Nick's birthday

As you can see, Nick's headstone is now in place. We had what turned out to be a celebratory visit on his birthday, if tinged with sadness, because Ben's children treated the whole occasion as a sort of birthday party. Cleo sat on the base of the stone and beamed at us all, while Mia insisted on leading us all in singing 'Happy Birthday Uncle Nicky'. She also sent off into the skies a large balloon; we hope he caught it. Needless to say, this lifted our mood and we felt that we had remembered Nick happily.

Walks for Nick 3

Walking in Norfolk with Mandy, March 13th 2010

We stayed in a small cottage in Wells-next-the-sea, with a log fire that dwarfed the room, and we were literally next the sea, with its estuary qualities of low grey light and a sense of land and sea not quite separated, the one beckoning you to the other. It was the weekend of Nick's anniversary and the elegaic light seemed right, as did being in the flatlands of this deeply quiet coast, with the same open stretching skies that Nick must have often looked up towards as a student. But we lit the big log fire (Mandy unduly impressed with my fire-lighting abilities) and felt cosy.

Our walk was planned for the Saturday and we aimed to go straight out along the coast, keeping to the sea as much as possible. We were lucky with the weather - the sun shone, the sky seemed endless, with no real horizon, sea fading into sky and sky into sea. Wells at first seems more river than sea, more mud flat than beach, and you have to walk out along a spit to get to the real coastline. All along this estuary were many wading birds happily and busily stabbing the mud, scurrying here and there, sometimes in single state (curlews, redshanks), sometimes in crazy little flocks. I think we identified these latter birds, which seemed more like very active mice, as turnstones. These waterline birds were a feature of the whole weekend; Mandy and I would stand captivated watching their purposeful pursuit, and once, though not on this walk, saw a huge flock (of what?) massing and tumbling against the steely sky (see the headline picture).

At length we reached the 'real' coastline, but here the sealine was still some way distant with flat stretches of sand in between. But it was real sand, of the sort that people in my youth used to bring back from holidays, in a glass vial, showing the different colours in strata. Mandy had a mission at this point, which was to gather some sand to take back for a friend of her daughter Hattie, to use in a dance project (Hattie at that time doing a degree in Dance at Roehampton). Getting sand into a plastic bottle without an implement proved difficult;and it had a comic dimension. Yet at the same time it felt significant and almost mythical in this place, and on this walk - and perhaps because it was to be used in an art work. Nonetheless we hoped no-one was watching us.

We proceeded then for a couple of miles on hard sand, sea to our right, pinewoods and dunes to our left. Lots of people were out, with dogs, and kiddies, on the first sunny day for a while. We were looking for a particular gap in the dunes where were to strike back towards land. This gap was much further than we were expecting, and when we came to it it was a massive opening landwards, rather than the small 'gap' we were imagining.

For much of the first part of the walk we were entertained by jaunty beach huts, as yet unoccupied but promising fun and relaxation, the simplicities of seaside holidays which the whole of this coast still seemed to encapsulate - no amusements, crabbing when the tide was in, running endlessly towards the waves across hard packed sand when it was out. We were brought up short though at the Gap where there was some sort of emergency - a specially adapted vehicle tore across the sand towards a family. It reminded that this must be at times a treacherous coast. At the same time we saw a white horse being taken through its paces on the water's edge. It felt a different kind of place from the seaside I'm familiar with - Ramsgate, Broadstairs - perhaps because of the long way the sea goes out, the hard stretches of sand that go with that, the sense of under-population, the distance from any main conurbation. A different kind of living.

Then we were back into civilisation - up back to land, and across the road to a great estate, Holkham Hall, where we had tea in the converted stables. Back to a reminder of class distinctions, which must have prevailed more strongly and for longer in these land-owning places on the edge of England - Sandringham takes up a very large area of land close to here. I had earlier proudly remembered, when Mandy and I stopped off at Ely and visited the Cathedral, that my first visit there was with Dad, around the 1980s, and it was just when they were first making charges for visiting such places. Meat and drink for Dad! He argued down the poor attendant trying to extract payment, and we sailed into the Lady Chapel for free, upholding socialist values even in a place of worship - especally in a place of worship! From the rather forbidding grounds of Holkham Mandy and I walked the back roads to Wells from a back gate in the estate - a path which must have been trodden by many labourers over the years.

There is a coda to this walk. The next day we went to Walsingham, a place of Catholic pilgrimage ever since some poor girl had a vision of Jerusalem being built there. As those who know me will know, I felt at the very least ambivalent about visiting this place. And the things one would imagine about it are indeed true, including the gift shop. But Mandy and I went to walk in the grounds of the Abbey, where the site of the original vision was. And a vision did meet us, of carpets and carpets of snowdrops; it was the image of Spring, with all its hopefulness, not accoutred by any significance other than its own, that life springs back year on year, in spite of all. There I did think very much of Nick, under the big skies he brought his very rational scientific mind to bear on, but which I know he will also have looked at with wonder.

On our way back from Walsingham we stopped off to look at a church noted for its Burne Jones stained glass - possibly Houghton St Giles? - it was locked, but Mandy noticed a small handwritten note saying that there was a place to get the key - which we did - and had the church and stained glass wonderfully to ourselves. It felt a tremendous privilege.

So it was a weekend of ordinary miracles. I don't need to add that there was a lot of ordinary worldliness as well - drink was taken. How would we manage otherwise?

Mandy is one of my oldest and dearest friends and it was a special time together. Thank you Mandy.

To be a pilgrim

Riding to Walsingham on

deep Norfolk lanes

sunk below sea level

I heard the faint creak and clip
Of saddlery and shoe

heading for mystery.

At ten I was called to unbelief

I seized my vocation

Confessing to sins not committed

Taking instruction from that

Forgive me father, I have been unkind

To my mother.

That much was true.

In the museum

poacher punishments:

curled switch; knuckle duster.

Light words; heavy things.

And man traps.

Then poacher tools -

a sling to throw down a rabbit.

My grandfather used

A hand and stone.

That was a communion

of hardship

hard blows, hard graft,

the knuckle on the head

to knock some sense in

or out.

We break free

to snowdrops, aconites

stained glass stars on a green ground

the pilgrim path

where there would have been

someone like me

attending the shrine

but not believing

treading the path, head down

full of her own miracles.

Walks for Nick 2

The Kent Downs round Hastingleigh with Andrew: March 6th 2010

I had to go back (by car) the other day to remind myself of this walk, and it was a perfect Autumn day with the heavily wooded Kent countryside glowing with deep reds and zinging gingers. When we did the walk back in March the trees were largely leafless, but we still had a clear sense of the way the current woodland reaches back to a time when wood drove the local economy. The walk took us past an ancient platt (?I feel as though that's the right word but just looked it up in OED and it's not there) of Kent cobtrees (there's been a revival of growing them more recently); through chestnut woods which at one time would have been systematically coppiced, but where the coppices had grown into great trees; and through newly managed coppices to feed the new green economy (much of the wood is sold as fuel for woodburning stoves).

We began the walk in Hastingleigh, a small village about 6 miles from Canterbury. Its name has an Anglo-Saxon derivation, but settlement here predates Anglo-Saxon times. The village is mentioned in the Domesday Book. We headed first down a green lane, opening on to a huge field, which we crossed towards Hastingleigh Church - now stranded some half a mile outside the village. The field was typical of the beautiful wide sweeps of agricultural land in this part of the Chalk Downs, littered with flints - the same flints used to build the Church, which is Saxon in origin. Two things linger in my memory - the plastic bags left in the porch to put over one's boots to keep the church floor clean, and the very beautiful 15th century rood screen. From the Church we struck up the line of the edge of the field, on an ancient pilgrims' path leading directly to Canterbury. We left this path to head across a couple of fields towards a rough wood. This field and the wood are apparently criss-crossed with badgers' setts; and n the wood are the ancient remains of cobtrees. From these we emerged on to a lane leading to another village, Bodsham - which happens to house a feted restaurant, Froggies (it's French...), but we weren't dressed for a stop there.

A particular point in the walk stands out for me: a moment when there is a break from one wooded area to another, which is like a break out into the land itself. A field spreads out beyond and outwards to our left as we pass from one clump of wood to the other, a characteristic sweep, not following an ordinary line, but somehow folding out in different planes and curves, almost joyous, but held too to the line of the chalk. We stop and look out, and take it in.

Then on to more woodland - and here the walk becomes a bit hazy to me, since it's over six months ago. Somewhere around here we got lost - a not uncommon event on my walks. But, in Andrew's inimitable words on another such occasion, 'It's not that we're lost; it's just that we don't know exactly where we are'. A good thing, amongst many, about going on a walk with Andrew - I know that we will eventually, and patiently, find our way. There was meant to be a signpost - a kingpost tree dating from long ago, a marker of boundaries, but somehow we missed it. Nonetheless we came out in time to the right path, through recently coppiced chestnut trees, passing a barrow - not much information on that except it was a barrow! and we were suitably impressed.

Though my memory of it may be imperfect, this was a lovely walk - very Kentish, with its chalk and flint fields, its flint buildings rising as if naturally from the land, its unhedged great agricultural sweeps and its closed coverts of trees very particular to this area. These trees - chestnut and cobnut and beech - were once food and fuel sources for life in much more straitened times, and they give an immediate link to those earlier times and lives. Of course, it will never be home, but I have been won over to the beauty of the Kent countryside - softer and less striking as it is compared with Yorkshire.

Suddenly we emerged from this deep countryside into the lane leading back to Hastingleigh - civilisation, albeit a quiet and hidden version. There is a pub, but I think we eschewed it. Thank you Andrew for a happy walk.

Next time: Norfolk with Mandy.

Walks for Nick

WALKS FOR NICK

Hi all - I'm going back to the early months of this year for my first walks, but 'Walks for Nick' is an ongoing venture and I hope to be doing some more in the next months. When Nick died, I wanted to contribute to his memorial fund, but to do that in an active way that would help me to reflect on Nicky, his life, and what he meant, and means, to me. I decided to do some specific walks with Nick in mind, along with my closest friends, who have been a great support to me over many years, and most of whom know Martin too. My first idea was to do a long walk in stages - the North Downs Way, local to me - but I wanted to keep the walks personal, rather than their being a big 'project', so decided instead to do individual walks with different friends. The first walks cluster round February/March this year, coinciding with Nick's birthday and anniversary.

1. Burwash, Sussex: February 20th.Trevor and Karen, and Gregor the dog!

I had a week on the Kent Sussex borders with my dear friends Karen and Trevor, and on the final Saturday we had our walk for Nick. It had been a pretty wet week after a very wet winter, but on the Saturday the sun shone, the rolling Sussex countryside looked at its best, just beginning to come to life, and we felt very lucky. I'd wanted to do a walk that took in the countryside that surrounded our cottage, and we did just that. At times it felt like being in a painting by Paul Nash or Eric Ravilious, celebrating Englishness but at the same time catching that slight eeriness, the echo of a distant past.

We began on an ancient 'hollow lane', with glimpses, opening out at points, of sweeps and curves of arable land alongside. The lane itself was lined with scrubby trees of the sort that might have been there forever, and Gregor (a border terrier) loved snuffling about in their undergrowth. I got my feet thoroughly wet at the start, as much of this lane was boggy or full of water, coated with a thin ice that it's such fun to break with a crackle;

and I was wearing my Harry Tuffins' 'special' walking boots, £9.99 a pair (see above). Trevor and Karen were of course properly attired.

Our walk took in pretty villages, ancient woodland with massive beeches, orchards (where I spent some time trying to identify a 'rare' bird) till T and K and especially Gregor got fed up. We passed by Rudyard Kipling's house, Bateman's, closed for the winter, where we pretended to be lords of the manor. From time to time we talked of Nick, with sadness but also in celebration. And Gregor always kept us from being gloomy, with his joyful dashing back and forth, running twice the distance we were walking.

We ended our walk - where else? - in the pub, then stopped at the war memorial in Burwash, its lettering beautifully carved - on which we found the name of Kipling's son John. It was an elegaic day, but a day full of the warmth of friendship and of the consoling beauty of the English countryside, which for that day we were happy to inhabit and enjoy without questioning it. It was a day for Nick.
Next time: On the chalk downs in Kent, with Andrew.

A Big Thank You from MIND

On 8th July 2010 Ben and Martin were invited guests at the Annual MIND Awards ceremony, held in London. The event was hosted by Lord Melvyn Bragg, and awards were presented by , among others, Mark Damazer, Controller of BBC2, and Alastair Campbell, a former MIND Champion for writing about working through and recovering from mental stress and depression. Ben and Martin were warmly received by Helen Marriott, Head of Events at MIND, who said that they had all felt inspired by the great Manchester to Cork Bike Ride, and the way in which Nick's family and friends had responded to losing him. We made it clear that we were representing all who had taken part in the Ride, and to the large network of friends who had supported them. It was quite something to meet so many people committed to helping those with mental health problems, and campaigning to improve the ways in which they are perceived and treated. We came away feeling that the money raised on Nick's behalf would be very well spent and felt determined to continue some form of support in the future.

Al's thoughts

Hello every one. My name is Alan Harrop and I was one of the support team along with Martin.
What can I say about this wondrous adventure the ten of us have finally completed.
The team spirit was exceptional, the friendships grew with every minute that passed. Humour was always there, even in the most difficult of circumstances. The support team started out as a bit of a joke, but very quickly became a major part of the journey. For myself it was a journey I initially was dreading but from the first stop in Chester it was obvious to me that I was a full part of the team and not just a hanger on.
|The boys treated me with total respect, made fun of me, let me help them emotional, a quick cuddle even with a 35 year old can make them feel good again, but most of all made me part of the team.
This was a journey of self discovery, team building, physical torture, but most of all a journey to show how much they love and miss Nick. Everyone should come out of this with lung busting pride, enormous self belief and with an attitude of I CAN DO ANYTHING IF I WANT TO.

Thanks again for including me in this extraordinary quest, a quest that has found more than money but has made friends for life.

Let do something easier next time eh

Well done!

Well done everyone! This blog has been great for keeping up with the trials, tribulations and adventures of the bike ride. Well done to the main writers: Martin and Sarah. Nick would have enjoyed it - though he probably would have added something really technical and exciting. We miss you Nick and are proud to have achieved something so substantial. Also it gave the team time to talk about you and, frankly, time to grieve. The year has passed so quickly and yet so slowly. Your death was such a shock and it is hard to come to terms with losing you. Sadly we have your table at home, and it was sad to sit round it in January without you (the first time we had sat down since March, having a baby, and moving house). We wanted to have that beer together - or at least around a different table and you were still using this one. I want to say how much Ben misses you. He was so ill before and during the ride. I think you may have kicked his butt for trying to complete it (which he did) but then you probably would have appreciated how he felt. You were always pushing through the pain. Anyway, Ben survived (despite an intravenous drip episode in Cork hospital) and it was because he needed to do this to remember his brother. So well done Ben. Sorry for your pain - and love to Nick.