Walking to Camelot (33 page)

EVERY DAY OF
our walk we discovered powerful vestiges of the past: neolithic megaliths; Celtic resistance to Romans; Roman villas and roads; King Arthur and Camelot; Saxon chapels; Viking names and traditions from the Danelaw; Norman churches and architecture; the ravages of civil war — Parliament against King; village pride and medieval customs, such as fairs and athletic competitions; Victorian achievements like Brunel's railways and canals; countryside change, ruin, resistance, and resilience; the painful scars of two world wars. From ancient barrows to World War
II
bunkers, every era was represented. We even followed the Jurassic belt of rock that has so defined central England — reminder of a geological age of cataclysm that ushered in life, teeming and abundant, much of it embedded in Cotswold stone.

Along the length of a slender footpath we encountered an astonishing array of historical figures: Queen Boadicea, King Arthur, King Alfred, King John, Sir Walter Raleigh, Samuel Pepys, Charles
I
, Oliver Cromwell, Charles
II
, George
III
,Alexander Pope, John Dryden, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Thomas, John Steinbeck, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Princess Diana, Camilla, and Prince Charles, all of whom are part of the historical tapestry of Macmillan Way — not to mention countless lesser luminaries such as Parson Woodforde, Queen Matilda, George Washington's ancestors, John Cotton, Charles Fox, John Masefield, J.B. Priestley, and Stewart Menzies.

Along the Way, we met warm, generous people, many of whom opened their homes and hearts to us and who were careful to never give offence. And everywhere on our journey we found a quiet acceptance of life by England's rural residents — plus a certain reticence, a hesitation to be too critical of others, and a reluctance to wave the flag.

We discovered an astonishing independence of thought and defiance of authority: bottle kicking at Hallaton; the sauciness of Whitwell villagers twinning their flyspeck hamlet with Paris; the rebellious Banbury folk with their Lady Godiva statue and Hobby Horse Festival debaucheries; Morris dancing run amok; the gypsies of Stow carrying on the tradition of a horse fair in defiance of court orders; woolsack-racing madness in Tetbury; Yetties in Dorset maintaining folk-song tradition; the fierce protection by villagers of the Cerne Abbas Giant; a Castle Combe resident blowing up an artificial dam that spoiled the look of the village; and the civil disobedience of Rutlanders in demanding their separate little county. Not to mention country marches on Westminster to protest the fox-hunting ban, fights against culling of animals — whether they be badgers or hedgehogs — and countryside Ramblers policing the public's right to walk the footpaths. It's live and let live — but don't dare interfere with our privacy, our wildlife, our green spaces, or our country customs.

THE ENGLISH FOOTPATH
is symbolic of the resistance of the English to change but also a symbol of enshrined liberty in the eyes of the common folk. Sovereigns and governments come and go. The Industrial Revolution despoiled much of the landscape; the Enclosure movement barred access to vast areas of tillable soil. But the inherent right of passage represented by the footpath lives on — and will be fiercely defended by Ramblers and others who regard this as a sacred entitlement, the legacy of every citizen. The hills, the fields, the wolds, the moors — all are part of the land over which free people may roam, mainly on legal footpaths, green lanes, and bridleways.

The footpath restores, energizes, and connects with some things lost. It is a tunnel to the past and a link to the future. Myriad spidery footpath networks underpin the nation, the gossamer acting like glue, embedding the very history of the land into the consciousness of a people. In a fast-paced world of change, it is vital that a people remain grounded, so that amid the clash and clang of metal on the highway, the buzz of electronics, the swoosh of a jet fighter overhead, the peace of the path will always be there for contemplation and solace. And the path will remain in one's memory forever.

In
Nineteen Eighty-Four,
George Orwell's hero, Winston, yearns for a landscape he dubs the Golden Country. The Golden Country can be reached by a footpath through a lovely park-like countryside. It is here that Winston is able to meet with his lover, Julia, beyond the watchful eyes of the state and its ubiquitous telescreens. As Kim Taplin notes in
The English Path,
“If we want the Golden Country to exist outside the imagination, we must keep the paths to it open.”

Some walking days are arduous, though one never remembers the icy rain; the slogging through muddy fields where the path disappears; the scrapes, the bruises, and the blisters and sprains. The joy of each day's discovery outweighs all of that. Robert Louis Stevenson writes in his essay “Walking Tours” that at the end of the walk you might question yourself as to whether you have been the “wisest philosopher or the most egregious of donkeys . . . but at least you have had a fine moment, and looked down upon all the kingdoms of the earth.”

The path also resonates in another way. In
The Lord of the Rings,
Tolkien writes that “Bilbo used to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary.” But the road and the path also represent the cohesion of all life, since even the tiniest footpath in the shire leads to distant and often sinister places. It is often comfier to stay in one's willowed brook or shire, but the wider world awaits, to be explored, tasted, and perhaps improved. And it is the footpath that represents the way out. So the Macmillan Way is very special. It unlocks doors. And for me, it also proves the truth of the adage
Solvitur ambulando
— you can sort it out by walking.

A number of people contributed to make this book possible.

First, many thanks to my literary agent, Robert Mackwood, who never lost faith in the project.

My chief editor, Scott Steedman, worked indefatigably to improve the manuscript, and it was fun working with him. I will forgive Scott for favouring soccer over hockey. Stephanie Fysh, my copy editor, showed thorough and often piercing insight into textual matters. She is a true professional.

Thanks to the entire publishing team: Chris Labonté has assembled a talented group, including my ever helpful managing editor, Lara Smith; media savvy Mark Redmayne, who coached me into learning some of the finer points of social media; and book designer Natalie Olsen.

Thanks to Peter Titchmarsh, who facilitated the creation of the Macmillan Way, despite many obstacles from recalcitrant landowners.

My friend and walking companion Dave Green provided valuable insights on the manuscript and my thanks to him also for his impressions of English rural life.

To Karl Yzerman, surely the Al Pacino of long-distance walkers, my heartfelt thanks for so many enjoyable hours of rural walking adventures. Karl was the inspiration for this book.

Last but not least, thanks to my wife, Dee, who as always provided valuable critiques of the manuscript and encouraged me along the way.

Quotations from the
Guide
are from Peter Titchmarsh,
The Macmillan Way: The 290-Mile Coast-to-Coast Path from Boston to Abbotsbury
(Ipswich,
UK
: The Macmillan Way Association, 2003).

“That village, so often near a Roman road, is sometimes clearly a Saxon hamlet”: H.V. Morton,
In Search of England
(London, 1927).

“For all the drawbacks of rural life and its tough and uncompromising history”: Joanna Trollope, “The country we love,”
The Telegraph
(March 1,1998), reprinted in
The Hedgerows Heaped with May: The
Telegraph
Book of the Countryside,
edited by Stephen Moss (London, 2012).

“These by-paths . . . admit the wayfarer into the very heart of rural life, and yet do not burden him”: Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Leamington Spa,” in
Our Old Home
(Boston, 1883).

“right of . . . thoroughfare on his land for every vagabond”: George Eliot,
The Mill on the Floss
(Edinburgh and London, 1860).

“There are certain things that happen at nature reserves”: in “Amorous birdwatchers get back to nature,”
The Telegraph
(August 6, 2009), reprinted in
The Hedgerows Heaped with May
.

“Realism; fatalism; phlegm. To live in the Fens is to receive strong doses of reality”: Graham Swift,
Waterland
(London, 1983).

In fact, the great drainage schemes of the eighteenth century: Marion Shoard, in her book
The Theft of the Countryside
(London, 1980), argues that with the removal of trees, bushes, and hedgerows over the centuries of reclamation schemes, the Lincolnshire Fens are now “just a production line for food products.”

“a cluster of lavatory brushes in the sky”: Sir Bernard Ingham, quoted by Robert Bedlow in “Sir Bernard takes a tilt at windmills,”
The Hedgerows Heaped with May
.

“Badger hates society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing”: Kenneth Grahame,
The Wind in the Willows
(London, 1908).

“I can only teach you two things — to dig, and to love your home”: T.H. White,
The Once and Future King
(London, 1958).

“little water vole”: Stella Gibbons,
Cold Comfort Farm
(London, 1932).

“Feather-footed through the plashy fens passes the questing vole”: Evelyn Waugh,
Scoop
(London, 1938).

“Every British animal has its cheerleaders”: Sarah Lyall,
The Anglo Files
(New York, 2008).

“read it and reread it”: in Alison Flood, “First edition of
The Wind in the Willows
sells for £32,400,”
The Guardian
(March 24, 2010).

“I am nervous; I am not ill, but I am nervous”: King George
III
, quoted by Frances Burney in her court journal for 1788, published after her death as
The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay
.

“men who are ceaselessly battered by the wind and rain”: Pierre Daninos, “Contradictions” (1957), reprinted in
In a Fog: The Humorists' Guide to England,
edited by Robert Wechsler (Highland Park,
NJ
, 1989).

“Few other peoples lavished so much money on charity as the British”: Ben Wilson,
The Making of Victorian Values
(London, 2007).

“There are few things which give such a feeling of the prosperity of the country”: William Howitt,
The Rural Life of England
(London, 1838).

The spirit of the Celts was epitomized by this brave woman: Tacitus,
The Annals
(
AD
110–120), translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (London, 1888).

“In the course of a day's walk, you see, there is much variance in the mood”: Robert Louis Stevenson, “Walking tours,”
The Cornhill Magazine
(1876) and
Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers
(London, 1881), available at
grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/walkingtouressay_2htm
.

“If you see something along the way that you want to touch with your mindfulness”: Thich Nhat Hanh,
The Long Road Turns to Joy
(New York, 1996).

“white narrow roads rutted by hooves and cartwheels, innocent of oil or petrol”: Laurie Lee,
Cider with Rosie
(London, 1959).

“Roads, lanes, paths”: Geoffrey Grigson,
Freedom of the Parish
(London, 1954).

“It is a great day for me, sir . . . I have established a right of way”: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Hound of the Baskervilles
(London, 1902)
.

“but they don't want to be near the nasty niffs and noises”: Ian Johnson, quoted in Audrey Gillan, “You don't get country folk moving to London and demanding that they stop the buses,”
The Telegraph
(July 19, 1998), reprinted in
The Hedgerows Heaped with May
.

“In Britain, identifiably, there is a persistent rural-intellectual radicalism”: Raymond Williams,
The Country and the City
(London, 1973).

“Is there no nook of English ground secure”: William Wordsworth, “On the Projected Kendal and Windermere Railway” (1844).

“unfreedom of the villein or serf was never a generalized condition”: Frances and Joseph Gies,
Life in a Medieval Village
(New York, 1989).

“One spot shall prove beloved over all”: Rudyard Kipling, “Sussex” (1902).

“Laws for themselves and not for me”: A.E. Housman, “The Laws of God, the Laws of Man,” in
A Shropshire Lad
(Oxford, 1896).

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”: Lewis Carroll,
Alice in Wonderland
(London, 1865).

“stock exchange, his reading-room, his club”: Richard Jefferies, “The labourer's daily life,”
Fraser's Magazine
(November 1874).

“nurseries of naughtiness”: James Moore and Paul Nero,
Ye Olde Good Inn Guide: A Tudor Traveller's Guide to the Nation's Finest Taverns
(Stroud, 2013).

The writer A.A. Gill decries the Trust: A.A. Gill,
The Angry Island Hunting the English
(London, 2005).

“That in the beginning of June, 1741, he observed a Man”: Bill of 1744 to Dissolve a Marriage,
Journals of the House of Lords,
Vol. 26.

“where a footpath diverged from the highroad”: E.M. Forster,
A Room with a View
(London, 1908).

“Woods, where we hid from the wet”: Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Marriage Morning,” in
The Window
(London, 1871).