Muddling through

In the planning, everything on a map seems so straightforward - that path, then that track, past the stand of trees with that stream always to the right. But in Harold Macmillan's somewhat overworked phrase: 'Events, dear boy...'

The previous day was doleful, both because of the confused, messy post-election political situation, so much inflamed by the gleeful, prurient machinations of the press, and because later on we heard that an old friend had passed away earlier in the week, taken too early by cancer, one of the young dancers who forty years ago had been part of our company as we toured Israel. So it's a relief to be out in the open, shaking off the effects of sadness, intrigue, disinformation and alcohol.

There's a weather spike, one of those brief day-long meteorological variations which seem to me to be more frequent. As I leave Irthlingborough eastwards it's very warm and there's a heavy, gusty wind rushing up from the south-west. I'm heavy-legged as I acclimatise, following the Nene Way out of town.

Nature is abundantly doing its thing. Black-headed gulls dip playfully towards the glistening river against the breeze, snapping up insects as they go, before returning at breakneck swooping speed on the extra pairs of wings the gale gives them. Either side of the carefully cut grassy path, where the nettles stand neck high, a thousand kingfisher-blue damsel flies dart and dive. Here and there small tortoiseshell butterflies join the dance. Little pink and white convolvuli poke up between the blades of grass. I hear the distant call of a rare cuckoo, as comforting a childhood memory as chocolate cake. A field of barley ripples silver in the wind.

As I walk I think. (A Cartesian variation!) I could have voted for any of the three main parties with equally good logic, and have never felt as disenchanted with all of them as I do now. Maybe I have a species of what Sartre called 'La Nausee'?  How about you?

What weight should I as a Christian apply to the fact that Teresa May is a Christian? Does it make any difference to me at all? It should mean that our values, hers and mine, might be somewhere in synch. But how could one tell through the froth and spin of party and press releases, the need to pitch a line, any line, that would reel in the voters? My gut instincts are for the left, but they seem like a bunch of incompetent chancers. 48 hours after the event I'm still metaphorically (and sometimes literally) shaking my head. (Since time of writing, news has broken about Tim Farron's resignation, which raises other questions about how people of faith stand in relation to political process)

A footbridge isn't any longer where it once was, so I miss the footpath up to Little Addington: a trifling presentiment of what's to come later in the afternoon. Next to a smart allotment (for benefit of clergy?) is St. Mary the Virgin's Church. I eat a sandwich by the back porch in which I see a dusty and not very recently used Alesis electronic drum kit. Relic from a defunct worship band? Churchwarden's guilty pleasure? Unwanted gift?

After GB in the Bell pub, where drinks aren't apparently much of a priority (the gentlemen barmen look most disappointed that I'm not staying for lunch, desperate even, there being no other takers), I press on to Great Addington past the playing field shared by the two villages. It has a lovely view down over the valley to enjoy as one exercises. I pass the house owned by John and Ruth Wayman, whose son Robbie was a childhood friend of our Matt. Robbie is now an airline pilot, which I find slightly scary for reasons with which many parents will identify. Our lives in their hands. That's the way of things, folks, and the more so with each decade we survive.

Even in a regional town, kids go on to do extraordinary things in our vivid and brave new world. Back in the nineteen seventies at the School for Girls in Northampton, Suzanne Skey was perhaps never going to set things alight academically, but she had a great and sensitive skill as a dancer, sufficient to carry her on to a coveted place at the London School of Contemporary Dance. Who'd be a dancer? They practise their art through a constant background noise of injury and discomfort for little in the way of financial reward, and as with all athletes, time at the top can be short. We know little of Sue's subsequent career, but it was certainly varied and enabled her to see the world, dancing in what would now be described as burlesque in Paris (she loved the costumes) and spending some time being sawn in half by her boyfriend in a Mexican circus.

All Saints at Great Addington is open, and inside I enjoy the coffee maker placed beside the pulpit - to stimulate the preacher or keep the congregation awake? - and the remnant of the staircase up to the long ago-removed rood screen. On the wall there are photographs of Uganda where missionaries Jane and Derek Waller have been after leaving South Sudan. These two brave people have now taken up an invitation to serve in Madagascar, where hopefully life will be less threatening and more stable. Africa seems to get into the hearts of some, like our old friends the Glovers, and won't let them go. As with so much else in 2017, conceptually the notion of 'mission work' now seems very complicated. There's aid and relief work in all its many forms, and there's the legacy of colonialism, and there are questions abut who should be preaching to whom, as Africans sometimes point out. And there are many interfaces between the Muslim and Christian worlds, in Birmingham as well as in Kampala.

Away from Great Addington, everything is at first peachy, though walking westwards into the increasingly robust wind is becoming strenuous activity. The pull up to lonely Poplar's Farm (is this correct use of the apostrophe, OS? Did it once belong to a Mr. or Mrs. Poplar? At any rate, it's currently refitted and vacant!) is a hard one, considering it's only a rise of 150 feet at most. There are lots of windmills hereabouts, which tells you something, as does the lack of trees. There's nothing to break the force of a gale. But as I start to zig-zag across the countryside, avoiding the need to risk life and limb along the main road, things go awry. All the fields here are arable: rapeseed, barley and wheat, and there are very few gates and stiles as a result, which means there are very few waymarks. And unusually the topology as I'm viewing it doesn't match the map at all in terms of trees and field boundaries. I turn left too early, and convince myself that the 'paths' I'm following along the field margins match the cartological plan. But by the time I twig that I'm very much mistaken (and then only by intermittent sight of the water tower at Finedon which is presenting itself in the 'wrong' position), the configuration of fields and ditches sets me a problem solved only by a series of dodgy moves through dense hedges and relentlessly unyielding crops which leaves me frustrated and sweary. Eventually I complete my yomp into Finedon along the heavily trafficked A6. Thankfully there's a cycle track/footpath, or else I'd really be in trouble.

Finedon was once called Tingdene, which I rather like. I don't know what to make of it. I've been through the place often enough on the main roads, but never stopped to look. More than most places of its size there's almost a sense of 'town and gown'. There are areas along and just off the 'A' roads which are clearly of the working people, and sometimes what's on offer through the shop fronts reflects that. But behind the popular façade there are lovely old houses in various vernacular building styles, and close by you'll find antique shops, posh beauty parlours and an upmarket funeral directors' - just past the Conservative Club, should you feel the need. And the Vicar of graciously proportioned St. Mary's is Richard Coles, radio presenter, author, former keyboard player with chart-topping Communards and priest. He is, though he might not thank me for saying so, rapidly turning into a national treasure. An energetic chap too. He's just become Chancellor of the University of Northampton. Sue and I swapped smiles with him in Waitrose the other day, so although he doesn't know me from Adam, we're almost mates, me and Richard. The only problem is, we need more clergy like him. I suspect we might not agree about a lot of things, but no matter. He can't carry the burden of being the acceptable face of public Anglicanism all on his own. Well, him and Justin, I suppose. And John. Try Richard's recent book: 'Bringing in the sheaves'. It would make a fantastic study for housegroups, at least in my Fantasy Parish Church...

                              For the ashes of Dr Who fans: funeral directors': Finedon


I think I'm on the home stretch now, walking back over the hill to Irthlingborough past what I presume is a shaft to the tunnel between the two towns referred to a couple of posts ago. But even now, when the line of the path should be obvious, veering away on a slight angle from an overhead power line, I get on the wrong side of a hedge and pay for it with an exhausting trudge along two sides of a field sown with rape right up to its deeply ditched boundaries. Eventually I emerge near the cricket club where I stop and watch a few overs to calm myself down. The batting is efficient, the bowling workmanlike and the fielding elderly even though this is Division Two of the County League. The car park is full of Audis and Mercs. I take away the memory of a beautiful pull for four through midwicket, a shot I would have loved to have been able to play but never could.

Stats man:  23 km. 7 hours. 22 degrees C. Wind gusting 40 mph. 3 stiles. 5 gates (and two of those church ones!) No one to talk to: everyone's head is down, either to cut through the wind or because they too are suffering from political nausea.

Lord
From where we are
We see no plan
No solutions
Little mercy
Scant integrity.
We trust
That reality
Is not as we perceive it
Or that our reality
Is a mere illusion.
But please Lord,
Give us a glimpse of the truth
At least in part
For without a vision
Your people may perish.
Amen.

Night Sweat

I found myself in a bad dream last night and woke up sweating just after two. In these cases does the sleeping self decide to opt out of running a particular film, much as one switches off the telly when there's e.g. one too many grisly shot of the pathologist at work in a shock-horror movie? And how exactly do such dreaming experiences integrate the self, as psychologists intimate they do, if they're so scary? Both malign, pursuing protagonists in this instance were old friends, neither known to the other in real life. Both would undoubtedly be horrified to know the roles in which my mind had cast them during my personal psycho-drama. Of course it's an unsettling thought that one might feature similarly in the dreams of others: until this moment, that had genuinely never occurred to me!

In any event, it settled my procrastinating determination to walk today and make the most of the sunshine. I leave Raunds travelling east with, unusually, only one objective in mind. Hargrave is a small village on the edge of Huntingdonshire, just off the road to St. Neots. Like Raunds and Stanwick, it's a parish in the 'Four Spires Benefice', but it's stuck out on something of a limb.

                                                                       Spire no. 3


These days Huntingdonshire is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire, not a county, but maybe in the meaning of 'Raunds' there's a folk memory; the very name of the town means 'boundaries'. I suppose it's possible the markers to which it refers may go back even further. Where exactly was the border between the Catuvellauni and the Iceni in pre-Roman times? Or nearly a millennium later, between Mercia and East Anglia? I daresay there was hinterland and dispute. Strangely this lack of certainty extends to Northampton even today. It's always struck us as anomalous that we're stuck with Anglia TV: Man falls off bicycle in Beccles. Arguably Northampton looks more to the west and the north than the east for all that the Diocese of Peterborough extends its reach right down to Cotswold-facing Aynho. For whatever reason, to the east of Raunds the villages are more widely spread, the roads a little more like those of the fens, resembling a grid. It's a different kind of land. Just a mile from Hargrave Huntingdonshire reaches its highest point at the Three Shires Stone - a measly 263 feet. Apart from the Isle of Ely and the Holland district of Lincolnshire, Huntingdonshire's maximum height is the lowest of any county. And that includes Norfolk and Cambridgeshire!

Oh, the pure and atavistic joy of the first mile's walking in May! Birds are carolling from every tree and bush, with blackbirds the loudest and most expansively tuneful against the fluting ostinato alto voices of the wood pigeons. A distant cockerel is parading himself and the wind's a gentle zephyr. The far away scrapings of an industrial digger add a Charles Ives element to the symphony. Up the gently rising gradient to Mere Farm, I'm unreasonably pleased with myself as I spot the moment the path dodges from one side of a hedge to the other. My internal soundtrack is selected highlights from yesterday's concert in Abington church. It's always interesting to see which things stick and loop around the head when you've been working on them. We sang Parry's 'I was glad' so of course that's in there, as annoyingly are bits of the Cantique de Jean Racine: a piece of which I heartily disapprove because of its cloying sentimentality, quite unlike the uncompromising, steely darkness of the same composer's Requiem. But the novelty of yesterday's gig was Bizet's Te Deum, hitherto unknown not only to me I suspect, but probably all the other singers too. It's an enthusiasm of Tim Dolan, Abington's Director of Music, and I can see why. It's a slightly crazed mash-up of martial tunes and gothic diminished chords written when Bizet was still in his teens. The work was given a firm thumbs-down by the musical establishment of the time. It's as if young Georges had to get down in a single piece every musical idea he'd had that year. Some of the individual parts are good, which is why they still function as 'ear-worms' but taken as a whole, my provisional judgement is that the piece is a car crash, though weirdly huge fun. It could of course have been the reason for my subsequent nightmare...

The church of All Hallows, Hargrave sits in the middle of a small village whose population numbers no more than 250. There's a Top Farm and a Bottom Farm, and a sad failed pub in a boarded up, Grade 2 listed building, the Nags Head, whose fate at the time of writing is yet to be decided, but which surely has no future as a hostelry, unless on a remote off-chance the community were to decide to run it as a project. I sit in the sun-dappled churchyard and think about the future of the inn as compared to the church. Hargrave is in one sense quite isolated, which is part of its charm. The limited support All Hallows can garner, the relatively small income it can generate for the wider Church means that as things are it can only merit inclusion in a benefice like Four Spires rather than standing on its own feet. And yet, the Church (capital C) is very aware of the challenges posed by the likely housing expansion - not on Hargrave's doorstep to be sure, but not so very far away by road. What's the logic here? Can we envisage a church like All Hallows finding something special, distinctive and different liturgically, and offering it to the public so that there'd be the possibility or likelihood of new walk-up to its ancient doors. Surely we don't want this beautiful little place of worship, with parish history stretching back to the Domesday Book, to go to the knacker's yard along with the Nags Head? Churches exclusively for the young. Churches exclusively for the old. Churches designed and stripped for social action. Churches devoted to contemplation. Churches representing the best of every liturgical tradition and none. How could benefices plan to strategically diversify their product? Here I am, Lord. it is I Lord...

It would mean the sacrifice of personal preference in many instances. But what's the alternative? Niche  and genre are important modern words, even if neither is very English.

I walk the long, roundabout way back to Raunds under a hot sun through alternate fields of rising grassy wheat and rapeseed - which is now turning olive green and just beginning to hint at its cabbag-ey finale. There are paths flanked by luxurious bridal trains of creamy-white cow parsley, and I skirt a lovely resonant wood. The views are long and shimmering. At one point I push through an overgrown field entrance, certain of the route's direction, although on the diagonal across the green wheat the walker's line is discernible only to the faintest degree. I enjoy the pleasure of wading through the crop on the sandy soil, much as one would find delight in crossing virgin snow, and then stop in the middle of the field to look behind me. I'm surprised to see that the wheat has closed over my track again. You wouldn't know I'd been there, and in the moment I find a metaphor for my existence. For all that in my human arrogance I think I'm so significant, I have to accept and understand that I'll leave very little mark on the ground.

Stats man:  14 km. Just a shade under five hours (I went very slowly today). 24 degrees C. Two stiles. Seven gates. Six bridges. But when is a bridge a bridge? A rather subjective matter this, but I tend to include the smaller ones which prevent me getting my feet wet, and sometimes ignore/fail to notice the bigger ones. And when is a gate a gate? Also a matter of opinion. I count gates I actually have to open, but on this walk the farmers have often very thoughtfully left a clear person-shaped space beside the closed five-bar. Stiles? Getting fewer, I reckon. Perhaps because they're more expensive to maintain than gates?  One church: shut. Walkers: not a single one - from the leaving of Raunds unto the returning of the same.

Lord
Help me to lift my eyes to You
From the turmoil of everyday life
The deluge of communication
Social media
Gossip and trivia
Argument and counter argument
Alternative facts and temporary truth.
Let me be astounded again
By the thrill of Your creation
And Your care for us
And to remember (thank you Sarah)
That we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
By Your grace
Sanctify all our lives.
Amen


And then came the news from the Manchester Arena. A waking-life, shared nightmare.

Whatsoever things are lovely...

Ian Brady, who with Myra Hindley tortured and killed those poor children so many years ago died yesterday in prison, probably mad and unrepentant, and the radio and other news media are all over it this morning. It's hard to ignore the story, or not be shocked by it all over again, but what more is there really to be said? Is it true, as John Donne wrote, that every person's death diminishes me? I don't feel diminished by Brady's passing, but don't even know if that's what Donne meant. I only know what the Greeks knew, which is that evil usually spawns new evil, and dismounting the carousel is hard.

Whatever, the news casts a pall over the beginning of the day. The weather is strange too. A plume of warm air has been sucked up from the continent, and outside the car it's sticky and humid under cloudy skies and a strong breeze. Tomorrow the wind will die, and we shall have rain all day, probably starting at five this afternoon, so there's an incentive to throw off the media-induced glooms and get walking.

On a cheerier note - unless you suffer from coulruphobia - the circus has arrived on the Higham Ferrers rec. I search out the path which takes me over the A6 by-pass to the east of town, and though my direction finding is out of sorts today, I eventually find the track which climbs gently beside the rapeseed fields to the Water Lane end of Chelveston. Over the fields the farmer has suspended a couple of animal/crow scarers which resemble Red Kites (the ornithological sort!) bouncing airily on the end of pieces of wire. High overhead a real buzzard is hoping they're fooling no one. There's no water in the ford at Water Lane: although it's rained a little over the last five days, the Daily Express, ever the voice of meteorological doom, has been trumpeting the likelihood of impending drought, and there've been the first suggestions from water companies (all hoping that Mr. Corbyn doesn't win the election and nationalise them) that we should be careful with our hosepipes unless we want them banned.

Either Chelveston originally came in two parts or St. John the Baptist church is hedging its bets. Actually its assignation is to 'Chelveston cum Caldecott' so maybe the latter. A few posts ago I remarked on the number of Hardwicks there are. If anything there are more Caldecotts: Smith to Hardwick's Jones. No surprise: there's a plethora of cold places in Britain to fit the name. But then, the caldarium in Roman baths was the place for a hot plunge so there's a mild lexicographical puzzle here. I think the link from 'Cald' to 'Cold' is the more probable. People like a good moan.

The church is down a leafy path backing onto fields and on it there's a memorial to the American airmen who were based at the local RAF station during the last war. They undertook some of the riskiest bombing missions in WW2 but their success exacted a terrible price in casualties. There's another memorial right in the centre of Chelveston too, by the Star and Garter pub where I have an early lunchtime drink, hanging outside the door waiting for it to open, the image my dad hoped never to see cultivated in his son. If I'd walked in the opposite direction today, clockwise rather than the other thing, I might have arrived at St. John's in time for Tuesday afternoon tea and cake. Bad planning.

The airfield came back to life with a vengeance in the fifties when the Americans constructed an 11,000 foot runway to take their B-47 Stratojets, part of the bomber-led nuclear deterrence fleet. But when De Gaulle founded France's independent 'Force de Frappe', he ordered the American parent airfields off French soil, and with the coming of ICBMs, the politics and strategy changed, so there's now little to betray the existence of such a large facility. Back then, was the Star and Garter full of Carolinian and Californian voices, and the yard stuffed up with Chevys and Pontiacs to pull the local girls? I guess so.

Out of the village I walk through fields to Stanwick (don't pronounce the 'w' unless you want to be immediately identified as an incomer). I obviously look like I'm a local, because just inside the village a woman winds down the passenger window of a grey Golf.

Her: (peremptorily): Where's the High Street?

Me: (amiably, as I think...)  I haven't a clue...

Her: Well, that's not very helpful.

Me: Sorry, I'm a walker (stating the bleedin' obvious - I'm wearing shorts, have a rucksack, a stick and am carrying a map. My hat is 80's vintage cricketing fashion.) I'm a foreigner. But let's look at the map. The church is...back there...so if you hang a right at the corner, it should take you round in a circle...

Her: (huffy, now) Don't bother. I expect we'll find it.

Me: ...and back to the middle of the village. High Streets are usually next to the church, aren't they...

But by now they've already moved off without a thank you or goodbye.  'How do I find...?' dialogues are a staple of English Language Teaching materials for children. I must have recorded at least fifty tokens of the type, and they generally don't run like the above. Is there money in 'How to speak rude: a new approach to learning English'?  Later on, having walked up the churchyard on Stanwick's little hill, I see Mr and Mrs Golf trying to find their way into the village bistro (Stanwick has a bistro?) They're dressed as one might for a nice lunch if one were seventy-five, so probably they're late and had a row about it, you know, she spent a crucial five minutes too long on her face, and he insisted they went the country route. But honestly, I ask you! Along the way I meet all sorts, and most of them, like the cheery lady with her dogs near Chelveston, are lovely so the clever/dumb balance has to be maintained. 'Whatsoever things are...' Forget it, Vince, it doesn't matter. Move on.

St. Laurence Stanwick, and St. Peter's Raunds are part of the '4 Spires Benefice' which since last February is in an interregnum (i.e. they're between vicars). This group of churches is aptly named: the spires of both are awesomely high and beautiful, both benefiting (I'd have made a good estate agent) from their situation, raised above the communities they serve. Both prove to be shut, though as so often, if I'd had the gumption to plan ahead, or had wanted to spend the time now, I could have tracked down a key from one of the holders. But I just read a psalm, say a prayer, and think about the places, trying to be aware of my prejudices and presuppositions. Most of life seems to be about clearing up misunderstandings, usually one's own, sometimes other people's. Mrs Golf thought I was the one being rude, didn't she?

It's a short stroll up the road past Stanwick's Pocket Park and Raunds' rather bleak playing field into Raunds itself. The skyline behind the playing field is dominated by the Warth Park warehouse development. Well, that's what Northamptonshire does for the UK economy. Because of our centrality I suppose, it's convenient for all kinds of large-scale producers and logistics companies to have their own vast shop floors here. But in terms of the space they occupy compared to the number of people they employ, what's the net long term benefit?

                              'Er, Claire, does that include Tudor motets and Schubert lieder?'

There's something about Raunds. In the olden days i.e. the nineteen seventies, this was one of the pretty ways to Cambridge, as opposed to the more mundane route through Bedford. It's still a useful back double if there are problems on the A14. Then it always seemed to be tumbleweed o'clock in the middle of town with groups of young people standing on the corners jostling and prodding each other, and deciding who was going to go out with whom next week, if only to the chippie. There wasn't much else to do after the shoes went, but still the place has an air about it, a style that hints at the North Country. By the gate to the little park in the centre is a plaque commemorating the 1905 march to London protesting the low wages of shoe workers. They walked there, and some of them walked back too, and they won a concession from the government of the day.

I'm hoping 'Library Plus' will sell me a book on the history of Raunds but the nice, helpful woman in charge has nothing to offer, except a rather particular imprint about one of the excavations undertaken at the time the warehouse developments began. There's a lot of Saxon stuff under the ground here and on one occasion it drew in Tony Robinson's Time Team for a hectic weekend poke around. I follow the old Meadow Lane down towards the river and the site of the medieval village of Mallows Cotton (sounds like something from Midsummer Murders!). For company I have an unusually large number of dog walkers, and in a little while I see the logic. An upside of the warehouses is a trade-off in nicely manicured paths angling back towards the town centre. I plunge on, trusting the map that I can get under or over the A45 to join the Nene Way on the far side of the river and the wetlands. However what looks feasible on the OS turns out not to be so in practice. Maybe I've missed something. My next intended port of call should be Irthlingborough, but pitching up at the roundabout where the road from Stanwick meets the dual carriageway, I think I've been thwarted. Then I see a brown tourist sign on the other side of the road, and follow its pointing finger into 'Stanwick Lakes', which I suppose I always had down as a fishing facility, but which I now find is a large outdoor pursuitsy expanse under the care of the Rockingham Forest Trust with a Visitor Centre, and cycling, and walking, and rock climbing (walls presumably) and an adventure playground. I don't fork out for the lottery, but the money of those who do is going to some good places.

The weather's looking less promising so I deny myself a cup of coffee, and guess at a direction through the park. Eventually I find the path which brings me up over the weir and on into Irthlingborough past the remnants of the sadly deceased Rushden and Diamonds Football Club. Even the little that remained to them in the history books has this very week been taken away. Forest Green Rovers have been promoted to the Football League Two. Previously Rushden and Irthlingborough (the Diamonds bit!) were the smallest community to host a club in the main Football League but the mantle has passed on.

People who live in Irthlingborough. 1. Big Jim Griffiths. For many years in the eighties he was  a stalwart of Northamptonshire County Cricket Club. Allegedly a quick bowler, he was loyal, willing and tall, with a windmill action and a pronounced pause in his action at the bowling crease. He was one of the worst batsmen ever to play first class cricket, christened a 'wally with the willow', but every dog has his day. Look up the story.  2. Chris Storr. Nice man and excellent trumpet player for Jools Holland's band amongst many. He always came happily to play sessions for us when we could afford to make it almost worth his while. As did Trevor Barry, inhabitant of Rushden and ace of bass. If you watch Strictly he's the one with the hat sitting somewhere near Dave Arch. A lovely player, and amusing, genial company.

St. Peter's Irthlingborough has a lantern tower which was built to guide former generations over the marshy drifts alongside the river. The church looks intriguing, there are lights on, and stuff is happening beyond a door at the side. I want to go in, but if I'm to avoid getting wet I have to press on. Like Raunds and Rushden, Irthlingborough is an untidy place, although the size of the church and some of the surrounding buildings shout 'high status'. Again, its history is about ironstone. There's a tunnel between here and Finedon, now safely shut up, but who doesn't love a closed tunnel? I blame Enid Blyton's Famous Five.

And here I get briefly annoyed, as my personal radar goes awry again, and the signage to the Nene Way abandons me in favour of the 'Greenway' which runs across the new nature reserve/SSSI below the town but which turns out to be the Nene Way in disguise. I have a spat with an unfeasibly large man, his grinning wife and his husky dog which is not on a lead despite the proximity of sheep, and on which he seems to think I should lavish praise as it invades my personal space to importune whatever it is that huskies think they fancy. I do the barking, and tell the owner that I don't appreciate the attention, and then reflect as I burn leather into the distance just how big the bloke was, and whether it was altogether wise to antagonise this particular One Man and his Dog. Whatsoever things are lovely...

And finally, Esther...

22.5 km. 6 hrs. 20 degC. Five stiles. Seven gates. Five bridges. One heron interrupted from his daily work by my incautious approach. One bunny: deaf apparently, judging by his reluctance to take flight.

Last week I mentioned Chester Farm, and the work going on there, which prevented me easily accessing the Nene Way from Irchester. Well, Sue and I went back to have a look later in the week. By 2018 there's going to be a Visitor Centre there too, so right along the valley there'll be a chain of interesting places to visit covering nature, archaeology/history and outdoors stuff. This is very good news from the point of view of education and healthy entertainment. It will be a challenge to maintain it all to the high standards that will be initially set, but could we perhaps see a developing movement equivalent to the great era of park construction undertaken by the Victorians? I'd love to think so.

Lord
We blunder around
Stumbling over the furniture
Falling down stairs
Kicking the cat.
Shine your light upon us
So that we may see well enough
To deal graciously with those we love
And those we don't.
Amen

Rust Belt

It's only a couple of weeks since a regular phone nuisance, selling double glazing I expect, stopped bothering us with an unseasonal recorded message beginning: 'Now that winter's here...' But it's February-chilly again today despite the bright sunshine. The easterly wind whipping in over the exposed fields near Irchester is shading out of brisk into brrr!

I think the writer Peter Ackroyd's very good on what could be called the idea of 'persistence' - the notion that a trade or attitude hangs on in the same place right across the centuries, despite more widespread changes in culture, politics or religion. Sometimes this can be because of the presence of natural resources, and sometimes just because of tradition or human reluctance to move on - if it ain't broke, don't fix it!  In the central belt of Northamptonshire, it's the ironstone which determined the pattern of life, and years after the resource has been largely worked out, the light industry and untidiness which accompanied its exploitation makes for a semi-urban landscape that isn't always beautiful - which isn't to say it lacks interest. But walking here reminds me of the way things often are on the long distance paths around Greater London.

My intention had been to believe the OS map, and follow the road from Irchester to the A45, cross it with trepidation, and track the marked Nene Way down past Chester Farm, the history of which dates back to Roman times (you'll have guessed from the name, and may remember from my late summer 2016 posts about the Irchester area). However, on the far side of the trunk road, the stile's overgrown and there's a 2015 notice telling me the Nene footbridge beyond the Farm is closed. There's nothing for it but to lug myself reluctantly up beside the dual carriageway as far as the Ditchford turn half a mile away. Thereafter there's another bout of precarious road walking down to and over the river to pick up the Nene Way on its re-route eastwards from Wellingborough.  From their enthusiastic website I can see that the archaeological work at Chester is ongoing, so that's the likely reason for the path changes. If so, my annoyance is assuaged. Let's hope the archaeologists' funding is being maintained in these straitened times.

Even after the detour (and hey, this is a pilgrimage, so whoever said I deserved it easy - and I'm not exactly scaling endless flights of stairs on my knees!) the path is scrappy. Smelly too. Sewage plants are often built to the east of major conurbations to use the prevailing wind to good effect, which is fine until a meteorological 'block' like the one we're currently experiencing comes along. The Billing facility is currently delivering some pungent pongs in our direction at home, which would more usually be dissipating in the fields towards Earls Barton. Down by the river just here, there's a history of traveller encampments. In the early eighties there was a notorious murder at Ditchford amongst the traveller community in which we were briefly and accidentally caught up. We were short-term fostering at the time, and were contacted for assistance because in the absence of reliable witness information the cops had brought in whole families for questioning, thus dumping on Social Services a very sudden, very tricky problem in terms of accommodating the children. We turned them down. The brief was too difficult, and there was a lack of immediate candour which spoke poorly of the various agencies involved. I'm not sure a culprit was ever convicted. The community closed ranks.

I simply endure this stretch of the Nene Way. In addition to the overpowering smell of poo processing, the path is manky and rarely walked these days: the lakes which remain after the gravel extraction are threatening rather than an amenity (although they're probably very good for bird life). The area's clearly attracting trials' bikers on a regular basis. The access to the south is closed because of the vast new shopping complex being constructed where you could once break an ankle at the Skew Bridge dry ski slope. Just about every Council in Northamptonshire opposed the plan, but in the name of regenerating the area, the government expedited matters with unknown consequences for the surrounding towns' economic development. Overhead scream USAF F-35s visiting Suffolk for testing, training and evaluation. They temporarily drown out the birdsong. I am disgruntled.

Things improve at the bridge which spans the A45, carrying the walker towards the tall spire of St. Mary's in Higham Ferrers. I stop and fidget for a while, taking some pictures, searching through my many pockets because I think perhaps I've dropped my map, and so fall into brief conversation with Graham Bell and a companion, who are exercising dogs, and judging by their field glasses, doing  a little gentle twitching. I'm wearing my North Face sweatshirt, and Graham thinks I might be a superior breed of walker to the one I actually am. I explain myself, and it turns out Graham is a retired vicar, who still ministers in a variety of situations, and even knows our own parish a little.

Up in refined Higham Ferrers, everything's peachy. I visit the garden of Chichele College. This was a chantry, not a school, built by a Plantagenet Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry of that ilk, so that a team of clergy could pray for him, his family and the monarch. Sensible precaution, that last bit, I reckon. Henry managed to remain Archbishop for thirty two years which strikes me as impressive longevity for any period. Shaded from the wind, the cloister garden is peaceful and warm, but the lure of the Coffee Barne is hard to resist. They attempt to palm me off with a £5 note which will cease to be legal tender this Saturday, but I don't hold it against them: the coffee and the choccy croissant are good.

There was once a castle in Higham Ferrers too, though the bit on the recreation ground you think might be its site, is just the rabbit warren which the inhabitants encouraged outside the main walls (rabbits being good to eat, natch). The site of the real inner keep is barely detectable by the suggestion of a mound on the edge of later housing just to the south. Simon Jenkins rates St. Mary's church as a three-star, and apparently the stained glass is beautiful. He wonders how it escaped the predations of the Civil War. I have to admire from outside the spaciousness of the buildings, their stately situation, the elegant flying buttresses. Given the tourist potential of the town, this is a church which really should be open, but it isn't, not today anyhow.

At one time during our teaching careers Sue and I knew Barbara Smith, the first headteacher of the Ferrers comprehensive, through a mutual interest in the Inter-Schools Christian Fellowship, and fancied working for her because we liked the cut of her jib. I think at least one of us applied cheekily for a post beyond our reasonable expectations, but were turned down. We were attracted by the idea of a new, frontier project in what then as now was the better end of this mid-county conurbation. But things happen in schools. Its high status didn't prevent the deputy head, Mike Cousins, from being wounded by a disturbed pupil wielding a shotgun a few years later. I walk along the length of the school playing field, still impressively substantial, and join the Greenway which follows the one-time trackbed of the branch line from Raunds down into Rushden..

And rather to my surprise, I find a heritage railway project on the outskirts of town with a nicely restored station building. Looking at their website later on, it seems to me that some headway has been lost amidst the rag-taggle collection of shunting engines, old carriages, a mail-coach, a diesel railcar (of the variety which used to work the Brackley to Banbury line in the sixties)), several vintage fire engines and countless other bits of heavy engineering bric-a-brac. What do you do with all that stuff, assembled over three decades of preservation work? It would take an army of workers just to get rid of it again, let alone turn it into anything useful. Nevertheless, there's a half mile stretch of track, and the website speaks of ambitions to extend to Higham Ferrers one way, and to a junction with the Midland Main Line at Wellingborough, although that idea may already have been kyboshed by the need to increase passenger capacity out of Wellingboro' to St. Pancras as the town grows.

The heritage railway makes total sense to me in the context of industrial Rushden's past. Maybe some of the enthusiasts are people who worked all their lives in engineering, and miss it. The shoe industry has largely gone, but still just opposite the station stands the Rushden Town Band Club, and a little way up the street, there's a traditional shoe-repairer's shop.

I pray my way around the town, visiting the three Anglican churches one by one, all with their differing traditions and styles. It's Polling Day for the local council elections, and St. Peter's hall up on the Midland Road is open for the casting of votes, although I see no one going in or coming out. At the opposite end of the town centre St. Mary's is hosting ninety primary school children who have come to find out ' a bit more about the church', as the contemporary syllabus challenges them to do. And out on the seventies-build Whitefriars estate a third more charismatically inclined congregation meets of a Sunday to praise God in the local school. For various reasons I do not effect entry to any of these places of worship, so remain something of a neutral observer. But as I look upwards along the charmingly undulating High Street at the faded grandeur of the buildings from Rushden's Victorian heyday, I begin to feel more warmly inclined to a place which in times past has caricatured itself as somewhere for the lame and insane. Just Northamptonshire wit and irony, of the sort you can still occasionally hear in the county's better sporting venues! The stand-out shop on the main drag? Without question it's House of Venom Reptiles where for just £85 you can buy yourself a Reticulated Python should you so wish. Every Goth should have one.

Stats man:  17 km. 5 hrs. 15 degrees. Cold wind.  Sun and then rather more in the way of cloud. Railways: two - the Midland Main Line & the Rushden, Higham and Wellingboro'. Dog walkers by river: also two, one nervous and female, the other male and dour.

Lord
People so involved
Pigeon-fancying
Birdwatching
Playing bowls
Throwing axes
Ceroc
Model railways
I could go on
And on.
Do you find this weird kaleidoscope creation variety 
As endearing as I do?
Or like my dad
Do you discount it all as trivia?
Do you really want us
Down the church instead
Making our sacrifice of praise?
Could it be that we're worshipping you
By an inordinate interest in snakes
or Liberian postage stamps
If we will only acknowledge
That you are the Lord of
Anacondas
And Overprinted Fiscals?
Honestly, I'm not being obtuse.
Just once again yours puzzled
Vince

Town and Country

                                                              Crown of thorns: Pytchley


Today I could do urban or I could do rural. In light of the beautiful sunshine would I prefer to contemplate grimy windows or the moderated ordure of the farmyard? I opt for things pastoral and park in front of the little church at Hardwick.

Where do you feel more comfortable? Do you like to look out over a vista of brick and tile, concrete and clay to the blocky shapes of the city, or over dappled greenery to blue remembered hills? I used to work with a good colleague who said that the countryside made her feel insecure - mildly agoraphobic I suppose - whereas she felt safe in the enclosed spaces of the town. I can recall the panic of being lost in the Great Outdoors, but I've more often felt threatened in stressed urban environments - Peckham, Deptford, the 'wrong' bits of Paris, Bethlehem, the suburbs of Eastern European cities, townships in South Africa. I can readily identify with that character in Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities  : a single wrong left or right in the city, and the whole world turns upside down: his life unravels.

The Roman poet Martial gave us the phrase rus in urbe which Virgil had already traced out as an ideal some decades before. I have no evidence, but have always wondered whether the strange changes in (and even abandonment of) Roman British cities in the second and third centuries AD was an improvisation around this theme. Did the citizenry act out on their desire to get back to the land, and reject the Forum for the fields?

Until I began this long walk, I'd never really considered the differences between the urban and the rural in terms of the Diocese of Peterborough. The cultural gaps feel substantial. The financial contributions between Town and Country may be skewed. There may be unspoken differences in attitudes to faith between the two, mirroring political and social views. Things that seem important in the one may seem trivial in the other. It may actually be harder for individuals to believe  depending on where they are. Are we certain we know where the shadows of conservatism and radicalism are falling just now? The pattern may not be the same now as twenty years ago, and the forthcoming election may give us new information. If you had a free rein (country metaphor?) where would you want to put the resources. Go on. Choose! In this blog I'm saying I'd like us all to feel united of purpose. But is it remotely possible?

As I turn onto the field path which will carry me towards Orlingbury, I can hear a woman's voice savagely rebuking someone: 'Just because you're a bitch on heat, it doesn't mean...' As I check my map she continues to chunter on in like fashion at - ah, her poor pooches! - but she doesn't see me until I round the hedge end. As I come into sight, her demeanour changes on a dime. We nod familiarly at each other as country lovers should and smile civilised smiles. Presumably as I recede into the distance, her invective resumes.

It's perfectly dry now on the fields, apart from the remnants of this morning's heavy dew. I cross a series of rivulets, each trickling down their own little mini-valley, with Orlingbury's church tower clearly in view. But on a rising field there's a sign on the gate telling me to watch out for a bull. Like you do, I peer anxiously up and down the pasture, but there's no audible or visual evidence of bullishness. As I cross on the diagonal however, I see a herd of cattle the far side of the next fence/hedge. There are a lot of new calves among them too. The cattle eye me up as I walk towards them, raising their heads to sniff out friend or foe, and as I approach the field end, they move decisively and strategically, shielding their babies, and blocking my way through the gate. It's an impasse. They stare me out from a couple of metres distance, and no matter how I wheedle, cajole or threaten, they ain't goin' nowhere. I consider, and then decide I'm not going to risk it. There are too many of them, and they're too nervous. The consequence is at least a mile of detour, possibly more, and a tedious road trudge, but if in doubt, leave it out!

The road has me walk past Little Harrowden's 'The Lamb' - a Charles Wells pub, which takes me back. A long time ago, I wrote and recorded a number of radio commercials for this brewery. In fact their continued existence is probably entirely down to the sterling work I put in on their behalf! Me and The Prince of Wales Rattlers we should have a pint on the house every time we pass for singing Charles Wells, Charles Wells, CHARLES WELLS! with such gusto. I don't put this notion to the test. It's too early in the day anyway.

When I finally get there, the churchyard of St. Mary's Orlingbury is idyllic, even though the church itself is closed. A parishioner is doing some gardening. The sun is warm, the seat south-facing. I eat a chicken sandwich, and a trifle reproachfully a single freethinking brown hen appears from nowhere and walks delicately around my feet. It's only when you take the time, and have the sun in the right place that a chicken's glossy plumage can look so perfectly beautiful (although I suspect mescalin might have the same effect, judging by Aldous Huxley's experience with his corduroy trousers - the infinite in the ordinary!)

The current St. Mary's isn't enormously old: it's a replacement of the medieval church. It's locked, but inside there's an effigy reputed to be the likeness of a hero of local folklore: Jock of Badsaddle. The story has it that in the fourteenth century Jock dispatched England's last wolf. If this lacks a tad in the historical authenticity department, it's still a fantastic name. The man deserves a country ballad all of his own. And yes, there's still a Badsaddle Farm in the vicinity.

                                                        Inside Pytchley church: Easter   


It's not very far to Pytchley. I like the view as one approaches, with the Overstone Arms pub set directly underneath the church on the rise. Of course the village name makes me think of hunting, but since the passing of the Great House, I don't think any part of the Pytchley Hunt is still resident there.
Personally, I'm ambivalent about this strand in the British countryside tradition. I don't care for the class connections of the Hunt ( any Hunt!) and have never thought the environmental arguments in favour were up to much - it doesn't seem logical to me as a way of controlling the fox population - but there's something fascinating and involving about hunting as symbolic of the history of our countryside. At the age of fifteen I was very taken with Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man even though it was an 'O' level set text. But I really don't like the yah and boo between Hunt supporters and 'Sabs'. I suspect both sides enjoy too much the chance to scrap, and to caricature each other as the epitome of all they hate in contemporary society. Perhaps, a bit like the monarchy, we should retain hunting on its current basis for ceremonial purposes, an anachronism to remind us of our roots. By the large I think it's a practice that unhelpfully divides Town from Country. (By the way, lest I offend royalty-supporting readers, one doesn't necessarily get rid of 'anachronisms' unless one has something better to put in their place, and in the case of the monarchy, I for one haven't.)

The church and the pub are both open. I do the holy thing first, and enjoy the wide open space of the All Saints nave. There's a bit of room in the lounge of the Overstone Arms too. The patron and the chef are discussing the selection of the Lions team for New Zealand. No slot for hooker Dylan Hartley, England captain and club skipper at Northampton Saints, which doesn't go down well. It's actually a bit too empty in the bar ( no other conversations to overhear) so I sup up and leave quickly, moving on towards Isham across the very lumpy fields to the east of the village. British History Online mentions all kinds of Roman and later discoveries in the vicinity. I cross an obvious 'hollow way. In these kinds of places you always wonder how much archaeological work has been done. There's so much under our feet. Not everywhere can be dug, but if it hasn't been it would be worth getting the shovels out here, I reckon. Interestingly it seems lots of stuff has been found under the church.

Soon I cross garden land in front of an industrial scale battery farm where HGVs deliver foodstuffs to hoppers, and then the Weetabix factory appears on the horizon dominating the Burton Latimer side of Isham. Weetabix have been in the news in recent days. The Chinese have sold them. Americans have bought them. It seems Weetabix (how do you pronounce that in Mandarin?) products proved a hard breakfast sell in Beijing and Shanghai. I'm supposing there'll now be many local people worried for their jobs: these kinds of take overs often don't work out so well. Remember Cadbury's?

Gigs in Isham. Twenty or so years ago there was a festal evensong when we took our choir over from Weston Favell to sing. I recall a rather recalcitrant, creaky organ, and a somewhat uncertain reception from the small congregation. The church was cold and, well, not really very festal. And I know I did an evening with friend Brendan and band at the pub, which I'm fairly sure was then called the Monk's Head or somesuch. It was one of the last occasions before legislation from which I had to endure the 'spilt beer and fags' effect on my gear (the smell would last for weeks and repeated exposure would make it permanent which is one reason why fastidious old me did so few pub gigs. These days one leaves with the merest whiff of eau de Watney hanging about the person. The same hostelry now appears to have become the Bear and Beignet. This gourmet pairing sounds like one of the weirder concotions whipped up by aspiring Masterchef contestants before John and Gregg have knocked common sense into them: infinitely resistible. Well, I don't fancy a beignet and St. Peter's is locked, so I march on, contemplating the signs decorating the trees and fences of Isham.

                                                                Drivers need a by-pass!

It's true, the main road here, the A509 has become as they used to say, arterial. It's an obvious and necessary connection between the A14 (itself an A1/M1 east-west link) and the A45, so there's a steady stream of cars and lorries through the middle of Isham. But O Denizens of the Bear and Beignet/St. Peter's Church you pays your money and makes your choice. If you get your by-pass, you also get an infill between the by-pass and your village (see my posts re: Towcester). You'll lose your countryside and fresh air, and is that what you really want? Already Isham is very nearly part of Burton Latimer which is very nearly part of Kettering and Rushden, which will soon be joined to Wellingborough. I have to brave a quarter mile of a pathless A509 before I can veer off on the track to the Harrowdens. The traffic is bad. If you're contemplating this walk, don't consider it with children or in bad weather - more dangerous even than a field of cows!

St. Mary's, Little Harrowden lost its spire in 1703, but it's a pretty church in a parish that's apparently one of the 'longest and narrowest' in the diocese. Why? Geographical accident, I suppose. I go through the Romanesque doorway into the church past a parishioner who tells me a meeting's about to begin. And indeed within a couple of minutes more folk arrive. I briefly explain why I'm there, but no one's interested, so I leave them to do their thing, whatever it is. Should they have shown more concern?  I don't know: the whole world doesn't revolve around me and my obsessions, but perhaps a smile wouldn't have gone amiss. We're not a private club, are we? That said, solemn and sad things are part of church life, and maybe that was the content of their agenda. It doesn't do to jump to conclusions, though I frequently do.

There's a 'Doom' painting in All Saints, Great Harrowden, but the church there is locked so I don't get to see it. I spot the grave of Dorothy Darlow in the churchyard. Earlier in the day I'd read a piece she'd written remembering former times in Pytchley, and spend a moment contemplating the changes she'd have witnessed up to her death in 2014. When we came to Northampton in 1973, it was still the case that younger teenage children from town were frightened by escalators when taken on trips to London. If you lived in Rushden, for some Wellingborough was still the big place you visited only on special occasions. We were incomers, and the 'Eastern Development' of Northampton had just been built, to the consternation of established townees who thought it signified the End of Everything. These days I spend a lot of time thinking whether like them I've just become more conservative and scared as I've got older, or whether the nature and scale of societal change is now greater. Of course, I think the latter...

Statty man: 20.5 km.  6.5 hrs. 15 degrees C. 5 churches. One open. Two advertisements for axe-throwing as a pastime.

Lord
When I was little
Someone claimed the words:
'Bind us together, Lord, Bind us together,
'With cords that cannot be broken...'
For the Baptist 'National Anthem'.
I like the ideal
(the Baptist bit somewhat less)
But I can't live it.
'Do I love these people?
'I don't even like them!'
I once heard someone say.
I know what they meant.
We're so polarised.
Pro Brexit - Anti Brexit
Capitalist - Worker ( yes, still, apparently)
Monarchist - Republican
Town - Country
North - South
And I haven't even got onto
Race, Gender or Religion.
Help me each day, Lord,
To find humility
To remember my creatureliness
To show love
To go 'one down',
And so (perhaps) find Eternal Life.
Amen.

Revival hour

I love the slow-television reveal of the landscape as I breast the rise on Wilby Lane out of Great Doddington and watch the spire of St. Mary's on the far side of the valley increase in size as I approach. The drop down to the Swanspool Brook is steep for thirty metres or so, but up the other side I'm immediately into Wilby. I push open the church door as quietly as I can. There's still a loud creak. The Rector, Jackie Buck, is nearing the climax of their once monthly weekday Eucharist. For a few moments I sit on a chair at the back, and then go up to share communion with five church members surprised to find themselves suddenly a congregation of six. When the service is over, there's coffee and home-made cake. I introduce myself to Janet, Eileen, John, Margaret and Julia. They tell me a bit about the parish. I confide to Jackie that, looking at the long prayer list on the church notice board full-time ministry was never a vocation for me. All that giving of oneself, I say. She replies that it's a two-way process. I don't follow through on that. I'm thinking, but don't say out loud, that even Jesus felt the power drain away when someone in the crowd touched him. I know this is a rather introverted response. What personality type was Jesus? The benefice works well, Jackie tells me. There's a lot of sharing between Wilby and her two other churches at Ecton and Great Doddington.

Away from Wilby, I zig-zag through the Wellingborough housing estates to St. Mark's on Queensway. As so often with churches, its hall hosts a pre-school playgroup. Their Lenten meetings have been using a Rowan Williams text as a study focus - tough and intellectual stuff. Mandy Cuthbertson, the vicar, is moving on to be the Diocesan Advisor for the Healing Ministry. In the relevant pages on the Peterborough website Mandy says: '...I believe the Healing Ministry is not a sideline of the Church's ministry and mission, but an integrated part of it, for it was at the heart of Jesus' own ministry and teaching...'  The footnote to the page adds 'If you are concerned about any unusual, puzzling or troubling incidents, please contact the Bishop's office'. I very frequently am of course, but I suspect they wouldn't appreciate me phoning up every five minutes about the things which trouble me!

Off the hill and closer to the town centre is St. Barnabas'. It represents a slightly earlier period of church building than St. Mark's sixties' small-scale functionalism. I guess St. Barnabas' to be a creature of the nineteen thirties, massively brick built, like a holy relative of Cambridge's blank-faced, monolithic University Library, though in a much nicer material. It's no surprise to find that both churches are closed to visitors today. How could it be otherwise in this untidy, needy town? The descent into Wellingborough down Oxford Road is bleak, although it's personal memories which colour that. There to my left is Westlands Care Home where lovely Joan, my mother-in-law spent her last months declining into a largely benign dementia, which for all its benignity was immensely distressing for those of us who watched. She'd always been an energetic, kindly soul, known to many in Weston Favell because she believed you ought to be nice to and interested in everyone you met, even if you merely passed them in the street. Her talent for creative play made our Matt the man he is now, capable of deep thought, possessed of an amazing, compassionate work ethic, and a capacity for the best kind of silliness.

I stop by the Tithe Barn, and think of the monks of Croyland Abbey who founded an outpost of their fenland House here by the Swanspool and were rewarded by having a car dealership named after them. Because of them ancient Waendelburgh grew to become today's Wellingborough. The old name survives in the annual Maytime 'Waendel Walk' which beats the bounds of the town.

                                                                    Open for business?


Behind the Market Square (the medieval regulations permitted a Wednesday-only market here, but commerce got the better of that notion yonks ago) is the oldest extant building: All Hallows church. Behind heavy duty, firmly closed gates across the porch I can just glimpse a sign welcoming visitors. It's the second hostage to fortune I've encountered today. Earlier I'd smiled at a Borough Council notice which shouted across a derelict parade of shops that it was working in partnership with the local community (in vandalism? in bankruptcy?)  You can't only blame the clergy, there are all kinds of risks with open churches, and it's too easy to stand from afar and be critical, but isn't it obvious that if Christians want to make a favourable and lasting impression on the public, a church like All Hallows has got to be at the forefront of our presentation during working hours? At the moment it's too easy for people to ignore us.

The Victorian churches in this town are all huge, none more so than the URC: a huge temple of a place just up the hill. There was once a great deal of money sloshing around, and now it's all gone. I go to look for the Kilburn School of Dancing in Rock Street, now resident in a low profile, low rise building. When I left teaching, during the transitional year in which I slowly emerged as a professional musician, I drove once a week to Kilburn's former building in a vain attempt to enthuse the ten or so full-time students about singing. I hadn't a clue what I was doing, and I shouldn't think they benefited one iota from what I said, but I was cheap and I probably ticked a box for Kilburn's prospectus. I remember one of the girls was a junior lion-tamer. The one boy (poor, or lucky?) was called Kriss, though I assume that was a nom de guerre. To cheer myself up I used to play a cassette of Springsteen's 'Hungry Heart' on the way there and back. Quite loudly, drowning out my sorrows and doubts.

I have an appalling pulled pork wrap at the newly re-opened Castle Theatre. It's not the wrap or the pulled pork that's the problem, it's the mayo, the BBQ sauce, the coleslaw, the strange things in the salad they don't tell you about that combine to make it so dreadful. And all for a fiver. It gives a new meaning to the idea of 'take away' food. Please! Just take it away! Boom boom. I'd have paid more for them not to muck the meat about. However, I'm very glad that the funding has been found to give Wellingborough back its cultural heart.

Round the corner is another vast palace of religion, All Saints Church, whose nineteenth century architects probably had in mind a Roman-style basilica. Its geographical proximity to All Hallows means that they function as twin stars in Wellingborough's central ecclesiastical firmament. It's here that young Harrison Cook from our church has recently found a home for his enthusiastic musical talents. And again, within a half-mile or so is St. Mary's. Now I know from Simon Jenkins' 'Thousand Best Churches' to expect something special here: it's one of only three four-star rated churches in the county, which puts it in his UK top one hundred. So rather exceptionally, I knock on the keyholder's door, and ask if I can look inside. Peter Walker slowly and carefully establishes that I'm not going to steal the family silver and opens up. As Jenkins notes, the exterior isn't remarkable, but the interior is truly staggering. The Gothic inspired design is by Sir Ninian Comper, dating from 1908, under the financial patronage of the three Misses Sharman, and there are echoes of Italy all around the worshipper, though the ornate rood screen is British tradition incarnate. The money ran out, of course it did, so what Comper intended as a final decorative result is best seen in the lavish gilt and colouring of the side chapel. But even as eventually finished in the nineteen fifties, the main body of the church invokes in me a great sense of calm, something to do with the size of the space relative to the number of seats. This was a late-flowering part of the dreams which once existed for Wellingborough in the decades after the coming of the railway, when the tree-lined Midland Road would enable elegant folk to walk with their parasols (to provide shade from the sun not the rain - Wellingborough has less precipitation than almost anywhere in the UK)  up to the town centre. And to their right as they walked would be the splendour of St. Mary's, which now sits incongruously among the growing urban deprivation of Knox Road.

Peter tells me that the church is full each week. It's a centre of Anglo-Catholic ritual so intense it undoubtedly eclipses the Roman Catholics round the corner, and so people come from far and wide to participate - or perhaps just to be present - amid the grandeur of procession, incense and music. Do they have a choir, I ask? Peter tells me they have a Cantor, who was in the West End in 'Chess' and 'Phantom of the Opera'. It fits somehow. Peter smiles at the thought that the Bishop probably doesn't entirely approve of what goes on within the walls of St. Mary's. I'm unsure that I do either, but then, I'm reminded of Christ being anointed with spikenard, and think to myself that back when there was all that dosh in Wellingborough, this wasn't the worst use of it. But how to go on caring for it now? Ninian Comper wanted to be buried here, but they stuck him in Westminster Abbey, which is what you get for being good at art.

Before I go, Peter and I talk about Wellingborough's future, which is in a dramatically expanded housing stock, most of it to the east of town, where presumably it will become one with Rushden.
And so this is a little local test of the theory that building houses gets you out of the financial doldrums. Will Wellingborough's struggling economy recover and return prosperity to the place? The politicians believe so. I hope as the French say 'ca vaut la peine'. But the police will tell you that the EDL are strong around here, so something must be done.

The last Wellingborough church I visit today is St. Andrew's, up on the estates around the western edge of town, where friend Michelle runs the show. I hum and hah about phoning her beforehand, but decide to leave it to chance. In the event she's in the middle of talking a couple through a forthcoming funeral, but leaves them considering hymn options for a few minutes to show me the compact, friendly, neat space which is the church. Things are on the up. The congregation is increasing in number, and they're working with her to make the parish more effective. Michelle is lovely, so I'm not at all surprised, but it's good to see that she's in good spirits. Here's a parish which in some respects is the polar opposite to St. Mary's. Belief-wise they probably share a catholic perspective, but the manner of expressing what they believe is very different. If Revival is to come to Wellingborough, all hands are needed on deck, financially, culturally, and in terms of faith. Nationally the same is true. Can a Phoenix arise, post-Brexit, post post-modernism?

Stats Man:  19 km. 6 hours. 15 degrees C, and sunny most of the day. A chilly breeze. Six churches: entrance effected into three of them, by invitation or request. One eating experience, regrettable. One fly tip (avoided). No stiles (unsurprising). Nine gates. Sundry bridges across the Swanspool.

Father
These rhythms all around us:
The way the Church ebbs and flows:
In fashion/out of fashion:
Enthusiastic/withdrawn:
Promoted/persecuted:
Processional/Puritan:
Waxing and waning:
It probably seems insignificant to You.
But down here on the ground,
It's so easy to be worried,
Caught up in the preoccupations of today,
Anxious about the way things seem to be going.

Thank You for the faithful people I meet:
Trying to make sense of the Gospel:
Trying to follow You.
Add me to their number
By Your grace.
So may Revival come. Or not.
Whatever You will.
I ask it in Your name,
Amen.

Palm Court and Palm Sunday

It's going to be warm, so the weather pundits say, and indeed it's been dry and mild right through these last few days. And so that strange thing happens as the British give themselves permission to cast off winter clothes and live the dream, hood down, club music hitting every beat squarely, flesh and bling well on fat n'fun display. Driving along the multi-ethnic, multi-pubbed Wellingborough road on Thursday evening it felt like the Boys were back in Town. There were tint-windowed, suspension-lowered GTIs everywhere. People were spilling off the pavements even at nine o'clock. A vague suggestion of menace and 'who are you looking at?' hung in the air. Is it me that's changed or Northampton. A bit of both, probably.

But let's hear it for the sunshine. Clear blue skies today, every bird busy and singing its heart out, blossom to the maximum. Since I was last walking in Overstone, the builders have moved in. Readers will think I'm making this up to ride a familiar hobby horse, but we only noticed a few months ago how the fields towards Moulton are being gouged out by earth-movers. A large new housing estate is to be constructed there, with little infrastructural provision as far as can be seen, except that the A43 is to be dualled close by. That apart, the roads, the schools, the health services - they'll all just have to cope. It was announced back in 2014 apparently - but we didn't know, of course we didn't, because Northampton no longer has a daily paper, and we choose not to listen to local radio. The problem is there's always something useful among the junk in your inbox.

Overstone and Sywell run seamlessly the one into the other. There's Overstone Heights in Sywell, and I've just parked off Sywell Road, Overstone. I buy a copy of The Times in the village Post Office.  Mr. Murdoch's proxies are discussing pruriently the prospects of the US and Russia going to war, but that all feels a million miles away as I walk east along the straight road up to Pie Corner, a little close of modern houses next to Sywell's pub. I can find nothing to tell me why it was so named, unless the hostelry was (still is?) renowned for its steak and ale. The only reference I can find on the web has Big Ade, whoever he is, tell the world he thinks he'd fit in well there. A stile takes me into a lumpy field. I walk down to a dried stream bed and then up to the church of St. Peter and St. Paul. The handsome cottages to the far side of the church look like estate houses, sturdily and prettily built in an artsy and crafty Edwardian way.

The rapeseed is brilliantly in bloom in the fields. At first the path to Mears Ashby neatly cuts a broad swathe through the sea of yellow, but where it pulls up the other side of another little valley, it's narrower and I'm pushing through plants that are as tall as me and slightly damp on my shorts and bare legs.  It's dustily dry underfoot now. Too much more of this nice weather and the water companies will be crying drought. Perhaps I could have gone back to my Merrills today.

I would have said I knew Mears Ashby - we pass close to it weekly - but I find I don't. It's a severely square shape on the map, which if we were in France might suggest fortifications, but this is Northamptonshire and such things don't exist here. Inside the square there's another dip to the next stream on its way down to the Nene, and a little nest of roads with many distinguished houses representing a number of moments from the last four hundred years or so. A couple are up for sale and I talk to Maria from Jackson Stops, who's just been showing prospective clients around a little cottage. Too small for us, I say, but she smiles a charming smile and presses a business card upon me - Jackson Stops were the agency who negotiated our current house. All Saints church hangs solidly above a flowery ravine with a pond at its bottom. On the far side is the large Manor House. I stop and honour the name of Callis on some of the gravestones.  I was at college with Charles Callis from this local farming family. His brother Richard and wife Veronica worship at our St. Peter's.

I ignore the path which runs northwards from the village, fearing more wet rapeseed, and go by road instead, because I want to drop into the Beckworth Emporium for a drink and the loo. Beckworth is a tremendously successful business attracting hundreds of people every weekend (and many weekdays too) to its garden centre, café and fine foods shop. The staff are unfailingly pleasant and helpful, the ambience cheery and at Christmas you can watch the skating and buy a reliable well-priced, needle-fast tree. It's a regular breakfast treat for us. It does the simple things very well, and so has flourished. And after that endorsement, I'll expect 10% off all future transactions. The downside of my call on them today is a dodgy walk along the back road to Wellingborough, and I have to take conservative care, stepping into the ditch when in doubt until I can pick up the streamside bridleway to Hardwick.

Hardwick is the sort of nominal village equivalent of the Smith family name. You can find Hardwicks all over the shop. This one is a small collection of houses and farms around St. Leonard's church, with a postage stamp green and one tree. It was probably always a tiny settlement. Wikipedia tells me that there's an additional shade of meaning to wic  of which I was unaware: a village so named was dependent on another community close by - in this case I suppose probably Mears Ashby, although the expanding girth of Wellingborough creeps closer year on year. A youngish man is testing out a pushbike for his wife, who arrives back from work while he's doing so. They play with their pretty little, laughing pre-school daughter. I wonder if they ever have anything to do with the beautifully tended church. Perhaps they cut the grass. There's a notice in the porch to say that the benefice has been suspended. One reason that this might have happened, though not the only one, is that one of the churches in it may have been unable to pay its way. They still have a priest-in-charge though, Duncan Beet, but he's on his way elsewhere, so from now on there's an interregnum. I wonder what will this do for the churches of Overstone, Sywell, Mears Ashby and Hardwick? People can grow - in the modern parlance 'step up' - at such times, or they can decide to jack it in and go somewhere else, or nowhere at all. We are a supermarket culture, or so we're told, and the church is competing for trade. Is that right?

The lane takes a right angle in the village, and I walk up it towards the woods trying to ignore the lacework of litter beside it. Near Grange Farm two Transit vans pass me. There are three up front in the first and a single bloke driving the second. This is no statement of his marital status: there is just one of him! The gate to the farm is opened and they go on down the track towards it. They don't look right to me. Looking at the livestock around me, I think, 'Sheep rustlers?'

Generally speaking, compared with the west of the county, there are few footpaths around here. Why is that? I suppose the communities may be slightly more scattered, and in times past the population may just have been smaller. Or maybe rascally landowners shut them down long ago. Or maybe it's something to do with field use. Or perhaps wartime experience - airfields and so on - changed necessary permissions. It means more road walking for me, but round the back of the farm there are bridleways, a bit knobbly now that the ground has dried out. And horses obviously exercise on them regularly, because at one point I come to a little series of well-organised jumps. From the west side of the wood I can hear the sounds of shooting and I recollect that I've seen directions to a range off the A43 to Kettering. The fields are full of sheep, with winsome, just-past-gambolling lambs. It's hopeless trying to get pictures: I could be there all day. As soon as the camera comes out, the mummy sheep herd their little ones out of the way in a way that's truly very endearing. No human mother could be more protective.

Then I hear loud voices over the fields and raucous, revving engines. I can see the two Transits again, over to my left. Evidently not rustlers then. The blokes are standing, admiring trials bikes which have exited the rear doors of the vans. Soon they're racing them around a field very close to the sheep. I look for a verifiable phone number for the farm, but can't find one, and so have to leave them to traumatise the animals. Are they doing this with the farmer's connivance, or illegally. I don't know but I find it peculiarly distressing.

Up past the solar farm, I come back to the road near Beckworth, and walk back towards the car past Sywell Aerodrome, winner of several awards for being the best UK 'General Aviation airfield'. I have a drink at the bar of their fashionably Art Deco hotel, and study the clientele hanging out to watch the planes take off and land on the grass strip. It's a jolly place on a regular Saturday afternoon (there's no special event today, though next week their little aviation museum will re-open with a bit of formation flying, re-enactors and weather permitting, 'the appearance of a friendly war bird or two'). On this day before Palm Sunday, in this slightly Palm Court setting (no band though: just cheesy pop on the stereo), I reflect that there are as many people sitting in the sun as there will be in church tomorrow morning. Are we so much less attractive than this as a place to be?

Statto: 17 km. 5 hrs. 20 deg. C. Light breeze. One stile. Nine gates. One bridge. Three churches: all shut. One garden centre. One kestrel. One estate agent, mildly predatory. One Hawker Hunter, now toothless, proudly displayed. Countless lambs, universally appealing, some sooty. And on my I-phone, goodness, Northants C.C., winning their first county match of the season by an innings. On April 8th!

Father
Walking in the Sunshine of Your Love today
I found it hard going.
Everywhere looked
(here we go with the cliché )
'achingly beautiful'.
Pain in my heart, you see,
And fatigue in my muscles.
I was thinking about Trevor,
Whose life we'll celebrate on Wednesday,
Returned to heaven so early.
And these things I report:
All so transient.
The life of those lambs:
So short.
I ask you again to help me understand this,
And to accept all that we have
So fleetingly
As precious gifts from You to us
And to find a proper response
To Your kindness and generosity.
Amen