Liminal

It seems an inconvenience, but for today's walk the best sequence of churches suggests I should retrace my steps from Earls Barton to Castle Ashby. But of course, walking in reverse is really a whole new deal. There's the footpath which I missed ten days ago (it turns out the finger post was shrouded in ivy and hidden in a hedge).  Ooh, I'd never noticed that barn - the farm is still pretty much inside the boundaries of the town, isn't it? How lovely this green lane is...(which I'd not really appreciated as I toiled up it at the wrong end of 20k last week). How striking Whiston church is from this side of the valley! How completely the old Northampton to Wellingborough railway line has vanished from the landscape just the other side of the river!

Just past Whiston a combine is whirring away in its own little dust-cloud harvesting the wheat fields, and so I'm lucky enough to enjoy that singular late-summer pleasure as the aroma of nut-toasty cut corn fills the air all the way to Castle Ashby. A tractor pulling a lorry-load of grain passes me on the incline up to the neglected village pub, 'The Falcon'. I've known clergy and others who've muttered about the irrelevance of the traditional harvest celebration because they think their churches are full of supermarket-besotted townies who don't get it. Not me, but then I'm just a 'John Barleycorn' singing folkie.

The first part of the walk gives me a chance to recover. I woke up this morning in the grip of a powerful dream in which I was seethingly angry with everyone - including my lovely family and friends. Yet in real life the previous night we'd come back from a great few days away with excellent food, company and activity. My first reaction on waking to the tightness of chest and teeth-clenching anxiety is a rather shocked 'This won't do at all!', but just as if I'd experienced the anger in my waking state, I find it's impossible to shake off the emotion just by telling myself off. It's perhaps a cliché but this parallel life of dreaming and waking, each as real as the other at the experienced moment, still puzzles (and sometimes alarms) me. How easily we slip from the one to the other. The frightening thought remains, 'How much am I influenced in wakefulness by the dreams I can't control?' And is this true for everyone?

I'm further repaired by coffee and lemon drizzle in the Buttery of Castle Ashby's Shopping Yard. Next door I talk to Janice in her 'Limeblue' emporium. She's been there 23 years and business is still good, if seasonal. She tells me 'The Falcon' is on the Compton Estate's list of things to do. I say how pleased I am about that, and that given how the gardens of the big house have been restored with energy, skill and intelligence, I'm sure the same will be true of the pub/restaurant. Sue and I have visited the place on and off for forty years - it has great character and charm - but apparently the inside's in a poor state. It'll make a difference to the footfall in Janice's shop if they can get it up and running again.

The lane through the village is called 'Compton Road', and my instinctive reaction is to harrumph. We all know that the lordly family own the whole jolly show, so why the need for yet one more namecheck? But when I look on the War Memorial at the names of those who died in the First War, I see amongst the four or five mentioned a young Lieutenant Compton, and my attitude softens. I may think of the road as a tribute to him from now on. There are two 'Private Ashby's on the list of the dead too. Coincidence?

Although there aren't any waymarks to say so, the path from Chadstone to Yardley Hastings is part of the 'Round Northampton Footpath'. The way across the fields between the crops is very dry now, and there are long cracks in the earth where the plates of soil have separated so I have to watch where I put my Merrelled feet. I'm wearing shorts, as I often do, and as I cross the long grass either side of the Castle Ashby drive I wonder idly about the risks of the tick-borne Lyme's Disease. The partner of a one-time colleague became infected - with disastrous results for his long-term health. Maybe I should be more careful with covering my legs.

A flowery little lane brings me into Yardley Hastings by the tradesmen's entrance. In the churchyard of St. Andrew's church I meet Alan. He lives in Rushden but many of his family are buried here. He hasn't come dressed to tend the graves so I think he's visiting just to be in the presence of those he loves. He's very fond of his native county. I say I'm an incomer of forty years, but I am too. As I explain what I'm doing, I'm too eager to say that I'll mention him in the blog: he becomes defensive as he says 'I don't have anything to do with social media', but we part in friendly fashion.

Easton Maudit is a couple of miles away by a path that is bosky at first, but then follows a stream through fields which climb a little to a view looking all the way back to the great house at Castle Ashby. There was a manor house in Easton Maudit once, but the Comptons pulled it down. In fact the village is only half what it once was. As I walk towards the buttressed spire of St. Peter and St. Paul's, I can see lumps and bumps in the west field, with the suspicion of a hollow way between them. The back lane survived until 1840 or so. What caused the depopulation? The village isn't so far from the junction of Roman roads near Irchester, and there's a lot of ancient history here, including a villa. Later I learn that the church-going actor Derek Nimmo lived in Easton Maudit and is buried in the churchyard. Apart from 'Just a Minute' I suppose Derek is best remembered  for a very Anglican role in the 70's TV series 'All Gas and Gaiters' as Noote the Bishop's Chaplain, playing opposite William Mervyn, John Barron and Robertson Hare. Compare and contrast to Tom Hollander's more recent 'Rev'. Which do you think most closely matches the clergy image held by the man/woman in the street? And do we care? As '1066 and all that' has it, 'Write on both sides of the paper at once'! And when will someone write a series about a church congregation without the main focus being on those in possession of dog-collars?

As I continue to Grendon, the one surviving Lancaster bomber drones past me on its way back home to RAF Coningsby, presumably after some summer show. Seeing it flying alone over the fields is peculiarly poignant: the landscape just here wouldn't have looked a lot different in 1943. St. Mary's, Grendon is open. I rest my wearying legs inside and read Psalm 24 out loud: 'The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof...'. When I was in my last year of teaching and feeling the pressure, I used to occasionally escape at lunchtime for a (very) swift transgressive half of well-brewed fullness in the Grendon pub. And at about the same time, we occasionally came with the young people of Abington Avenue URC to the Hall for weekend retreats. We never once went near St. Mary's, which in retrospect seems a bit strange and unfriendly.

And now I get lost. The Nene valley is broadening at this point, and probably because a lot of gravel has been extracted, ancient paths have been diverted or dug up. After a bit of wandering across the first ploughed fields of autumn, I get my compass out and exit a scrappy field system roughly where I intend, by the Summer Leys Country Park, ignoring the pleading looks of thirsty sheep. For the first time since beginning this enterprise, I have to walk along a really hazardous road: it's the cut-through from Wollaston to Earls Barton, and the rush hour is just beginning, but as I turn off onto the Nene Way, Hardwater Mill is as beautiful as ever, one of the most picturesque spots on the Nene, and 20,000 years ago home to at least two woolly mammoths. Eventually I drag myself up the hill away from the river towards Dowthorpe End in Earls Barton, and on to All Saints church with its wonderful distinctive mortared and carved tower, hard by the bailey of a now vanished castle which stood in puzzling, apparently symbiotic relationship with the ancient place of worship, grander than anything in medieval Northampton.

On its bury, the church is both separate from the little old shoe town, yet entirely dominating. Walking the perimeter of the motte, I'm in liminal space, caught up between the present time and that of our Saxon forebears. As was Alan, standing among the graves at Yardley Hastings. As maybe was I, waking in confusion this morning. There are times when the new physics with its talk of multiverses and the New Testament with its perspective of 'looking through a glass darkly' seem to hint at the same wider reality.

Stats man: 24km: 7.5 hrs: 5 churches (two open, one previously visited). One barn owl, disturbed. Two crested grebes. Ten cyclists, three hellos. One country bus, cautious. 18 degrees. Occasional breeze, betokening autumn. Blackberries still mostly green and small.

Dear Lord and Father

I can do absolutely nothing
About #Donald Trump
Or #TheLabourParty
Or even #TeamGB.
In fact the sheer number of things and people I cannot fix
Is utterly overwhelming
And dismaying.
I give in.
I submit.
I put all matters great and small
Into your hands
Together with my family and friends
And commit them to your grace
Which is sufficient
For all our needs.
Amen.