, and decides to return to Hell rather than to endure a Heaven in which he can’t display his artistic talents.
Luckily for me, I had no idea, while doing JoGLE, of writing a book about it, and was therefore spared the temptation to regard it as something to be written about rather than experienced.
The downside is that I’ve now had to recreate the entire journey from three imperfect sources: my memory, the route I plotted on my smart
phone, and the one- or two-sentence daily updates I posted on my Facebook page.
But perhaps that isn’t such a bad thing. I am, after all, not the kind of walker who cares much about naming and labelling things. Nor am I the kind of walker who likes to bother himself with too much biological, geographical, or historical detail. Instead, I’m the kind of walker who prefers to let his mind wander where it will. So I guess that this book ought to reflect that.
Anyway, Wendy and I eventually arrived at Bidford-on-Avon, where we spent the night at the Harbour Guest House, a black-and-white period building complete with beamed ceilings, log fires, and a panelled dining room.
Although it was a week since we had posted home our backpacker tent and camping paraphernalia, the thrill of staying in such comfortable surroundings hadn’t yet worn off. Hadn’t even begun to diminish, in fact.
I think that this was because the memory of all of those days and nights of taking down and setting up camp, and of squeezing into a tiny space, and of enduring all kinds of inconvenience and privation, remained with us. We still appreciated the contrast.
From Bidford-on-Avon, our plan had been to walk to the village of Chipping Camden, where the Heart of England Way connects with the northern end of the Cotswold Way.
Unfortunately, all of the accommodation at Chipping Camden was fully booked. So we were forced to re-route off the Heart of England Way, and walk fifteen miles to the village of Dumbleton instead.
During the morning, we followed the course of the River Avon to the market town of Evesham, and during the afternoon we improvised a route, mostly along the banks of the River Isbourne, to Dumbleton.
We spent the night at the Dumbleton Hall Hotel, a nineteenth-century manor house set in swathes of gardens and woodland, and felt very grand – but not too grand to eat pots of instant noodles in our room rather than splashing out on dinner in the restaurant.