In the evening, back at the field, I sat at the covered table – Justin had repacked the van with his possessions – and chatted. Over too much wine, we were joined by Claire, in her early forties and a floaty, flowery dress. She was living in a large tent at the other end of the field with a puppy, a boisterous and shiny black spaniel called Daisy. She'd bought the dog as an emotional crutch for her seventeen-year-old daughter who'd recently chosen to have an abortion. But then she'd changed her mind and decided to keep the baby and so the puppy stayed with mum. Claire herself had recently withdrawn from a ten-year relationship.
“The only other caravan on this site is a bloke who's just been dumped too,” said Justin. “It's like the campsite of broken hearts.”
Justin had enjoyed a colourful life, trying to make money whenever and wherever he could. In Switzerland he'd started a pop-up crêpe business but it was closed down by the authorities for lack of a licence. He talked about one of his possible upcoming money-making ventures.
“There are a lot of people in my position,” he said, rolling a cigarette. “I want to do up vans, make it possible to live in them. But I've got no money to start.”
“I'm getting a van I need doing up,” said Claire enthusiastically. “And I have money. We can go into business together.”
“Great! We can do that!”
“It has to be big enough to live in but small enough to get down the lanes of Spain and Portugal.”
Everyone was on the move, or running away from their broken hearts. Justin had his own Portuguese plans. He was hoping to move there some time soon and try self-sufficiency. He'd recently come back from a fact-finding mission to see how feasible it was.
“Yeah, I visited sixteen eco-sites there, mostly run by Germans and Scandinavians.”
“Was it useful?”
“Yes, but they weren't very friendly,” he said. “Some were actively hostile, a lot of alpha males.”
He planned to buy a cheap acre and start his own with a friend. With his soft-spoken ways perhaps Justin could be a better, non-alpha ambassador for future eco-warriors who needed advice and information.
It was lovely to sit there and have a night-long conversation after many quiet evenings in the tent. Both Justin and Claire were good company. It felt like an oasis of calm after the traffic-mad roads of Kent, Surrey and London. I hadn't had a proper day off the bike since Bristol, nearly a month ago, and so tomorrow, because I could and because I didn't have to scurry from office block to coffee shop to office block, I granted myself a holiday.
*
I awoke to a thump. What the hell was happening? My tent seemed to be collapsing from the outside.
“Sorry!” sang Claire. “It's just Daisy.”
I stuck my head out of the door to be greeted by a beautiful day and a spaniel trying her best to keep balance while walking on the sloping roof of my house.
Claire invited Justin and me over to her tent for breakfast. We each brought whatever we had. I was a part of a commune and it felt lovely.
“I don't want to go back to my house,” Claire said. “I want to stay here and be free.”
It had been two months since her fella had gone. She felt she needed a change. Her daughter thought she was bonkers.
Claire fried some bacon on the stove outside her tent while Daisy stole the baguette it had been intended for. Claire retrieved an unchewed half of it from the ground but Daisy made another daring burglary and the bread was gone for good.
Barry the farmer was out as well, driving his grass roller around and around the large site in an attempt to give his field the look of Wembley Stadium.
We sat there, drinking coffee and looking around us. The vast flatness of the landscape emphasised the skies. An army of clouds marched across from left to right, close to the horizon.
I lounged around for most of the day, reading and recharging my body. In the evening Justin returned to Godalming again and so I went with him, this time for a stroll down the River Wey. A middle-aged man stood at the side of the water alone, feeding the ducks. A little way down the water was a cloister, a tranquil haven built as a memorial for John George Phillips, the Titanic's radio operator, whose own broadcast had been cut short by that stray iceberg.
In the evening, back at our table, Justin set up a sheet as a screen and put on a film but we just talked all the way through it. We swapped travel stories.
“I was in India,” he said, “and ate some dodgy food. I was on a coach and knew I had to be sick. We were stopped at some lights and so I stuck my head out of the window and threw up.”
“It could have been worse,” I said.
“It was. For the guy on the moped directly beneath the window.”
Claire popped by but she needed an early night as she was working the next morning, and she was still nursing a hangover from the night before. And then Taz, a friend of Justin, turned up. She was a fragile-looking young woman with long, ginger hair tucked inside a woolly hat, wearing denim shorts and purple tights. Her mum had died recently and Taz was now homeless. She gave off an overwhelming air of sadness, sometimes looking like she wanted to smile but had forgotten how to. Taz was scouting for somewhere to live. Also on the site was a small boat that had been the payment to farmer Barry for some distant debt. She gave it a once over to see if she could live in it. It looked like another broken heart was moving into this lovely, little field.
*
It had been a great place for a relaxing day away from the saddle but it was time to move on. Under another blue sky I went to Justin's table to tell him I was off. He was on the phone.
“Can I call you back in a minute,” he said to the person on the other end. “I need to say goodbye to a very good friend of mine.”
It was very easy to like Justin. He was genuine, laid back and one of life's dreamers. I agreed to come and find him when he got to Portugal.
My route for the next week or so would be an anti-clockwise half-orbit of those counties west, north and east of London that everyone gets mixed up, probably because they are so similar. My map of British stereotypes labelled the inhabitants of these areas as either “depressing”, “posh people” or “twats”.
Despite sticking mostly to A-roads, around here they were quiet and mercifully flat. The route, now in Berkshire, took me through Lightwater and Ascot. A lot of Britain, especially the south, feels unloved or at least uncared for. Many roads are bumpy as hell and signs are illegible, grown over by trees as though I'd slipped into some post-apocalyptic future. Maybe no one needs signs any more if everyone has a satnav. We can just have the machines tell us where to go until the next big solar flare wipes out our electronics and then the human species can starve to death as it tries to drive home from work in huge circles.
But close to Windsor, things were different. Carriageways were wider than normal, certainly big enough to allow a car to overtake me without straying into the opposite lane. But why only here? Maybe it's like the story that the Queen thinks the world smells of paint because ten yards in front of her there's someone with a brush tarting up whatever she's visiting. Maybe she thinks Britain's roads are well-maintained because the ones near her houses get special attention.
Windsor is a very pretty place although having a naff McDonalds directly opposite the castle cheapens it. I went to look at the town's biggest draw but, in addition to my taxes, the Queen wanted twenty quid. Surely it's one or the other. I went online to see if my entry fee could go to nearby Legoland instead but they wanted even more, a whopping £50. And, as a funfair, I wasn't sure about the health and safety issues of giant rollercoasters made out of tiny, little plastic bricks.
I also wanted to see nearby Eton. Like a melon I followed the road signs and five miles later I arrived. It was only then that I saw the bridge connecting Windsor and Eton, the one that could have got me there in thirty seconds from the castle. Beneath the bridge hundreds of swans paddled in the Thames just waiting to be plucked and roasted by Lizzie.
&nbs
p; Eton College wasn't open to us proles today and so I cycled its little streets instead. A few students wandered around in their ridiculous doorman uniforms. I wanted to see the kids playing rugby in their top hats but the playing fields were empty today. The residents of Eton clearly cared about their town. It was rich and staying rich. Local shops meant the money stayed local.
With this deep-seated desire to maintain its reputation, I was surprised by what I saw as I cycled through town, my eye inevitably drawn to Eton's Porny School. Brilliant, I thought, a place where you can actually get a GCSE in blowing your beans. But don't get excited. It's just a primary school set up by a Mr Porny in the days before his name induced mirth. By the way, that's Dick Porny.
It was early afternoon and England's second European Championship match had started. I found an incongruous-looking snack bar and had a cheeseburger and chips, once again a million times better than anything Maccy D could manage, and listened to the game on my radio. Wales scored. The Asian fellas behind the counter asked who was playing and then looked amused that England were losing.
I headed out of town. The former blue skies had been replaced by brooding clouds. It started to rain. I hid under a large tree and listened to the last few minutes of the game. England ragged a winner right at the death, an escape the inmates of Stalag Luft III would have been proud of.
Berkshire is a county of contrasts. I found a mostly peaceful route towards Maidenhead, Britain's infidelity capital. Unlike classy Windsor and Eton just down the road, Maidenhead was shabby, how I imagined nearby Slough to look, at least as portrayed on The Office, its naff architecture crying out for John Betjeman's ”friendly bombs”. It was hard to believe that only ten miles separated these places, like Buckingham Palace giving garden space to Steptoe's scrapyard.
Out the other side of town I headed down more lanes to the Hurley Caravan Site. The bloke wanted £22. You'd think a place charging such outrageous fees would have some facilities, like a shop or something, but you'd be wrong. I cycled back out to the little store in Hurley village but, usefully, it closed at 5pm and it was now twenty past. A woman was going into the house next door to it. I asked her where the nearest place to buy food was. She looked blank.
“I honestly don't know,” she replied.
It was a week from the referendum. According to the radio, after the former solid lead for the Remainers, the Leave campaign was seven points ahead. Everywhere I cycled, gardens displayed Leave signs. There were few Remainers doing the same. Maybe it's more difficult to get excited about voting for the status quo, those wanting Out shouting louder, more enthusiastically. But I was near Henley, a wealthy area. Money and education usually coincide and the newspapers were reporting how the better educated you were, the more likely you were to vote Remain. So what was going on around here? But Berkshire is also a very white area. When you live around people from other countries you realise they're no different to you. The whitest areas tend to be most fearful of foreigners. It was, after all, Blackburn's whitest ward that voted in the BNP. Regardless, in seven days' time the votes would be in.
Chapter 11: Fleas and fleeing
Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire
I cycled to few miles to Henley, passing a sign for a village called Cockpole Green. Green is definitely not a great colour for a cockpole. Green was also the colour of a little car I saw that was, for reasons I'll never know, completely covered in astroturf.
Despite a sky like elephant skin Henley looked classy, like the sort of place that would be sponsored by Pimms. I pushed my bike down the side of the river and a woman in her sixties asked me if I was walking the Thames Path. She'd done it twenty-odd years ago, ten miles a day, but couldn't remember how far it was or how many days it had taken her.
“You could cycle it,” she said.
“Does it go to Abingdon?” I asked, today's target.
“Yes.”
“And it's a continuous track the whole way?”
“The whole way.”
I was marginally excited. It would be wonderful, I thought, to ride along the riverside. But after fifty metres the path came to an abrupt end. It hadn't come as much of a surprise to be honest. I decided to stick to the roads. Besides, this would allow me cycle through Pishill, and that appealed to the massive child inside me.
I cycled out of Henley and passed a pub with a chalkboard sign saying, “Pub open for lunch and supper.” Supper? As a northerner I'd only just got used to calling my evening meal 'dinner' instead of 'tea'.
I ascended the incline towards the village of Pishill, a wee climb, and now in Oxfordshire saw a sign for Christmas Common. Someone had suggested I see this. On top of a hill grew thousands of pine trees. I passed a Christmas shop, closed now but open from the first of November. Ten months holiday a year sounds good to me. And then I hit Christmas Common the hamlet and cycled through it in thirty seconds. What was I here to see? The trees? Yep, they were alright. Perhaps better in Sweden or Norway where they aren't all aligned in rows. Or was there something else I was missing? The origins of its seasonal name aren't certain. It's either because of a nearby Christmas Day truce during the English Civil War, the local holly trees or the Christmas family, who have local connections. See, Father Christmas does exist.
About six miles short of Abingdon I saw a sign for a campsite. I cycled in past a toilet block surrounded by a forest of lemon balm, a plant I'd never have recognized had it not been for what I learnt looking for those fairies.
The site was directly on the Thames, boats moored up on its near-side bank. I was quickly realising that, for all its lack of drama, the south's scenic beauty depended upon its waterways, especially the Thames. The aesthetic highlights of the last two days had been on the river, in Eton, Henley and right here. It wasn't Snowdonia, but it would do until I could return to the truly awe-inspiring parts of Britain.
*
As I packed away I got speaking to Vas, a Bulgarian who'd lived in Britain for the last twelve years and was married to an English woman. Their small son toddled at his feet. He wanted to know about touring because he planned to cycle from his current home in Abingdon to Bulgaria. The exoticism of speaking to someone with an Eastern European accent felt like I was travelling abroad again. As I set off under a leaden sky, along a flat road with unattractive industry to my left, I was transported back to a day in 2012 when I'd cycled from rough-and-ready Harmanli to Plovdiv, Vas's home town and Bulgaria's second city. Back then, the ugly roadside industry had looked fascinating, possibly just because it was somewhere foreign, somewhere not Britain. This morning, England had, albeit temporarily, transformed into an exciting Otherworld. I was quickly pulled back to my British reality when my cycle path became so narrow I was stung on both hands and legs by the nettles that encroached on the neglected tarmac.
I arrived in Abingdon and reached the main square just as a troupe of Morris dancers turned up, in a variety of colours and embarrassing accoutrements like bells and clogs. They danced for a bit while a small crowd of us watched. It's really not that impressive a dance, is it? It's the sort of bodily movement made by someone outside a locked toilet door who's desperate to get inside. But after five minutes of skipping on the spot the guys had worked themselves up enough to require several beers, despite being only half ten in the morning, which I'm guessing is the entire point of the exercise. There weren't many more things to tick off my bucket list of Typically British Must-Sees. Morris dancers had been one of them. The only thing left was a street fight.
In an attempt to find a quiet route into Oxford I got lost but, as a result, accidentally stumbled upon Oxford's main campsite, which research had already told me was a 25-minute walk into town. I decided to see the rest of Oxford on foot.
I set up the tent and walked into town. It was instantly impressive. The city feels like it was designed hurriedly by someone playing a classical version of Sim City, with ancient, grand building after grand building dumped higgledy-piggledy next to each o
ther.
Strolling down busy Cornmarket Street a session of Science Soapbox was in operation. Three individual, crate-sized platforms had a white-coated doctor on each, explaining some PhD project or other to anyone interested. How beautifully Oxonian!
Then came a street preacher, his crappy P.A. system and nonsense thankfully drowned out by chatter from thousands of people, tourists and residents alike, of every hue. I looked at their faces. It's great the UK has so many immigrants these days, of every shade of skin. It means you can walk down a British street nowadays without thinking everyone's dying of a vitamin D deficiency.
I headed off to see something beautifully pointless. On the way a rollerblading fella came tearing down the street dressed like a combination of Captain America and that hyperactive, partially animated cockwomble from LazyTown. That cheered me up.
I eventually arrived at the Headington Shark, a wonderfully bonkers installation. It looks like Jaws fell out of a plane and through the roof of a terraced house. It was erected in 1986 to symbolize the isolation, alienation and helplessness felt over Chernobyl and other nuclear issues, or something. It was highly controversial to begin with. The council wanted to remove it because planning permission hadn't been sought. But the locals campaigned to save it. I'm not sure the nearby neighbours care much for it. As I took a photo one local resident crossing the road openly sneered at me, like she didn't want this sort of thing encouraged. It was too late now. The Shark is part of the Oxford furniture.
Walking back into town, I ambled down Headington Hill where a chunky lad of about nineteen, sitting on a skateboard, tore downwards, using his feet ineffectively as brakes, nearly colliding with a jogger and then a lamp post before screaming to the bottom and landing in a messy heap in the road.
Route Britannia, the Journey South: A Spontaneous Bicycle Ride through Every County in Britain Page 23