Walking to Camelot (23 page)

But the Woolpack is closed, and we have to suffer our thirst in silence for many miles further. On the outskirts of Beckington, we become snarled in a bevy of bowling and cricket pitches. Then we have the most terrible experience of the day — there in the distance on the motorway is the ugly plastic red and white sign of Little Chef, the British fast food chain that serves gluttonous agglomerations of over-salted, cholesterol-ridden fare to weary and unwitting motorway victims. Ugh!

We quickly scurry away from this sordid window into the outside world and dive into a copse, from which we emerge onto a lane entry to Beckington.

In 1766, Beckington was inundated by rioters, who set ablaze a mill and other buildings as part of their rage against mechanization. Fulling mills had been built along the River Frome since before the fifteenth century, and depended upon spinners and weavers working from their cottages. Now all that had changed, with the entire operation moving to large, mechanized mills. A pitched battle ensued in which one man was killed and several seriously injured.

We opt for a short walking day, as we are booked to stay at Angela Pritchard's farmhouse near the village. Angela is a warm, chatty, erudite lady who is married to Ken Pritchard, who was the navy's Director General of Supplies and Transport during the Falklands War, and was later made a Commander of the Order of the Bath for his services. She tells us over hot tea all about the Falklands conflict and how she often met the naval and soldier lads upon their return, some of them dramatically affected by combat.

Angela was named Lady Sponsor at the 1981 launch of the
Bayleaf,
an auxiliary ship of the Royal Navy. She managed to smash the champagne bottle on the first try! She tells us that the
Bayleaf
went on to see service in the Gulf War in 1991 and the Iraq invasion of 2003.
4

Next morning, we say our goodbyes to Angela and set forth. The hedgerows are festooned with colour — hawthorn, honeysuckle, milkwort, and red dog rose. Chaffinches are singing, rabbits dart across the path, and all is right with the world. I twirl my stick and experience a real joie de vivre.

A mile down the path we encounter signs warning walkers that the resident Highland cattle are neurotic creatures and should be avoided. The path has been altered by the farmer, winding to the left, whereas both the
Guide
and intuition tell me it should be to the right. We plunge through a copse of firs for ten minutes and decide it's hopeless, then crash through heavy undergrowth, with brambles, nettles, and burdocks having their way with my legs — terribly so, as I am wearing shorts today. Stung, welted, and covered with burdocks, we finally emerge into a field, where a herd of steers approaches at speed. We wiggle beneath a barbed-wire fence to escape their clutches. Below I spy the Frome Valley, dark and mysterious.

Nothing looks familiar. Damn those Highland cattle!

“Not often that we get lost,” offers Karl.

“We're not lost! As Tolkien once said, ‘All who wander are not lost.' ”

“John . . . face it, we are lost, and you damn well know it!”

I know better than to argue with Karl, so I just stand there and pick a few burdock burrs off his back. Then he laughs.

Our male egos bruised more than our bodies, we walk across a field immersed in purple thistles and by good luck stumble upon a path that leads us back to the Macmillan. Half an hour later we straggle into Buckland Dinham.

At about this point I reflect on our situation: that despite all of the manifold delights of our adventure, one must also consider the hazards and travail — ravaged feet; inclement weather; wading through field after field of wet, thigh-high rapeseed; avoiding charging bulls and other bovines; boggy bridleways; dangerous horse encounters; near-death experiences on busy roads, not to mention pony carts and tractors; scratched and punctured skin from brambles and nettles; crime scenes; ploughed-up, muddy fields; attacks by canines and geese; getting lost in driving rain; and encountering the odd dodgy character. So, please, do not take a long-distance walk in England lightly. Still, I love it.

I find burdock burrs still clinging to my shorts. These prickly, sticky balls are found worldwide. In England, dandelion mixed with burdock constitutes a soft drink associated with the hedgerow mead that was consumed during medieval times. The burdock root has even been used as a bittering agent in beer. Its greatest usefulness, however, was as inspiration for a Swiss inventor named George de Mestral. George was walking his dog one day in the 1940s when he became curious about the burrs that clung to his pet's fur. He studied them with his microscope and realized that a synthetic approach could mimic Nature's method of causing seeds to disperse through “stickiness.” The result after ten years of effort was Velcro, the “zipperless zipper.”

The village bulletin board advertises a weekly yoga class. The local inn is hosting a charity curry night. A chalk sign proclaims “Ladies Film Night,” which sounds a tad racy. Are only ladies allowed? Do they look at male strippers? Chick flicks? This village is a far cry from Flora Thompson's Candleford.

Near Great Elm, Karl and I decide to take a
Guide
-recommended diversion to Mells, where there is reputed to be great refreshment at the Talbot Inn. Not far along we reach a crossroads called Mary's Grave, the origin of which name is based upon one of four alleged scenarios:

1. a young woman in 1850 murdered by a jealous wife from Great Elm is buried here;
   
2. a gypsy caravan containing a gypsy queen was cremated here;
   
3. a suicide named Mary is buried here; or
   
4. a highwayman who disguised himself as a woman, was tried by Judge Jeffreys, and was hanged at the Old White Horse Inn is buried here. (This is my personal favourite.)
   

There used to be a stone etched with a cross at the presumed site of Mary's grave, but this vanished in 1998 when a new road was built. It must have been a wild, violent place around here, as there is a Murder Combe and a Dead Woman Bottom en route as well.

Mells is well worth the visit. This unspoiled village tucked away from main roads has three notable features: a tall, withered palm tree; a fascinating graveyard; and a fifteenth-century coaching inn — The Talbot Inn free house. I marvel at the great hall of the Talbot, whose matching oak doors lead to a cobbled courtyard cluttered with beer barrels where village fete events are staged in the summer. There is even a “tithe barn sitting room” with a Sunday cinema. The inn proper is a labyrinth of obscure passageways. We take a pint and a sandwich in the Coach House Grill Room, where the food is still grilled over a charcoal and wood fire as in medieval times.

Upscale inns like the Talbot cater to everyone from country rectors to the Rolling Stones. Coaching inns were specially equipped for stabling the teams of horses used for stagecoaches. Their heyday ran from 1650 to 1850, after which time they were converted to country pubs or inns with limited accommodation. The courtyard cobbles of the Talbot conjure up visions of steaming, stamping horses.

In
The English Inn,
Thomas Burke quotes one seasoned nineteenth-century traveller's impressions of coaching inns:

Inns of good dimension and repute . . . where portly sirloins, huge rounds of beef, hams of inviting complexion, fowls, supportable even after those of dainty London, spitch-cocked eels, and compotes of wine-sours, were evermore forthcoming on demand.

What home-brewed — what home-baked — what cream cheese — what snow-white linen — what airy chambers — and what a jolly-faced old gentleman, and comely old gentlewoman, to bid you welcome. It was a pleasure to arrive — a pain to depart.

A glowing tribute, but I just don't know about those spitch-cocked eels.

Mells Manor was owned by the Horner family for centuries, and is associated with the nursery rhyme “Little Jack Horner.” The story involves the Abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting, who held title deeds to twelve manorial estates and who, in resisting King Henry
VIII
's order to destroy all the monasteries, decided to bribe the king by handing over the deeds to those other estates — in return for the king sparing Glastonbury Abbey. Whiting's steward was Thomas Horner, who set about the bribery mission by secreting the twelve title deeds in a large Christmas pie so as to avoid being robbed of same while travelling to Westminster.

Horner double-crossed the abbot, so the king learned in advance of the plot to save the abbey. In a strange twist of fate, Horner then sat on a jury that found his own abbot guilty of treason. Whiting was hanged, drawn, and quartered on Glastonbury Tor, and Horner was rewarded with the title to Mells Manor, the “plum” of the twelve estates. (The king obtained title to the remaining properties.) Hence the nursery rhyme:

Little Jack Horner Sat in the corner,

Eating a Christmas pie;

He put in his thumb,

And pulled out a plum,

And said, “What a good boy am I!”

Subsequent generations of the Horner family have protested that the manor was properly purchased by Thomas Horner, but the rhyme has been used by satirists over the centuries to ridicule politicians and sycophants who get fat on the public purse.

Before leaving Mells, we visit the churchyard and discover the gravestone of Siegfried Sassoon, the famous poet. The simple headstone is surrounded by miniature crosses stuck into the grass. Sassoon was one of the first prominent anti-war activists in modern history. He served in the trenches on the Western Front and experienced their horrors. In time he became a thorn in the side of the Establishment, using satire in his poems to attack the “patriotic pretensions” of those who believed in war being necessary and honourable. Even before World War
I
Sassoon is said to have written, “France was a lady, Russia was a bear, and performing in the county cricket team was much more important than either of them.” Yet he enlisted and was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in rescuing countless soldiers from death. He later threw his Military Cross into a river.

“And he was damned right,” muses Karl as we slowly walk away from the grave.

“I thought you were a fan of Attila the Hun, Karl.”

“Not on your life. Oh, I would have gladly fought in World War
II
— I just missed it — and my brother was badly injured and captured at Arnhem by the Jerries, but that Great War was pure genocide. Certain generals on both sides should have been hanged for ordering such senseless slaughter.”

We retrace our steps back to the main Macmillan path. We enjoy the peace of a deeply wooded coomb, then slog wet pastures in the rain, inch through a kissing gate, and find a tree-lined driveway. The lovely Nunney Brook now runs beside us, and we follow it to the next village.

Nunney is dominated in its centre by a castle that is modelled on the Bastille. It was erected in 1373 as a fortified residence, not a military stronghold. During the English Civil War, it was defended for the Crown, but a few Roundhead cannon blasts breached one wall. The castle fell, and its interior was gutted by Cromwell's soldiers.

The castle lay in shambles until the 1900s, when the rubble was removed and the structure partly restored. It was auctioned off in 1950 for six hundred pounds to one Rob Walker, of the Johnnie Walker whisky dynasty. We wander about the castle ruins; there is no one about but the pigeons that mass on the towers. The place is well maintained, surrounded by manicured clipped grass and a quiet brook.

At the George Inn, one can always enjoy a pint of refreshment and a pound of local gossip. The beam holding up the sign at the entrance was used in the seventeenth century to hang the condemned. At that time the inn doubled as a courthouse for judges travelling the circuit. Occasionally, says the barkeeper, one can hear the sound of taut ropes and creaking from outside, as the bodies of the criminals sway in the wind from the beam — which beam, by the way, is actually “listed” as a legally protected heritage structure.

A local ghost story concerns the lane between Nunney and Frome, which is haunted by a phantom hitchhiker. The ghost wears a sports jacket and trousers and takes great pleasure in fetching lifts from motorists, then vanishing before their eyes. Several motorists over the years have filed reports with the local police. Karl just shakes his head in disbelief.

“I think the whole country is haunted,” he says with a smile.

I reflect that despite Karl always charging ahead of me on the trail, we are getting along just fine — both of us stubborn and blunt in our own ways. In her book
The Cruel Way,
Ella Maillart discusses the trials and tensions of travelling with a companion in terms of a
vie à deux,
but our drama consists more of a good-natured joshing from time to time — and no argument between us can maintain ill humour in the face of a good steak and ale pie, a bottle of red wine, and a sticky toffee pudding at the end of the day.

In fact, I have never seen Karl so mellow. I know his sprained ankle is bothering him, but he shrugs it off, and now walks with a kind of half-smile. At first I thought it was by way of cynical reaction to untoward events, but not so. He seems genuinely amused by everything, taking it all in stride. Thich Nhat Hanh writes that the Buddha always walked with a half-smile: “The half-smile is the fruit of your awareness that you are here, alive, walking. At the same time, it nurtures more peace and joy within you.” I never thought that I would be thinking of Karl and the Buddha at the same time!

“So, John, how many days until we get to the coast at Abbotsbury?”

“At least another five, or six if we stay an extra night at Cadbury.”

“That long?”

“Emerson once said that life is about the journey, not the destination. Don't tell me you just can't wait to get back to the rat race?”

“I'm torn, John. This has been great fun, and in some ways I wish it could go on and on. But I need to get back to the business and see the family.”