Walking to Camelot (9 page)

We encounter two lady goths dressed as Brides of Dracula along High Street, but I am certain they are not wearing corsets.

You're traveling through another dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead — your next stop, the Twilight Zone.

—ROD SERLING—

The Twilight Zone

I WAKE UP TO
the peal of church bells ringing “God Save the Queen.” But it's not Sunday. It is June 2, the anniversary of Elizabeth
II
's coronation, and it also happens to be my birthday. (I share that honour with both Thomas Hardy and the Marquis de Sade. But I digress.)

We rise early and leave Market Harborough via Little Bowden on the Brampton Valley Way. Numerous allotment strips are being worked along here as vegetable gardens, something that has become very popular in England, a throwback to the old Commons principle that preceded Enclosure. Townspeople cheerfully dig in their plots and weed their zucchinis, potatoes, and corn. Lime and chestnut trees demarcate a finely clipped cricket green as we make our way south and leave the village proper.

Through a fine mist I discern the high brick buildings comprising Her Majesty's Prison Gartree, a maximum security facility that holds more lifers than any other prison in Europe. Some four hundred of its inmates are aged over fifty. Various activities are designed to provide some meaning to the prisoners' lives, including an active prison garden program. There is even some limited interaction between the inmates and the allotment holders we have just passed.

Near Great Oxendon we rejoin Macmillan Way. We climb over a stile, follow a muddy path through scrub woodland, and then descend to a broad flat valley, part of a fourteen-mile linear park that once formed the route of the railway between Market Harborough and Northampton. Almost immediately looms the gaping black maw of the Great Oxendon Tunnel, the first of two quarter-mile tunnels designed by George Stephenson and opened as a railway route in 1859. Karl marches ahead like some commando. It is pitch black, and I have to touch a side wall and grope my way along to the distant point of light where Karl's figure is faintly visible. “Blimey, it's dark!” I mutter out loud. I feel like a sewer rat. I can't see a foot in front of me. I keep stepping into puddles. On top of everything else, my feet hurt like hell from blisters. Yet Karl just whistles blithely onward, his dark figure silhouetted against the oblong panel of light in the distance, Tilley hat jauntily tilted, the very picture of verve and élan. He is utterly oblivious to the plight of his younger mate.

When I emerge from the first tunnel, he has already disappeared into the distance. Some three miles later, I enter the second tunnel, which is equally dark and puddled and as unnerving as the first. When I reach the rusty grillwork at the far end, I am splattered with mud and in ill humour but thankful to be out of the darkness. Then the path plunges sharply downward and I experience a vertiginous moment, like Alice must have felt falling down the rabbit hole. At bottom is an eight-foot brick wall on the right and a hedge on the left; tall black trees stand in the field ahead, enveloped in thick mist, poised and intimidating like so many Ents. Can the Dark Riders be far behind? I almost expect to hear horns in the distance and see Rohan riding forth out of the gloom to save me.

It takes another half hour to finally catch up to Karl.

“You might have slowed down for me, Karl. I could have slipped and broken an ankle in one of those dark tunnels.”

“Really?”

“You remind me of Alec Guinness in
Bridge over the River Kwai.
This isn't supposed to be a forced march!”

“You realize, John, that there's a Canadian connection to the ‘Colonel Bogey March'?
”

“How's that?”

“Well, certain Canadian regiments adopted the tune over the years as their march past, and there was a diplomatic brouhaha in 1980 when the Japanese prime minister visited Canada and a military band played ‘Colonel Bogey' for the occasion. Apparently, the Japanese felt that with the famous movie and all, the Canadians were sending a pointed message about the inhumane treatment that Allied prisoners of war experienced from the Japanese during the War.”

“How politically incorrect on Canada's part.”

“Quite.”

“Anyway, could you please slow down!”

Karl just looks at me and smiles. The moment passes.

One mile to the west of us sits Kelmarsh Hall, a stately eighteenth-century mansion in the Palladian style. Nancy Lancaster, niece of Nancy Astor, designed the interior. Her decorating firm, Colefax & Fowler, is credited with popularizing the modern English country house look, colloquially called “shabby chic” — an eclectic blend of period and contemporary furnishings. Kelmarsh Hall has gained prominence recently as the site of English Heritage's annual Festival of History, where some two thousand performers dressed in period costume re-enact jousting, fencing, archery, and other period activities. It is now billed as the largest heritage event of its kind in Europe.

We cross over the Kelmarsh Cycle Path, betwixt fields and spinneys. We see no walkers, but a group of male cyclists fly by, clad in colourful spandex.

This region has seen a marked ebb and flow of population. Bronze Age dwellings have been unearthed here; then there is a long gap until the Saxon era. The land was largely cleared by the Middle Ages, but the Black Death decimated the population. Disease and the Enclosure movement combined to allow estates such as Althorp to become gargantuan. This in turn led to corporate-scale sheep farming.

Agriculture experienced a revolution in the eighteenth century with the application of scientific techniques to animal breeding. Robert Bakewell, a Leicestershire landowner, referred to his sheep as “machines for turning grass into mutton.” One benefit of Enclosure was that animals could be managed better within fenced fields than on open, common ground. Improved animal breeds appeared, such as Hereford cattle and Southdown sheep, and inventions such as the seed drill (in 1701) also contributed to greater efficiency.

A mile past Maidwell we pass beneath an ornate gateway on a firm, wide track. Here sits the famous eighteenth-century Cottesbrooke Hall; we stop to peer at it down a tree-lined avenue. This impressive building is linked by tradition to Jane Austen's
Mansfield Park.
The red-brick pile standing in magnificent repose is thought to be the estate highlighted in the novel. Austen likely never visited the hall, but did write to her sister and a friend for detailed descriptions of this area. More tangible Jane Austen associations lie ahead of us on Macmillan Way.

The world abruptly closes in when our narrow path drops downhill into an overgrown wood. Stinging nettles clog portions of the trail. Just when I think we are lost, we exit the copse into the village of Creaton, which boasts a population of 488. Creaton holds close associations with George Washington, the first American president. The president's great-great-grandmother, Amphyllis Twigden, was born and grew up here. Amphyllis married Rev. Lawrence Washington, whose son John emigrated to America and became the great-grandfather of George. The foundations of her cottage are still visible in the centre of the village across Grooms Lane.

The path is again hard to follow after we exit Creaton. The
Guide
tells us to “continue up hill, through large gap in fragmentary hedge-line coming in from left.” Fragmentary, all right — non-existent! Then we are urged to climb over a stile “by a water trough,” but I can find no such trough, and to further complicate matters, there is a new gate on the wrong side of the field and no stile leading to the meadow beyond. By this time Karl has disappeared over the horizon, completely off path.

I trend left, following a faint track that leads into the Holdenby Woodlands. Then I find a meandering trail through the woods that winds in a promising direction. I also stumble upon a grove of wild garlic stalks, which I begin to munch. A furtive pheasant cock crosses my path. Bluebells glisten; thrushes twitter. Could Bilbo's Shire be more enchanting? Does it really matter if I am lost for a while? I am more worried about Karl, who might turn back and begin searching for me. But for now, this is pure euphoria, and for a few irresponsible moments I am at one with Alice when she asks the Cheshire Cat,

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don't much care where —” said Alice.

“Then it doesn't matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Alas, my compass now tells me that the path is veering away from Holdenby village, where I should be. So after ten minutes I find a deer track that heads in the right direction, then peters out. I trip and fall on some barbed wire from an old fence, fight my way through brambles and nettles, and finally emerge a good twenty minutes later, scratched and bruised, on a paved lane with wide grass verges. A little farther on I find Karl — sitting on a bench near the entrance to Holdenby House estate, drinking a can of Guinness and grinning like a sly fox.

“What took you, John boy?”

“A minor diversion. And you're looking rather chuffed with yourself. How long have you been here?”

“Oh, a little while — enough time to sniff out the village and grab a beer
.
No pub, though. What's with the scratches on your arms?”

“It's nothing, Karl.”

“Why are you leaning over my bench?”

“I am noting down interesting inscriptions on benches I have seen en route — this one celebrates a local resident who liked to walk.”

Some of the inscriptions I have seen are rather funny: “Mistaken Accidental”; “Little black poodle waiting for the Star”; “Born in a puddle”; “She used to sit here sometimes”; “Jacket potatoes shared here”; “My first love.” I got a chuckle out of a plaque near Market Harborough which read “She sat too long.”

Holdenby House is a country mansion with a falconry centre. But it is closed to the public today. I wanted to visit this estate where Charles
I
was held for four months just before his execution. The Scots had brought Charles here in 1647 and handed him over to Cromwell's Roundheads. With its 123 windows and 14 towering chimneys, the pile was called the finest home in England in 1583, when Christopher Hatton, chancellor to Elizabeth
I
, built it. He refused to move in until the queen visited. Hatton had made his fortune by helping to finance the piratical ventures of Sir Francis Drake. In gratitude, Drake changed the name of his ship to
Golden Hinde
to commemorate the gold deer emblazoned on the Hatton coat of arms.

Alas, Hatton went bankrupt and died in 1591. The British Crown then purchased the home for the monarch's personal use. The estate was used as the set for a
BBC
production of Charles Dickens's
Great Expectations,
for which the director piled eighty tons of mud and ivy by the long driveway to make the place resemble the dilapidated home of Miss Haversham.

I stand at the gates and count the chimneys atop the massive pile. From here, walkers must navigate along a tiny road with the stone wall of Althorp Park to the left. Althorp is an immense estate of 14,000 acres, with oak woods, a little lake called the Round Oval, and the imposing mansion of Earl Spencer, brother of Lady Diana. The late princess is allegedly buried on an island in the Round Oval. The oldest tree on the estate is the Crimea Oak, seventy-two feet high and planted by Sir John Spencer in 1589 as his contribution to grow more oak trees for the Admiralty to replace ships sunk during the Spanish Armada crisis. The current earl planted an avenue of thirty-six oak trees in 1999 as a memorial to Lady Diana. Each tree represents one year of her life.

We enter the minute village of Great Brington. Here we are immediately swept up in swirling debate at the post office shop, where the strong rumour floats that Diana is in fact buried in the church at Great Brington next to her father. This could not be revealed, the story goes, lest the church be constantly jammed with tourists. So an urn allegedly containing her ashes is displayed on the island in Althorp Park. The park is open to visitors only in the summer months. One can walk down to the folly shrine to Diana, place flowers in her memory, and gaze across the water to the island.

Some nineteen generations of the Spencer family are buried at the church, and the theory is that Diana was secretly cremated and her ashes interred in the family chapel. Locals note that a strip of wet concrete suddenly appeared in the chapel at the time of Diana's purported interment at Althorp Park.

The postmistress tells us that we are the first Macmillan walkers she has seen who are walking the entire route. She says that it's now officially okay to pronounce the name of the estate as Althorp, because in 1998 Earl Spencer changed the pronunciation from
AWL
-trupp to
AWL
-thorp, though locals wouldn't have expected North Americans to get the correct English accent right. We buy a couple of postcards and leave the villagers to continue their playful badinage.

The church is absolutely fascinating. The first thing one notices is the series of Spencer tombs in the north chapel, great monuments enclosed by spiked iron railings, including the tomb of Diana's father. There is no doubt as to what family rules this neck of the woods. But there is a second matter of interest, particularly for American visitors: a gravestone marking the burial of Lawrence Washington, the great-great-grandfather of George Washington, who died in 1616. This comes after just having passed through Creaton, where Amphyllis, Lawrence's wife, lived. We view the Washington coat of arms on the slab, with its alternating rows of stars and stripes — George Washington later chose this motif for the American flag. So in this tiny rural village are direct links to both Diana, Princess of Wales, and George Washington, the father of the United States of America. And people complain that history is dull?