by Bill Bryson
‘If you feel anxious about strokes after reading stroke warnings …’
‘ If you have any of these symptoms – or any other symptoms – find a doctor at once. An embolism THE SIZE OF A DUCK EGG is heading straight for your CEREBRAL CORTEX!!’
Taken together, the alerts make clear that the best indicator of a stroke is whatever you were doing just before you had a stroke. Lately the warnings have been accompanied by alarming accounts of people who failed to heed the signals. ‘When Doreen’s husband Harold noticed that his ears were red after he got out of the shower,’ one might begin, ‘they didn’t think anything of it. How they wish they had. Soon afterwards, Doreen found Harold, her husband of forty-seven years, slumped face first in a bowl of Weetabix. HE WAS HAVING A STROKE! Harold was rushed to hospital but critical minutes had been lost, and now he is a VEGETABLE who spends his afternoons watching COUNTDOWN. Don’t let this happen to you!!’
I don’t actually need memos to know that things are not going well with my body. All I have to do is stand before a mirror, tilt my head back and look up my nostrils. This isn’t something I do a great deal, you’ll understand, but what I used to find was two small, dark caves. Now I am confronted with a kind of private rainforest. My nostrils are packed with fibrous material – you can’t even really call it hair – of the sort you would find in a thick coir doormat. Indeed if you were to carefully pick apart a coir doormat until all you had was a pile of undifferentiated fibres, and shoved 40 per cent of the pile up one nostril and 40 per cent up the other, and took the rest and put that in your ears so that a little was tumbling out of each, then you would be me.
Somebody needs to explain to me why it is that the one thing your body can suddenly do well when you get old is grow hair in your nose and ears. It’s like God is playing a terrible, cruel joke on you, as if he is saying, ‘Well, Bill, the bad news is that from now on you are going to be barely continent, lose your faculties one by one, and have sex about once every lunar eclipse, but the good news is that you can braid your nostrils.’
The other thing you can do incredibly well when you are old is grow toenails. I have no idea why. Mine are harder than iron now. When I cut my toenails, I see sparks. I could use them as body armour if I could just get my enemies to shoot at my feet.
The worst part about ageing is the realization that all your future is downhill. Bad as I am today, I am pretty much tip-top compared with what I am going to be next week or the week after. I recently realized with dismay that I am even too old now for early onset dementia. Any dementia I get will be right on time. The outlook generally is for infirmity, liver spots, baldness, senility, bladder dribble, purple blotches on the hands and head as if my wife has been beating me with a wooden spoon (always a possibility) and the conviction that no one in the world speaks loud enough. And that’s the best-case scenario. That’s if everything goes absolutely swimmingly. There are other scenarios that involve catheters, beds with side railings, plastic tubing with my blood in it, care homes, being lifted on and off toilets, and having to guess what season it is outside – and those are all still near the best-case end of the spectrum.
Unnerved by my dossier of stroke warnings, I did some research and it appears that there are two basic ways to avoid having a stroke. One is to die of something else first. The other is to get some exercise. I decided, in the interests of survival, to introduce a little walking into my life. And so it was, the day after my trip from Bognor to Hove, that I was to be found fifteen or so miles to the east wheezing my way up a steep hill to a breezy top called Haven Brow, the first in a series of celebrated eminences gracing the Sussex coast and known as the Seven Sisters.
The Seven Sisters is one of the great walks of England. From the top of Haven Brow the view is just sensational. Ahead of you stretches a hazy infinity of rolling hills, each ending at the seaward side in a sudden plunge of white chalk. On a sunny day like this one, it is a world of simple, bright elements: green land, white cliffs, deep blue sea, matching sky.
Nothing – and I mean, really, absolutely nothing – is more extraordinary in Britain than the beauty of the countryside. Nowhere in the world is there a landscape that has been more intensively utilized – more mined, farmed, quarried, covered with cities and clanging factories, threaded with motorways and railway lines – and yet remains so comprehensively and reliably lovely over most of its extent. It is the happiest accident in history. In terms of natural wonders, you know, Britain is a pretty unspectacular place. It has no alpine peaks or broad rift valleys, no mighty gorges or thundering cataracts. It is built to really quite a modest scale. And yet with a few unassuming natural endowments, a great deal of time and an unfailing instinct for improvement, the makers of Britain created the most superlatively park-like landscapes, the most orderly cities, the handsomest provincial towns, the jauntiest seaside resorts, the stateliest homes, the most dreamily spired, cathedral-rich, castle-strewn, abbey-bedecked, folly-scattered, green-wooded, winding-laned, sheep-dotted, plumply hedgerowed, well-tended, sublimely decorated 50,318 square miles the world has ever known – almost none of it undertaken with aesthetics in mind, but all of it adding up to something that is, quite often, perfect. What an achievement that is.
And what a joy it is to walk in it. England and Wales have 130,000 miles of public footpaths, about 2.2 miles of path for every square mile of area. People in Britain don’t realize how extraordinary that is. If you told someone in the Midwest of America, where I come from, that you intended to spend the weekend walking across farmland, they would look at you as if you were out of your mind. You couldn’t do it anyway. Every field you crossed would end in a barrier of barbed wire. You would find no helpful stiles, no kissing gates, no beckoning wooden footpath posts to guide you on your way. All you would get would be a farmer with a shotgun wondering what the hell you were doing blundering around in his alfalfa.
So if there is one thing I enjoy and admire in Britain, it is the pleasure of being on foot and at large in the open air. I was on the South Downs Way, which runs for a hundred miles from Winchester to Eastbourne along the rolling chalk downs of the south coast. I have done most of the trail in chunks over the years, but this is my favourite stretch. To my left were bosomy hills of green and gold, to the right a spangled plane of bright blue sea. Dividing the two were cliffs of brilliant white. You can, if you dare, creep right up to the cliff edge and look over. Generally you find a straight drop down two hundred feet to a rocky beach. But almost no one ever does this. It’s too unnerving and way too dangerous. These cliff edges are crumbly, so everyone keeps well back. Even frolicking dogs brake and retreat when they see the fall. All along this stretch of coast the path is a grassy lawn, cropped by sheep, sometimes hundreds of yards wide, so even the most absent-minded walker – the sort of person who can’t be trusted around automated parking barriers, say – can amble along in a state of blissful unawareness and remain safe.
The South Downs Way is not only lovely but getting better. At Birling Gap, roughly halfway between the start of the Seven Sisters and Eastbourne, there used to be a fairly horrible café, but the National Trust has absorbed it into its tasteful care and converted it into a paradise for people who look as if they have just stepped out of a Barbour catalogue. Now there is a smart cafeteria full of scrubbed wooden tables and lovely sea views, clean restrooms, a gift shop for people who think that £10 is not too much to pay for six ginger biscuits so long as they come in a nice tin, and a small but interesting museum. I went to the museum first and appreciated its intelligence and thoughtfulness. It tells you a great deal about the geology of the Sussex coast, including that it is eroding by two-fifths of a metre a year on average, though Birling Gap itself is tumbling into the sea at nearly twice that rate. Across the way from the National Trust café there used to stand an extended terrace of clifftop houses. Now just four houses remain, and house number four looked like it might soon be called Beach Cottage.
I was also interested to discover that th
e Seven Sisters – which are, namely, Haven Brow, Short Brow, Rough Brow, Brass Point, Flat Hill, Bailey’s Hill and Went Hill – don’t include Belle Tout or Beachy Head, two of the mightiest eminences of all along this stretch of coast, which meant that I was in the process of climbing nine hills, not seven. No wonder I was tired. Sobered by this thought, I fortified myself with a posh sandwich and bottle of organic soda pop at the National Trust café, then returned to the long, lonesome trail.
Not long after Birling Gap, the path arrives at a sweeping prospect across the downs that strikes nearly everyone as familiar whether they have ever walked this way or not. It is a view that was immortalized in a Second World War poster by an artist named Frank Newbould. The poster shows a shepherd guiding a flock of sheep across the downs. Below, in the middle distance, is an attractive farmhouse. At the top of a facing hill is the iconic Belle Tout lighthouse. The sea is just visible as a line across a distant valley. The caption says: ‘Your Britain – fight for it now.’ I have always thought it interesting that of all the possible things worth dying for in 1939, it was the countryside that was selected. I wonder how many people would feel that way now. Newbould took a few small liberties in the work – he improved the shape of the hills, tidied up the farmstead, altered the course of the path slightly – but not so much as to render the view fictitious. It is a testament to the British nation that more than seventy years after Newbould painted this expansive prospect, it is as fine now as it was then.
Taking the English countryside for granted, assuming that it will always be like this, is almost certainly its greatest threat. The sad irony is that the things that make the landscape of Britain comely and distinctive are almost entirely no longer needed. Hedgerows, country churches, stone barns, verges full of nodding wildflowers and birdsong, sheep roaming over windswept fells, village shops and post offices and much more can only rarely now be justified on economic grounds, and for most people in power those are the only grounds that matter. Looked at economically, we don’t even need farmers. Farming accounts for just 0.7 per cent of GDP, so if all farming in Britain ceased tomorrow the economy would barely notice. Successive governments have done almost nothing to preserve most of these things. There is a strange, blind, foolish inclination to suppose that the features that make the British countryside are somehow infinitely self-sustaining, that they will always be there, adding grace and beauty. Don’t count on it.
Belle Tout lighthouse itself nearly didn’t survive. It was decommissioned in the early 1900s and became derelict. Canadian soldiers used it for target practice during the Second World War, but mercifully failed to destroy it. After the war it was restored, but by the late twentieth century it was in danger of falling into the sea, so some good soul paid a fortune to have it mounted on rails and moved a safe distance back from the cliff edge. So now it is safe for another few decades until the crumbling cliffs sneak up on it again.
After Belle Tout comes a long descent almost to sea level, then a steady climb towards the summit of Beachy Head. It’s a long haul up a broad grassy strip, rather like walking on a golf fairway, but worth it for the payoff at the top where you get the most sensational views of the famous Beachy Head lighthouse with its jaunty red and white stripes, standing in the sea at the base of the cliffs.
At the top of the hill, where it flattens out, is a big layby where coach parties of schoolchildren can get off and scatter a little litter around – it’s a kind of tradition, I guess; school groups come from all over to put their crisp packets and chocolate bar wrappers in the gorse and bracken, bless their sweet, undersupervised little hearts – but I am pleased to say that this was the only place along the entire walk that I encountered litter.
After the summit at Beachy Head, there comes a broad, parklike expanse of land with a selection of paths plunging downhill to the old resort town of Eastbourne. The views over the town’s sweeping seafront with its golden beach and scallops of advancing waves are very fine, too, though marred by a single high-rise apartment house called South Cliff Tower, which stands distractingly in the foreground. It’s a charmless building that should never have been allowed, but there you are. The world is full of shitty things that should never have happened. Look at Eric Pickles.
In nearly all other respects, however, Eastbourne is a good place. The promenade is well kept, with big houses and smart hotels on one side and broad beaches on the other – all leading to a good old-fashioned pier, one of the few truly classic piers still standing. Just after my visit, the pier was badly damaged in a fire – seaside piers in England seem to be amazingly combustible; I don’t know why – but according to press reports it will be lovingly restored. I most emphatically hope so. It would be a tragedy to see it go.
The charm of Eastbourne is that it is so comfortably old-fashioned, and nowhere is that better encapsulated than in a café where I always stop called Favo’loso. It is the most wonderful establishment. Inside, it is forever 1957. It is like stepping into a Cliff Richard movie called ‘Summer Milkshake’ or ‘Ice Cream Holiday’ or something. Favo’loso is spotless and polished and shiny; it basks in a retro gleam. The food is decent, the servers efficient and friendly, the prices reasonable. What more could you ask? It is my favourite place in East Sussex, if not on the entire south coast. Two days before I left on this trip, I Googled ‘Favo’loso Cafe’ to check the address and was led, all but inevitably, to TripAdvisor, where I was appalled to discover that most people didn’t view it very favourably at all. One recent visitor pronounced himself ‘Dissapointted’ with the experience. Well, here is a new rule: if you are too stupid to spell ‘disappointed’ even approximately correctly, you are not allowed to take part in public discourse at any level.
Trawling through the reviews, I found that hardly anybody spoke warmly of Favo’loso’s carefully preserved atmosphere. In fact, most were critical of the decor, calling it old-fashioned and in need of an update. I do despair. We live in a world that has practically no appreciation for quality, tradition or classiness, and in which people who can’t spell even common words get to decide what survives. That can’t be right, surely. I was, as a TripAdvisor correspondent might put it, deply trubbled.
Chapter 3
Dover
NOW HERE IS a question that is harder to answer than you might think: Is Britain a big country or a little one?
Looked at one way, it is self-evidently small, a modest chunk of land floating in chilly waters off the northwestern edge of Europe. Of the total surface area of Earth, Britain occupies just 0.0174069 per cent. (I should note that I can’t absolutely vouch for that number. It was calculated for me by my son some years ago for a newspaper article I was writing. He was only about thirteen years old at the time, but he had a calculator with over 200 buttons on it and he seemed to know what he was doing.)
By other measures, however, Britain is incontestably substantial. Amazingly, it is the thirteenth largest land mass on the planet and that includes four continents – Australia, Antarctica, America and Eurasia-Africa (which geographers, being anally retentive and unimaginative, classify as a single mass). Only eight islands on Earth are bigger: Greenland, New Guinea, Borneo, Madagascar, Baffin, Sumatra, Honshu and Vancouver. By population, Britain is the fourth largest island state, behind only Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines. By wealth, it is second. Measured by decent music, old stony buildings, variety of boiled sweets and reasons for not going to work because of the weather, it is number one by a very large margin. Yet it is only seven hundred miles from top to bottom and so slender in profile that no one in the country is ever more than seventy miles from one of its edges.
Taken all in all, it has long seemed to me that Britain is just about the perfect size for a country – small enough to be cosy and embraceable, but large enough to maintain a lively and independent culture. If the rest of the world vanished tomorrow and all that was left was Britain, there would still be good books and theatre and stand-up comedy and universities and competent surgeons and so o
n. (Plus England would get to win the World Cup every time and Scotland would always qualify.) This cannot be said of many other nations. If Canada were the only country to survive, the world would be a nicer, politer place, but there would be way too much ice hockey. If it were Australia, you’d have terrific barbecues and surfing but a greater dependence on Kylie Minogue for musical entertainment than is, with respect, ideal.
Interestingly, the thing that made me realize that Britain is an optimal size was the rarely discussed subject of cow attacks. This is a topic that we don’t pay as much attention to as perhaps we ought. I first heard about cow attacks some years ago while walking on the South Downs Way with a journalist from a walking magazine. I had just become president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England and he was interviewing me about the countryside. At some point – we were crossing a field in the vicinity of the Devil’s Dyke, near Brighton, if I recall correctly – he mentioned that we should proceed cautiously because there was a bull in our field.
‘You’re kidding,’ I squeaked, but sure enough, watching us lugubriously from about fifty feet away, was a great rectangular block of beef.
‘Just walk normally,’ my companion instructed in a taut whisper, ‘or you’ll attract his attention.’
‘But we’re on a national footpath,’ I protested, my sense of unfairness momentarily outweighing my instinct to exit sharply. ‘Surely a farmer can’t put a bull in a field with a footpath through it,’ I added. I turned to see what my companion had to say about this and discovered that he was about seventy yards further on and running like hell. I waddled briskly behind him, casting glances over my shoulder, but the bull stayed rooted to his spot.
When we were both safely on the other side of the field wall, I repeated my complaint that surely it was not legal to put bulls in fields with footpaths.