All for One and One for All

A benevolent gorilla in the shape of a large 'Azores High' is sitting right on top of summertime Britain, and for the moment nothing much will shift it. The result's a run of very predictable weather. It's going to be hot later today: too hot!

I find myself decanting from the car in Watford (Northants) on the dot of seven. Back in Northampton it was just grey, but out here to the west and at an altitude less than a hundred metres higher, it's misty and dreakh. I'm walking due north on the Jurassic Way. I remember this section through the old parkland from a decade ago - just trust the compass Vince, because the waymarks won't help you! At least the cows haven't properly woken up. They turn disinterested mournfully bovine heads in my direction and keep munching. I eventually locate the route out of the park into the arable fields beyond, passing under an ornate, crested iron railway bridge, the neglected furniture of the erstwhile estate.

Since my last visit a wind farm has been erected and the path peters out in the tracks which surround the feet of the metal monster windmills. Like last week, I have to fight my way through clumps of fully grown rapeseed. As I struggle and push, I become increasingly aware I've tweaked a left calf muscle. It's very sore. My humour deteriorates. I lever myself up a mound of sileage to see where I should be headed (not something I actually recommend for health and safety reasons!) and shimmying to the right round a hedge, eventually pick up the line of the JW again.

Later on, around Silsworth Lodge, things get increasingly confusing. A plethora of notices stapled to trees and gates tell me the paths have been moved by agreement with the Council. On the ground, nothing much is very clear but I solve the problems more by luck than judgment and soon find myself securely on the way to West Haddon. Suddenly my memory is jogged about an animal encounter ten years ago. On a wet day at the side of this very field I came across a slow-worm, jet black and glistening, a creature of rare beauty, an unexpected treasure, the only one I've ever seen.

I hobble up West Haddon's High Street to the Pytchley Inn, where the pleasant staff serve me an enormous and extremely toothsome breakfast (I'm looking pretty dishevelled: the crops were early-morning wet and my shorts are soaked through). I assess the situation. Is my left leg just cramping? Have I done the most difficult part of the day? Can I at least make it to Crick, and if necessary phone from there for a cab? Or is it time to cut my losses now? I massage some Ibuleve into the muscle and allow it recovery time, then decide to keep going steadily and see what happens.

In All Saints church, the Rev. Graham Collingridge is taking Wednesday morning communion with three parishioners. I sense a moment's anxiety at my arrival on the threshold, but I'm cordially invited to stay, provided I'm quiet. The four of them review what and who they should pray for, and I hang in with them through the first part of the service until the conclusion of the readings: 2 Corinthians, and then Mark's account of Jesus calming the storm. Outside All Saints, it's anything but stormy. The sun has come out and the sky is revealing itself as a brilliant cloudless blue. The onward path to Winwick is a lovely thing, sweeping down across the vale through cornfields and over cropped grass until it joins the lane. Somewhere near West Haddon I've been told there's a place, a tumulus perhaps, called 'Oster Hill'. I can see a couple of likely sites on the 1:25000 O.S., although neither of them is named. The claim is that this represents a faint memory of the second Roman governor of Britain, Ostorius Scapula, who fought a battle on a hill somewhere, maybe here, but probably not (more likely at Stonea in Cambridgeshire!) According to Tacitus, dealing with the troublesome Britons left Scapula a worn-out, depressed man. Wider tradition has it that he was buried in Wales, but local legend would him under the soil at Oster Hill.

The hamlet of Winwick is a personal 'might-have-been'. As at Quinton, Sue and I once looked at the possibility of living in semi-communal circumstances with friend and colleague Nigel Pegrum and his first wife Angie back in the heady rock n'roll days of 1982. The Manor House had been divided and part of it was up for sale, an idyllic, Grade II pastoral retreat. It was a lovely pipe dream, but even had we been able to afford the mortgage, the maintenance would have been a money-pit, despite Nigel's very considerable practical nous. Yet even now the charms of Winwick call to me...

June is gardening in the house next to St. Oswald's church. Why is there a church dedicated to Oswald in this neck of the woods? He was a seventh-century Northumbrian king, and it's not surprising to learn that a notable church in Durham has his name. But he was an absolute enemy of Mercia, and though after his death in battle (at Oswestry) the Mercians may have acknowledged his holiness, this sounds like cool and grudging recognition rather than reverence. June is clearly proud of Winwick's village church, and grateful that they've managed to install a loo there recently. Up till now she's been donating comfort breaks to funeral goers and others in her house, which must have been truly inconvenient. As she says, the gentlemen can always 'do a farmer's', but this isn't necessarily an option for visiting ladies. Inside St. Oswald's there's a pleasing smell of polish, probably at June's hand. Its crowning glory is the west wall contemporary stained glass which shows a plan of the village (you can just make out the details in the lower central section) flanked by trees against dramatic fields and sky.

As I limp up the lane towards Crick across the wold, the sun is ever higher. A problem with road walking at this time of year is the reflected heat, hence the reference to 'track temperatures' at motor racing Grand-Prixs, where summer measurements of 40+ degrees aren't so uncommon. It feels every bit of that as I gratefully leave the tarmac to walk through the ripening barley to the fishponds at Foxholes Farm. I pick my way on down and over the canal to the road junction at the entrance to Crick. I stop on a town bench only to be immediately joined by a fellow traveller who accuses me of hogging the shady bit. It's not a good conversational opener, so I leave him to enjoy his ice-cream and the solitude, and press on for a GB at the Royal Oak where feisty pensioners are ordering ham pie and veggie bake. The pub landlord has been in situ since 1976 (though that's a trifle beside the 62 year long incumbency of one long-dead Rector at Preston Capes!)  Afterwards I cross the road to the architectural confusion of St. Margaret's. A gaggle of undertakers stands quietly on the church path, and momentarily I'm rather annoyed to be thwarted in my investigation of Crick's church. However a few minutes late I hear the strains of Abide with me and deduce that the funeral service must be drawing to a close. I watch as the procession emerges into the sun and then hangs a left towards the side of the churchyard where I'm waiting: unusually Jennie Bromley, the deceased, is being buried in her own church grounds. I remove my battered hat as they pass, and the funeral director acknowledges me with the slightest inclination of her head. It's a touching moment. Amongst the mourners are several uniformed carers. Jennie was 92. On the service sheet it says that any donations will go to the Alzheimer's Society and Marie Curie. One can draw one's own conclusions.

Inside the church, there's a lot to look at. The south aisle is all fearfully out of kilter, woodwork and windows at angles to each other as if there was once an earthquake here. This is a place of worship which has been serially patched and replace over hundreds of years. It was briefly the incumbency of William Laud, later Archbishop of Canterbury, who was a supporter of Charles I, and paid for it, executed in 1645 at the age of 72 for no single good reason except a general feeling that he was treasonous, and had an inclination towards Catholicism. The churchpersonship of the present day St. Margaret's is difficult to discern from what I can see. There are New English Hymnals but also copies of Mission Praise, so perhaps like our own church it's one of the declining number of active, well-attended, middle-of-the-road congregations. It's a cheap shot, but I think there may be an inclination among more radical Evangelicals to quote Revelations on Laodicea - that because such places are neither hot nor cold, they should end up in the spittoon.

The words Evangelical and Catholic  should both carry entirely positive affect, it seems to me. Surely all Christians should feel that they have 'Good News' for the world, in the way that Jesus did when he preached in the context of a Jewish people caught in a hopeless cycle of trying to appease an angry God (I don't say that modern day Judaism necessarily shares this perspective, but how would you  feel if you had only the O.T. for solace?)  Likewise Catholic simply means an embracing of the faithful...ours is a faith for everyone, isn't it? Yet these two words have become yah-boo terms in the world of ecclesiastical politics, badges to be worn in order to exclude rather than include. We should be ashamed of ourselves, and start over.

I'm still hurting, but I decide against a cab. I now have a choice on the way back to Watford. Road or footpath? The destination is the same so in one sense it doesn't matter much. Because I'm carrying a slight injury, I choose the road, and very pretty it is too. In view of my previous paragraph I'm going to let you do the work of metaphor.

Dents on the fender:  18.5 km. 7 hrs. (but one hour for breakfast, and my leg - did I mention my leg? - was slowing me down. 12.5 deg C. at the outset. 25 deg back at the car, mitigated by a nice cool breeze. One hypochondriac. Lots of rabbits. One hare. Lovely memory of a slow worm. Three churches: all open. One very good breakfast. 16 stiles. 14 gates. 7 little bridges.

Father

We thank you for the glorious variation in your world;
For the constant flux and change we see;
That no day is the same as another,
Tho' circumstance can make us feel it is;
That history, if it repeats itself at all,
Is never exactly replicated;
That we as humans are utter individuals
With different looks, opinions and tastes.

But, Father, help us not to make an idol
Of our self-hood.
Help us to embrace our common humanity
And not to be ashamed that you have called us as a people.
May we truly acknowledge the unity of our creatureliness
And agree that we are your children
Together tasked with caring for your beautiful garden
This wonderful Kingdom of Heaven.
Amen.