FOUR FROM HOME

 

There are now just four more small circles to be described on the landscape of the Diocese before this Big Walk is complete. I suppose under any circumstances it’s hard for the pilgrim not to associate the ending of the pilgrimage with arrival at the Heavenly City, or to put it in a blank and humanistic way, with Death. All the more difficult in Covid Times, and particularly when a friend is bravely planning her own imminent and untimely end to earthly life. And for me personally, autumn, rather than winter has always had that overtone – the bringing in of the harvest, the obvious decay of flower and leaf, the drawing in of the darkness.

Walking up from Castor though, away from the river, and onto the low plateau above the village, as flat as the fens but at about a hundred rather than zero feet, the harvest is still to be gathered – or at least the late-sown wheat is. I’m on the ancient, straight track known as Cow Lane, probably for the most obvious of reasons. There are odd kerbstones in places, traces of a now lost importance. Perhaps there was a villa set back here in Roman times. The top half of St. Kyneburga’s spire is clearly visible where the track right-angles, so the top half of the Praetorian Palace would have been too. On the way I have to cross the dualled A47. It’s not the best of crossings, nor the worst, but fellow-walkers please beware. The traffic is fast, and one has to dodge between bits of Armco and guess at the opening for the path on the road’s far side, all of which can be a bit stressful.

A mile further on, before I gain first sight of St. Mary’s Marholm, I’m wincing from an incipient blister on the back of my right heel, despite the strapping I always apply when I’m wearing boots. This has caught me out: it’s a few weeks since I’ve worn my Berghaus. Maybe they’ve stiffened up, or my feet have broadened a little. The ground is very dry at present and the field paths are quite corrugated, so perhaps my feet have been pivoting and rotating more than they would on flat surfaces. Ouch, there’s the rub.

There are cars parked all over the field in front of St. Mary’s: there’s a wedding in progress, and it’s good to see the church being used for a proper purpose. Everyone else is inside but a suitably and smartly dressed young gent, probably an usher, is entertaining a small boy on the church path. As I open the gate, heading towards the bench on the far side of the churchyard, I detect the slight reservation in his eyes. He’s thinking ‘What’s this old tramp doing? Is he a gatecrasher? Will I have to intervene?’ I say a sotto voce how-do in my best RP to allay his fears. At least he now knows the tramp is posh. Up in Marholm village I enjoy a restorative ginger beer in the Fitzwilliam Arms, then retrace my steps across the church field to go Torpeling in the direction of Peterborough. The field is rufty tufty. It’s been the scene of animal husbandry for some while, but in its middle is twenty two yards of concrete underlay for an artificial cricket pitch, awaiting a resurrection in some future decade, when/if eleven men or women can be mustered from the village’s a hundred and fifty souls. The outfield will need a bit of attention though…cow pats at ‘cow corner’ aka mid wicket.

Marholm is such a Danish name. Or Norwegian? (I’m thinking of Norway’s extraordinary four hundred metre hurdler Karsten Warholm!) Whatever its origins, for centuries Marholm has been a village under the patronage of the Fitzwilliam family, as the pub name implies, and the sixteenth century’s Sir William Fitzwilliam is still writ large in the fabric of St. Mary’s by the splendid Perpendicular of the chancel, which balances the strong, squat tower at the far end of the building’s exterior.  

I follow one of Peterborough’s ‘Green wheel’ waymarkers along a broad track towards the suburb of Bretton. While things are still rural, I meet Irmintas taking a walk with his pretty-as-a-picture giggling daughter Melita. They’re obviously hugely enjoying each other’s company. Irmintas is wearing bright green shorts, and has a strong eastern European accent (Latvian?) As I walk on, I can’t see any sign of a motor vehicle or house, so who knows where they came from.

 It’s been a long time since I walked in an urban environment – was Corby the previous one? – and I’ve forgotten how much extra heat is engendered by the hard surfaces on only a moderately warm day, and how easily one can be confused about road lay-outs when one isn’t familiar with the ‘hood. I know the Church of the Holy Spirit is somewhere in the Cresset complex (theatre/shopping centre/library/etc.) but after the nice big road signs telling me the general direction, it takes a bit of wandering about before I find the entrance, tucked away just past the Fayre Spot pub. In some ways the church is a clone of Emmanuel Church, Weston Favell, but slightly neater and more well-formed. Inside I find Jenny who’s flower arranging and Pete who’s the churchwarden. We talk with pleasure of the gradual opening up of churches, and about Helena the vicar and former curate.

These kinds of churches are gifts to the wider Church. They’re where the people are, but like the modern chapels in hospitals and airports (which have the additional problem that they’re sometimes shared between two or three religions) they can be mundane places, emphasising that people of faith are just like everyone else really, rather than stressing that God is totally ‘other’. Both truths of course, but which would be the most attractive to people of no faith – a place you might find someone to listen to you or give you food, or somewhere you could weep in the presence of an almighty God? And must these things be mutually exclusive?  But hey, back in the early seventies, when both the Church of the Holy Spirit and Emmanuel were built, at least allowance was made by the developers for their necessity. Nowadays, they’d be seen as an unprofitable luxury, so all that’s left to us is to be ‘street church’. In all senses of the word, there’s still a feeling of ‘sanctuary’ at Holy Spirit in front of the altar and the appealing statuary.

Outside again, I try to orientate myself and then tread the mean streets of the city in the direction of Longthorpe, repeatedly selecting wrong options and having to double back, because my city map is decades out of date in random ways (It still has an extra ‘e’ attached to Marholm’s village name).  At the Copeland Local Centre, I’m struck by its familiarity to anyone who worked in the peripheral parts of Milton Keynes. When our recording studio there was relocated to a purpose built environment in Willen at the end of the eighties, the stipulated style of architecture was ‘pavilion’ and here it is again at Copeland’s pub - ‘Cooper’s’ Its broad eaves, and smaller first floor suggest Japanese culture or Adamski-era forties’ flying saucers, depending on your interpretive frameworks. In Neath Hill, Milton Keynes, where our first studio was, the pub in the square opposite was called ‘The Eager Poet’ (a not-so-subtle joke…Milton…Keynes…geddit?) Which makes Peterborough’s ‘The Fayre Spot’ seem not such a bad moniker.

Longthorpe is an ancient village on the city edge, cut off from the Nene and greenery by the Ring Road. A medieval tower stands behind St. Botolph’s church, managed by English Heritage who would charge me a fiver for entry, which at first I think a bit steep, until I read that on its rather special domestic wall paintings I could spot ‘kings, musicians, saints and animals…including a mythological beast armed with projectile flaming excrement (sic)’. 

However my blister is now really hurting, so from the outside I admire the re-ordering of St. Botolph’s, and undertake running repairs, re-strapping the ankle and removing one of my two socks. For a moment or two, knowing it’s maybe two and a half miles back to the car, I wonder how I’m going to manage this.

The flyer for the St. Botolph’s financial appeal has as its strapline, ‘Honouring our past: looking to our future’ – which seems pretty good to me. The bullet points are worth recording in full: 

·       To undertake urgent renovations to preserve significant historical features… 

·       Allow for more inclusive and flexible worship

·       Become an intimate venue for musical events and concerts and support the development of young musicians from the area (smiley face from VC!!)

·       Grow our role as a health and well-being hub for the parish and extended community

·       Celebrate our history, educate visitors and tell the stories of local families past and present

·       Improve the parish church layout for key life events of our villagers and enable access for all.

I have to dig in for those last two or three miles. I struggle, limping, past Thorpe Wood, over the Ring Road, and search for access to the river, which necessitates an annoying half a mile back-pedal towards the City Centre. I’m pleasantly distracted by the joys of Bluebell Wood and Nene Park, where on this warm Saturday afternoon people of all ethnicities are cycling, walking and bathing. Then there’s a long slog up the car park past the Milton ferry to the old road back to Castor and the top of Love’s Hill. Above the river there are a number of gracious properties, whose beautifully kept gardens engender a mix of emotions. Who are these people? Where/how did they make their dosh? Inherited or earned? By fair means or foul? With or without exploitation? And are they just successors of the Romano-British middle class, who probably also enjoyed their long views over the wide river valley where the peasants subsistence-farmed and smelted?  I gaze over a field to the north where unattributed by the OS map, lies what looks like a burial mound. It could of course just be a spoil heap from road building. At any rate it’ll do as a memento mori on this early autumn day. One fence negotiated, three to jump…

Giraffe in grounds of care home: Longthorpe

Horses in the race:  20.5 km. 6 hours. 23 degrees C. Two stiles. Six gates. Two bridges. Three churches, two of them open.

 Father God

Free will and determinism.

I’m still struggling with this one

After all these years.

 

I get the endless questing

Boundless improvising

Restless enterprising

Drive of humans

And praise you

That you made us that way

And in the words of Otway

‘Cor baby, that’s really free’.

 

And then I see us stuck

In old habits

Addicted

To money

Consumption

Drugs

And inanity

And that looks anything but really free.

 

Can I be both?

Am I destined to be redeemed

Or condemned to nothingness?

It’s a real worry Lord.

Not something that ought to be pushed

To the back of the mind.

But to function, I have to.

Have mercy on me, O Lord.

Amen.