but some way down the long list is an absolute inability to remember lines or lyrics. Just about the only one which has ever really stuck over the decades is Edward Thomas' poem 'Adlestrop', learned at the earnest behest of English teacher Mr. Steve Woodley thousands of years ago: 'Yes, I remember Adlestrop - / The name, because one afternoon/ Of heat the express train drew up there/ Unwontedly. It was late June/ The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat/ No one left and no one came/ On the bare platform. What I saw/ Was Adlestrop. Only the name.'
In its simple elegance and unspoken foreshadowing of the Great War, it's been a pretty good lifelong companion. Anyway, as I set out from Ashby St. Ledgers, it's that sort of Adlestrop day, oppressively humid and quiet; something waiting to happen. Today I'm learning about pilgrimage to the max what I suppose is always a possibility in solo walking, which is that sometimes one has to forget about enjoying oneself and grit the teeth both physically and mentally. Despite the fact that the farmer's done his best with the field paths, I'm already feeling weary under the sun by the time I reach Welton although in slight mitigation it's hard pushing through the waist-high undergrowth where the rapeseed has drooped over the cut right of way.
I'm in that state the Greeks called 'aporia': an existential perplexity which defies resolution, and before you shout 'oh for heaven's sake just get over it', don't tell me you've never been there. Don't understand Brexit. Don't understand the Americans. Don't understand God and therefore not a ghost of understanding the Church of England. Don't understand People. Don't understand, most of all, don't understand Me. And if one's lucky, the rhythm of the walk rehearses and rehearses the cycle of puzzlement, slowly untangling it. Socrates famously said that he was the wisest of men because he was aware he knew nothing. Perhaps his 'method', which got a surprising outing in a recent episode of Sky Living's Madam Secretary ( for the uninitiated, a 'West Wing Lite' with occasional flashes of originality amid frequent thematic plagiarism) whereby Socrates claimed to be a midwife to the truth by relentless questioning, was simply just relentless questioning from a place of angst and aporia. Of course I'm tempted to say that if this doesn't also represent your state of mind as you read this, you're delusional, given 2018's politics. Yet, as I was driving to Ashby today, there were so many people phoning in to Five Live expressing their unshakeable green-ink conviction that immediate cliff-edge Brexit must be enacted NOW. How nice to be so certain. Not. All that and dog poo.
Inside St. Martin's Welton it's cool, and there's a table where I can de-stress and eat a sandwich ( not enough carbs?) There's even a box of tissues with which to wipe my Coronation Chicken mouth. Beside me there's the handsome case of St. Martin's two manual organ, and pictures of the church's patron saint. The organ began its life in Suffolk's Hengrave Hall, and was gifted to the church for the coronation of the Queen by a local benefactor, so my choice of sandwich turns out to be very appropriate, As I leave I buy a copy of Douglas Feaver's commentary on the Collects, a couple of slightly dog-eared copies of which are lying among other random printed matter at the back of the church. Douglas Feaver was the Bishop of Peterborough who confirmed me in the early eighties. I once came across him in full episcopal gear, cope and mitre, playing honky tonk piano to himself in the music room at the School for Girls in Northampton, and retreated on tiptoe rather than interrupt his reverie. He was a very eccentric, sometimes rather rude man, and I was rather more in awe of bishops back then than I am now.
There are only a score or so regulars in the congregation at St. Martin's. Nat White is their (relatively) new vicar. Her predecessor Sarah Brown said the following in a recent annual church report. It puts the dilemma of many parishes very well.
'I believe that we are balanced on the line between terminal decline (one member of the congregation at a time), and the opportunity to grow the church and safeguard the future of Christian mission in Welton by developing new congregations... (and here Sarah makes reference to new housing projects locally)
...the challenge is to take these opportunities while properly taking care of the people and traditions that we already have. Time will tell what compromises and changes will have to be made and what we should hold fast to...
...If the choice is 'As long as it sees me out without changing' then a loving management of decline will be the appropriate model of ministry. If there exists a passion for the long term future of Christ's church then the model of ministry will be energetic, riskier, outgoing and missionary, but there will be costs associated.'
Sarah is now Canon Missioner at the Cathedral. But is it simply a matter of A or B? And is what Sarah says code for 'Move over Dadd-i-o, and make way for the hip cats...'?
Welton is a village of springs, and the church is perched on the edge of a little hill looking out over the valley, so that the view from the road makes the undulations on the far side look more impressive than they actually are. I cross some fields past a donkey sanctuary towards the Braunston arm of the Grand Union Canal, and promptly have a brain-fade, turning right rather than left along the towpath. I only realise my mistake when I'm nearly back in Daventry because suddenly there's a main road where no main road should be. I turn on my heel, hold my head high, and saunter nonchalantly back past bargees and tramps, wishing one and all a happy summer's day and pretending this was exactly what I'd intended for my day's rambling entertainment.
There are a number of pleasures to be enjoyed on the way back to Norton Junction where the canal offers the northward bound traveller two options - should she steer for Leicester or Braunston? A massive heron takes gracefully to the air and flaps away above me, head and beak jutting, gradually descending to another fishing pitch two hundred metres away. A duck stands by a sluice watching her clutch of mini-ducklings make their first moves towards independence. I chide her for being a bad mother and then am unexpectedly moved that she's only doing what we all do as responsible parents, hearts in mouths, allowing our children risk and uncertainty. A narrow boat flying the Cornish flag chugs by, and I offer the opinion that they're a long way from Lostwithiel, which gets a smile. By Buckby top lock there's a boaty hiatus. (It sometimes seems off-puttingly hard work getting a boat through the locks!) A country lady is limping around, eliciting sympathy. 'Oi slipped back there and went on moi arse' she complains to another waiting crew, 'And now moi knee's bust. So that's moi lot for the day!' 'Easily done' replies the other party, winching, shoving and pulling, sweat dripping.
Yet again I cross Watling Street and the railway and the motorway, and by fields arrive in the housing estate on the edge of Long Buckby where I need Googlemap's assistance to find the centre of this sprawling townage ( i.e. L.B. is halfway between a village and a town!) So long is Long Buckby that nearly four thousand people live here, but its shoe-making and railway heyday is of course long since done and dusted. It was once the home of Stanley Unwin, who made a single verbal gag into a complete career, and acknowledged how lucky he was to do so. The Victorian red-brick buildings of the shoe era crowd impressively around the townside view of St. Lawrence's church, whose interior was restored by George Gilbert Scott in 1862 but which I can't see because the church is double locked, reinforcing just how urban is this place. So I sit and look at the sheep in the fields behind the churchyard, and think of the characters who might have sought refuge here from the drudgery of factory or marshalling yard, or who might have lived in picturesque Nuns Lane, which runs up one side of St. Lawrence's in a fashion suggestive of a medieval past.
As I walk out to the west, a green Triumph Herald convertible, hood down, yorrocks into town. A seventy-something lady is driving. Her be-capped gentlemen companions all look jolly pleased with themselves. The scene is redolent of a sixties' Punch cartoon. Well, the weather's shifted. It's now a breezy afternoon, so why not? Less Adlestrop, more the top of the Malverns. Are they churchgoers, I wonder. If not, what would attract them inside?
A road-avoiding bridle path takes me north and then west again towards Watford. No, no, not that Watford, silly-billies, beyond which culture is alleged to vanish in a cloud of soot and squashed vowels. This is Watford of the famous Gap, where the motorway service station was once the late-night haunt of pop stars, models and the nouveau riche crowd making large with quiffs and starched petticoats back when the two-tone ice-cream coloured Ford Zodiac and Vauxhall Cresta were King and Queen. But to get to the land of these delights I first have to negotiate countryside obstacles I shouldn't have to deal with. First of all comes the crossing of the railway out of Northampton towards Rugby. It's not immediately clear what to expect from the O.S. but what one has to do is locate the hidden gap in the undergrowth which carries the path up a ramp in a copse where once there must have been a bridge over the permanent way. But the bridge is long gone, so the walker drops level with the track to 'Stop, Look and Listen', before venturing out across the welded rail and gravel - except that some of the metal inserts designed to help him do this are missing. 'Could you just tweet for me, Donald? Thanks. 'Not Good!!! @ NetworkRail'
Then come sweary moments, courtesy of a farmer who hasn't time for his side of the country code bargain...
Grrr!
St. Peter and St. Paul's Watford is just an average country church, you'd think. Not big, but not small either. And inside there's nothing very posh about the place. Without being rude, you'd have to say, it's not particularly well-appointed, though the pews look nice and shiny. The altar's covered in plastic, so there's either an ongoing problem with birds or bats, or restoration work's going on. Which it may well be. Over the last five or six years £224k has been spent, just to keep the church safe and upright. There've been grants from public bodies of course, but I expect the villagers have worked pretty hard themselves to keep intact the building which more than any other defines the heart of their community. I refer you back to Sarah Brown's challenge, and I'm in perplexity again, not knowing how to reconcile the competing goods of national culture and being an ambassador for the Gospel. If they are competing...
The website for SS. Peter and Paul teases us. There's probably a crypt under the chancel, but no one knows exactly where. Don't we all love a secret passage!
Goals in the net: 22 km. 7 hrs. 23 stiles. 21 gates. 9 bridges. 3 churches, one closed. 21 deg. C. Variable cloud. One rabbit. One heron. One buzzard. Two annoying farmers ( I didn't mention the second one, but he seems unilaterally to have diverted the Jurassic Way between Watford and Ashby, constructing elaborate schemes of electrified fences and possibly removing some waymarks supposedly in the interests of public health and safety because of his admittedly very large herd of cattle. One for the Council this, I think. And possibly the CPRE.)
Father
I'm not clever enough to work this out.
I see there must be a link
Between Free Will
And Not Knowing What To Do,
But sometimes I could wish
You'd made things easier for us.
I confess.
Sometimes I just do bad things
And then I'm sorry,
And try hard not to do them again.
Other times...
I just don't have a clue
So either I 'hit and hope'
Or I hunker down
With my head in my hands.
Help us, Lord.
Give us a sign.
Show us what to do,
Even if it gives us more opportunities
To disobey you.
Amen
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