Tumbling Dice

I like most things about France. But not all.

In Brockhall the birds are singing merrily in every tree and bush. Apparently not so on the far side of the Channel. A recent report expresses anxiety that there are far fewer trills and tweets in Tarbes or Troyes than once was the case. I'm not surprised. The citoyens will have shot them all.

No signs of trigger-happy bird-hunters as I walk up through the pretty fields towards Little Brington. This has been the best May I can remember...but I've probably said that in many previous years. Has it been God's consolation goal after such a lousy second half to the winter? Or will we suffer payback for this month's benignly beautiful weather in midsummer's return match? OK.  Enough strained football references already. Car roofs glint up on the low ridge which carries the sometime minor Roman road from Duston towards Bannaventa by Watling Street, where St. Patrick may have spent his youth (emphasis on the word may). A rather morose dog-walker passes me. 'It's getting hotter..' he intones, although I can't tell you whether this is a global assessment , or just a comment on the day's meterorology.

I take the small lane into Little Brington before doubling back on myself to visit the single spire which comprises the remains of St. John's, the village church. Crossing the road, I somehow manage to trip on a slightly raised piece of asphalt and, unbalanced by my rucksack, sprawl headlong into the roadside gravel, uttering ungodly words as I go. Raising myself painfully from the prone position my initial, stupid reaction is to look around nervously, anxious lest someone should have witnessed my undignified tumble from grace. They didn't. But my knees are as bloodied as they often used to be when I was a schoolboy, and so I spend ten minutes with water, tissues and Savlon cleaning up and staunching the trickle of blood. It spoils my appreciation of St. John's just a bit. The church was built in the mid-nineteenth century as a Chapel of Ease by the 4th Earl Spencer to be a memorial for his wife. Her family name was Poyntz. She now gets a substitute commemoration by way of having a road named after her (well more a cul-de-sac than a road) on the far side of the Spencer land in Dallington, Northampton. The rest of St. John's was demolished in 1947, but the spire survived as a landmark for the RAF, or so it's said, and the villagers of Nobottle and Little Brington have to make do, as they did in former times, with traipsing across to the mother church at Great Brington. Only now they go by car.

Only rarely in Northamptonshire is one so aware of the influence of the old aristocracy. Down the lane back into the village, I pass the legend over the door of a restored farmhouse: 'The Lord giveth; the Lord taketh away...' - a reference to some fall in fortunes or family loss suffered by Lawrence Washington (not the most famous one) who may have been acting as land agent for the Spencers in the early seventeenth century. And just round the corner, I briefly amble down Carriage Drive past a monitory Althorp Estate notice before climbing a stile into the Earl's fields. The sheer scale of ownership puts a different spin on the notion that Diana Spencer was a 'commoner'. Not in the sense that you and I are commoners, she wasn't, however much they traded in stories about her dropping in on the Brington post office to buy a pint of winegums when she was a mere slip of a lass!

Field paths take me down to the barely detectable settlement of Nobottle, which Wikipedia would have us believe is one of the 'smallest hamlets' in the country. I don't know how they know that. From there yet more well marked and worn paths carry my bruised legs across the expanses of Spencer territory to Harlestone, Lower and Upper, where I can enjoy again the villages' wonderful collection of thatched cottages. If there's a better set in the county, I haven't seen it. Once in Harlestone an undulating tarmac path carries me round the back of the houses and up to St. Andrew's church, crossing one of the Northampton Golf Club's fairways as I go. It's rather unusual to find a church and a golf course in such contiguity. Here one could preach a sermon, pronounce a benediction and be out on the first tee in five minutes or so. I think this should be mentioned when the benefice looks for an incumbent in about two years time. But do vicars go much for golf as their sport? I notice that membership at the Club runs at £1120 annually to play seven days a week, plus a joining fee of £500 - although you'd find it hard to get in at the moment: they're oversubscribed. Compare and contrast. I wonder how St. Andrew's finances are doing?

Back down in the village I chat to Stephen who's repairing stonework in one of the cottages. He was apprenticed as a dental technician in Northampton nearly fifty years ago but didn't enjoy it and transferred his skill into the jewellery trade before seeing a better living in masonry. After all, there'll always be a need to replace and maintain the wealth of stone from which the county's houses, churches and walls are built. Stephen is rightly proud of what he does, even down to using delicate tools which he's made for himself. He calls to my notice the variety of stone in the house he's working on, the darker, harder material, and the honey coloured, flakier stuff which may have come straight out of the ground just round the corner, beautiful but not long-lasting ( in terms of centuries). Stephen tells me about working in a church at the Buckinghamshire Twyford: so much did he love the place, he ended up giving visitors guided tours in between cutting and filling, but he's an atheist he says, when I tell him about the blog. That's OK, I reply, there's lots of other stuff in among the holy bits. Which now includes a conversation with you, Stephen. I hope you approve!

                                                           
                                                                    Harlestone thatch

Stephen wishes me good luck with my pilgrimage, and passing the Dovecote Laundry, I go up the hill to find the wall defending the Althorp Estate proper. I follow it along the lane until I reach the permitted view of the Big House through its railings. Looking further up the road I can see the tower of Great Brington church on the sharp edge of the hill ( a farm on the brink?), and recall the stories that when Charles I was imprisoned by Cromwell at Holdenby Hall, he was allowed to ride down a couple of miles to play bowls at Althorp, and to take communion in St. Mary's with the Spencers. A couple pass me, walking their pooches, and we swap a greeting. But then I see there's a green path which would make a preferable route up to the village, and so I turn and catch them up, and then have to explain my war wounds, still technicolour gory and dripping. They are solicitous for my welfare, which is nice.

I have affection for Great Brington because I was commissioned to write and record a couple of 'library' albums for John Gale who once owned a house there. Remarkably the earlier album, recorded in 1984, still brings in the occasional royalty. A reggae track, South West Two seems to have been used in an Australian soap, who knows why, and a pretty generic 50's rock n'roll instrumental, Teddy's Delight, also turns up from time to time on Romanian pay-per-view or Canadian Cable. It's a funny old business, music.

St. Mary's church is a place for reflection. At first I'm peeved to find that access to the Spencer Chapel is prevented - as you can see from the opposite picture. But then I look in the visitors' book and see that people who come to Great Brington church are interested - of course they are - in Lady Diana, and I suppose a small proportion of those folk may be crazies who'll think she's buried there, and may hold all kinds of weird conspiracy theories about the government and Dodi Fayed and who knows what. So I suppose there's not much choice but to lock and alarm the Chapel. The rest of the church is open though, and a lovely place it is too. As well as thinking about those national tragedies, I'm remembering my uncle, Bernard, who died aged 86 last Sunday morning, the youngest and last of five brothers. He and Joyce had two daughters, Sue and Diane, who between them and their husbands Robin and Chris produced half a quiver of grandchildren. They will all be missing him greatly right now. In a quirk of birth and death only my stepmum and my Aunt Margery still bear the name Cross in that older generation (the joke among my dad and Bernard's teachers long ago was 'We all have our little Cross to bear...' ). I'm the only one to do so in the following generation, and only our son Matt in the one after that. The study of history leads me not to be greatly worried about such a thing (as if I could do anything about it!): families come and go; names are absorbed into the cosmos but the DNA line goes on. I'm far more anxious that a properly conservative view of society - 'a little change in a time of change' - continues to be allied to kindliness and inclusivity in a properly socialist British, Christian tradition. It's a tradition which arguably a lot of people broadly agree with (given discussion about the Christian bit, and the fact that some will choke on the word 'socialist') but it's a third way which is hard to articulate in a formal, PR-friendly soundbyte, and it's going, going, nearly gone. It was an intangible about British life which New Labour reified for a short while and has now become wispy and unreachable again. Tony Blair was at least right in identifying the death of Diana as a watershed. Coincidentally we were all in the process of losing something much larger at the same time. Kingdoms rise...and they fall. I think ours may have had it, and I mourn that too.

 As I walk from Great Brington along the narrow lane to Whilton and back to Brockhall, the cloud cover disappears, and I'm walking into the afternoon sun. Like the man said: 'It's getting hotter.' Or darker. Please supply your own weather metaphor.








                                                                                                 Whilton church plus guardian

Hitches on the britches:  22 km. 7 hrs. 23 deg C. Little breeze. Distinctly sultry around lunchtime. One deer: bouncing dangerously across Watling Street in front of the car. One rabbit: they're having a bad year or two with viruses. Two scarred knees. One poorly finger. (Have I milked this enough for now?) Eight stiles. Twenty-seven gates. One bridge.

Lord
This week
The suggestion was made
That politicians should be more joyful.
But I confess
That having read the News assiduously
I too am more than averagely
Eeyore right now.

Lord, run that idea of Free Will past me again?
How do we
How do you
allow people to make their mistakes
And therefore be truly human
While harming themselves
And the world in which we all live
And which you made?
When wilt Thou save the people?
Oh God of mercy, when?

Coda

p.s. Two reports to consider this week.

1) The National Housing Association. Wants to build 4 million homes in the UK by 2030. So do the math, people. How much land would this take, if you factor in the necessary infrastructure? You wanna live in a country like that?

2) The Church of England: 'Setting God's people free'. It's about empowering the laity, without disempowering the clergy. Or is it? How can a church reconcile having a bureaucracy? Particularly when in our case it's tied to the State?

More about both in due course perhaps. 'Oh no!' I hear you cry. 'Give us a break...'  And God said: 'This is a break...'

Worn out Road

The Oxford Canal north of Braunston winds its way towards Rugby through emerald fields. The towpath is narrow and overhung. Drifts of cow parsley brush against me as I walk. Moorhens scatter. Duck parents shepherd their new ducklings into the safety of the middle water. A few random geese offer a rustic fanfare. Cattle are much in evidence all around, sight, sound and smell. And where the cattle are, there are flies, lots of them even on this cool bright morning. The canal is quite busy, as perhaps you'd expect so close to a major boating hub.  On a two mile stretch, fourteen narrow boats pass me, in each case driven by a bloke, usually of late middle years, usually bearded, usually with a leather Stetson covering a bald patch. Below decks the women are cleaning and cooking. One or two are out front, soaking up the rays. One or two are literally Standing By Their Man, peering into the distance for signs of the Spanish Navy. I'm happy to report that most crews swap jolly hellos with me. But a couple pass by without a word exchanged, staring ahead unblinkingly, the ships of the damned. Maybe from their perspective I'm just making the place untidy.

The scene is so very pastoral, it's easy to forget the industrial strategy which brought the Oxford Canal into being. Completed in 1790, it carried coal from the colliery at Bedworth to where there wasn't any. The junction with the Grand Union, just to the west of Braunston, soon afterwards offered the possibility of cargo reaching London. Amazingly, the last mule-powered boat was still going towards the end of the nineteen-fifties, at which point the Oxford's commercial life had ended. Barbara Castle saved it from being filled in, as pride in our industrial heritage began to blossom and the leisure possibilities afforded by the waterways gained recognition.

I pass Willoughby Wharf, flirting with Warwickshire, and after the large new marina at Dunchurch Pools, turn east up a fieldpath towards Barby. The parish is actually 'Barby with Onley', and the Parish Council is 'Barby and Onley', but Onley is yet another vanished, cleared village, the name now chiefly commemorated in the prison which sits out of sight beyond the trees which skirt the canal. Formerly it was a Young Offenders Institution, with a reputation for violence between inmates and towards staff. Now graded Cat. C, it claims to concentrate on rehabilitating adult prisoners, very often from London. But a 2016 Inspectors' report again highlighted problems with violence and the taking of psycho-active substances. Perhaps because of staff shortages, prisoners were missing out on training too. It's strange to be in the fresh air, enjoying all the English countryside has to give, knowing such complications are the daily stuff of life just a few fields away. More positively, also in 2016, the prison became a member of the Community of the Cross of Nails, an organisation which works for healing and reconciliation, and which has its origins in the post-war rebirth of Coventry Cathedral. The Christians are in there, doing what they can.

At the top of the hill I come to a farm track with the M45 away to my left in the valley. This is a motorway from the very beginnings of the system in the late 50s and early 60s. Like the similarly two-lanes-a-side M50 out near Ross-on-Wye, it remains a pleasure to drive, very straight and little trafficked. I've always imagined these were roads built partly with military needs in mind at the height of the Cold War. Either that or the predictions of traffic flow were way out. Up on the little bumpy track, I'm passed twice by Postwoman Pat (no sign of any cat, black and white, Persian or tabby) bringing the day's mailshots and bills to the farm. What a little marvel this service remains, no doubt lined up for replacement by drone delivery any day soon. At which point Jess will receive a redundancy notice as will her mistress, their distinctive red van will be cannibalised for spare parts, and every Greendale will be the poorer for it.

               Why does my camera distort the verticals? There is no leaning tower in Barby.

Nigel Fry, who I met by  accident a few walks ago in Daventry's Courtyard Café, is the priest at St. Mary's, Barby. There's a long list of people I could phone to obtain access to the church, but life's too short, and today's walk is slightly longer than average, so I content myself with sitting on a bench there and eating a M&S sandwich. Googling the village to see what I'm missing, I find Wikipedia hasn't a lot to say about St. Mary's, although there's a reference to a Saxon window. So for a moment I'm tempted to file this under 'not of especial interest'. But whoa, hang on there old timer, this is still a thousand years of history we're talking here. The shades of forty generations of Barby ancestors are dancing around my chicken and sweetcorn. Let's not give in to cultural fatigue quite so quickly!

Barby is twinned with the village of Vulaines-sur-Seine. I wonder if the Vulaignots and the Barbies (?!) still have anything to do with each other - twinning is less fashionable these days (an early indicator of disenchantment with the European idea?) I hope they do. Personally I think twinning is still a Good Idea. I'm charmed to see that the first baby buggy was conceived by Mr. Maclaren in 1965 Barby to the benefit of parents ever since. The alliterative potential of Barby, baby and buggy amuse me.

I'm less amused by what happens in a field between Barby and Kilsby, the other half of Nigel Fry's patch. About four hundred metres away I see a herd of young heifers, and spot that my onward diagonal path takes me nearer them than I altogether fancy. So ignoring Pythagoras' wisdom, I take the line of least resistance but maximum distance around the field edges.

(To digress for a moment, have you picked up on the new linguistic tic, which is to do what I've just done and elevate subordinate result clauses beginning 'So...' into complete sentences?  As in: Q. What are you going to do between school and university, Jason? A. So...I'm gonna spend a bit of time in Vegas before, like, taking six months out to find myself in Vietnam and Australia...

Rather as with water going round the plughole the opposite way in the southern hemisphere, of course Jason will find this changes once he/she reaches Wollamboola or Cork Hat because the Standard Young Australian, let's call him Jarrod, will reply in similar circumstances: A. Aw, look...I'm gonna spend a bit of time in Vegas before, like, taking six months to find myself in Vietnam and Earls Court.)

Back to the heifers. The bloomin' animals are eyeing me up. I can hear them whispering to each other, Well, we're not going to let him get away with that, are we lads? at just the moment I put a foot down a rut filled with putrid country muck, soaking my right foot and lower leg. I quicken my pace towards a gap in the hedge. Putting on greater speed than I could ever manage, they find the gap no obstacle at all. There are lots of them and they clearly have all kinds of juvenile bovine fun in mind. I scamper for a gate and hurl myself over it. They stand the opposite side, reproachfully: Spoilsport! We only wanted to play!

Kilsby is a workaday village, the more modern of its houses crowding up to the back of St. Faith's church. The George pub serves me a Fentiman's GB with a smile, I spend a few minutes listening to a conversation one of whose participants has clearly been working on the Yorkshire accent adopted by Sir Derek Jacobi in Last Tango in Halifax, and then drop in on St. Faith's for a quick tootle on their one-manual organ. I also spend a few minutes thinking and praying for Nigel and his congregation, who've just met a substantial bill for repairs to their tower, but are finding the yearly Parish Share hard work ( £6.5k short last year). As their leaflet says, 'How odd would our village feel without St. Faith's at its heart?

Kilsby is a traveller's landmark, and always has been, a crossroads for drovers to meet and share an ale, the locus of a 1.6 mile railway tunnel, shielding the village from the worst of the West Coast main line's noise, and the beginning of the A361's long trek down to north west Devon's Ilfracombe! It's the longest three digit road in the land.

I put my head down, grit my teeth and stride out across the fields. Today's walk was to a degree a venture in faith, and my body's feeling the stress just now. Since Glandular Fever eight (!) years ago, I experience occasional bouts of post-viral fatigue, and this week it's been on me again, making nights uncomfortable and days a bit out of focus. How it interacts with food and exercise, health maintaining drugs, alcohol and painkillers is all rather mysterious. Is the fact that I can now achieve less than I did a decade ago to do with increasing age or the fatigue? The general counsel seems to be that moderate exercise helps rather than hinders, but have I taken on more than I should today?

Increasing numbers of people are vocal about their experience of 'fatigue'. The inclination among the fit and well is sometimes in the direction of 'Get a grip...' which of course is what those who suffer from fatigue would very often wish to do. I think people's bad experiences in employment...the requirements to meet targets, even and particularly in the caring professions including teaching and the priesthood...is sometimes a factor. And so maybe is our 24/7 exposure to the media, and particularly social media. Perhaps diet and other lifestyle choices can be causative. Fatigue is boring, both for those who live with it, and those who care for them or encounter them. Moving away from the strictly pathological, do we all have shorter attention spans than previous generations? Do we all tire more quickly? And if so why? And how does fatigue relate to concepts such as 'routine', and in a church context... 'liturgy'? Yup, no typo. Liturgy not lethargy.

Ashby St. Ledgers is one of my favourite places in the whole world. The long village has beautiful vernacular building, not all of it as old as at first seems (check out the Lutyens workers' cottages opposite the excellent pub.) The fields are lush and sheep-filled. The pluperfect Manor House (also restored by Lutyens) was the scene of the Catesby/Fawkes Gunpowder conspiracy, hatched in the half-timbered gatehouse next to the church, and the church itself is an ecclesiastical mini-marvel, filled with every kind of ancient decoration and ornament. It's dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Leogedarius. He and Kilsby's St. Faith were both French, and both met with grisly deaths in the 7th and 4th centuries respectively, thus gaining their sainthoods.

Nat White, the new incumbent at Braunston, also has Ashby St. Ledgers in her care. My route back to Braunston takes me along what must have been the old lane from the one to the other. The track is obvious at the Braunston end, but is a fieldpath towards Ashby. As at Staverton, it's hard now to see why the old road was never developed between the two - perhaps some land dispute prevented it. Anyway, Nat has these two very different but equally lovely places to look after. Apart from a lack of available clergy, there's no reason for yoking them together. I don't know if they are already a single benefice or whether there's the intention to make them into one, but it would make no sense. (The same isn't true in Barby and Kilsby, the latter having once probably been a daughter church of the former.) This is something to come back to in other contexts...

Runs on the board: 22km. 6.5 hrs. 17 deg. C. a breeze, slightly cool at times, dying later. 28 stiles. 23 gates 11 bridges. Blossom. Birdsong (my how happy the birds have been since Spring finally came!) The buzzing of innumerable bees.

                                                                  Ashby St. Ledgers

Father
We thank you for the renewal you brought the children of Israel
With the coming of Jesus.
We thank you for the renewal you brought to his disciples
By the gift of the Holy Spirit.
We thank you for the renewal we receive daily
In prayer and contemplation,
In the love of family and friends,
In the experience of your lovely Creation.
Amen

Borders

From the Grand Junction Canal near Weedon, a track winds down through a field to Watling Street. I've just crossed the 'West Coast' railway line. For the rest of today's walk I'm very often within sight or sound of these three north-south arterial routes. When King Alfred made peace with and then converted his Viking enemy Guthrum in the late 800s, Watling Street north of the Ouse became the boundary between the Saxons and Danelaw. Was it used as a demilitarised zone by both societies? Or was it a porous border of as much significance and danger as say, that between Northern Ireland and the Republic in the nineteen-seventies?

Borders are Big News. The next two years will tell us how we're going to cope with a changed relationship to Europe. For the life of me, I can't see how the different political positions within the UK on this matter can he resolved harmoniously here or the other side of the Irish Sea. Nor do I see how the structural integrity of the UK can be maintained. Perhaps you can. I'm convinced David Cameron's decisions will be regarded with incredulity by future historians, but that's no comfort. It isn't the first and it won't be the last time a nation's wellbeing has been sacrificed to an interest group's well-being. If you disagree, please stay with me! We may not be at odds about everything. This isn't The Guardian...

The soil on the far side of Watling Street is noticeably sandy. All Saints, Flore dominates the higher ground the far side of the little Nene bridge. The village has a reputation for fertility - crop-wise. I can't speak for the sperm counts of its inhabitants.

If one knows that at least some Romans thought well enough of the place to build a villa here (what's not to like - just off the main road and with a plentiful supply of water?) then you'll have guessed the possible 'floral' derivation of its name. But in Saxon 'flor' means 'floor' (which itself is an alternative ancient spelling for the settlement) and so this could refer to knowledge of the villa's now re-buried tessellated pavement, or the threshing floor which received the fields' abundant harvests.

The church is shut. I sit on a sun-warmed bench and watch a lady tend a grave near the field edge. All Saints' ochre sandstone is particularly weathered. The details of a gargoyle over the south porch and a Norman arch by the chancel are softened and fading with age. As I walk up through Flore's streets, I see the drive to a house called 'Living Stones' and think of friend Maurice Walton, priest and architect, who with his wife Jill made one last home in the village here...but not at 'Living Stones'. This is a community house for the Jesus Army. As at Bugbrooke, I wonder how much contact there is between the Army and the folk at All Saints. Boundaries. Even in the Christian church. And becoming more rather than less marked with time it seems, contrary to my teenage expectations. Does it matter? I believe this. You believe that. Is it too post-modern to think that we can still love one another? See Angela Tilby on a related matter in a recent Church Times.

A lane follows the high ground to the north, and brings me to the by-pass described in the previous post ( 'Gongoozler'), which will perhaps form the future boundary of Northampton/Daventry. I'm surprised by how far advanced the work is. The road surface is laid, and even the white lines are marked. I'll try to be fair. For a few hundred yards I've just followed the road through Flore, and been impressed by the number and size of (mainly logistics) HGVs that rumble through the village, breaking up the road surface and doubtless representing a threat to any residents crossing e.g. from the church to the housing estate opposite.

But the logic of by-passes is that infilling will inevitably occur everywhere between the by-pass and what it's by-passing. Whoever you are, wherever you live, you'll be able to find an example. But let me show you with a few rather poor pictures what that means here:

So, all the land to the left will be given over to housing... (we're looking roughly south-west)...

And so will the land that you can see here...(the road from Northampton to Daventry is out of sight but in this direction... this is to the south-east...

And because the M1 lies beyond the trees in the right of this picture, itself forming a boundary, so will this...and here we're looking more or less north...

I don't expect they say this is what will happen. But in time it will...

Near the new by-pass I slip on a patch of mud, and spatter my legs with slurry. I hope it's not the smelly sort or I'll be persona non grata in any pubs or cafes I visit later.The path veers westwards through a spinney close to the M1, and at a ploughed field right beside the motorway there's a choice as to which margins I follow (the path originally went on the diagonal, but I'm in Merrills and I can see it's stickily wet in the middle). I opt for left and then right, but of course make the wrong choice, ending up in mud so sucky it threatens to pull the shoes from my feet. I zigzag through the tilth, trying to find dry land, hoping no one's watching. Sorry, Mr. Farmer. Footprints all over.

Metalled lanes take me above the motorway and on to the delectable hamlet of Brockhall, which don't you think sounds like a place in Wind in the Willows? And since brocc means badger in Saxon that's pretty much right. St. Peter and St. Paul's is an estate church, built no more than twenty yards from the Big House. It's no great surprise to find that it too is locked. Services here will only be occasional: it's in the same benefice as Flore. Going forward the road's gated at either end of a sheep pasture. Gated roads used to be a more common feature of Northamptonshire's landscape, but they've mostly disappeared now: the inconvenience to solo drivers was just too great. On this occasion I have the opportunity to open and close the gate at the far end for a passing motorist. I think she said thank you, though she didn't bother to open her 4x4 window if she did. Perhaps she assumed I was an estate retainer, paid to stand and serve, and she was merely shocked I didn't tip my cap.

Just beyond the crest are the lumps and bumps of the medieval settlement of Muscott, once moved and emptied, I expect, at the behest of some long gone Lord of the Manor. So distressing and inconvenient to have the peasants quite so close to one's nice shiny new Seat. By the wonders of modern science i.e. cell phone I talk to friend Richard Holder as I stroll through a farmyard and then back up and over the M1...the canal...the railway. Richard has written a good song and I shall try to find a piano part worthy of it. All we less-than-famous musicians are now doing what our more celebrated counterparts have been at for years, using our laptops to record together remotely. It's fun, creative, and makes us collectively more than we are individually. Potentially here then, boundary transcendence...

At Watling Street I find myself by the entrance to the Heart of the Shires Shopping Village with a sudden overwhelming urge for Earl Grey. Hey man, I like...I need my fix, ya dig. Ya gotta give me the stuff. Now.  Whatever it takes. Don't be cruel, man. Ya gotta help me... Inside the Village everything's red brick and lavender paintwork. The shoppers are, well, like me really, in their sixties and seventies with the occasional real OAP thrown in. And all, well, quite lavender. Unlike me. A moment of self-awareness intervenes. No one else is sporting ordure-spattered legs, nor do they look like tramps - these are Country Casuals of a different ilk. I try to forget my personal bohemian chic and sit in Darlington's café with as much dignity as I can muster. The chocolate and orange cake is to die for, but I decline the offered accompaniment of ice-cream. You see that old dosser we had in here today? Went for the Blood Orange Gateau bigtime, he did. It's not right you know. I mean...the smell! What I say is, if he can afford that, he can afford a decent pair of trousers. And what about them Big Issue blokes? They take their benefits and manage to run a Merc on the side. Well, that's what I've heard. They should bring back the Workhouses if you ask me...Well, good morning to you, Mr. Willetts. ('Two Brains' David Willetts has been at it again this week, blaming Old People for all the ills of society.)

Pubs are closing but cafes like this are certainly doing a roaring trade among the middle-class retired. However N.B. to the Church (and 'Two Brains' ). Do not imply, when requesting greater donations from elderly parishioners or taxpayers, that this year's suggested increase in giving will only be the price of a Starbuck's coffee per week. Not all pensioners can afford the café lifestyle. Many are still on the breadline, and they too should be made welcome in our pews. And in wider society too.

                       Modern Watling Street. The boundary with Danelaw (to your right!)

The road to Norton curves away expansively from Watling Street at the junction you see above. I talk on the 'bone to stepmum Jean about electricians and days out, occasionally stepping onto the verge to avoid the surprisingly frequent traffic. At tall-towered All Saints' church I meet assistant treasurer Patrick who welcomes me warmly. He's come to check that the church is open (it is!) We chat as we shove our way through the tight-fitting churchyard gate and then walk together up a short avenue of nicely pollarded trees. It's a lovely spring day, but I don't think it's just that which makes the atmosphere of this place so cheerful. Norton's pub is a good 'un too. It doubles as a chippie, and gets very good web reviews - one to remember, if we're out this way and fancy a bit of haddock.

The lane to Dodford takes me up hill and down dale past acres of munchable grass, glittering blue-green in the sun, to a long view from an airy plateau where various bits of WW2 detritus litter the fields, frustrating the efforts of successive farmers to destroy them. In one place slabs of concrete are piled on top of each other so as to resemble a Cornish/Breton menhir - and artistically/historically it kind of works in this elevated setting.

Down the hill, beyond the relics of the old branch line to Leamington, is a little ford whose stream leads me beguilingly into the village. Dodford has associations with travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, who yomped his way entertainingly around Europe in the middle of the twentieth century, disregarding the artificialities of political borders.

A reality check. The milk of human kindness was no more widely available a hundred years ago. Ask the Armenians. Ponder on the butchery of the Great War and the Holocaust. But thus far through life, while acknowledging the universality of sin, and frequently rehearsing for my own benefit Luther's formula 'Semper peccator, semper penitens, semper iustus', I've also believed that slowly, oh so slowly, humanity is inching towards an omega-point, that moral and spiritual progress is possible. These days I'm less sure. With the cyber-revolution has come more sharply defined differentiation, a greater tribalism, exploited by knowledgeable oligarchies for financial and political gain. We're happy with our boundaries, safe in our insulation, content only if our walls are high and excluding. There's an upside. The Christian message of sin and salvation, of our being in Christ neither Jew nor Greek, nor bond nor free, was never so relevant. I talk the talk. Am I walking it enough?

And finally, Esther. On my way into Weedon, I catch up with a young African woman (I know she's African and not Caribbean from the accent as she returns my hello). At her side is a prettily summer-dressed three year old who turns, hearing the tap of my stick on the pavement: she finds me hugely amusing. I suppose it's the mud. The woman has another baby in a sling, and she's pregnant. I can't ask, but I want to know: 'what's the story?' She will have crossed, will daily be crossing, borders to be here. But why Weedon?

                                                                 In Norton church

Ticks on the stick:  20 km. Just shy of six hours. 19 deg. C. Slight breeze. Mostly sunny. One stile. Eleven gates. Nine bridges. (Why do I rehearse these stats each time? Because I love the British idiosyncrasy of 'the stile'. And they give some crude indication of the kind of country I'm walking in and the strenuousness of the hike.) Four churches, only one of them open.

No prayer this time.
Sometimes the subjects are too large;
The matters too weighty.
Words fail to meet the requirement.
So I'm afraid you'll have to do the work,
If you wish.
T.S.Eliot said much the same
But infinitely more elegantly.

Gongoozler

Big Hill

 

 

Is everywhere the same as everywhere else?

I've been putting off this walk for a while. It looks like hard work: a slog up the Leamington road into Daventry, and then navigation of the town's Milton Keynes-like periphery: roundabouts, grass verges, commerce, boxy houses and all. In the event it turns out to be less intimidating than a first, careless study of the OS made me think.

The old road out of Staverton soon winds back onto the modern highway. The trees and bushes are bursting into green life on every side. It's that exciting week when winter really turns into spring, although you wouldn't know from the ambient temperature, nearly twenty degrees down on last week's exceptional maximum. I'm swathed in sweaters. The tarmac roadside path takes me past the Staverton Park Hotel and golf resort. It's clearly a favourite with the conference crowd. The large car park is rammed with Sales Rep transport on this Thursday morning, Insignias and Focuses by the score.  I'd have thought the 'De Vere Staverton Estate' would have demanded a re-branding of the prosaically named 'Big Hill' on the opposite side of the road. How about 'Trump's Head' or 'Mount De Vere' or  'FTSE Top'. So much classier.

I leave the main road through a layby and cross to a brief diversion along the remains of the older way out of Daventry, now just a footpath. I pass six or seven individuals walking the other way, perhaps workers at the De Vere. At home we've been watching BBC TV's 'Civilisations' series - with rapture when Simon Schama's presenting, somewhat more desultorily when Mary Beard or David Olusoga have been in charge. From our Gogglebox critical cheap seats we find Olusoga's style anachronistically didactic and his arguments sometimes less than convincing, although great as discussion starters. Oh my, how highbrow life is at the Crosses. Why not drop in sometime for an evening seminar on Derrida or String Theory. Such fun. Anyway...

Last week Olusoga mentioned a painting by Caillebotte neither of us knew: 'Paris Street: Rainy Day'. It shows  people hurrying through the city, heads down and avoiding eye contact, against a striking backdrop of Hausmann architecture. Today none of the people I pass on the road to Daventry want to make eye contact either. This isn't the countryside default. Just a few hundred yards back in the village I'd swapped the cheeriest of greetings with two women on horseback. In towns people are scared, and sometimes with good reason. We too have been burgled, assaulted and sworn at. It was probably always so. Is it just over-close proximity that makes us mean? Or an enhanced awareness of what we have and haven't got?

The old Staverton road takes me across a pedestrian flyover into a traffic-calmed urban street, the houses going increasingly upscale as I approach the town centre, through an underpass to a previous era of building, and then past the old  'Coach and Horses' travellers' inn. It's being gutted, earth movers where the horses once lodged, perhaps for part-refurbishment as a pub, abut also partly because it's soon to be reborn as an apartment complex. As Daventry's road plan changed, the 'Coach and Horses' lost its function as a hostelry. Now it's on a road to nowhere.

Say 'Daventry' and I think 'radio station'. On Bakelite wirelesses of the fifties it was one of the many exotic-sounding locations printed on the dial along with 'Hilversum', 'Sundsvall' and 'Allouis' etc. etc. Until fifteen years ago, going north on the M1, the motorist passed an extensive array of radio masts all now dismantled - tho' I think the town is still a radio marker for Britain's busy air traffic control. Daventry strikes me as a liminal town, looking west more than east, an outlier in Northamptonshire's geography. The town's shops are the usual contemporary mishmash, at least in the older streets. In the arcade by the bus station you can find Boots, Waitrose and Greggs as you would in any comparable place. Elsewhere it's charity emporia, tattoo parlours and takeaways. The buildings are a bit of a jumble too - here a bit of handsome sandstone Georgian, there workaday nineteenth century and nineteen-sixties utilitarian. I order an Earl Grey and a slab of Cherry Bakewell from the cheerful women in the Courtyard Tearoom (alas too sweet even for me!) and fiddle with my latterly unpredictable I-phone to no great effect. I notice a chap with a clerical collar in an adjoining comfy chair. It's Nigel Fry, the incumbent at Barby and Kilsby. I explain myself briefly, and leave him with a card and the threat that I'll be 'down his way' soon. He deserves his peace and quiet (I thought I detected a certain hunted look in his eye when I said hello), although I suspect like me he'll find it hard not to tune into the intimate domestic details being shared with the world by two ladies-who-cake on another near-by table.

Up at Holy Cross church, the front door of the splendid Georgian edifice (1754) is open. I'm welcomed by a be-gowned steward who explains there's a funeral shortly. I'm sorry not to be able to spend more time looking around. Everything about the church's décor and presentation is friendly and enthusiastic in an embracing kind of way. Recorded music is playing quietly in the background. A discreetly positioned sound desk is tucked in behind the back pews. Fe-fi-fo-fum, I smell the amps of a worship band ( but Holy Cross's website begins its 'music' section with a great - and clean - Thomas Beecham quote, and they have a church choir too!) The whole place sparkles with light and warmth. Leaving aside any human element, why wouldn't you want to worship in a place like this?

I follow my nose downhill looking for the Ashby road out of town ( not Ashby-de-la-Zouch: Ashby St. Ledgers!) It's still really chilly, particularly when the sun's hiding. A brisk west wind has got up. I recall the one time I played cricket in Daventry, also in late April, the first game of a season with a rather smart-alick team, all manly exhortation and diving around in the outfield. The wind was positively howling across the ground. It was right in my face as I opened the batting, the pitch soft and wet. I made a big lonely blob, tamely prodding the ball to a waiting catcher in the first over. It was one of the most miserable afternoons I ever spent on a cricket field. I played a few more games in that lot's company without any discernible distinction, sliding down the batting order week by week, confidence shot to pieces, until finally I brushed the dust off my cricket boots and moved on. I have to like the people with whom I'm spending time. The activity is never enough by itself.

After three quarters of a mile I find what I'm looking for, the converted path of the old branch line from Long Buckby, heading north-west, now a green corridor for cyclists and walkers through the housing estates. Daventry is expanding, like all the other Northamptonshire towns, pushing out on all sides. On the way from Northampton out through Weedon, there are roadworks on both flanks of that village, part of the Daventry development plan, as if the countryside in between and beyond will one day soon be quite consumed by housing. And so Daventry will no longer be an 'outlier': it will be one with the Northampton Megalopolis as it pushes forward to Coventry. And Oxford. And Cambridge. The bones of the structure will soon be in place. The detail will follow and nothing now can prevent it, outside economic collapse, and even then, that possible disintegration would be offered as the rationale for the 'necessary' destruction of the countryside. I'm sorry to bang on endlessly about it, but if this blog is to add to the historical record in any tiny way, this has to be recorded as one of the most important national trends of the early twenty-first century.

 I'm looking for a cross-track which I eventually find, but it's running along a viaduct fifty feet above me. I scramble up the steep and slippery sides of the old railway cutting, and walk a newly-made grassy way skirting the farthest extent of the housing. It eventually delivers me to the lane which once carried horses and people over the Braunston Tunnel on the Grand Union Canal. Below them the boats were 'legged' by their operators, who lay on boards and from an inverted position walked them from end to end - in this case through almost a mile and a half of tunnel. Not great for the digestion I wouldn't have thought. Apparently there's a bit of a wiggle in the middle, as there is at Blisworth, either because of difficulties with the soil, or miscalculation. At ground level the spire of Braunston's 'Cathedral of the Canals', All Saints, is dead ahead as I look down the green lane where it descends to meet the tunnel at its western portal.

Braunston is a first real taste of the Midlands as the traveller goes west. There's a lot of nicely weathered red brick, and much less yellow sandstone. The ginnels on the north side of the canal meander pleasantly between the cottages and eventually I gain the High Street, passing the old windmill, and arriving at All Saints to find Pat Milner one of the churchwardens waiting inside, drumming his fingers. A colleague has forgotten a promise to meet. We chat about this and that. They've just been through an interregnum: their new incumbent Nat White will be installed this Saturday. I say that we've just lost our lovely curate Allison who is to be installed this weekend too, and Pat and I get confused about dates. At any rate, the Bishop's working hard ( as I expect, creep, creep, he does every weekend!) Pat and I swap news about Marion and Keith Thomas, our former members at Weston Favell, who many years ago felt a calling to minister to canal folk, and made a temporary new home among them at Braunston, as you would.

I spend a few minutes just sitting in the beautiful breadth of All Saints' nave, looking around me. You could spend hours here, and still find new detail to stimulate and excite. The sheer quantity of symbolism in form, colour, fabric and glass is dazzling. This wealth of suggestion has been taken for idolatry, here in England and more widely around the world. As we know, courtesy of IS et al, wanton destruction is still going on. The Baptist church of my younger days would have been uncomfortable with what I see around me now. But for most of us, finding God in the desert is the hardest thing to do. My soul is relaxed and revived in this forest of images.

I walk back along the south side of the canal. Near to the entrance to the extensive marinas is a narrow boat café, the Gongoozler. I had no idea, but a gongoozler is a person who enjoys watching activity on the canals, but doesn't participate. That's me then! But there's no time for tea today.

                                           Legend on the wall by the Marina at Braunston

Did the people of Braunston not get on with their counterparts in Staverton? The Jurassic Way follows a more or less north-south line from the one village to the other, but it was never metalled, and at times is no more than a one person path. Just to the north of Staverton, two-thirds up a two hundred foot climb from the stream at its bottom, there's a civic seat. It looks out across miles and miles of uninterrupted country patchwork, a glorious view, a national resource of food and emotional sustenance. For how much longer?

So is everywhere the same as everywhere else? (I'm asking myself!) Yes and no, Superficially, all Mozart sounds the same - and some music-lovers never get past this. Superficially all sheep look identical, except perhaps to the farmer. At first glance every town and village look alike to the world-weary traveller. But, as I remind myself, the more we look and listen, the more we identify difference. And then it strikes me, as if a new and revolutionary thought, the only near-clones are those we produce through our own human industrial processes - knives and forks, cars, photo-copies, 3-D printed artefacts, robot-produced books. Or am I still not looking closely enough? And what conclusions should I be drawing from this?

Snoozes on the pews: 19 km. 5.5. hours. 9-14 degrees C. Wind: 15 mph, gusting 25. No stiles, Ten gates. Maybe four bridges. Countless new-born lambs: a shout out to numbers 19 and 13 in a field near Braunston.

Father
Ignite our land
With the gift of discernment
So that we can tell apart
False prophets from truth-tellers;
Disingenuity from integrity.
And then give us courage
And opportunity
To speak as you would have us speak.
Amen.

TESS

At baptisms, at weddings, at funerals, every organist knows he or she may have to give their own good account of Lord of the Dance. But Syd Carter wrote a lot of other lyrics too and, mischievous and free-thinking chap that he was, they still frequently tend to polarise opinion, none more so than Every star shall sing a carol:

'Who can tell what other cradle/High above the Milky Way/Still may rock the King of Heaven/On another Christmas Day...?'

Some people hate this. Others love it. I'm with the latter group. And I particularly love Donald Swann's recording of the hymn. Donald and Sydney served together in the Friends Ambulance Unit during WW2. We had the great privilege of knowing both these great men, eccentrics and holy doubters both.

As I drive out to Everdon, I ponder again the possible theological challenges raised by TESS (NASA's 'Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite'). Well, it's an alternative to considering the relegation woes of Crystal Palace or Southampton as the morning's intellectual exercise. TESS is a Falcon 9 powered launch to replace the Kepler probe. It'll assume an elliptical Earth orbit to allow a survey of stars of relatively close proximity across the full spectrum of sky, with a view to gathering data about their planets, particularly those within the so-called 'Goldilocks Zone' i.e. where distance from their own 'sun' makes the possibility of life - extraterrestrial life - greater. A database will be assembled which scientists can then interrogate for details of atmospheres on those planets and so on. This is amazing and hugely clever stuff.

Well then, Christians of this world, what do you think? Are we humans unique in a universe chock full of galaxies, which in turn, like our Milky Way, are chock full of stars? And if we're not, how do we account for this in our soteriologies? (...which was the problem Sydney was contemplating fifty years ago!) Did Jesus die for the little green men and women too? Some will see this as a fundamental challenge to their faith. Personally I think we may end up with no alternative. We'll just have to embrace it some day, just as we embraced the notion that the Earth isn't the centre of the Universe. (Although strangely, Andrew Flintoff and many others apparently still cling to the notion that the Earth is flat. Stick to fast bowling and TV presenting, Andy!)
As Sydney said:

'Who can tell what other body/He will hallow for his own?/ I will praise the Son of Mary/Brother of my blood and bone...'

Because it's all I can do.

It is, to nick a lyric, such a perfect day, but for the duration of this walk I'm mostly spending it by myself. I take the risk and swap my boots for Merrills, then walk down the main street and over Everdon's stream, before climbing the hill towards Everdon Stubbs. I pass the gated road to Snorscombe, a hamlet whose name is a favourite of mine. The Stubbs are managed by the excellent Woodland Trust, and although my route takes me along its perimeter, I can see dog walkers enjoying the bosky paths in the shade of the trees. Whereas I, out in the open at 10.30, am hot already. There's a charming little fenced viewpoint looking out towards the distant A45 across the expanse of valley. The bench there is new. It's a good place to take on water. A rosette is somewhat randomly pinned to a tree, declaring the cattle who perhaps sometimes graze in this field as 'best in show'. Right at the top of the climb, the path very briefly ducks into the wood before setting out across a field of corn six inches high and growing taller by the minute. A couple are resting on a log. We swap jolly hellos as I try to incompetently reassemble a recalcitrant gate. I say that it's nice to see the bluebells. The gentleman draws my attention to the anemones. He's never seen so many and so large just here (they're locals). For some reason I think of Elvis Costello's 'It's been a good year for the roses'. Has anyone written a song about anemones? Difficult to scan...

I skirt farm buildings and emerge on a lane which follows the ridge towards Upper Stowe. To my left are the Castle Dykes. There was a castle here in medieval times, and the earthworks are well-preserved. Were there the money and opportunity for archaeology a lot more might be discovered (but you can't dig up everything). Antiquarian reports suggest hidden underground rooms, and pre-Roman antecedents of the later fortifications. Given how well it commands the view on both sides, I guess this shouldn't be surprising. Past the divide in the lanes, I come across an elderly gentleman close to the gates of his house at the end of a morning constitutional. He says he wishes he could walk as well as I can, which is a nice compliment since I'm apt to feel pretty decrepit myself at times. I'm forced to admit how lucky I am to be relatively fit and well.

I'm in the vicinity of Stowe Nine Churches, a little collection of small hamlets, but if you come looking for nine places of worship you'll be out of luck. I'm indebted to Mike Rumbold, writing on the village website: the explanations of the name are various and entertaining. If you're into folklore you'll like the idea that there was a little local difficulty in building the church because the Devil came out night, and threw down the building work eight times before God's Workers prevailed at the ninth attempt. An alternative but historical explanation might be that a new church was built on the site of the old one (French: neuve) but that this was misunderstood and corrupted to neuf (i.e. nine). Or how about a geographical interpretation whereby the 'Nine' is a corruption of 'Nene', the river being relatively close by? I think the latter probably gets my vote, Stowe being a common village name.

In Upper Stowe is a Chapel of Ease, St. James. I walk up the path and shelter inside from the sun. My intention to read a psalm aloud is forestalled by the arrival of Patsy and Ann. They're with a coach party the rest of whom are currently finishing morning coffee in the farm café opposite. Patsy and Ann et al are on an outing from Peterborough. They're spending the morning here, then having lunch at a Toby Carvery in Northampton, before giving Corby the once over during the afternoon. Ann attends St. Mary's in Peterborough, Patsy, St. Oswald's (I think that's the right way round). They like the quiet little chapel. They have to be back on the bus promptly so they sign the visitors' book and wend their way. As their companions drag themselves from the tearoom, I enter it and order Earl Grey and a piece of cranberry and orange cake. Delicious.

Behind the farm, the path drops sharply and then rises again to Church Stowe. Away to the right there's a long view to the cream coloured bulk of the Heyford flour mill, and beyond it the Express Lifts Tower. I feel a little tug of regret that the urban is once more poking its way into my lovely rural. Around the corner is a small development of rather elite contemporary homes, but these have been beautifully effected around a 'new' cherry-blossomed village green. I don't want to come on like Prince Charles, but this is an excellent example of harmonious village expansion. Hallelujah!

The church of St. Michael's has a great situation. It hangs over the descent towards Weedon, tall-towered and partly clay-clad. The electoral roll has 26 names on it and they return about £11k to the diocese as their Parish Share. The parishioners are keen on promoting wildlife in the churchyard, and as I sit on the bench there, there's a proliferation of bumble bees foraging in the grass around me, a welcome peculiarity of this unusual Spring - I've seen a lot in the last couple of weeks. Among the papers on the various tables inside St. Michael's is a book about the artist John Piper. I leaf through it, wondering for a moment whether he'd ever used the church as a subject...but I don't think so, though he was certainly active around the other and more famous Stowe; Lord Cobham's one time seat near Buckingham.

The path takes me on through fields of cabbagy rapeseed over the West Coast Main Line and down to the canal. A short totter along the towpath are the steep steps to the road which doubles back under the railway to find the church of St. Peter and St. Paul Weedon, sandwiched betwixt iron horse and barge. Properly this church originally served the community of 'Weedon Bec', now confusingly conflated with the later 'Upper Weedon' and 'Lower Weedon'. It was 'Bec' because after the Norman Conquest the living was given to the Abbey at Bec Hellouin in Normandy, then the most powerful foundation in northern France. When Matt was very small I remember we stopped off at the Auberge de l'Abbaye where the food is now of a gastronomic rather than egalitarian sort (though maybe the Bec Hellouin monks always looked after themselves well, being as influential as they were). Even before Norman times, Weedon generated its own saint, St. Werburgh, daughter of a Mercian chief, c. 700 A.D.. It's said that there was a chantry dedicated to her in a field to the south, Ashards, perhaps near the more recent graveyard? Some confirming archaeology really would be nice here. Ah, my Time Team of long ago, alas, where are you now? Werburgh is buried in Chester, although how she got there, I don't know.

Entering the church one is struck by the generous breadth of the nave, a nineteenth century rebuild courtesy of the fascinating history of Weedon in more modern times. This was the church to which soldiers would come from the garrison whose blocky buildings can still be found half a mile up the hill. I was always told the origins of the military here were the need to establish a final redoubt for the King (George III) during the Napoleonic Wars, when Britain feared imminent invasion. Weedon lay pretty much as far from the sea as you can get in England, and at a convenient halt on Watling Street too, still the M1 of its day seventeen hundred years after the Romans first dictated its line. The little town later became an ordnance depot, and retained military significance until the mid-twentieth century, at its peak doubling in size and accommodating over a thousand personnel. A branch of the canal was built into the facility, and a railway siding too. The Barracks have now become industrial units, home to many small and burgeoning businesses, including a great book shop and art gallery. However it's only a fraction of what it could yet become, given investment and vision. I'm thinking of Manufaktura, the innovative restoration project we encountered in Lodz eight years ago. Whatever may happen in the future, to my mind this is one of Northamptonshire's most resounding places, the ghosts of the past loitering on every street corner.

It's very hot now - one of those days when the forecast has gradually raised the level of the expected temperature - and as I toil along the Nene Way, straggling through Weedon and out into the countryside beyond, I'm failing to cope and wondering about the wisdom of today's excursion. Fortunately I have a hat and good water supplies on board, and the hedge to my left provides some shade. But by the time I reach the outskirts of Everdon Hall, I'm thoroughly cooked and extremely glad the car's near at hand.

Last week I received a charming e-mail from Charles Coaker who's churchwarden at Everdon. When I wrote of the commodiousness of the Hall estate I hadn't realised he was the owner. He thanked me for my kind comments but pointed out that the Hall's cricket ground is no more, superseded by an arboretum, although the pavilion survives. As Charles says with reference to the former owner: you can't live someone else's dream.

There was a certain dream-like state to today's walk, comparing en route the history and people encountered by little old me to the unimaginable vastness of the single galaxy in which we live and which we're just beginning to explore - one galaxy among an infinity of galaxies in our universe - one universe, if we're to believe the late Stephen Hawking, among an infinity of universes. This for me has always been the beginning of my belief in something beyond humanity, guiding and caring for all creation. That's my dream, and I'll go on recommending it for others to share while I have breath.

                                                              Bring your dijeridu...

Notches on the doorpost: 15 km. 5.5 hrs.  1 stile (only one stile!) 19 gates. 1 bridge. 28 degrees C at maximum (national high 29.1 at St. James Park, London = a record for April since 1949, and only 0.3 deg. C away from the all time high for the month.) So it really was hot then!

Father
I am staggered
By the beauty of your creation;
Awestruck
That I find myself in its midst;
Terrified
That we humans may so foul it up
That we wilfully
Destroy what you've seeded here;
Humbled
By the knowledge
That without us
The whirling universes
Will continue to your purpose.

Oh God
I acknowledge you
As the author and finisher
Of all that is.
I thank you
From the depths of my being
For the amazing rollercoaster ride
That is our life.
Amen.

Soggy bottoms (and soggy tops too!)

Saturday. Sunny...April...Saturday!  The weekend traffic jostles Blue Audi as I head north-west. At Rothersthorpe Services there's a bit of cheery sub-continent Exchange and Mart. A car of uncertain age and temperament is sold, then kangaroos around the parking lot. Perhaps the purchaser's just learning to drive and the car's a present from a benefactor. Blue t-shirted collectors for Cancer Research UK dominate the entrance to the café: intimidation in a good cause. Two young men in track suit bottoms swagger towards the Gents, hips loose and thrust forward, displaying their procreational possibilities to any passing females the way young men of a certain athletic demographic are apt to do. Further on up the road a Bike Club (of the Electraglide in Blue variety) park their beards in a layby to admire metal and swap stories of Easy Rider derring-do.

All relatively quiet in Hellidon though, except the pub's still being refurbished to the sound of Polish jokes and Radio 1, so there's no morning coffee to be had. A scotty dog wanders out onto the Green to sniff my boots. And this is all very welcome bucolic normality on the morning Allied cruise missiles have struck chemical weapons' facilities in Damascus and Homs. As I drove in, I'd been pondering the odds on a Russian reply in kind against Akrotiri.

Just around here the parishes and their churches are inconveniently grouped for my purposes. First up today I'm retracing my steps in the direction of Badby. The English cricket season has drifted into its wettest start for more than a decade. Match after match is being abandoned because of soggy outfields. The cricket authorities have become complacent about the good April weather of recent years. And just here the fields are sodden too after weeks of regular precipitation. The sheep look ragged and miserable - hard going for them and for me. The gentle drumlin shapes of the hills are softly outlined in the morning light: it's a joyful walk despite the squish and squelch. The sheep are tolerant enough of my presence, but as a microlight passes over (and now I remember there's an airfield close to Hellidon) they scatter. I join a green lane and pass to the south of Arbury Hill. Soon there are lovely views across the valley at what in a grander landscape would be called the 'head of the pass'. Thereafter the line of the old way is for a while marked by scrub trees on both sides. Soil erosion is causing them to slip slowly down the hill. I turn on to the metalled road and greet three walkers, who return my shouted hello with puzzled diffidence. They're in that class of person one encounters in the countryside who for whatever reason at that moment look uncomfortable. Maybe they're lost, though if so they don't ask for directions. Maybe they're up to no good: they're certainly appear ill-assorted for age and equipment. Of course, they may be saying the same about me - muddled old codger, looks like a tramp, might be a bit bonkers, best not to engage etc. etc.

                                                                      Arbury Hill

The entrance to Badby from this side is called Bunkers Hill and I remember a similar name for a lane I used to walk in Kent as a teenager. I suppose these may have been bunkers from which to shoot, or perhaps bothies to which one retired for a sandwich and a nip in between reducing the squire's pheasant population. At the top of the descent is Whetherday's Garden Centre, which like others of its ilk seems to be branching out into 'collectables'. That this is a trend I know from sometime guilty afternoon pleasure Antiques Road Trip.

I think I've observed this before in a previous post, but prolonged or effort-heavy walking induces obsessive or unexpected mental process in me, perhaps due to lack of oxygen. So as I enter the village this fine spring morning I catch myself humming over and over again the verse of a much-loved hymn from distant childhood:

'Glad that I live am I
That the sky is blue
Glad for the country lanes
And the fall of dew
After the sun the rain
After the rain the sun
This is the way of life
Till the work be done...'

It's a bittersweet thing, to rehearse something so meaningful but from so far in the personal past, to know that despite the intensity of the moment's experience how close the work is to being finished in one's own life.

The path onwards to Staverton follows a rushing stream (well, rushing today at any rate) fed from springs which mark one of the sources of the Nene. A little way along is the ruin of a mill, unmarked on the OS. The path goes ahead invisibly over richly brown ploughed fields, but the waymark posts are clear on the far side, so the decent and sensible thing is not to disturb any sowing or clag my boots and I zigzag the margins uphill to a copse which opens onto Staverton's rather sad-looking playing field. No one's playing footie this Saturday afternoon, nor for a few past, judging by the the random distribution of the goalposts and the faintness of the pitch markings. St. Mary's church is over the road presiding over the aura of calm organisation Staverton radiates.

Inside floor heaters are scattered around the four quadrants, and it does feel chilly, but the sanctuary is filled with beautiful light. I love the gargoyle on the back wall, tongue hanging out either lasciviously or in urgent need of a pint. It looks as it it's escaped from an Indian or South American temple. But why just the one? Was the stonemason humoured with this single piece of fun as compensation for his earnest toil on the more regular tasks? But no more than that, Joe! 'Twouldn't be right in God's church...

Less happily there are sundry rather tatty photographs of past incumbents displayed near an unusually large honours board for churchwardens. Would it be cranky of me to suggest that if the photos are going to be there (presumably because they have continued meaning for the congregation) they should be re-framed and freshened up? I notice that one of the portraits shows Rev. Allan Wintersgill, Rector here in the 1980s and father of Andrew, organiser of Northampton's Great Knights Folk Club. Time was, the best folk club in the county was to be found at the Dun Cow in Daventry, just a couple of miles away. I must have sung there in company with Andrew once upon a time.

I eat a happy sandwich in the sun-dappled churchyard and reflect on where I am with the Church and its organisation. For a few months I've been reading St. John's Gospel with growing puzzlement, partly assuaged by the writing of Tom Wright and Richard Bauckham. I've been shocked by the strangeness of the Gospel's language, so elliptical, so dualist, so challenging. Are you in or are you out? it keeps asking, but the in-ness or out-ness is to a relationship not the membership of a body. That only comes later in the New Testament ( ordinally though not chronologically) once Paul's fierce voice comes to the fore. So John's Gospel poses a challenge to me and the Church as it searches, in common with many other institutions, to find 'relevance'. To illustrate what I mean I heard a Radio 5 discussion the other day which forecast the death of Sport as we know it, Jim. The argument runs that Young People are far more interested in video-gaming (which is campaigning to be recognised as a 'sport'), and that football, tennis, cricket etc. etc. are destined to be numerically overwhelmed in the foreseeable future. No, I don't believe it either. But I'm not so sure about organised Christian religion. And I don't know if it's my imagination, but I think I can detect in the increasingly frenetic and shrill yoof-biased presentation of sport on telly that there's a growing insecurity about its cultural hegemony. It's not only Christians who fear the immediate future as a 'remnant'.

I pop into Staverton's Countryman pub where Susanne serves me a GB and has time for a brief natter after a hectic patch in the kitchen and at front of house. She worked in Improvement at Siemens, husband Rob in Safety for an airline. Restructuring provided the opportunity and now here they are in the village with their enviable business background, running a place that's thriving (and perhaps benefiting from the loss of a competitor in Hellidon for the time being!). Seems to me it requires enormous energy and liking for people to do what they do. I'll be coming back.

Over the road the path goes on the diagonal where a notice blatantly fibs that there's a 'Bull in field' (although n.b. for all I know this may not always be a fib, dear fellow-walkers!) and then progresses jauntily up and down, up and down, past Bates Farm ( no Motel available) where despite the fact that this is the Jurassic Way long distance footpath one has to start guessing the way ahead because there ain't no sign of it on the ground. I know. I'm boringly, predictably, grumpy about such matters. Or maybe just dumbed-down. Because the whole point of this section of path is to pass close to the southern end of the Catesby railway viaduct and you'd have to be blind to miss that. The viaduct carried the Great Central high over the River Leam, and provides a wonderful example of the difficulties facing the Victorian railway builders even in lowland Britain. Looking south one can see the rolling edge of the escarpment which entailed the tunnel mentioned in a previous post. To the north the terrain flattens, but avoiding a too steep gradient required the viaduct we still see today. Steaming across it at seventy miles an hour or more, the passenger would have been afforded a quintessential view of a Shire County. I wonder what the local bigwigs thought? Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford in real life.

I walk along the embankment and through the gate guarding the viaduct to enjoy the panorama, then retrace my steps and slosh along to Lower Catesby. You'll know the name, forever associated with the Gunpowder Plot. I'll encounter the family later and more tangibly when I get to Ashby St. Ledgers. Here they're just a medieval memory. The nineteenth-century chapel of St. Mary and St. Edmund is down a straight well-kept drive. There's a gate to a muddy paddock and stepping stones which take one in unorthodox fashion across the dirt to its locked front door. In the foreground two black and be-horned sheep beat a retreat, while a third white sheep of a different breed (sorry folks, my townie ignorance of farm animals is showing badly!) comes and nuzzles me, absolutely tame. Or absolutely starving. A little further back some cattle, also black and be-horned raise a head and sniff in my direction, but thankfully keep their distance.

It's a rather stiff-legged walk from here up the metalled road into Hellidon where the banks beside the back lane have been sown with many clumps of primroses. What a delicate spring glory they are, a re-discovery of recent years in our countryside, as I think, after some decades of decline and neglect; flowers which together with lily-of-the-valley are a direct line into the five year old Vince's perception of what every English woodland garden should be. Glad that I live am I.

Marks on the Park:  15 km. 5 hrs. Wind: minimal. Going: very soft ( Tiger Roll won the Grand National 10-1) 18 degrees C. 18 stiles (some rather high) 21 gates.  8 bridges.  2 cattle grids. Lots of daffs. In the absence of larks, an exaltation of primroses. Two large, bright yellow butterflies. Many solitary bees on the forage. Two churches. One open.

My re-vamped personal website is now live at:  www.vincecross.co.uk and if you click on Blog it will take you straight to the site you're now on. So now you have two ways of finding me!

Lord
I thank you for the memories
About which I write at such length.
When they begin to fade,
Deal with me gently
And give me some grip on the past
So that I can continue to be thankful
For the people I have known,
The places I have seen,
The sheer immensity
Of all that I've been privileged to experience.
May what I share of the past
Be truthful,
Be generous and
Be a witness
To your love and care
For all your creation.
Amen.