Part the
first
The main street of Cottingham/Middleton meanders
prettily towards the junction of the back roads to Great Easton and Rockingham.
The entire population seems to be sprucing up their homes: there’s decorating and
roofing action on all sides. I’m just about the only person not in dungarees. Homes Under The Hammer has a lot to
answer for. The local postie says a
friendly, smiley hello. My day is cheered. I bid her the same as I park near
the primary school and heave myself up the hill past the church, hoping
there’ll be a footpath beside the B road out of town. There is…for a while…but
when it disappears the verge is verdant and flat and largely minus beer cans,
and there’s not a whole bunch of traffic. The view across the Welland valley
gives me lovely glimpses of the hill village of Bringhurst on the far side.
Wonder of wonders, it’s sunny and warm most of the way into Rockingham. The
last week has seen some drenching downpours: we’ve had the heating on every
evening at home.
I cut across a field on the Jurassic Way for a couple
of hundred metres and emerge by
Rockingham’s Sondes Arms, but sadly
the village seems shut this Monday morning. I’d been hoping for coffee and cake
at The Barn, but despite rumours to
the contrary on its website there’s nothing doing. I thought I remembered a
small gallery, but although I can see picture framing in progress through an
open door, there’s no display of the Matisse prints of yesteryear. I puff up
the hill, admiring as I’ve done for forty years the way the Oakham road twists
down the scarp and then runs straight between the broadly spread cottages, as
dramatic a view as any in Northamptonshire. I hang a right into St. Leonard’s churchyard in
the lee of the Castle: a muscle-strengthening climb for the peasants from their
front yards: a gentle health-giving stroll for the gentry down out of their
elegant drawing room. The view of the valley from the churchyard is mostly
obscured, but a gap in the trees allows me to look across two county lines to
my next destination at Caldecott.
Gaul, as you well know, was divided into three parts. Well,
the East Midlands is divvied up more ways than that, but today is a three
counties walk, though my decision to tack Caldecott onto the itinerary is a
last minute whim, quickly regretted. The A6003 takes Route One
over the valley floor, and for the section up to the Leicestershire border it’s
fine: there’s a roadside path.
But the county of Jonathan Agnew and Richard III
offers only thigh-high Arnco barriers to both sides for a while from this point,
with narrow margins marked by white lines
- a hint to cyclists or a warning to incautious motorists they're in danger of denting
their precious metal. Whatever, it’s an unfriendly environment for walkers, so
my thought is to detour via the bridlepath of Long Lane and then bend back to
Caldecott. This cunning plan is scuppered by the recent rain fuelled growth of
vegetation. I don’t fancy fighting my way through thistles for a third of a
mile, but neither do I want to risk nemesis from oncoming traffic. I utter a
St. Christopher’s prayer and opt for the tarmac.
Where the defunct Rugby to
Stamford railway line once crossed the main road, the noble county of Rutland
restores a kerbed path. So what’s your beef with pedestrians,
Leicestershire? I say thank you and
start enjoying Caldecott. St. John the Evangelist’s is open. Stepping inside, I
read Psalm 80 out loud, with its litany: ‘Let
thy face shine, that we may be saved’. My head's full of Boris Johnson, so the
psalmist's prayer strikes a chord. St. John’s is pleasant and well-cared for, but it’s not
the most peaceful church. The Oakham road curls around its east side and the
roar of traffic is more or less constant. If the organ’s particularly wheezy perhaps the frequencies might cancel each other out, but otherwise the parson’s
preaching is always going to have urban overtones. There are Roman tiles in the
church’s northern walls. It’s said a Roman temple may once have stood in St.
John’s shoes.
When I was small the county of Rutland seemed rather
exotic. I remember being quite excited when Dad drove us through it on one of
our holiday forays to Scotland. It was partly the curiosity value of its being the smallest English county, but it also
intrigued because of the ‘land’
suffix which otherwise only applied to certain remote northern-waste counties -
Westmorland, Cumberland, Northumberland…Greenland. My
arrival in it now marks a certain point in the Big Walk. The yet-to-be-explored
diocese falls into three parts: firstly Rutland, secondly the flatter lands to
the east of the county and north of Titchmarsh which also comprise the open
territories of the former Rockingham forest, and thirdly the enclave around
Peterborough itself. But not necessarily in that order!
Outside in Caldecott’s churchyard there’s an array of similarly
constructed, solid, stone cube-shaped tombs. One is the last resting place of
‘King Henry Stokes’, whose last Will and Testament is preserved in the National
Archives at Kew. It describes him as a ‘Gentleman of Caldecott’, so there’s no
pretension in his name beyond his parents’ wish for the success and character
of their offspring. The Surrey and England cricketer Kenny Barrington greatly
impressed people in the Caribbean by his humour and skill when he toured there
in 1953. Two decades later I taught a Barrington Harrison down on Northampton's Billing
Road. The Stokes family live still in the memory and imagination of local
people in Caldecott. One was a teenage First World War hero, sunk and drowned, his
brother killed at Ypres. A new housing project up the road is named after them
all, presumably. Either that or Ben Stokes has fans locally.
Overhead a buzzard is duking it out with two crows
(only ever one winner!) as I walk the lane to charming but expensive Great
Easton, which is close to being the perfect English village, everything commodious
and easy on the eye. Notwithstanding, there’s always grit in the oyster: The Sun is being given a makeover. Let's
hope it’s going to survive as a pub. A place like Great Easton deserves to have
a landlord’s ( m. or f.) welcome at its heart. Up Church Bank, in what’s
probably the most ancient part of the village, is fragrantly scented St.
Andrew’s, lilies within, roses without. The artist Rupert Cordeux was here
during the heavy rain last week, and notes his thanks in the visitors’ book.
He’s known for his paintings of churches, and also apparently for cardboard model
kits of cathedrals – if I’ve got the right bloke.
Time Team came to Great Easton for their first Big Dig
in 2003, encouraging the villagers to dig test pits and share what they found
with the nation on TV. Not a lot came out of the pits,
but it seems typical of their community spirit that the citizens of Great
Easton were willing to be guinea pigs. Looking in the church magazine, there’s
a whole lot of community still going on: Grimsby fish to buy on Wednesdays, a
‘Summer Bonanza’ coming up, Good Companions for the older folk, a B&B, Tai
Chi, Yoga, Singing with Sally. It would be nice to live here. Not far away, in Nevill
Holt, there’s even Leicestershire’s annual equivalent of Glyndebourne to enjoy each
summer.
The first fields on the other side of the village are
sheepy and overgrown now, but when walking the Jurassic Way in the opposite
direction here a decade ago, I was alarmed to find myself in the middle of
an ‘incident’. A girl had fallen from a horse. She was badly hurt. There was
nothing to be done - she was already being attended to by the medics and an air
ambulance was clattering in. She was soon on her way to hospital.
The hilltop village of Bringhurst is very ancient; an easily
defended site. I wend the lane to St. Nicholas’ church, which is very plain
inside and in the throes of decoration. On a chair near the bell tower there’s
a notice giving thanks for assistance with the project - not to the diocese but
to a waste management company. This makes me smile. To quote Daphne in Frasier, ‘I don’t know why’. Perhaps they’re putting in a loo, for the
convenience of worshippers.
Isn’t it strange how a stripped ancient church can
still retain, even amplify, its holiness? I suppose the IKEA aesthetic is a
useful contemporary reference, insofar as many of us quite like that white
paint/fabric and wood/stone vibe, but that’s as a place to live in, not
somewhere to find God. Many of us need our church (small ‘c’) to be something other. Many of the ‘shed’ free
evangelical churches set up the place of worship as a theatre – and even some
Anglican congregations see this as a way-to-go. Personally I’m not
inclined to find raked seating
plus a stage as a natural residence for the numinous, even though as a
performer or as a member of an audience I’ve known special things to happen
there, and sometimes those moments have had spiritual overtones.
Bringhurst churchyard
Two things. Firstly God can creep up on us unawares
anywhere, any time. I suspect I mostly walk around with my eyes shut. Secondly, people are drawn in to churches for
any one of countless reasons. But maybe we aren’t relentless enough in finding
our own church’s USP, and plugging it for all its worth. And I suppose that
could even include looking like the Fabric Committee just popped into IKEA one
afternoon.
Hancock’s
half-hour/Gove’s Gimbles* : 14.5 km. 4.25 hours. 20 degrees C. Sun and cloud, and an intermittent,
capricious, southerly breeze Four
churches. Three open. Nine stiles. Eight gates. Four bridges.
*Matt Hancock and Michael Gove have been eliminated in
the endless political accompaniment to the cricket World Cup. They will not be
our Prime Minister. This time.
Part the
second
I’ve been meaning for some time to ‘clean up’ an
untidy detail from one of last winter’s walks. I should have included the
outlying church at Weston-under-Welland when staggering on from Ashley to the
pretty chapel of ease at Sutton Bassett, but my energy then was at a low ebb
and my hips very sore. So now I park up at the end of Mill House’s farm track,
and walk down the road into Weston before finding my way back to the car via a
short section of the Macmillan Way. St. Mary’s church is shut, but I can see
from the notice in the porch that there are nineteen souls on the electoral
roll representing twelve families. Down in the valley, this seems a depressingly
small remnant from which to build a Kingdom. From the highest point on the hill
above the car, the view is beautiful and wide-ranging, and midway through a
lovely afternoon the possibilities seem endless.
Boris’s bits:
2.25 km. 40 minutes. No stiles. Six
gates. No bridges. Hope in the heart.
Father
We can only
begin
From where we
are.
Give us the
gift
Of working
smart.
Open our eyes
Set us on our
front foot
Stiffen our
resolve
Help us find
joy
So that we
can better commend you
To all we
meet
All with whom
we work
All whom we
love
Amen.
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