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.