Walking to Camelot (12 page)

KARL RETURNS
in late evening from Yorkshire, having successfully recovered his daughter's time capsule from the abbey grounds, though not without incident. Evidently, he attracted much attention when he tunnelled like a mole into sacred ground in front of perplexed tourists. He had just retrieved the buried capsule when an abbey official, puzzled by a stir in the courtyard, came onto the grounds to investigate. By this time, Karl was carefully replacing the grass turf, both capsule and spoon tucked nicely away in his pocket.

“So what did the official say to you?”

“He just stood over me as I finished replacing the turf, his eyebrows arched, looking very worried.”

“So what did you do?”

“I stood up, cleared my throat, and told him that the Yorkshire soil was of great interest to me as a Canadian agronomist with special interest in forestry.”

“But you're no agronomist.”

“I know, but it turns out that his uncle emigrated to Canada years ago and went into forestry in Ontario, so that shifted the conversation to a topic I know everything about — trees.”

I shake my head. “Karl, how is it that you can shift so quickly from stubborn Dutch stoicism to whimsical Irish blarney?”

Next morning after breakfast I apply the blister spray to the feet and voila! It does indeed feel like I am wearing new skin. We take our leave of Helen and Nick and are quacked at by the ducks patrolling the green by the pond.

The walk out of Warmington toward Edgehill is quite an ascent. A lone beech tree is our marker as we make a turn, poised above a high escarpment. There are stunning views over the Avon Valley. My blisters are less painful. Unfortunately, Colin the über-walker's footprints are no longer visible, as rains have washed them away. We soon face the weather again: sheets of rain lash us in windy gusts as we traverse steep rolling fields where myriad sheep tracks sometimes take us off trail.

We emerge from a copse to arrive in the centre of the ancient village of Ratley, startling an elderly man walking his collie. He looks us up and down as if we were a pair of mesolithic vagabonds.

The rain abates and the day is turning warm. We look forward to refreshment at the famous Castle Inn in Edgehill. But first we descend into dense woods for two miles, and then plunge farther down long, steep wooden steps known as Jacob's Ladder. A hike of a good half hour back uphill takes us to Edgehill village. The Castle Inn is mercifully open. I admire the imposing golden oak door, above which hangs a crimson sign dating the inn to 1747.

“As the good duke said, John, never miss an opportunity to take a pint and a piss.”

Karl happens to be a great fan of the Duke of Wellington.

“Now Karl, that's not quite how the quote goes — the duke said nothing about a pint.”

“You can trust the Iron Duke, John, to know the order of things.” With that I can't argue.

The local squire built the inn as a castellated octagonal folly in 1749 to commemorate the Battle of Edgehill. The walls of the bar area are decorated with weapons, including pistols and swords. Tradition has it that Cromwell planned the battle sitting in the back of the Reindeer Inn in Banbury. Visitors staying in the turret of the Castle Inn still report being awakened by the sounds of fighting below, reports given credence by being recorded at the Public Record Office over the years. The English take their ghosts seriously. They are even assigned file numbers.

We each take a Guinness outside to the terrace garden, where we kick back and bask in the pale sun. Below us lie the terraced slopes of the battlefield where a thousand men died in 1642. Edgehill was the first major battle of the Civil War. The two sides, a total of 28,000 troops, were quite evenly matched. Both sides claimed victory, but historians agree it was a draw. The battle set the tone of indecisive combat over the next four years, until Cromwell eventually prevailed.

The fields now are peaceful, aglow in the mellow afternoon light. In the distance, soft, rounded hills mark the Vale of the Red Horse. The cacophony of clashing swords, screaming horses, and bloodcurdling cries is hard to imagine in this bucolic setting.

Alas, we must heft packs. The path dips down steeply behind Castle Inn, then descends into deep beech woods until joining a muddy track merging from the north. The track is called King John's Lane, because the famously despotic monarch spent many of his days hunting in this region.

“You know, Karl, King John was an evil bastard who greedily tried to seize the throne while his heroic brother Richard the Lionhearted was off fighting the Crusades. After Richard died, the barons rebelled against King John, and he was forced to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. The charter was never intended to protect the common man, yet it ultimately became embedded in the justice system and conflated with ancient Saxon concepts of fair play.”

“You're the lawyer,” says Karl, “but I don't see a whole lot of rights percolating down these days to the common man or woman. Try and fight city hall. Nor did the Magna Carta address the plight of the workers displaced by the Industrial Revolution, or, for that matter, the condition of agricultural workers like those Poles up near Boston scrimping a living from picking lettuce in the Fenlands.”

“No argument there, Karl.”

I once visited Runnymede, where King John signed the Magna Carta, with my wife and eldest son. The chief memorial is on a high hill across from the River Thames. The barons and knights had gathered on a meadow to meet King John to demand their rights. As I sat there and contemplated the scene, I saw the gaily painted banners of the barons with their tents and courtiers and pages. The lonely king's pennant was set apart, while the placid river wound its meandering course in the background. My son, meanwhile, scrambled about on the slope above us and I became rather emotional, realizing that much of the freedom he will enjoy will have emanated from what occurred at this spot so many centuries ago. As I pondered this, plane after plane taking off from Heathrow flew low overhead, one every sixty seconds — a different age, to be sure, but Man still faces the same basic struggles of existence: political equality, economic justice, and a fair balance between citizen and state. Ironically, but for King John the ogre, the evolution of British and all human freedom may have taken a much longer path toward fruition. For many, of course, the path is still untrodden.

FROM SUNRISING HILL
there is a panoramic view westward over Warwickshire, where bright yellow, beige, and green fields alternate like a quilt tapestry beneath the Malvern Hills. This is Shakespeare country. Stratford-upon-Avon shines resplendent beside the silvery Avon, a storied stream that winds through meadows before merging with the Severn at Tewksbury. For the first time, we are confronted with evidence of substantial horse ranching and equestrian activities — cinder tracks, horse-jump runs, and well-fenced paddocks.

We push on. Two little boys are so completely absorbed dangling fishing poles over a brook that they do not notice our approach across the narrow footbridge. As we cross, the breeze sends a shower of white hawthorn blossoms in a cascading spiral upon us.

The scene beyond the brook is right out of Constable's painting
The Cornfield:
Ahead of us is a flock of sheep being herded by an English collie along the path. A tall elm tree stands as sentinel. The eye is entranced by the seemingly endless slanting fields beyond and a sky pulsating with fast-moving, creamy pillows skirling eastward. Darker clouds loom ominously on the western horizon. The only part of the scene denoting the twenty-first century is a farmer in tweeds and wellies standing beside his Land Rover, watching his dog and sheep while speaking on his mobile.

Of the English painters, John Constable was the master of skies. No part of England is far from the sea, and the sky is ever changing as layer upon layer of clouds pile in from the Atlantic, the Irish Sea, and the North Sea. Even when the sky is blue it seems pale. Sarah Lyall believes that the climate influences the English to be less “perky” than Americans — “The moodiness makes for lovely landscape painting, but the sun's failure to rise all the way in the sky brings on a natural melancholy.” There is some truth to this. However, I would say that the climate tends to produce a mellowness, as opposed to melancholy.

We trudge on toward Epwell on a squishy lane full of mudholes and horse turds.

“Why do you suppose that farmer back there was all dressed up in tweed?” mutters Karl. “Surely, that's impractical. Do they just see themselves as gentlemen farmers here who don't want to get all mucked up?”

“It's a tradition, Karl, I suppose. Particularly in wealthy horsey communities like the Cotswolds. And it's not wholly impractical, since tweed is made to be durable and reasonably rainproof.”

“Perhaps — but a farmer should dress like a farmer, not like Sherlock Holmes.”

Tweed, in fact, is making a comeback in Britain. The fabric originated in Scotland and quickly became popular with the upper and middle classes, who wore tweed Norfolk jackets and plus-fours for cycling, hunting, golfing, and motoring. Mr. Toad was even styled by Kenneth Grahame in a Harris tweed suit. After 1918, the fabric declined in popularity until it was revived by the academic set. During the seventies and eighties there was another brief revival, this time in the form of loud and herringbone tweeds. Now tweed is popular among the smart horsey set and academics as well as with hipsters, vintage tweeds being especially in vogue. Harris tweed is still made on the Outer Hebrides and is the only fabric in the world protected by an act of parliament.

I reflect that thus far on the walk we have been haunted by the ghosts of every past era — “haunted” both literally and figuratively. Oscar Wilde once wrote, “He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives. To realise the nineteenth century, one must realise every century that has preceded it, and that has contributed to its making.”

One cannot walk a mile in this country without history intruding to startle or absorb the senses. Along our path, every vestige of the past presents itself — sometimes vividly, as with a monument such as Edgehill and the carnage of the English Civil War; sometimes more subtly, as with a simple sign proclaiming “King John's Lane.” Every key moment in English history seems to pop up en route — and every age in that history: neolithic barrows; Celtic place names; Queen Boadicea's meadow; Roman roads and ruined villas; med­ieval castle ruins; Anglo-Saxon burial sites; Viking villages; centuries-old churches, still standing; Elizabethan architecture; Victorian piles and monuments; twentieth-century war bunkers and airfields — all taking their turn in the never-ending saga of history.

Our route now follows a green lane that forms the boundary between Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. This track is part of a trading road dating to neolithic times. It bears the insipid name of Ditchedge Lane. Superb views unfold on both sides of the ridge we climb, particularly to the west toward the Cotswold hills, where the folly known as Broadway Tower crowds the skyline. It stands near Broadway, the centre of Cotswolds chic, haute couture, and fine antiques. It is to Broad-way that wealthy North American antique hunters flock, some shipping entire container loads of high-priced brass, raiment, and centuries-old oak across the pond.

GUIDE:
At bottom of long field, follow path along small sunken section of track and through gate onto minor road. Bear left and over bridge beside attractive ford.

We stand on an ancient packhorse bridge over Traitor's Ford on the River Stour, where Parliamentary sympathizers were executed during the Civil War. Some believe that its original name was “Traders Ford,” since a cattle market was once held here. The spot was used for a scene in
Three Men and a Little Lady,
a 1990 Hollywood comedy featuring Tom Selleck.

Karl and I clamber off the bridge, doff our packs and boots, and wade into the water to cool off. Just as we do so, I am accosted by a couple of big dogs, one of which resembles a cross between a German shepherd and an Irish wolfhound. At first I think they are just playing, but when the bigger cur chomps at my leg, it is time to do battle. I slosh to shore, grab both walking sticks, and thrash and yell at the canines, only routing them after the blackthorn stick does its work on the wolfhound's rear quarters. Then I look around anxiously to ensure I am not going to be arrested by some animal rights activists. The dogs romp away into a nearby barley field.

Karl has remained oblivious to my aquatic battle, as he is performing washing ablutions midstream below the bridge, quite enjoying the experience. He finally looks up at me, a bar of soap in his hand, and smiles. “Cleanliness is next to godliness, my mother always told me.”

Just beyond Traitor's Ford we meet a man with a spaniel who says he is walking his dog this weekend to “get away from the kids.” He lovingly coddles and coos his springer and proudly tells us that the inn he is booked to stay at this evening welcomes dogs within. I wonder how much coddling and cooing he gives to his children or, for that matter, his wife.

The British government recently issued an alarming bulletin to the public over the nation's children — increasing numbers of whom are evidently growing up aimless or dysfunctional. Some relate this trend to the traditional distance that English parents place between themselves and their children. The Victorian notion that “children should be seen and not heard” still holds traction in large swathes of English society.

Sadly, even
The Wind in the Willows
was written by a father who found it so awkward to communicate with his son that he sent him off to boarding schools and refused to visit him. Grahame wrote his classic book in part as a substitute for being a parent, according to literary experts, including the
BBC
's John O'Farrell. Grahame wrote dozens of letters to his son, Alastair, detailing the adventures of Toad, but ignored Alastair's pleas to come and visit him. Fifteen surviving letters confirm that Grahame used Toad to deflect Alastair's pleas, which at age seven sound heart-rending: “You must come down for the weekend and pick a nice beef bone with me,” wrote Alastair in 1907. Grahame later used his “Toad” letters as the basis for
The Wind in the Willows.