VISITING THOMAS

A smiley man pops out of Church House by the bridge in Wansford, and politely asks me if I’d mind moving the car down a few feet. He’s expecting a delivery of groceries. ‘Of course’ I say. It’s a picturesque place to live. They’re probably plagued with walkers and fisherfolk parking outside their home.

The Nene Way ducks under the old and newer bridges for the A1 (one for each carriageway) and continues to follow the river’s flow towards the North Sea through the clovered Sacrewell fields. I feel sure I’ve walked this part of the long-distance path before, but nothing seems familiar. Perhaps it was just too long ago, or the route’s been altered. Not many folk are using this part of the Nene Way at the moment: the grass has been cleared to a degree, perhaps by wardens, but is fighting back vigorously. Bunnies scuttle across the path (little ones, so not jumping), a huge grey heron takes to the air, and when I eventually emerge onto a wider track near some fractious horses, a guilty fox skulks away. The path angles through a plantation and before I quite realise it, I’m in the hamlet of Sutton beside the little church of St. Michael and All Angels, which was once a chapel of ease for today’s main destination, Castor’s St. Kyneburgha’s. A Wikipedia article tells me that in 2010 St. Michael’s received a £37k grant so that it could become a community hub for the villagers, and that it’s since ‘been improved further with such things as heating systems and carpeting’. Surely not! Honestly - people these days, where’s their backbone?  What does one go to church for except to suffer a bout of good old hypothermia?  Opposite it, at the end of the plantation, there’s a small football pitch and lots of nice apparatus for getting warm again after worship. Sutton is clearly a thoughtful place. (Before anyone shouts at me, yes, absolutely, it’s a struggle for small communities to raise the cash for even modest church improvement, and that’s leaving aside heritage questions which may cause difficulties in getting the necessary faculties). So, joking apart, tick in the box for Sutton.

At the end of Lover’s Lane, a gate opens onto a field where the cattle munch away with fierce concentration. The finger posts offer me two routes to the Nene Valley Railway’s Wansford Station. The slightly longer one requires me to make a too-close-for-comfort transit of the cows, the shorter one lets me leave them undisturbed. I choose the latter. In trainspotting terms, this turns out to be a mistake. The path issues onto an old disused railway embankment which in turn brings me to meadows some way beyond Wansford’s Railway HQ with no visible way back towards it. Bother!  I’m thwarted in my desire to ogle sundry collected delights of heritage transport. More than that, I find the onward route is mostly through armpit high grasses. All kinds of insects lurking therein are overjoyed to find human flesh on the lunch menu. I spend an uncomfortable half hour flapping and scratching. I’m still thoroughly itchy about the arms and face when I get to Normangate Meadows. It’s a sultry day, and the oppressive effect is accentuated by the booming sound of fast jets in the vicinity. A fisherman leaves his rods on the riverbank to climb onto the path where it’s clearer of foliage. He shades his eyes. ‘Can hear ‘em, but can’t see ‘em’, he says, and neither can I. Which is the point of the war games, I suppose – but it’s rather uncanny nonetheless.

With a name like Castor, you’d expect the Romans to have been a major story in the village’s life. Normangate was something of an industrial area for the settlement of Durobrivae whose remains sit under the fields on the Nene’s other, south bank at Water Newton. Ermine Street cuts diagonally across the broad meadow as I look at it, a still discernible raised platform on the sheeped grass. I follow the path to Splash Dike, turn into Splash Lane and find a pub for a ginger ale, before climbing Stocks Hill to St. Kyneburgha’s massively impressive, elegant pile.

There’s so much fascinating history here it’s hard to know where to begin, but let’s start with the church as I find it today, which is open-hearted and generous, with tons of interest in every nook and cranny. The high altar is up three sets of steps, which gives the place the feeling of a tiny cathedral. There’s a beautiful wall painting with Catherine and her baleful wheel of destiny prominent on the lower panel. A wonderfully worked tapestry hangs nearby, the work of the W.I. from 1991, skilfully showing features of the village. A faint whiff of incense is detectable near the altar, or perhaps it’s just the flowers. I think maybe there’s a musical tradition: some modern, movable choir stalls and Herbert Sumsion’s unison setting on the organ. I wonder how they’re doing in this respect through Covid times. I’d assumed such a lovely place would be included in Simon Jenkins ‘1000 best’, but it isn’t. Missed one there, Simon.

 

These holy women of early British Christianity – what do we make of them? We met Etheldreda at Guilsborough a couple of years ago, and then there was Tibba, a kinswoman of Kyneburgha, whose presence is still felt at Ryhall, and now perhaps most important and historical of all, this saint of Castor. She was daughter of Penda, the pagan King of Mercia, and through her probably diplomatic marriage to Alhfrith, son of the Christian King of Northumbria Oswy, she herself converted to the Faith. After Alhfrith’s death, sometime after the Synod of Whitby in 664, she came to Castor and founded a convent.  But why Castor?

Roughly where the church now stands was once a monumental Roman Praetorium, a centre of

government for the Fens. Artists’ reconstructions make this three storied building look like a grand seventeenth century Tuscan palace. Its robbed-out stone provided building materials for the Saxon church, its walls were still standing four metres high in the 18^th century (a couple of chunks still protrude over the roadside at Stocks Hill) and its pavements have caused gravediggers repeated problems. The site has been pored over by archaeologists since the time of William Stukeley, and more recently even Time Team spent a happy weekend digging and speculating at the request of local academics.

So I suppose an attraction for Kyneburgha may have been that there was a conveniently plentiful supply of stone available to be re-used in her new convent-building. But more than that, some of the ‘finds’ from Castor and Durobrivae include the earliest Christian silver plate known in the UK, together with relatively late Roman pottery marked with a chi-ro. So just perhaps in this place there was an unusual continuity of Christian community right across the presumed turbulence of fifth and sixth century Britain. Did Christianity then, as sometimes seems to be the case now, continue to hang on among the middle classes, while working people plumped for something more visceral. Football now, paganism then?

How wonderful it would be if Kyneburgha’s bones had been left to rest in Castor. But the monks translated her remains as well as those of Tibba to Peterborough so that they could be permanently closer to her holiness. We can feel this to be an act of selfishness, or with today’s eyes, an inappropriate annexing of female power, perhaps even an attempt to weaken the influence of women saints, by preventing an individual cult in a nearby potentially rival place.  Castor is still worthy of pilgrimage. We could all start making it a regular thing.

Descending the steps on the south side, I pass the happy normality of the C of E school doing games on their well-appointed outside space, whistles, laughter and encouragement. One thing about Covid, sometimes the ordinary becomes suddenly, inexplicably moving, particularly when one becomes aware of the centuries of history that lie behind us. It caught me that way in the Cathedral a couple of weeks ago, and does so again now.

Back in Wansford, I’m taking off my boots by the Polo’s tailgate when a lady who doesn’t live in Church House is impatient to back her car into the space behind me. She drives within inches of my feet, and then waits huffily to complete her manouevres. I can feel the drumming of her fingers on her steering wheel. She’s probably plagued with walkers and fisherfolk etc…

I drive a mile or two down the Old Great North Road, and turn off to see what’s happening at the Nene Valley Railway. Not much. A couple of seniors hobble out of the ticket office, but apart from that it’s a replay of the Edward Thomas poem ‘Adlestrop’:  The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat/No one left and no one came/on the bare platform…’  But this weekend, no doubt there’ll be kids and their parents queueing for a ride on a ‘Thomas the Tank Engine Special’. It will be exactly fifty years since the Rev. W. Awdry signed Thomas’s cab at Wansford.

I try to put that anniversary together with the history of Kyneburgha, an arc of history across 1400 years, and am totally, completely flummoxed.

Tesserae in the museum:  14.5 km. 4.2 hrs. 20 deg C.  Mostly sunny, but rather oppressively humid.  6 stiles. 18 gates. 5 bridges.  Animal life as described above. One Saxon cross. One diesel-hauled train on the move.  A kindly nod from a couple at the pub (I never know quite what to make of this…friendliness?  ‘thank goodness we can at least all sit outside at a pub and have a drink…’ sympathy? ‘poor old codger, down on his luck…’  empathy? ‘it’s a good day for walking…’) Two churches: one a ‘must-see’.

 Lord God

 Thank you for these people

We have come to know

From the distant Christian past

Kyneburgha and Tibba

Hilda and Etheldreda

Oswy and Aelfred

Augustine and Bede

And countless more:

For their example and action

Through the centuries

Picked up by the saints

From my church childhood

Like:

FHB Smith

Alfie Oman

Harold Neave

Charlie Harris

And my mum and dad

Betty and Don

(Supply your own names, dear readers!)

And then those who have accompanied us

On our latter walk in faith

And are now also with you

Like:

Zoe Cosserat

Ann Goodman

And John White

(Again, you’ll have your own list, my friends!)

Names picked almost at random

From an address book

Because there are so many others

In this great

Extraordinary

Cloud of witnesses.

What an incredible privilege

To be part of this story.

Hopefully one more name in the

Book of Life.

O Lord

Increase our faith.

Amen.

 

 

SEMPER FIDELIS

 

The machines in the Stamford car park won’t take credit cards – apparently it’s a facility which isn’t available at this present time, so with a bad grace I surrender some of my precious stash of coins. It’s one of those things about my personal behaviour which has changed during the pandemic:  I no longer get or use cash unless I absolutely have to, and mildly resent that those who said ‘proper’ money was on its way out are being proved right. Last Sunday at the Cathedral I made an instant donation though their card-swipe – so easy, so painless, but a little less invested in ceremony. In future will we Christians retain coins and notes as a symbolic gesture of giving, like a self-conscious bow to the altar, or is that just an old way of thinking? Or perhaps a card-reader will need to be placed on the chancel steps, so that the connection between our faith and our wallet is made more obvious. We will walk up to it, pause, turn, extract our plastic with due solemnity and a declination of the head, swipe, step back and move on up.

I ascend the slope of Wothorpe Road but where that old route out of Stamford continues on to the village, veer up beside the hedge line to the lane known as First Drift which exits on the Old Great North Road by the wall of the Burghley Estate.  I presume that ‘Wothorpe’ might mean ‘farm on the promontory/hill’, and indeed at two hundred and sixty six feet, the settlement represents the highest point in the Soke of Peterborough. Wikipedia says rather tartly: ‘Although unmarked, the summit is of interest to participants in hill-bagging who visit these high points of the historic counties of England’. There was once a Benedictine monastery there. Those monks always had a feel for healthy living.

Four ladies are preparing for the first hole of the Burghley golf course, light sweaters in pastel colours, jolly checked slacks and sun visors. They may not need the latter; it’s one of those odd English summer days, dull and damp feeling but clammily warm. Ahead of them a foursome of chaps are cheerfully hacking their way round the course with a marked absence of skill. I keep an eye on them for fear of one of their balls issuing in an unlikely and dangerous direction. I remember very well the film footage of one time US Vice-President Spiro Agnew felling an incautious spectator with a tee shot which flew at terrifying velocity forty-five degrees from its anticipated direction. The unremarkable track beside the first hole is in fact Ermine Street, which just here takes a dink in its general northwards progress from London to Lincoln and York, perhaps mindful of the higher ground and a good crossing of the Welland just where upstream navigation becomes more difficult. Around me is country estate parkland of the sort that mildly resembles savannah, the grass long, browning and wispy. There are sheep here, and signs of cattle, and at one point I must be passing the line of the famous Horse Trials course because to my immediate right is one of the fences.  I’ve never been to one of these events, and as always with sport, television flattens the actuality – which in some ways is a good thing because being there in person is always so much better. The fence is an awe-inspiring sight. Wow! Deep respect Princess Anne!  The first element is a relatively straightforward row of brush, but beyond it is a deep ditch with stone at its bottom, and this is followed by a much higher, more rigid looking construction of brush and pole. The gap between the two parts of the fence over the ditch is substantial. It must take some bravery to commit your favourite horse to such a jump.

                                       It looks a whole lot more friendly here than it really is...

Eventually I emerge at a road junction where I’m momentarily confused. The priority of the lanes doesn’t quite reflect what I see on the map. I trust the cartographers and walking on enter Barnack along Wittering Road beside the Hills and Holes.  This is now a country park full of flowers and butterflies, but from Roman times was an important quarrying site. Barnack stone (Oolitic Lincolnshire limestone) adorns the great cathedrals of Peterborough and Ely, and when the Fenland monasteries who’d bickered over rights to the stone were dissolved, the dressed blocks from their dorters and minsters were removed to grace the ranges of new Cambridge colleges.

In view of the high status of this industry, it’s unsurprising that St John the Baptist’s church is spacious and ancient. Its marvellously solid, square Saxon tower is topped by a Norman spire that IMO looks slightly incongruous: the invaders might have done better to leave the building as it was. Was it simply greater visibility that encouraged them to go on building upwards or just cultural imperialism. See, we’re better than them!  Well, no, not necessarily.

I’m thinking a lot about allegiances at the moment – and a recent Thought for the Day on Radio 4 picked up the same theme. As Christians we’ll always say God has the first call on our fealty, though from childhood many of us dread the thought that, as has happened to countless martyrs through the ages, we might ever have to make good on those promises, as Japanese Christians did even as late as the nineteenth century. But ‘downwards’ from those ultimate statements of investment, we owe allegiances to family, friends, town, county, principality, sports teams, workplaces, and so on, and there’ll be few of us who haven’t experienced some conflict of interest at some point. One of the most common for me has been a perceived need to compromise on my own cherished sense of who I am in the interests of those who might employ me, which is why most of my working life has been spent in self-employment – avoiding the issue, you might say. But at least I have been able (to some degree!) to choose my own ‘uniform’, working hours, and even who I work with.

One of the contradictions that’s becoming most obvious at a very local, Anglican level is whether village identity always trumps benefice identity. Is it right only to engage with what goes on at ‘my’ church, even if that’s just a single eucharist per month, or should my principal unit of interest be the benefice, so that I get in the car and travel to wherever worship is happening?  In our current case in Welland Fosse, that could be in one of five churches, but there are benefices with far more potential venues even than that.  Now I know that currently Zoom has changed the rules of the game to some degree, but we don’t yet know how that story is going to play out in five years’ time, and we must surely hope and pray that the average Christian’s focus isn’t permanently limited to fifty minutes on-line per week. What’s certain is that the Church of England’s finances won’t emerge from Covid enhanced. As with many other institutions life will be a bit of a struggle. Fewer clergy? Fewer churches? With every passing year the choices become increasingly stark.

So good people, how much does your own ‘village life’ (urban or rural) affect your view of your Christian calling and affections – your missionary responsibilities?  It is of course, often easier to separate the place you worship from the place you live. My good friend Gerald often said to me, encouraging me to let my up-tight English hair down as we were about to go on stage, ‘It’s OK, you don’t know anyone here’. A hub church can enable us to hide our perceived frailties rather well.  Whereas your next door neighbours hear you swear when the mower won’t start.  But hey, giving in to that pressure is just cowardice, right? For most of us at some point the accusation that we’re ‘whited sepulchres’ sticks. It’s part of being human.

Yesterday it rained all day, and the humid atmosphere means there’s been little evaporation so the bottom half of me is pretty soggy, including my boots. It’s the first time in a while I’ve worn anything but trainers, and the increased effort required from this minuscule addition of weight always surprises me. Today’s is a short walk, but already I feel I’m dragging my feet as I follow the B road up to the hamlet of Pilsgate, whence the parish has persuaded the Burghley Estate to provide a roadside path all the way round to the Estate’s main entrance. Even better, the new stone path’s been hidden behind a hedge, so one is insulated from the passing traffic as well as kept safe. Seems to me this is a simple but great initiative reflecting well on all concerned. I’d been wondering how this bit of the walk would work out if I had to mix it with the Stamford traffic.

The rest of the route back to the car is through the lower half of Burghley. Some outliers from the deer herd are grazing close to the fence, but of course, as soon as they sense the camera, they turn their backs and mooch away. Patience is a required virtue in wildlife photographers:  I wouldn’t be well-suited. There are a good number of visitors in the grounds. I don’t know how the owners feel about it, but most of the visitors are customers now, and since the Customer is King, the aristocrats owe allegiance to them. It wasn’t always so, as one is reminded in exiting the estate through a (very) back, tradesman’s door into Stamford’s streets.

Doffs of the hat:  13.5 km. 3.75 hours.  19 degrees C.  Cloudy throughout, and very humid.  Six stiles.  Eight gates. One bridge.  One church plus a fly-past of St. Martin’s Stamford (interesting website but boards across windows by porch).  Animal life: mostly domestic – sheep and deer. One glossily, definitively black raven, imperious in a field by the Estate.

 Lord God

To call you ‘Lord’ still makes sense to me,

Iconoclast though I am

With all that historical stuff that rattles around in my brain.

But I wonder

Does it register with someone under the age of 30?

Their heads seem to be somewhere else.

So much of popular culture seems so worldly

Or if not that

Post modern

See it my way

Make it up as you go along

Hippy-dippy crystal gazing.

 

I acknowledge again that I am a creature

And you are the creator.

And I slowly feel my way to what is appropriate

In view of that:

Profound gratefulness

Awe

Love

Wonder.

Thank you.

Amen.

BOOM! SHAKE THE ROOM!

 Well yo are y’all ready for me yet?  (DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince)

In the week up to June 4^th, RAF Wittering was host to the (annual?) Exercise Swift Pirate which this year saw the airfield play the part of a foreign location where humanitarian assistance is required. The theme was ‘Human Security’.  Over the decades the airbase has fulfilled various roles, but in recent decades logistics has always been its major task, so the sight of the Service’s massive transport aircraft in Rutland’s skies isn’t that unusual. Local plane-spotters had an extra treat too, because, (coincidentally? I wouldn’t think so…) some of Coningsby’s Typhoons were on detachment there for the first time in a while.  As, Basil Brush would say, ‘Boom, Boom’ – though unless there’s a major panic, these strike and air defence aircraft aren’t allowed to go supersonic where there are people.

For the walker, RAF Wittering’s presence is a bit of an obstacle – obviously, you can’t go through it - and for my Big Walk it means a short out-and-back from the village of Thornhaugh to preserve my Rule and reach Wittering’s church without risking death crossing the A1. This major league road cuts alongside the entrance to the RAF base. As one flashes by to north or south (though hopefully not with the speed of a Typhoon pilot) one glimpses a Harrier preserved and parked on the concrete there, a reminder of one of British aviation’s more innovative and accomplished aircraft. To me, despite their deadly intent, including valuable service in the Falklands, they always resembled exotic insects. There was something lovable about their gentle vertical descent and pneumatic settling. Mechanical things can be beautiful, as the late Fred Dibnah frequently used to remind us.

Someone has a tidy mind on the Thornhaugh estate. The grass which fronts it on the lane near the A47 is cut immaculately – and there’s an awful lot of lawn to mow. You’d think you were looking at the fairways of a premier British golf course. The owners are also noticeably protective of their own privacy. Up past the chicken farm, a path begins to loop all the way round their territory under charming tree cover, flanked by secure fencing. At one point a short steep rise leads the walker to a track which takes him/her on to Wittering village above a field of distant horses and a pongy sewage facility. The airfield is largely out of sight, as I suppose is to be expected security-wise.

All Saints, Wittering is strikingly out of place where it sits in front of the utilitarian housing estate built for the Forces in the middle of the last century, because of the spaciousness of the church grounds and the clash of architectural styles. More than usually, I feel sad I can’t explore its interior. At least one other electronic writer clearly found it a memorable and evocative space. Like so many of our wonderful places of worship, it still carries evidence of its Saxon origins, but few churchyards so obviously contain a record of human sacrifice on behalf of others. The common design of many of the headstones, white and regular, instantly tells the visitor these graves are the last resting places of RAF personnel. On a very quick look, the most recent I found dated to 1981.

Do you shudder as I do when watching telly and seeing the temples of those South American civilisations where human sacrifice was regularly practised for the propitiation of the gods or the achievement of a good harvest?  We use the language of sacrifice regularly in our worship and liturgy, but very often insulate ourselves from the brutal meaning unless it’s Good Friday or there’s a particular prompt to think more deeply. The Wittering churchyard is sobering on the one hand, and a Tom Wright ‘thin place’ on the other. At any rate, it’s hard to walk away feeling anything beyond fear, humility, or quiet gratefulness.

There’s an odd contrast between the technicolour gore of the Old Testament – whose concepts carry over into what we assume is a friendlier New Testament context (but then think of the Romans’ enjoyment of the Arena!) – with the comfortable welcome of an Anglican Sunday morning.  This is why we read the OT so rarely these days, unless we follow Morning Prayer. Instead, we confront our fears by watching Line of Duty - and I only do that through half-closed eyes. Even in the middle of this pandemic, which has produced minor challenges for us all alongside tragedy for some, I’m grateful my life has been so sanitised.  I may have difficulty grasping ‘Jesus died for me’, but I have a rather better understanding by contemplating the airmen who died during and after World War 2.

On the way back to Thornhaugh and the car, on the opposite side of the estate, I come across a forty something female jogger sporting psychedelic multi-coloured tights who's just met a friend along the path. The teenage daughter of the latter is standing at a distance looking as if the grown-ups are nothing to do with her...

Hippie jogger:             It’s a – well, I don’t know - like a kind of a ripple…

Friend:                        I don’t go for all that sort of transcendent stuff…

I wanted to stop and ask, but of course, I didn’t.

Aircraft in the squadron:  7.5 km.  2.2 hrs.  21 degrees C. Intermittent cooling breeze.  No stiles. Ten gates Two bridges. A fox. One church.

 Father God

I thank you for old friends

Like Andy and Clare

Who used to live at RAF Wittering.

For memories of happy times

And lessons learnt along the way.

For shared experience

And clever sons and daughters:

For parents and relatives now departed:

For parties on summer lawns:

For laughter and for gentle disagreements:

For the appreciation of each other’s skills and talents:

For careers that are now past history

But which inform us still.

For all this and much more

I thank you.

Amen.

THROUGH MANY DANGERS, TOILS AND SNARES...

The goats are posing picturesquely against the sylvan backdrop of Ryhall, bridge, church and pubs. I park up near the Methodist chapel, and walk the fieldpath on the hill to the north which is clearly marked between the newly sprouting crops. The air is warm, scented and summery.

 Onwards to Grange Farm the path is well-grassed. I realise how quickly I’ve lost my former careful habits. Rashly, the sunny weather encouraged me into shorts, and the grass is knee-length, so my calves are unprotected from possible tick-bites. Health and safety note to self and others: trousers should be worn!

I’m zigzagging across the fields to avoid traffic dangers on the ‘A’ road to Essendine, but where I have to join it for the last few hundred metres into the village, I find I didn’t need to be cautious: there’s a good, wide cycle path all the way from Ryhall. But if I’d taken that easy option, I wouldn’t have seen the muntjac I surprised in a spinney along the way.

Essendine 2021 is a somewhat prosaic place, with a lot of relatively recent housing to either side of the main drag, and no obvious village centre. The little church of St. Mary Magdalene is at the far, western end, isolated from modernity. I can’t go in, but enjoy the carved stone image of Christ in majesty flanked by angels which presides over the south door. The style makes one think Saxon, but the building is Norman at best, so perhaps the twelfth century craftsperson was simply steeped in what was even then an ancient way of portraying the Saviour. The church is situated here because the castle is next door: the substantial moat and mound are easily visible from the churchyard. It’s a charming place for quiet reflection on the relation between the Church and power, then and now.

The main line to Kings Cross passes through Essendine, and throughout today’s walk it’s always close at hand. The curve of the line away to the east just outside the village is slight but significant. On 3^rd July 1938 4468 Mallard broke the then world record for a train hauled by a steam locomotive as it ran south from Grantham down Stoke Bank. It achieved 126 mph, but had to slow down for the Essendine curve, its brakes running sufficiently hot that Mallard had to be substituted for a new pair of legs at Peterborough.

At one point on the main road, there’s a smart street sign for ‘The Council Houses’, six of them, none of which much look as if they’re now in Council ownership. Contrast that with the posh modern mansions on the lane pointing up towards Carlby. One of these has been named ‘Cavalier’. I wonder whether the owner is a Civil War re-enacter, or whether it represents a certain attitude towards the planning authorities. Or maybe he/she just had a penchant for Vauxhalls. It takes all sorts to make up a village community. As we’re learning afresh with every passing day…

A lot has changed in a short time. Speaking personally, as a family we’re now somewhere else, compared to a year ago. This is probably true mentally and metaphorically for most people living in the UK, and indeed the world. So many certainties have been undermined, so many understandings re-evaluated. But for us it’s also true physically. During the recent lockdown, against what seemed sensible or do-able, we moved away from an increasingly urban Weston Favell to the relative rural tranquillity of Morcott, Rutland. We’d been in our previous house for thirty -six years – more than half our lives. It tugged at the heart to put ourselves at greater distance from so many old friends, but increasingly we’d been feeling a vague call to a different setting for our third age. The greater isolation of post-viral Britain, the necessary health-preserving adjustments to church and social life were contributory factors to making the change. Perhaps they even made changing easier. Certainly, Northampton seems a more uncomfortable place than it did when we bought our first house in 1974. In leaving I feel a certain guilt, as if I’m letting the side down by going somewhere more apparently safe.  But the facts remain. We were burgled a few times in Weston Favell, once quite traumatically. There’ve been intruders in the garden, and implied threats of violence. A firearm was waved round in the street last year. The traffic is fast and noisy and sometimes fuelled by more than just petrol or diesel, one suspects: the supply and use of drugs is widespread.  But someone has to carry on praying and witnessing in these circumstances…and now it’s not us.

                                                                            Duh!

People have always felt despair about and dislike for the urban. Roman authors referred to their great city as a sewer into which everything that was worst about the world issued. But as we’re coming to understand, and this blog has recounted, not everything is roses-round-the-door out in the country. There is poverty, and there is defensiveness. There is old age and there is separation. There are also a lot of lovely people. Some of them even go to church.  But not very many.

And all of this trivial local and personal detail is set against the evolving backdrop of Britain’s relationship with Europe and the world - which has now been given a coat of obscuring varnish by the actualities of Covid and the vaccination process, and also perhaps by an ever-increasing pre-occupation with the assertion of my rights, whatever they may be – to party – to travel – to offend – to be looked after by the state – to declare my sexual identity – to live my truth, as if that notion was a philosophical slam-dunk. More than ever, we’re having to guess at the reality of the world through a screen of disinformation. More than ever, each pronouncement of authority has to be forensically scrutinised for its reliability, even if it’s printed in the Church Times. Nothing can simply be taken on trust.  No wonder Scripture doesn’t cut much ice with Jane and Joe Public. These days not even the BBC is beyond reproach.

You will all have your own stories to hand down about the Pandemic. Ours is one of family separation across national boundaries, the pain softened a little by the Wonder of Facetime.  I’d always thought there would be some eventual family difficulties for us, separated as we are by the Channel/North Sea, but had always located them in e.g. a fuel crisis. I didn’t see Covid coming. And apparently, despite the warnings, neither did our government.

Carlby is an odd one. It seems to be in Lincolnshire, and yet is still in Peterborough Diocese, joined in a benefice with Ryhall and Essendine. The River West Glen marks the county boundary here. I cross it, and march round to the back entrance of the churchyard. There’s scaffolding above the south porch, and the roof of St. Stephen’s is under repair. I hope they haven’t fallen prey to the lead thieves.

I suppose ‘Carlby’ may be the Saxon farm where a Ceorl once lived, but the fact the place was named after him suggests to me this particular ‘churl’ was a chap worthy of recognition in either the thegn’s or the community’s eyes. But you never know with place-names do you?  Sometimes, as with ‘Cavalier’, the true meaning for the inhabitants is quite inscrutable to a passer-by. There may be a joke hidden there, or a sadness, or a criticism of local politics. Who knows, after a thousand years!

My onward path takes me on a lane and then a long track between fields of youthful barley, which appears to have grown tall but have little substance to it – perhaps a peculiarity of this year’s odd spring weather – so wet and cold, until the last two or three weeks. In Morcott there was precipitation on twenty-four of May’s thirty-one days, and the daily mean highest temperature was just 14 degrees C. - way down on usual for the month.

As I begin to walk the metalled roads towards Belmesthorpe, I repeatedly doh-si-doh with two very serious athletes, armed with stop-watches, running measured splits in between equally metred rests. Of course, I say a cheery hello the first time we pass, but on all the subsequent occasions, conversational gambits are limited. Of course I feel like saying, ‘I’m nearly seventy, you know…’ as self-justification for my laggardly pace, but don’t.

Boots on the ground (well Merrill trainers actually – hurray for summer!):  14km.  4hours, give or take.  23 degrees C.  Sun and cloud, and an occasional refreshing breeze.  A muntjac. Larks a plenty, ascending, fluttering, and descending again. Bunnies (more of them this year, it seems to me). Partridges (silly birds: one preceded me for a full half-mile along the track post-Carlby, constantly surprised at my re-appearance. One wonders whether it ever found its way back to its point of origin!) A low-swooping buzzard. Orange and white butterflies.  No stiles. Six gates. Three bridges. Two churches.

Through many dangers…  Reading Diarmaid MacCulloch on John Newton and the hymnwriter’s slightly late epiphany about the evils of the slave trade, I wonder how long it is before some daft person bans Amazing Grace because its author wasn’t sufficiently PC.

Lord

We long for a kinder world

Where in the light that we’ve all fallen short

We forgive the sins of the past

And fight the evils of the present

With greater resolve:

Where

Having once missed the mark,

We pick up our bows

And strive to be more accurate

Next time round,

So that we and all humankind

Live to see your Kingdom come.

Amen.

AS I WAS SAYING #2

 

Well, howdy folks! It’s been a while. Welcome back to my Big Walk, resuming after eight months (last post:  18^th October 2020).

 The one time Dean of King’s Cambridge, Eric Milner-White, adapted a thought of Sir Francis Drake into a well-known prayer; a good reminder to those of us with butterfly minds:

 O Lord God

When thou givest to thy servants

To endeavour any great matter

Grant us also to know that it is not the beginning

But the continuing of the same until the end

Until it be thoroughly finished which yieldeth the glory

Through him who for the finishing of Thy work

Laid down his life, our Redeemer, Jesus Christ

Amen.

Well, the Big Walk has certainly been a great matter for me insofar as it’s taken a lot of time and effort over five years. The reader will judge for themselves if nevertheless it’s essentially a trivial thing. At any rate, I’m continuing and I’ll hope to finish…

In April 2016, I set out to walk to every parish in the Diocese of Peterborough by a series of roughly circular walks beginning at our then home parish of St. Peter’s, Weston Favell. I gave myself a rule that every new walk should touch the circle of a previous one at some point. The incumbent of each parish visited would receive a card through the post to say ‘Vince woz ‘ere’.  I would write a blog/journal of what happened along the way (and if you’ve got the stamina, thanks to Blogger, you can still read every word).

It’s a project with a purpose.  I want to suggest that whatever our particular brand of Anglicanism, we need to cleave to each other at this time, and emphasise what unites us rather than what divides. To that end I’ve hijacked the phrase rejected by Brexit: ‘Better Together’, to which I’ve subsequently added ‘Better in Colour’. The Church needs to present itself as radical, exciting and counter-cultural.  From now on we cannot afford to be safe, comfortable and grey.

The circular nature of the walks draws attention to a feature of faith as I’ve experienced it. Old dilemmas recur. Sins are persistent, and like a troublesome virus, they return to plague us. We’re exploring a labyrinth, in which high hedges sometimes obscure the view. We’re travelling towards an omega-point whose nature is only intermittently glimpsed.

Even before the most recent lockdown and pause, I hadn’t provided an updated summary of the walks – the previous list was in the autumn of 2019, taking us to Walk 87. So, for anyone who wants to get their walking boots on to see what’s changed since I passed that way, here’s the continuing record of my progress:

 Walk 88:          Pilton (nr Oundle) – Stoke Doyle – Pilton                             (5km)

 Walk 89           Rockingham – Gretton - Rockingham                                   (10km)

 Walk 90           Gretton – Shotley – Harringworth – Seaton – Lyddington –

                          Thorpe by water – Gretton                                                      (18.5km)

 Walk 91           Warmington – Eaglethorpe – Fotheringhay – Woodnewton –

                          Southwick – Warmington                                                         (19.5km)

 Walk 92           Lyddington – Stoke Dry – Uppingham – Bisbrooke –

                          Lyddington                                                                                 (15km)

 Walk 93           Southwick – Apethorpe – Kings Cliffe – Blatherwycke –

                          Southwick                                                                                   (21km)

 Walk 94           Gretton – Kirby Hall – Deene – Bulwick – Gretton               (19.5km)

 Walk 95           Apethorpe – Thornhaugh – Wansford – Yarwell -   

                          Nassington – Apethorpe                                                            (19km)

 Walk 96           Uppingham -Wardley – Belton – Ridlington –

                          Ayston – Uppingham                                                                 (17km)

 Walk 97           Laxton – Wakerley – Barrowden – Wakerley – Laxton        (15km)

 Walk 98           Bisbrooke – Preston – Wing – Pilton – Morcott –

                          Glaston – Bisbrooke                                                                  (18km)

 Walk 99           Belton – Loddington – Launde – Braunston – Belton           (21km)

 Walk 100         Braunston – Brooke – Oakham – Egleton – Braunston        (16.5km)

 Walk 101         Egleton - Hambleton – Egleton                                                (10km)

 Walk 102         Wing – Manton – Edith Weston – North Luffenham –

                          Lyndon – Wing                                                                           (21km)

                                                  LOCKDOWN

 (Walk 103a     Weston Favell – Great Billing – Weston Favell

 Walk 103b      Weston Favell – Abington – Weston Favell

 Walk 103c       Weston Favell – Cogenhoe – Whiston – Weston Favell

 Walk 103d      Weston Favell – Hardingstone – Weston Favell

 Walk 103e       Weston Favell – Great Houghton – Hardingstone –

  Northampton – Weston Favell

 Walk 103f       Weston Favell – Great Billing – Ecton – Earls Barton –

                         Weston Favell)

                                                  RELEASE!

Walk 104         North Luffenham – South Luffenham – North Luffenham   (6km)

Walk 105         Barrowden – Tixover – Duddington – Ketton – Barrowden (17km)

Walk 106         Ketton – Empingham – Ketton                                                 (10km)

Walk 107         Empingham – Normanton – Whitwell – Exton – Empingham(20km)

Walk 108         Oakham – Barleythorpe – Langham – Burley – Oakham     (17km)

Walk 109         Langham – Whissendine – Teigh – Ashwell – Langham        (15km)

Walk 110         Teigh – Edmondthorpe – Wymondham – Market Overton –

                         Barrow – Teigh                                                                           (22km)

Walk 111         Exton – Cottesmore – Greetham – Horn – Exton                   (14.5km)

Walk 112         Ketton – Collyweston – Easton on the Hill – Tinwell –

                         Ketton                                                                                          (19km)

Walk 113         Tinwell – Stamford – Great Casterton – Tickencote –

                        Great Casterton – Tinwell                                                          (16km)

Walk 114         Great Casterton – Pickworth – Ryhall – Little Casterton –

                         Great Casterton                                                                          (18km)

Walk 115         Pickworth – Clipsham – Stretton – Clipsham – Pickworth   (14.5km)

                                                LOCKDOWN 2