Free Country: A Penniless Adventure the Length of Britain

by George Mahood

  ‘But don’t you think you were being a tosser by going off and expecting to be given a new bottle of water?’

  ‘It’s only a bottle of water, for Christ’s sake,’ he said.

  ‘I know. That’s the point. Water is something that we can get anywhere, and you could find an old bottle easily. You were being arrogant asking for something just for the sake of it.’

  Ben curled his lip and considered that perhaps I was right.

  I shared my water with Ben and we topped it up from an outside tap in the pub car park. We asked someone to point us in an easterly direction, and they told us to head towards the villages of Perranporth and then Goonhavern.

  Ben and I first met in the summer of 1998, when we worked together at Althorp - the home of Earl Spencer and the resting place of Diana, Princess of Wales. We worked as wardens when the estate opened its doors to the public for July and August in the year following Diana’s death. We spent our days smiling at visitors, answering questions and messing around with walkie-talkies. I seemed to be the only person on the 14,000-acre estate that appreciated Ben’s odd sense of humour and we hit it off instantly.

  There was a piano in the staff room which Ben spent every lunch hour playing. The older members of staff adored him, whilst the rest of the staff – including the managers - all found him a little bit weird. I worked a total of four summers at Althorp. Ben was not asked back after the first year.

  Perranporth was a busy little seaside village. Its bustling high street was crawling with coach parties who were stripping the shops bare of their souvenirs.

  It was lunchtime and there was an unmistakeable smell of Cornish pasties in the air. We soon found the source; Berrymans Bakery with a queue stretching out the door. They were clearly popular pasties, and we decided it was worth the embarrassment and possible humiliating rejection, to join the queue and ask for a freebie.

  The young girl who served us was very smiley and didn’t really understand what we were doing, but she checked with her manager and then gave us two huge pasties. We pushed our bikes further up the road to where we found access to the beach and we sat and ate our delicious pasties in the sand dunes.

  There was another uphill section out of Perranporth, where we followed signs to Goonhavern until we became distracted by a signpost for The World In Miniature. We couldn’t resist.

  The World in Miniature was, well, the world, but in miniature. Most of the world’s most recognisable landmarks were there to see, in reduced sizes. They had the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Statue of Liberty and the Egyptian pyramids, to name but a few. We had an enjoyable world tour in about 20 minutes. It was almost as good as the real thing.

  The manager of the place, Donna, was particularly generous and she piled us high with more pasties, sausage rolls, pick ‘n’ mix and energy drinks (which provided Ben with a new drinking bottle). We asked her for directions east, following the scenic route, and she reeled off a list of villages for us to look out for. These included: Fiddlers Green, Kestle Mill, St Columb Major, Withiel and Nanstallon. It felt like we were characters in a Charles Dickens novel. Actually, it didn’t feel like that at all.

  We borrowed a spanner from the workman who was busy repairing the miniature Buckingham Palace, and we raised Pinky’s saddle. Neither bike was comfortable to ride, but the saddle on ­­Pinky had been especially low and was particularly painful on the knees. Raising the saddle made a huge difference.

  The Falcon’s chain jammed as Ben tried to overtake me at speed on one of the many downhills. It was wedged between the main gear cog and the frame but he was able to freewheel for another half a mile before we had to pull over.

  Conveniently, at the bottom of the hill was The Lappa Valley Steam Railway. We seemed to be doing an unintentional tour of Cornwall’s most popular tourist attractions.

  The Lappa Valley Steam Railway was miniature, as it seemed were most tourist things in Cornwall. We tried in vain to free the trapped chain, but no amount of yanking would release it. We decided the only way to release it would be to loosen the back wheel.

  I queued up at the ticket office and they directed me towards the train driver who was just emerging from the train. He had a big white beard and every inch of his face was covered in oil and soot. He looked like a black Captain Birdseye. He happily leant me an adjustable spanner and I returned to Ben who was already tucking into his pick ‘n’ mix. We had agreed that we would save it until we were really desperate. It seemed that we were really desperate as I too grabbed my bag and started shovelling handfuls of sweets into my mouth.

  It was the first sugar we’d had since the airport and our bodies certainly were wilting in its absence. I had started to get the shakes a few hours before, and I could feel the instant effect of the sugar. I have never tried heroin, and never plan to, but I can’t imagine that it’s any better than the rush we got from that pick ‘n’ mix.

  We lay on the grass, completely sugar-stoned. Donna from World in Miniature must have given us at least a kilogram of pick ‘n’ mix each, and in about 30 seconds we had eaten half of it. After fixing the wheel and returning the spanner, we continued onwards with the sugar still racing through our veins.

  We spent the rest of the day cycling along lanes that were so quiet that grass grew in the middle of them. It was lovely and peaceful, but extremely tough going. Despite swapping bikes regularly, alliances were beginning to be formed. Ben clearly favoured Pinky, and I preferred The Falcon - despite Ben claiming it was physically impossible to ride it up hills. Cycling uphill on The Falcon was an art that Ben never mastered. In fact, he didn’t cope much better on Pinky, and she was supposedly a ‘mountain’ bike.

  ‘These bloody hills!’ Ben shouted, getting off to push yet again. ‘Why can’t we stick to the A-roads?’

  ‘The A-roads have hills too, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, but not like this. This is ridiculous. We’ve not seen any flat ground in two days.’

  ‘But it’s nice and quiet. Surely you’d prefer to be cycling along these country lanes than the busy A30?’

  ‘No way. At least we’d get somewhere on the big road.’

  ‘That’s if we didn’t get hit by a lorry. Besides, it’s not about how quickly we do this trip, it’s about seeing bits of the country, too.’

  ‘I think I’ve seen enough already!’

  We stopped talking for a few minutes and I thought he had calmed down, until I heard a shout of ‘FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT’ behind me. I turned to see Ben throwing Pinky into the hedge. She fell back out again and landed at his feet, where he gave her a kick.

  This seemed to clear his system, as he seemed slightly happier afterwards. The hills smoothed somewhat, and we felt like we were making progress again.

  Half an hour later, we were lost. We had been covering the distance but we had no idea if we were going in the right direction. It was a while since we had seen any of the villages that Donna had mentioned, so we stopped at a farm to ask if they had a map.

  ‘Sorry, I was KILLIN’ chickens,’ shouted the lady, after we had been wandering aimlessly around her farmyard for some time. She was in her early thirties, with bleached blonde hair. Her hands were covered in blood that she was wiping on her trousers. ‘What can I get you? Is it chickens you’re after?’ she said, pointing to a sign on the gate. Fresh Meat – For Sale.

  ‘Actually, we’re a bit lost. Do you possibly have a map we could have a quick look at, please?’

  ‘I think someone left one ‘ere once. I don’t have no need for a map,’ she said and climbed into a caravan, which seemed to be her house.

  ‘There you are,’ she said, handing us a road atlas dated 1988. ‘I can’t read so good, so you’ll have to work it out for yourselves.’

  ‘Whereabouts on the map we are now?’ I asked.

  ‘I think somewhere around here,’ she said, pointing to a bit of the map miles from anywhere.

  ‘Nanstallon! That’s one of the places that Donna mentioned,’ I said.

&nb
sp; ‘Yeah. Looks like we’re going the right way then, Ben.’

  ‘So if we keep going in this direction for about eight miles, we should get to Nanstallon. It looks quite big on the map, so we should find somewhere to stay there.’

  Ben sighed.

  Soon afterwards, we were at a crossroads and lost again.

  We turned right and the grass in the middle of the road began to get to knee height, and it was obvious that no amount of traffic had been down there in some time. We tried one of the other turns instead. It led into a field. So, by a process of elimination, we figured the third and final option had to be the right way.

  The chain jammed on The Falcon, yet again. This time it was on a long uphill. Again, we were unable to free the chain by hand, so I pushed the bike to the top of the hill, and then freewheeled down the other side.

  We stopped at a cute little cottage at the bottom of the hill. We were in the middle of some woods, and we half expected Little Red Riding Hood to open the door. Unfortunately, the lady who answered looked more like the Big Bad Wolf.

  Not only did she provide us with a spanner, but she gave us a Kit Kat each, which we swallowed whole as the rush from the pick ‘n’ mix had started to wear off. We asked if we were going in the direction of Nanstallon.

  ‘Sure you are,’ she said. ‘You can either go up this hill, which is really long and steep and I wouldn’t recommend it. Or, you can turn left just there and then take the long way round, but if you go that way there’s a really long and steep hill which I wouldn’t recommend.’

  ‘So we can go either way, but you wouldn’t recommend either?’ I asked.

  ‘Not on a bike, noooo.’

  ‘But we are on bikes.’

  ‘Well I wouldn’t recommend it.’

  As it turned out, we had been up far steeper hills already that day, and we made it to the top without breaking sweat. It was worth it for the long descent into the village of Nanstallon, which turned out to be a huge disappointment. Not that there was anything wrong with the village, but because we had hoped for it to be full of restaurants and hotels offering free accommodation. The stupid place didn’t even have a pub.

  We stood near the church wondering where to try first. It was 8pm, so we still had plenty time to find somewhere to sleep, but it was late enough to mean that people would not want to be disturbed.

  A man wearing an ER t-shirt had been mowing the grass at the church. I mean ER the TV series - he wasn’t a doctor. After loading the mower into the back of his car, he wound down his window and asked if we needed any help.

  ‘There’s a farmer down the road there who might have a barn you can sleep in,’ he said after hearing the shortened version of our story.

  Ben chuffed. He wasn’t in the mood for another barn.

  ‘Although, last time he let people stay they burnt down one of his barns, so he might be a bit suspicious. Good luck,’ said the lawnmower man as he sped away. He continued up the lane, and we stood there debating what to do.

  ‘There must be a campsite somewhere near here,’ said Ben after a while. ‘Surely they’d have an old tent lying around that we could borrow?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to a man who had just got out of his car with his dog. ‘Do you know if there’s campsite near here?’

  ‘Gee, I think the nearest campsite is over near Bardmin?’

  He was American.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Bardmin.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Bardmin.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘You know, the big moor.’

  ‘Oh, Bodmin. Yes, sorry.’

  Just then, the lawnmower man reappeared in his car.

  ‘My wife says you can kip at our place,’ he said. ‘Get your bikes. You’ll have to follow me, as I live up the other end of the village.’

  The lawnmower man’s name was David, and he lived with his wife Annie.

  ‘We’re really sorry to trouble you,’ said Ben, after being introduced to Annie. ‘This is extremely kind of you to put us up.’

  ‘Well we shall bond as best we can under the circumstances,’ said Annie, grinning from ear to ear. ‘What would you like first, a cup of tea or a shower?’

  ‘Well if you can bear us being smelly for a while longer, then a cup of tea would be lovely, thank you,’ I said.

  We sat at the kitchen table and drank tea and ate biscuits. We explained why we were homeless in their village, and they seemed reassured to learn that they had not taken in a couple of tramps for the night.

  David, as we discovered, was more than just a lawnmower man. He was a former council chief executive, who had been responsible for the clean-up operation following the floods at Boscastle in 2004. A flash flood washed away parts of the village, but a successful redevelopment program - led by David - restored much of it by the following year.

  He was smug, in a very amiable way. He’d had a busy career, which he was proud of, and now he was equally proud of his retirement and the fact that he did very little all day.

  ‘I do the crossword, and mow the church lawn a couple of times a week and that’s about it,’ he said.

  Annie was lovely, although slightly neurotic. She was probably about 60 - but looked a lot younger - and from the moment we arrived she had been worrying about what she could cook us for dinner. We insisted that we didn’t need feeding and that we still had some pick ‘n’ mix, but she was having none of it. None of our insistence, I mean, not our pick ‘n’ mix. Although she was having none of that either.

  ‘Right. I’ll sort out some sort of pasta dish,’ she exclaimed, jumping up from her seat. ‘David will show you to your room. Have a shower and then dinner will be ready in about half an hour.’

  David showed us to the attic room, which we accessed via a secret door, a bit like Narnia, only not. It was a big white room with a double bed in the middle of it.

  ‘I’ll leave you both to it. The bathroom is at the bottom of the stairs,’ said David as he left.

  ‘So who’s having the bed, and who’s having the floor?’ I asked Ben.

  ‘Well I’m sleeping in the bed, and if you’ve got issues then you can have the floor, otherwise we can share.’

  ‘Fine, we’ll share. But don’t try anything funny.’

  Annie had created a monster dish of spaghetti and tomato sauce. This was no Dolmio (other pasta sauces are available), but fresh tomato sauce made from organic tomatoes grown in their own garden, flavoured with onions and garlic grown in their own garden, garnished with basil grown in their own garden, served on plates fired in their own kiln and with cutlery made in their own forge. I lied about the plates and the cutlery, but they were very proud to show how self-sufficient they were. Not that I blame them. I grew some cress once and I still count it as one of my greatest achievements in life.

  The food was delicious. It was the sort of meal that cyclists should eat. I wonder how many Tour de Frances Lance Armstrong would have won on a diet of Cornish pasties and pick ‘n’ mix.

  We ate seconds. And then thirds. And then huge slices of fruitcake, presumably made from a selection of fruits grown in their own garden.

  ‘Do you have any socks?’ asked Annie randomly.

  ‘Yes, well, we’ve got a pair between us,’ said Ben. David, who had been sitting quietly at the other end of the table, spat his wine across the table.

  ‘A pair between you?’ he laughed. ‘My god!’

  ‘We can’t have that,’ said Annie. ‘I’ll go next door and get some socks from our neighbour.’

  ‘What about MY socks?’ asked David.

  ‘Your feet are too small, darling. Bill next door is a size 11.’

  David didn’t have a chance to defend his inadequate feet as Annie had already left through the front door. I didn’t examine David’s feet particularly closely, but he didn’t look like the type of person that would have had especially small feet. I’m sure we would have comfortably fitted into any socks that he had, but Annie had
been adamant that we needed bigger ones.

  She returned with six pairs of the biggest socks I had ever seen in my life. If they’d been hung on the fireplace at Christmas, even the most generous Father Christmas would have struggled to fill them.

  ‘Annie dear, they’re going to Scotland, not Iceland,’ said David.

  ‘Yes, but it can get very cold up there at night. They’ll appreciate them.’

  ‘We do indeed, thank you very much. And please thank your neighbour, too,’ said Ben with a grin.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t even tell him I was taking them. He’s over 90, and was fast asleep.’

  After dinner, Ben entertained David and Annie with an impressive piano recital and then we headed up to bed.

  ‘What the hell are we going to do with all these enormous socks?’ asked Ben when we got back to our room.

  ‘I have no idea. I guess we’ll have to wear a pair each and try and stuff the rest in our bags somehow.’ We took it in turns to pick a pair and I ended up with the best of the bunch; a pair of knee length ski socks adorned with pictures of sheep wearing Christmas hats.

  Annie had kindly offered to wash our boxer shorts, and the pair of socks that we had been sharing for three days. She was concerned we would catch some sort of fungal infection, and she was probably right. This meant that I had to sleep in my suit trousers and Ben slept in his shorts. I enjoyed Ben’s company, but our relationship was a long way from naked bed sharing.

  Day 4 - A new hero

  Nanstallon to Okehampton - 52 miles

  We woke before David and Annie, so had a shower each, and then spent 15 minutes rearranging our bags so that the socks would fit.