Walking to Camelot (3 page)

Speaking of toilets — wherever you travel in Britain, do not make the mistake of asking to use the washroom. My first encounter at a petrol (gas) station went like this: “Do you have a washroom, please?”

“You want a room to do some washing, sir?”

“Ah, no, I would like to use a bathroom.”

“A bathroom, sir? Do you wish to take a bath?”

This was becoming embarrassing. “Ah, no, you see, I really have to go — you know, go! How about a restroom?”

“You wish to take a rest, sir?”

I finally pointed to my groin.

“Ah, sir, perhaps you mean the loo!”

Often a Brit will use the term “toilet” as well, which does not mean precisely the object of one's desire, but rather the room itself. Refined people say “lavatory.”

I lie on my back, exhausted but too tired to sleep. Loud music emanates from the pub below. Well, it
is
Friday night and the barkeeper will soon no doubt utter his famous “Time, please, gentlemen,” and all will be quiet. Then I hear someone approach the door, which is ajar because the lock fixture is missing. So are the lower two inches of the door itself, which looks like it has been gnawed by a porcupine. I anxiously sit up. There, his slobbering tongue hanging out, is the huge head of the mastiff, who has come to tuck me in. I take a melatonin tablet to finally fall asleep.

Next morning we arise refreshed. Muscles ache in a healthy way, and we are eager to conquer the next fifteen miles to reach the village of Baston. Our goal is to cover twelve to fourteen miles per day, in order to accomplish the entire walk within twenty-six days, with two nights planned for each of Stow-on-the-Wold and Sutton Montis, astride “Cadbury Camelot.” Today's entire route parallels the River Glen.

First, though, I have to stop and explore the Surfleet church. I am drawn to it because the fourteenth-century spire leans at an alarming angle and gives the impression of imminent collapse. Inside, I find delightful stained glass windows, an ancient font, and the effigy of a knight. The tranquil village basks in morning sun that dapples the predominantly red-brick buildings. Lilliputian rowboats lie docked adjacent to tiny riverside bungalows that in turn abut a splendid golf course. I half expect Bilbo and his fellow hobbits to emerge and trundle down to the waterside, fishing poles in hand.

We observe numerous pumping stations and prosperous-looking farms. These pumping systems were first installed in the seventeenth century and were originally powered by windmills, but few of the latter remain intact. When J.B. Priestley visited the area in 1933, there were still dozens of working windmills, and he labelled the region “Dutch England.” Those that remain in these northern Fens are largely used as tea shops for tourists, offering cakes and muffins made from stone-ground flour. There are ruins of some 135 ancient windmills in Lincolnshire, and we pass one such relic at Glen Mill.

Beyond Glen Mill loom eight modern steel windmills. Sir Bernard Ingham, former press secretary to Margaret Thatcher, claims that wind farms resemble “a cluster of lavatory brushes in the sky.” There is an obvious clash here between aesthetics and the drive for cleaner energy consumption.

Near the village of Pinchbeck we cross the River Glen, pass through a hunting gate, and stop at the entrance to Spalding Tropical Forest. Here, in stark contrast to the fenland, the creators of this arboretum have amassed the largest tropical forest in the United Kingdom. Masses of dense jungle foliage, cascading waterfalls, and lush plants with enormous flowers extend over several acres. Karl especially marvels at the hundred species of colourful orchids.

The English have been obsessed since at least the eigh­teenth century with bringing the world's treasures to their little northern island. Aside from the classical art works and sculptures looted from foreign lands — like Cleopatra's Needle in London, and countless Egyptian exhibits at the British Museum — it is their obsession with flora and fauna that astounds one. Countless estates abound with trees, shrubs, and flowers from around the world. Stourhead combines such floral sampling with Greek temples and follies; Longleat adds exotic wildlife — beware of monkeys riding on your car; and England's finest arboretum, Westonbirt, displays its eclectic floral fare along our Macmillan pathway in Gloucestershire.

A flock of forty-two huge white swans appears around a bend in the river. They try to take off as we approach but are so fat and cumbersome that their legs graze the water and most of them barely make it aloft; several crash on takeoff, like overloaded 747s. This open country is dedicated to the birds: there are bird boxes attached to poles for miles, placed by the Hawk and Owl Trust to attract barn owls. Alas, only a few owls have been spotted, the cozy birdhouses having been seized by squatters — kestrels, doves, jackdaws, and crows.

It is not until noon of our second day that we encounter other hominids on the footpath. An elderly couple, one riding a Shetland pony and the other a large black horse with burrs in his mane, follow us for a mile or so. I hail them, but they turn off and head into the mist at a farm track. The track heads toward the tiny village of Tongue End. Imagine
that
as your mailing address.

Spalding lies three miles south of here and is renowned for its annual tulip parade. Surrounding fields grow huge quantities of tulips and daffodils, with close industry ties to the Netherlands. There is even a Tulip
FM
radio station. The River Welland bisects the town, which now boasts a population of some 28,700 people. Spalding has been continuously occupied since Roman times, when it was a centre for salt production.

Spalding is one of those places that most people in the United Kingdom have barely heard of, yet it possesses interesting attributes. In addition to its fame as the flower capital of the country, it was the first town in the
UK
where bar codes were used on products. One of the oldest yew hedges in the country is at Ayscoughfee Hall, birthplace of the Spalding Gentlemen's Society. This archaic-sounding association was in fact a group of intellectuals who came together beginning in 1710 to discuss the important philosophical, scientific, and political questions of the day. The intellectual revolution of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced the flowering of rationalism and humanism that paved the way for modern parliamentary democracy and the ensuing economic order. Arguments were refined over a glass or two of port in forums such as the Spalding Gentlemen's Society, which boasted Sir Isaac Newton, Alexander Pope, Sir Joseph Banks, and Alfred Lord Tennyson as members. The society is still active today.

Our path winds toward Kates Bridge, an ancient settlement that demarcates the end of the Fens. No, it is not named after some village maiden, but rather a Danish god called Kat or Catta. We stop to admire a cluster of willow trees beneath the bridge. This was at one time the head of navigation on the River Glen. The thriving community declined in the nineteenth century, when railways became the favoured means of transport. Now the hamlet consists of a petrol station, a tractor dealership, five houses, and one farm.

The loose limestone fields are gradually becoming higher and dryer as we approach Baston. This village is thought to be the site of the first major battle between King Arthur's Romano-Britons and the invading Anglo-Saxons, in the late fifth century. Many Saxon graves have been unearthed here.

DIARY:
Images of today's walk — the heavy, burdensome pack (I must dump some clothes, but not any of my books); two Perrier bottles wedged upright into a hollowed-out fence post; the dank smell of the marsh; endless grasses and rushes, with swallows swooping and thrushes singing; stiles and waymarks to which the green Macmillan sticker is affixed; brick cottages; the ubiquitous red telephone booths, inside one of which Karl tried to call home but the line was dead — the first of many broken-down phone booths we would encounter along Macmillan. British Telephone says the phones and booths are too costly to maintain in this day of mobiles. So one by one they fall into disrepair and will soon become anachronistic relics of the countryside.

We stay the night at Baston's Baskervilles Inn, where each room is named after a character in the Arthur Conan Doyle novel
The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Ours is
Mrs. Oldthorpe,
while next door is
Sherlock Holmes
. Karl and I had not planned on having to share rooms like this, but in rural England, you take what you can get. Until the twentieth century, a traveller at a crowded inn was expected to share not only a room with a perfect stranger, but also the same bed.

We start a regular nightly ritual of washing out our undergarments and socks with detergent in the soap basin. Most
B&B
s don't do laundry: you have to plead for heat to be turned on so you can dry off your clothes on the wall register. Karl tells me that one must vigorously rub the socks together after laying them immersed in water for at least an hour. The proprietress allows us only two hours of heat this evening, so I worry whether the clothes will be dry in the morning. A bigger concern is Karl's snoring, for I am rather noise sensi-tive. I pinch his big toe after half an hour of his walrus out-bursts, and he rolls over. Mission accomplished. (My snoring is even worse, but fortunately, Karl is a deep sleeper and half deaf.)

On the trail next morning by the River Glen, we encounter an elderly fisherman in tweed hat and waders with whom we stop to chat. He says he has lived in the area all his life and has watched the demise of the native red squirrel — decimated, he says, by the introduction of the American grey squirrel. But the red squirrel is finally making a comeback. Government and nature groups are targeting key areas where red squirrels are still found, and trapping squirrels — killing the grey ones and releasing the red ones unharmed. (Personally, I think the grey squirrels are just as cute and someone should stand up for their rights too.) Then he complains about the American mink wreaking havoc with the aquatic life in the rivers. Mink are eating the fish and killing off ferrets, water rats, and small otters. We commiserate, then leave him to his fly casting.

“Karl,” I muse, “the very first book ever read to me by my mother was
Chatterer the Red Squirrel,
by Thornton Burgess, and I have gone through life believing that Shadow the sly weasel was the Darth Vader threat from which Chatterer was always running. Now I find that it's just a bunch of grey squirrels that have decimated Chatterer and his mates.”

“Don't lose any sleep over it. They're all pests and varmints as far as I am concerned, and they do a hell of a lot of damage if they get into your cellar or attic.”

The scene as we wend our way along the stream is reminiscent of Kenneth Grahame's
The Wind in the Willows,
with badger setts, willows overhanging the brook, and abundant bracken, marsh, and hedgerow to house myriad wildlife. Here indeed lies a quiet little microcosm of rural Lincolnshire, a world unto itself. Our fisherman friend is well entitled to be protective of this natural habitat.

Near the entrance to a copse of beeches, we discover a dead badger on the side of the path. The creature is much larger than I imagined. Its sharp, angular teeth and long, non-retractable claws are truly fearsome. This animal can do a lot of damage. Badgers are almost never seen in daylight; Grahame notes in his classic that “Badger hates society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing.” However, badgers have a reputation for wisdom. In T.H. White's
The Once and Future King,
the young King Arthur is turned into a badger by Merlin as part of his education. Arthur meets an old badger who tells him, “I can only teach you two things — to dig, and love your home.” The badger is also the house symbol for Hufflepuff in the Harry Potter book series.

Ratty in
The Wind in the Willows
is in fact a water vole, a semi-aquatic rodent which has a rounder nose than a rat, a chubby face, and, unlike the rat, hair covering its tail, ears, and paws. There are believed to be some 220,000 surviving voles in the United Kingdom, and the old fisherman was right — they have been fast declining due to the American mink, a predator. In the comic novel and movie
Cold Comfort Farm,
one of the main characters, Urk, refers to his unrequited love, Elfine Starkadder, as his “little water vole.” In Evelyn Waugh's novel
Scoop,
his hero declaims, “Feather-footed through the plashy fens passes the questing vole.” And British archaeologist David Miles opines that the vole existed in Britain some 500,000 years ago. In fact, the vole may be the longest surviving original Briton. Such adorable little creatures are therefore much maligned with the “rat” appellation.

The English really are in love with animals. There are countless stories of macho fathers condoning the beating of their sons at boarding school yet breaking down and crying at the sight of an injured sparrow. As Sarah Lyall writes in
The Anglo Files,
“Every British animal has its cheerleaders.” And the epitome of evil in English society is someone who mistreats an innocent beast. Near London's Hyde Park this year the government will unveil, at a cost of one million pounds, the Animals in War Memorial, to celebrate the animals who aided the nation in numerous wars. The massive stone sculpture will portray in bas-relief pigeons, dogs, monkeys, horses, donkeys, even glow-worms. Chiselled into the stone is the chilling proclamation “They had no choice.”

A mudflat we pass is covered with tracks — the etchings and scratchings of little creatures that resemble a Trafalgar Square–like meeting place. As we leave the brook and follow the path through the copper beech grove into a copse, a furry white creature suddenly rushes out of the bracken and does a merry dance around Karl, at one point even crawling partway up his boot.

“It's just a ferret, and I think he's blind,” Karl laughs. “I have read that they are often born blind.”