A Pilgrimage of Grace: England, a draft.
Monday.
July the First and I am returning to number forty-two again, yet I cannot help feeling another walking, hiking, hitching and fleeing adventure is already calling out to me. Before there is even the subtlest whiff of our social decay, drifting through my complex questioning mind, I will glance away from the corrupted source of decadence to prevent my melancholy self.
My home town - Wetherby - always keeps me fighting, struggling and reeling: it feeds a feeling of our unrelenting doom and I am frighten into a very real and personal hysteria. Once more, as I am reduced by Wetherby to an absolute literal pin-prick focal point of existence - a nothing, I find I must escape here before it gathers me into a heavily brassiered breast where I am hugged gagging for air and suffocated in the end! Other waves must deliver me freely upon another bountiful shore; where to next as this tide recedes July isn't an end but it may be the beginning of an end?
Tuesday.
This morning, after a much needed engagement walking with Snoopy Dog mid morning, and rolling out of a comfortable, copious, warm bed at six am, I brought my slimmer, younger feeling frame and freshly babyfied (shaved - gone is the man beard!) face into the aging OAP-land that is Wetherby. Warm wonderful Poppy provides me a mysteriously dense, dark, inviting and aromatic coffee to edge me back into this pastime. With a belly filled with plentiful rye bread, toast and honey I will set off in a little while to see what cheap goodies Morrison's has in tins; I am looking for the meaty brown lentils found regularly throughout Spain. When Filmore and Union fills to my suicide point I disappear across the old Great North Road into the Horsefair and it would appear we have plenty of stews, chilis, curries and good old Heinz Big Soup and I am sure, as I relax from the exertions of walking, some of these will be consumed at my leisure?
Indeed, as I am focusing my thoughts and looking toward to the fifth of July, I feel this next step might well be one of the most decisive and harebrained schemes of my life. The things I've learnt about my determination to exceed expectations, challenges and survive with strength and resilience; as I did in France and Spain, will definitely continue to inform, develop and improve my body, mind and soul. Knowing I will engage with my soul to the point of some absolute, real, truthful and lifelong epiphany (once it is all over and my brain has time to absorb all the 'layers, custard and icing' on this vanilla slice of adventure) I will find what will set me free.
Anything I do from Friday onwards isn't going to have the same characteristic form as I found in France and Spain, unless I try to make it so, and I expect there is just no concept of this kind of pilgrimage in twenty first century England? It is really hard to conceive, in advance, what kinds of person will be there to meet on this Way upon the routes I take to reach Harwich. From what I can grasp all the sleeping/camping barns are either in the Dales or North Yorkshire Moors and definitely Lake District so that means of sleeping is unlikely to be possible.
It has been interesting to note Patrick Leigh Fermor was better able to understand German language reading an excellent translation of Shakespeare. Would I benefit from this knowledge? It could be better bringing along a copy of Schlegel's Hamlet, Prinz Von Dänemark with me to Europe, but can I cope with more weight as I've already decided to must reduce the massive burden A Course In Miracles was becoming ... Hurray for Kindle(tm) as I got both books downloaded from The Pirate Bay and stored there for departure day! As I reach the Rhine will my final destination be Ulm with its suggestions of Gods glory?
After a brief and polite conversation (the lady returned my call with further info on two occasions) with Beverley Tourist Information I found out that people walk from Beverley to York yearly(or this may have been vis-versa), but there isn't a route made for modern day pilgrims from Fountains Abbey; so I'll have to tread one joining up the various Ways - Minster, Wilberforce, Wolds, etc!
Wednesday.
Must I punish myself for being too negative? My old university friend feels my prose needs to evolve to another more balanced, referential and layered aspect while remaining entertaining; but what will become of the grumpy man I incorporated in my twenties? Needing to balance the overwhelming desire to hate, and reflect thereon, any words written must feel deeper into the tight black velvet sack and deliver black balls and white balls of equal size for equal measure. Suddenly I feel like I'm under a spotlight and I must love and hate in equilibrium - what a ball-ache!
With a little planning this Friday I will set off, post breakfast, via 3 buses, and reach majestically dramatic Fountains Abbey, walk away south-eastwards from there. Ever since I saw Merry Wives of Windsor it has drawn me back under its spell; it is a vast and romantic place, solemn and gracious too and I feel it is honourable and true.
***
After a brief and polite conversation (the lady returned my call with further info on two occasions) with Beverley Tourist Information I found out that people walk from Beverley to York yearly(or this may have been vis-versa), but there isn't a route made for modern day pilgrims from Fountains Abbey; so I'll have to tread one joining up the various Ways - Minster, Wilberforce, Wolds, etc!
Wednesday.
Must I punish myself for being too negative? My old university friend feels my prose needs to evolve to another more balanced, referential and layered aspect while remaining entertaining; but what will become of the grumpy man I incorporated in my twenties? Needing to balance the overwhelming desire to hate, and reflect thereon, any words written must feel deeper into the tight black velvet sack and deliver black balls and white balls of equal size for equal measure. Suddenly I feel like I'm under a spotlight and I must love and hate in equilibrium - what a ball-ache!
With a little planning this Friday I will set off, post breakfast, via 3 buses, and reach majestically dramatic Fountains Abbey, walk away south-eastwards from there. Ever since I saw Merry Wives of Windsor it has drawn me back under its spell; it is a vast and romantic place, solemn and gracious too and I feel it is honourable and true.
***
Before setting off, stepping out of this constant dream, I will enjoy a proper breakfast and leave Wetherby less pinpricked. This will consist of the closest thing we have to a French pan in Wetherby, Yorkshire (Marks and Spencer 99p), my mother's very excellent homemade fruity blackcurrant jam and a cafetiere of Taylor's French roast coffee and I can leave with a faint linear attachment to the previous six weeks; twisting and twining white rose and fleur-de-lis like lovers. Only two more evenings before I start out again.
***
Just as I saw in Sigueiro, Wetherby swarms leaden with motor cars, etc. heading to North, or towards Knaresborough, Harrogate, York, or down to Leeds, The South or London. The density of people in England is such that the number of motor vehicles here makes this rarely observed scene in Spain or France a regular occurrence the length and breadth of the land. The English forgot their feet as soon as they discovered a brake, clutch, steering wheel, choke and gear stick; by pulling and levering themselves forward they drive themselves and will requite soon; gone into a coughing grave to be digested back into organic peace.
Just as I saw in Sigueiro, Wetherby swarms leaden with motor cars, etc. heading to North, or towards Knaresborough, Harrogate, York, or down to Leeds, The South or London. The density of people in England is such that the number of motor vehicles here makes this rarely observed scene in Spain or France a regular occurrence the length and breadth of the land. The English forgot their feet as soon as they discovered a brake, clutch, steering wheel, choke and gear stick; by pulling and levering themselves forward they drive themselves and will requite soon; gone into a coughing grave to be digested back into organic peace.
***
This Harrogate and District 770 bus bastard stings me again: £3 from Wetherby to Bramham; and without any preamble or written warning for less than four miles! Yes, I am off to eat curry, drink stuff and be questioned vigorously courtesy of Justin and Emma.
Whenever I notice the individuals being dropped or picked up from the British Library there is this lingering aroma in the air. They have been forgotten, desiccating and dying in decaying books. What comparisons would we draw between the Library of Alexandria and this modern exemplar? The life of a scribe often suggests a hermit like existence and dedication, and their exclusion from the corpus of the majority of humanity (as I also attempt to flee from society in my singular pursuit this summer) is very necessary, yet these 'seldom treasures' look too afraid to have been shoved forcefully out the doors at six pm (collected by the robbing bus) stepping into the glaring light of the day? They need wait until the dark seasons close in before they come out unassuming, unseen, unblinking, blank and white.
As we are driving from Wetherby to Bramham the bus turns right on to the High Street in Boston Spa. Where I used to walk Snoopy Dog, alongside the river to Deepdale, the green space has been filled by bland homes; seemingly ready formed houses have popped up from the ground; Jack-in-a-Box and frightening the very bodies lying alongside the parish church Saint Mary the Virgin. This once charming village is choking with residents created by some random M particle, infernal waveform or molecular flux who now partake of petrol guzzling and supermarket shuffling hell; without any memory or a reason for their existence. In a finite number of months all evidence of that once green and pleasant pasture has vanished forever. Why, in an increasing whirlwind spinning fury, are we in such mentally inflexible haste to concrete, pave and tarmac paradise beyond ever recall?
***
This Harrogate and District 770 bus bastard stings me again: £3 from Wetherby to Bramham; and without any preamble or written warning for less than four miles! Yes, I am off to eat curry, drink stuff and be questioned vigorously courtesy of Justin and Emma.
Whenever I notice the individuals being dropped or picked up from the British Library there is this lingering aroma in the air. They have been forgotten, desiccating and dying in decaying books. What comparisons would we draw between the Library of Alexandria and this modern exemplar? The life of a scribe often suggests a hermit like existence and dedication, and their exclusion from the corpus of the majority of humanity (as I also attempt to flee from society in my singular pursuit this summer) is very necessary, yet these 'seldom treasures' look too afraid to have been shoved forcefully out the doors at six pm (collected by the robbing bus) stepping into the glaring light of the day? They need wait until the dark seasons close in before they come out unassuming, unseen, unblinking, blank and white.
As we are driving from Wetherby to Bramham the bus turns right on to the High Street in Boston Spa. Where I used to walk Snoopy Dog, alongside the river to Deepdale, the green space has been filled by bland homes; seemingly ready formed houses have popped up from the ground; Jack-in-a-Box and frightening the very bodies lying alongside the parish church Saint Mary the Virgin. This once charming village is choking with residents created by some random M particle, infernal waveform or molecular flux who now partake of petrol guzzling and supermarket shuffling hell; without any memory or a reason for their existence. In a finite number of months all evidence of that once green and pleasant pasture has vanished forever. Why, in an increasing whirlwind spinning fury, are we in such mentally inflexible haste to concrete, pave and tarmac paradise beyond ever recall?
***
A charming curry later, which was prepared and cooked by Justin while Emma disappeared putting my nephew to bed (and a beautiful boy he most certainly is), I am challenged banally. Asking me if I have discovered God, a meaning of life (Liff ("A book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover. For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words, 'This book will change your life'.")) or how to keep your whites ultra bright - yawn - I can say nothing useful.
Inside I am really oblivious to this need to tell people why I am on this mission and I could never answer without sounding darkly disturbed, cavernously false and echoing empty. These are questions I cannot really answer, but at the train station in Girona I saw a man, with a sign, waiting for Jesus to come through the exit and I said ironically 'you've been waiting a long time' and then I realised that He must've been on the train with me all along if only I had looked back and seen Him - I am determined to see. But like a proto-farmer am I planting seeds hoping, not expecting, to sprout into the possibilities of a beneficent fruitful harvest with the help of signs, saints, theology and other shaman divinations and not just the sequential turning of the seasons - as I bash the soil for truth. But to feed my mind I must not speak untruths, judgements and summaries to anyone for this isn't real - there isn't any need to speak - and I return to Wetherby on the 770 before nine.
Thursday.
Morning.
Something is telling me that the old ways do not work any more and I am expecting the unsettled political, financial and spiritual sentiments around the world to lead us into some seismic human cultural shift that will heal the divided earth. Not that this is likely to affect everyone quickly, but perhaps enough like minded individuals will break-out of the oppressed, regressive, chained and bound expectant consumer greedy dying society and come to understand themselves and this new ideology will bring us all together again? But there is an ever widening gulf growing between me and all the people I felt I should respect, listen to, work with or blindly say yes sir/no sir ('ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die'), must I crack on while the whip stings my battered, bruised and torn back (chasing the sweat in long strokes to the creases in my sphincters end)!
The heavily dependant, symbiotic, relationship with Snoopy Dog, for nine years, has helped repair some of my turgid physical, emotional and mental issues as I have lost much weight, I am never overly desperately lonely when he's around and can deal with my lot better when he comes to me. He has taught me I too can love selflessly and with the added intrigue of Mental Health Practitioner, General Practitioner and NHS prescribed Prozac there seems in me a capacity to feel, empathise and understand more about what is 'out there'.
For years I hadn't heard my inner voice struggling to be heard passed the confusion of drugs, alcohol, social materialism and peer group pressure - expressions of conformity preventing me understanding my individuality and solitary peaceful happiness. Even when all my bones said you don't need to be like anyone, you needn't to be anyone, I did not listen to this voice for fear of rejection. But some of the horrors in my mind and a lot of the deep resentment I have held for my father over the years seems to be disappearing into the past and is not continually tripping me up. Summer of 2013 and all that! When I feel the rotten disappearing me awakening I know I can now turn to A Course In Miracles or I meditate, thinking of the silences that lie between all the noises of the world, or I talk to Snoopy Dog (even when he is not in my home, town, county or country) - I am aright!
Walking around the perimeter of King George's Field, and the adjacent fields on this sultry Thursday morning, I am filled with these thoughts and there hangs a heavy final chord in the air - a stanza expectant of thunder and a dramatis personae in act five with exiled banished rains returning four fold. Fighting for breath as swarms of flies drive before my passing and also following in my wake, alighting on my eyes, lips, ears and bald head I seek hurriedly to reach the tranquility of the cleaned up steps, on the banks of the Wharfe, while Snoopy Dog drinks and cools off.
True life's trundling silent simplicity is interrupted by a louder symphony and symptom of modernity: the grass cutter. Leeds City Council regularly send a number of these noise makers Wetherby way to trample and prevent free growing flowing wild-flowers from suffocating ball aching ball players; nature is controlled and so often overruled - we are always determining the course of the summers buxom bounty.
Now, as the wind freshens from the west along the dappled rippling, ever flowing, Wharfe, I depart. The higher and lighter clouds break up as the blue spreads from that west direction to return us to this belter of a summer. As I pass the swimming baths (where as youths we would eat beef flavoured Monster Munch, Burton's Fish and Chips and drink Bovill post swim), a modern youth declares on a Tee-Shirt, emblazoned, 'Get hench! Or die trying ' and I think I will depart tomorrow this sickness and try dying instead.
Afternoon.
Has it really become true that I am bored of the past four days routine already? I spent the remainder of the afternoon dedicated to this mountainous task of editing before I disappeared to The Muse to find a Kaltenberg, when nature called, and I drifted away into a drugged evening slumber desperate to depart at the crack of dawn after that final ruminating morning. The collating of all the data renders me numb, but I must stick at this daily or weekly from September. Stimulants might be required to jolt my fragmenting memory or to waste valuable editing time stirring demerara sugar and lusting after nineteen year old waitresses? Caffeine, Cocaine and Codeine need to rescue me and I am joking, probably.
Friday.
Why did I get so into the Rooster's beer last night? Probably because it is great beer produced just up the road in Knaresborough. After I took dislike to the lighter session Kaltenberg, not being the biggest lager fan, I oscillated between Stars and Stripes and Londonium and finished with a half pint of the cracking five hopped IPA Yakima by crazy men at Great Heck Brewery (7.4 percent alcohol by volume) and it was five and half pints before bed I recall.
Leaving forty-two at around seven thirty this morning I came for a brief coffee at F&U to find I left my essential 'fee free overdraft' bank card at home - very lucky I gave myself extra time to catch the bus. Last evening feels like it was the first really boozy day since Montpellier. Five and a half pints of quality real ale, but keep away from that habit. It is so easy to miss beer amongst such great Southern Europe wines and yet I could simply never forget it. Now I am sat alone on the Connexions Bus X70 heading to Harrogate. It is possible my mother was a little shocked I was up and out already by seven thirty, but when walking it is essential to try to beat the sun. Saying another bye-bye to Snoopy Dog I tell him is not to be going anywhere yet, even if he has a long distance stare where he must be seeing his own mortality?
Flying from Wetherby with me as the only passenger I glance at a memory: Plumpton Rocks standing proudly on the bend by the A661; it is many many years since any picnics there. The Great Yorkshire Show begins on the ninth my only connection with that event was to be a car park attendant in the summer of 1992. Last year it was rained off (thank God!). An animal and agricultural show seems not to mean anything anymore. During the pre mechanised era to see draft horses in their solid capabilities must've been essential, but all the prizes, awards and rosettes are all very wet and entirely vainly subjective concepts.
When I arrive in Harrogate at quarter to nine I am forced to join the queue formed of quaking, mad eyed and mental bus 'abusers'. It often seems to me only 'the last person's in the shop' ever queue for bus journeys. Passing Victoria Avenue, Parliament Street and Montpellier Parade I know this is the right thing to be doing. To my left we pass legions of climate control coaches clenching so many more OAPs and in my left fist I shake fraggle toothed blue rinsers towards extinction. Skipton Road takes you left and Ripon Road takes you straight ahead - get me hench!
Final hurdle was catching the eleven fifteen to Fountains Abbey leaving Ripon to start this pilgrimage. The first days walking will take me via Ripon Cathedral towards Boroughbridge over the A1. Once I had spoken to a duty manager he brought me the property manager who helped me on my pilgrimage with a complimentary ticket (thanks you Chris Fowler for this courtesy) and good vibes are spreading towards me already. I will be setting off after toast and Tiptree strawberry jam, I leant forward of the counter and spoke to the overworked chef and asked, in a sarcastic manner, if he wouldn't mind cutting my toast into fingers - which duly he did (Lovely)! The catering supervisor brought me a mug of coffee and another two un-fingered slices gratis while I planned to follow the Seven Bridges Walk into Ripon. This is the only way now.
***
Here I am at Roecliffe Camping and Caravan Club and have finished for today, my phone is charged up and I can relay back an interesting but not too challenging walk from Fountains to sleep in sleeping bag, and bivvy, under the stars tonight. It was such a great feeling walking into Ripon Cathedral, being blessed/wished luck by a detached bemused Vicar and then following Ripon Canal towpath until it merged with the Ure. However much I loved France and Spain, the ability to converse in Yorkshire English at the end of the day while I polish off a Big Soup makes staying in a camping site a no brainer. For a mere £8.20 I have 98% of the sky above me and 2% of a lush meadow. I can lay at a fraction of quantum reality with a simple frame of reference and hear the voices of chattering birds as I drift away (ladies from London via Birstall have come away and gossip much) and all seems fine in greens and blues as the sun sinks into the west.
Tomorrow? Linton on Ouse perhaps as the weather looks bon and bone dry. There is a campsite just beyond that village. Camping under the stars with the one you love must be bliss; this I would wish to know!
Saturday.
Damp? Cold? Noisey? All the above. Sleeping next to an industrial sized dairy, a short hop from the A1 and finding condensation/dew on the inside of the bivvy does not make for the most entire night's sleep, but I put up with the cold until I could take it no longer and dug out a woolly hat and a fleece to pass out again. Falling asleep around nine pm I got a fairly full nights sleep prior to suffering hypothermia at dawn. Now I am passing the Devil's Arrows as I seek breakfast in Boroughbridge town square: fine Yorkshire sausages in a torpedo baton from Havenhands bakery while I watch Audi A6 golfers depart their 'widows' for yet another day and a slipper shuffling pensioner awaits death with a splutter spittle grin, grasping The Sun newspaper, and I eat grimacing inwardly.
***
This morning I have this battled numb with prickling nature to reach a beer divine at Great Ouseburn. Much stung as the public footpaths were like the wilds of Borneo. Like a wildman I drink a pint of Rudgate Viking but get riled when I am asked if my surname is Gumpty, by broken nosed beer bellied Saturday biker, for walking all this way from Fountains Abbey. Yes I suppose my name could be Mr Gumpty if everyday I was so unable to meet the challenge of people like him, who speak their vile venom, without me returning a rapid, recoil and revolutionary retort. It is noon and I put biker's and golfer's in a similar category of misled fools for whom adventure can only occur between five pm Friday and Sunday early evening; I soon forget he ever existed.
Aldborough is a village seldom seen in modern England: so tranquil in the morning with a central village green crossed by lanes and a simple memorial cross marking a battle in 1322 (even if the arms of the cross have long since dissolved). People were vacant from this village scene. There is no way into the Roman town before ten and, as it won't open for 55 minutes, I leave with some hasty instructions intent on following the Ure to where it is thence known as the Ouse. Now while resting I can't battle the surging of histamine any more as I stumped through sheep, bullock, thistle and nettle infested fields, dropping into a bog, swinging at the end of my tether, when bullocks would chase me out of their field.
Thank you bar keep for the beer but the faked aged look of this particular Crown Inn leaves me feeling chip-board and whitewashed over. It is time to toilet and depart. Looking back to this morning the breakfast, although filling, was an almighty £7.20 for two instant coffees and bacon, sausage, egg tomato sub. The SPAR bread and jam I picked up in Boroughbridge will be my breakfast tomorrow.
So silently whispered is the Crown Inn I creep out. People eating lunch in hushed up tones so they forget this was meant to be a public house and the Landlord over obsessed with lighting up Carling fonts and polishing Angram Ltd. beer pumps forgetting his role as jovial and ruddy-faced patron. Setting off refreshed along Boat Lane for Aldwark Toll I pick up speed to beat off hasty flies; bastard horse flies I kill you for my sport!
***
Stop please stop. Stop talking to me unceasingly like you have to tell me everywhere you've been and stop trying to say you shouldn't have had your daughter when you did. Nothing can ever be undone. Obese grey chested post office manager and confiding wife. Making an excuse thinking another cider might make him become greyer and thinner and vanish altogether.
Yet another trauma: a voice, following me like the plague, from Wetherby. A ghoulish reminder of fears and worries wrapped up in her memories of another time. I will not contend with September until September. I wish she would just trust me as I lay here bare against the sky and not remind me to worry worry worry worry!
On the Sixth of July I am feeling more red-raw than at any point since I left the Aubrac and Lot during this wintry May. My body took a pounding today. Too many dead ends, too many stingings (I am literally covered from ankle to thigh) and returning upon the same routes I always find doubly vexing - why has noone cut the public footpaths in this summer of extreme nettle-age! But Wendy, my hostelero at this site by the Linton-upon-Ouse Lock, has helped me as far as she was able and for a minor £2.50 and I shall sleep soundly on top of my bivvy tonight (I developed a little nappy rash last night in that sweating sack). To Shower, eat food and then bed.
If I could actually succeed in thumbing a lift on a boat down the Ouse to York how will that feel once I arrive there? Is it too much trouble for 21st century Brits to care about a pilgrim as they drift into their 'barge death'. After feeding on a really good homemade steak and ale pie I speak briefly to 'a' yacht man, David, about my need to enter York another way to what convention would expect in this century. Retiring to bed I can stand the hostility of his and gaggles cold shoulder no longer; this night I sleep beneath the stars in my sleeping bag and not worry about Sunday yet.
Sunday.
Mad, certified, I am and taken away on a river boat! Downstream at nine am. After getting a lift this morning Arthur, his wife, Hamish (the white western island terrier) and I drift along managing to maneuver the sand banks and surprises until we meet the greater Ouse. Watching the wake of the boat I munch toast and drink coffee hoping that they will drop me off by Lendal Bridge as the sun rises over York.
Passing a clusters of wave producing tour boats and ducking beneath the bridge I leap from the boat to the Lendal Quay. Then, like a hobo vagabond jumping from a box-car rattling on tracks and delivering me this way, two navally attired gentleman lunge for me suddenly shouting 'Hey you can't come here' and why I have been put on this private quayside - I explain my mission, they pause and then quite cheerfully pass me onto the street leading up to York.
Suffering from two endurance sapping days walking and two nights of not-brilliant sleep I must seek a none rural bed tonight before heading off again Monday. The Ace Hostel as my final option will be more relaxing this evening (I hope).
Earlier, directly after I spilled coffee all over and had a toilet 'tire change' at a Costas, I tried to discover a place to sleep away from the city centre, backpackers, tourists, etc. and hidden from Micklegate (such a busy vibrant thoroughfare). The Salvation Army 'Citadel' on Gillygate was suggested to me by someone in the Minster as a place worth trying, as they look after homeless people nightly. Feeling very worn down by the last couple of days I arrived just at the conclusion of Sunday's sermon. They invited me for coffee and a couple of biscuits so I could explain what assistance I sought for this night, but in this reformed house of god no can found it in their heart to help me. As there was no one in the congregation who was able to vouch for me in anyway the main Officer said he was very sorry that he couldn't help because in this day and age they couldn't trust just anyone off the street 'even though', he confided, 'you seem quite normal', not a good samaritan here then? Never mind religion I'll finish my ginger nuts and find another place where money will buy me what love could not.
After a brisk trot up to the YHA at Clifton and back to Micklegate I deliver a very dirty sweating body to a clean shower and a cleaner white sheeted bottom bunk bed to relax. In this listed building all that we dusty lower class travellers require is a cleaned bed and a place to scrub up, but as they also provide a free breakfast for £16 I don't feel so corrupted paying out; yet. There is a warm welcoming presence to this hostel and, although YHA York is totally new and prim, it has always felt very remote in Clifton and at a stunning £25 a night per person how can it be aimed at the youthful or young at heart the trust was formed to help - I quote
'To promote the education of all young people of all nations, but especially young people of limited means, by encouraging in them a greater knowledge, love and care of the countryside and an appreciation of the cultural values of towns and cities in all parts of the world, and as ancillary thereto to provide hostels or other accommodation in which there shall be no distinction of race, nationality, colour, religion, sex, class, or political opinions and thereby to develop a better understanding of their fellow men, both at home and abroad.'
So while everyone and his dog will be out sunning themselves I'm going to siesta before anyone else abuses this empty space; fourteen beds and just me! Damn YHA for the corporate Gradgrindian values it seems to flaunts forgetful of its charitable status (yes but we are a business too). Zonk!
***
It is lovely warm early evening this Sunday but I have found you have to queue, in line, to get served in the world famous Kings Arms. With buckets of cash made via happily in-line and short changed tourists the air felt controversially humid as I did not want to wait organised into a long line of patiently waiting arse-heads. Jumping a length of luncheon meat for a Sam Smith's has to be worthy. Not so sure. York you have forgotten your local soul as you don't understand my local voice and cultural gripe mixed amongst these German, Japanese, Chinese and Yankie. Who are you who expect me to queue nicely in line for a pint of Old Brewery(£1.80 a pint)?
Please York, please say is it isn't all too much hassle to look after me as I pass by here today? Coming back to a solace in El Piano (I was once many moons ago, but I don't recall it in the least) I recoiled in shock from both King's Arms queues and The Evil Eye bar staff; burnt; so it is time to admonish York and it feels absolutely mental to be walking through York with such an appalling feeling from such examples of rubber booted in-tenderness when I was delivered a Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier for five sovereigns; my moaning goes up in smoke even when I claim a warning should be sold alongside the rip off here. Time for bed York. The tasty grub I won't remember, and can't even pronounce, as my brain races with so many disappointments. Except maybe I would return again and again even if York appears harder and harder to see behind the discarded refuse that is twenty-first century tourism. Argh!
***
Returning to an already retired room II (number 2 yet again) until around midnight there's a chance I might physically explode if the second girl won't stop showering. Only a rich Japanese tourist could come to a room full of tired or sleeping persons, well past midnight and forgetting they're sharing a space, unload a giant suitcase all over the landing and proceed to rustle every possible plastic bag in a universal crescendo of cymbals. After the second girl contentedly brushed her teeth for around 30 minutes, and had had two showers, and before the last girl and another boy used this shower I exploded, like a crater forming bomb, out my bed and to the door where I told them to stop this thoughtlessly inhuman irresponsibility and brought upstairs the yawning night porter to help sort out this mess - he pointed them in the direction of the communal shower/toilet and told them to respect people in a communal space. He didn't care - he just sighed and said the hostel was open 24 hours a day and people could arrive at any point so he could do little to defuse the situation other than what he did - so I bared my fang like canines at these mental intruders and threatened to bite out the jugulars of the stomping Japanese teenagers if they even squeaked!
Monday.
'Tired as fuck, Monday morning and waiting for a bus blues'. Things have become so meaningless at that time between sleep and work; from Kellogg's Crunchy Nuts and banal BBC Breakfast banter, driving a car or catching a bus or train in a crowded race and trying to smile and enjoy a coffee where no one blinks any happiness while reading the moaning morning papers - it is the never ceasing race of the hive. From a once singularly beautiful city now comes a time of business and I regret this assimilation: welcome to York incorporated. There isn't any unlooked for help when all the swarm see is pounds signs before their eyes; I sigh for an emotional response.
To the top of Micklegate I disappear for this part of this torrid affair; Tuesday away again. With eyes glued to TV screen, eyes transfixed to the pages of a book or front bumper to rear bumper England only seems to respond with unified vacant nodding; still asleep without ever waking. Driving along the B1224 I pass Mosaic Fulfilment Services, where I will return in September to pay back my bag of salt, but I am feeling mostly unfulfilled since York (can anyone service me this evening?). Or forget that! I am in Wetherby once more and will rest!
Tuesday.
Back the way I came again, as early as was possible, it is the first opportunity to reach another stage; I feel well rested. Setting out for the battlefield of Stamford Bridge before turning south west towards Pocklington (but that feels like I have misread the map) or south east towards Beverley (when I have my bearings). There is just enough time for one coffee on route out from the Minster: bye bye Wetherby at 6.45 am. Yesterday I reduced the burden upon my back by the most possible. With the addition of a more reliable breathable bivvy and I left the one man tent (for the future) and suffocating bivvy (forgotten) at home. Too warm and too heavy in 2013 and I am just too lazy for this inconvenience on a morning. Europe is at the end of this long road; no more hesitation or thoughtless flights. Finished my brief stop over with brilliant home made Bitter Orange Marmalade - mother knows she has this wonderful skill - and fig and walnut bread, brightening a warm orange glow to my face, and I will see you all again on the flipside?
Leaving on the the Eddie Brown bus from on York Road I find the smell of diesel hangs leaden dull heavy, intertwining with the misty morning, and my foggy notioned mind is steadily drifting away. A cat strokes its paw on tongue, cleaning, next to a lonely bottle of silver top, waiting, and we pass by fields, pubs and homes drugged beyond the hedgerows in the Vale of York; velvet and tightly blindfolded, I travel forgetting and yet the sun is already to making an appearance chasing nine lives away in a flash of a tail over a morning threshold and bringing me out of some opium shrouded thoughts.
Coming to York Minster during matins I am always surprised at how unready and unreachable our Anglican holy men seem to be. They are not paying that much attention to any of the words they're speaking to us apparently on behalf of Jesus and for our salvation; their words are muttered at a lower than they hope God will hear. Yet an improvement might be my the embossing my Credential, with a huge and heavy contraption, for the first time in England. He thinks he's seen an ink stamp as well so, if we could the member of staff could hurry up, I might be on my way. Locating this ink stamp we find it is much smaller than either my left or right testicle and so small it would fit neatly up the General Synods colon (happening at Heslington). All the beauty of St Peter's basilica can be lost in the churches frantic need to make money and the world keeps on spinning, yet man stands still.
By conducting a social experiment on route to York University I leave York in great time. While asking 'good morning' I get no preemptive 'good mornings' to catch me off guard. Eyes forward most of them fail to mumble any responses as the mist finally clears on this very fine July morning. Passing through Walmgate Stray as cows munch moist morning grass I salute a lady infantry person at some barracks and I am leaving behind my favourite city as it appears to sink. There is no public access to the General Synod while mallards grow unconscious, lazy and fat: one eye open and one eye closed by the lakeside.
Ladies golfers at Fulford smashing them balls down the highway of life while I search endlessly for any public right of way on this side of the A64 and to get away before I am smacked between my four eyes. This must be the Ladies European Team Championships which Harry Gration was so enthusing about on Look North last night!
As York steadily disappeared behind me I knew I was heading in a direction counter to that of Beverley. North and east generally to Stamford Bridge, while being chased and stung by a lot of bloodsucking freaks daddy (horse flies are so vicious this year), I have to acknowledge I am heading in the completely the wrong direction to meet Battlefield today. I passed a restless vestless man who gave me brief instructions through a wood as his fled on his lunch break. Breaking out of the wood yet feeling totally disorientated by this blind distraction I flagged down a Royal Mail delivery van traveling passed me on a rough country road. It seems plausible the driver could give me better directions, but she decides she'll drop me at a bus stop in Dunnington instead so I could jump onto the number ten bus to into Stamford Bridge. With my bites and stings playing havoc in my mind, I turn into The Swordsman Inn to stretch out and wait over a pint of Sam Smith's Old Brewery Bitter (£1.80), two bananas, flapjack, a litre of water and anti-histamine looking back at my thundering through overgrown footpaths, regularly muttering and swearing at my tender calves and shins, getting lost and finally reaching this north eastern edge of what is known as the Minster Way, I calm down. Tomorrow I must go more east, south east and south and my first goal of Beverley is closing in.
***
As ever the final leg is feeling further and further off. In the distance I spied a lonely spire and, having already passed Full Sutton (where the HMP is quite hidden from the road), I know this must be Bishop's Wilton where I think today's stage has to end. Running short of on water and in need of a toilet, foot and picnic break I come at last to the tall spire of this church around four - I fill my flask from a tap in the churchyard and look down a street at another example of an idyllic English village: charming, peaceful and utterly barren of a welcoming pub(closed until 6pm). Hanging about at the main route onwards I decide not to head for a local farm that is offering very basic camping facilities (a boy passing me suggested I might find that close by) and I set off to hit the top of the Wolds and look back west at my journey since six forty five and collapse exhausted somewhere in a field.
A final incline after Bishop's Wilton brings me to the end of today's stamina; my energy has gone and I must now see a sign swinging limply suggesting accommodation soon. Then reaching Great Givendale the ball of my left foot delivers the sharp jarring pain I began get regularly and hate in Spain and I must really call it a day.
At the first house on the left I spy a water tap so approach the red brick semi-detached affair hoping to refresh before I finish my stage somewhere in this village. A lady is reclining in the sun with a cat on her lap and she offers me water from the tap inside her house and I recount my adventures since this morning; as I groaned awake at five thirty, and where I am finally hoping to reach and she wonders if I would like to pitch on her lawn - Yay! Yvonne and Richard welcome me warmly; their garden is grassy soft and is freshly mown it also has a few treasures including a paddock where two chestnut mares munch hay. We talk a little then I spread my bivvy facing towards the sunrise and zone out for a little while listening to the activities of the horses. Then, around seven thirty, she invites me in to dinner, excellent home made spaghetti bolognaise and crisp Bulmer's cider, we watch Time Team after dinner then I thank them from my heart and return to my external pleasure realm to convey the course of this endlessly twisting, unexpectedly sunny and eventually happy and simple day. Tomorrow onwards into the Yorkshire Wolds; no folly, no Pocklington, just Beverley. The kindness of strangers is a counter point to today where I have been fighting and losing a battle with insects, thistles and stinging nettles, yet the final straw is a bite from an ant who'd hidden waiting in my bivvy while I had enjoyed tea with my hosts. The swines have such powerful mandibles and, as I shoo it away, I feel this bite more and think its just like a wasps sting!
Wednesday.
Sleeping in a garden. None of the noises I associate with the two official camp sites, however gale like wind blew loudly on the Wolds and I awoke early pre-dawn feeling rain might end the long day on a sour note? But it didn't. Awaking to a powerful cock crow I roll up my sleeping items six thirty and move onwards from the green master bedroom of number four's garden. The cock crowing made me hope for a bowl of cornflakes treat and I must find breakfast soon!
Feeling the exhaustion already after that mad first day I reach Millington to find everything closed. First I ring the doorbell of Laburnum Cottage Bed and Breakfast but there is no answer. Rapping on a farm house window I ask would the person running Laburnum likely just do the Breakfast side of their enterprise; she thinks not. Carrying on round the bend the village cafe doesn't open on either Tuesdays or Wednesdays; damn I could've waited for breakfast with R and Y! With resignation I sit down at nine to a fig and prune snack knowing this will not get very far upon the higher and more demanding Wolds. With a sigh I set off after this limited breakfast back the way I came to join the Minster Way to ask it why I was left unfed this deary Wednesday. To my surprise a car has just appeared outside the bed and breakfast, ringing the doorbell again I am met by Maureen who accepts my need for breakfast before I brave the starker Warter Wold, in this section of the Central Wolds, and with the kindness of strangers I am delivered two days on the bounce. Getting into the routine of breakfasts on the Camino Ingles I have forgotten the need to be provisioned at all times.
Hiding in the verges from a convoy of four heavy wheel based tractor taking white quarried stone from Blanche Farm, walking alone amongst pigs that screaming their disgust at my passage and bouncing through the last couple of fields prior North Dalton I am alert and that breakfast really did its trick; a potential disaster was averted and I am caught swatting Fendt tractors that dash passed these potato crop miles - I wave them on!
***
Long boring straight paths leading me eventually to a village with neither a church, shop or a pub open before five pm. What is a hungry walker meant to do at such a stumbling block? Oh will I need to carry an array of tasty morsels every opportunity I get and taste none of the local fare ever again. Oh for a home made pork pie at noon!
***
Hitting this stumbling block I have no other option than to find a speedier method of reaching Beverley and without spending a ridiculous amount of money. From North Dalton there are buses leaving every two hours to either Driffield or Pocklington, but I realise going to Pocklington will take me too close to York (and is an age away). My body is always so tired after I sleep in the bivvy. How is it possible to sleep without awaking at first light of dawn? There must be no way unless I wear a blindfold and proper soundproof earplugs is no way. Unless I purchase these item I must accept being awake by six without anywhere to breakfast in these remote rural idylls.
The people on the Wolds seems to very charitable and for a second day I get unlooked for assistance towards charming Beverley. Climbing on the bus at the last house on the route out of North Dalton I find I haven't anywhere near the correct change for the cost of the fare via Driffield to Beverley. At first the bus driver huffs and puffs but when I explain my venture he says 'get on board, I'll have to sort it out at the depo'. When we arrive there the driver speak to the superintendent in Driffield who says 'I'll look after you - come back for the next bus and I'll make sure to get to Beverley. A speedy fish sandwich from the High Street and now I am heading to Beverley. It is nice to see some employees of a bus company not being stereotypically rude and unhelpful.
After checking into well priced YHA Beverley (£13) I took to these ancient streets knowing that there is a traditional vintage public house hidden somewhere. With a few directions I arrive at Nelly's(The White Horse) which is historic and hasn't been altered much in over a century. In this town it is unrivalled: the environment, bric a brac and aged furniture make it feel authentic. The long day has taken its toll so I am not in the mood for drunken swearing adults in the main bar so I hide away in a room near the entrance. Here I am eventually joined by a couple of regional thickies and a hippy who has changed his spots and is now a distrusting middle-class lawyers.
There persists in me a twitch and an irrational hatred of those persons who would constantly speak of their lifelong regrets, which they appear, over the years, to have piled up bushels deep, and are unwilling to do anything to rock the apple cart of their unhappiness until after they're passed into retirement. Until they're sixty five they seem compulsed to nod, conform, scrimp and save at all times; do they know it is utterly useless to wait until the very end to grasp what they have desired all through their lives? Live life for the now. When you retire you are as good as dead and while you refuse to break away from conformity you are a slave.
In Nelly's pub I have found that the parable of the good Samaritan is being torn to shreds as none of the persons seem to care about my need, at times, on this journey. They really seem to fear the people who tread the same earth that they will eventually rest in and refuse to even consider stopping to pick up a hitchhiker just in case. Surely we need to trust each other much more than we do, and not always question whether there are motives to simple actions. Not all of the men or women in our society are dangerous; the vast majority aren't. But the mass media madness suggests we should trust no one at all! To them we are are all gang members, sex offenders, murderers, etc. In the twenty first century everyone wants to kill you(apparently). There has always existed those who would kill us for their pleasure and there is no need to fear everyone all the time. Where has trust, truth, compassion, honesty, openness or altruism vanished to in England. The handful of merry hopeful souls have a pitched battle with such colossal odds against them; but we must still keep trying! The media has made everyone so frightened of the perceived threat to individual security and most of our society can't function beyond a mentality of continual self defence. The fear of the unknown has reduced us to bastion seeking while we put chains, bolts, locks around our minds.
In frustration I leave these ignorant people for a peace. There was a girl who didn't know her north from her south! She was from Humberside, but didn't know whether Beverley was north or south of Kingston-upon-Hull, and she said that she would never pick up a hitchhiker for fear of being raped and killed. It seems to me some people are frankly unlikely ever to be murdered or sexually molested simply because they have eyebrow ridges sitting heavier than two colliding juggernauts and a lonely pixel of a pong ball bouncing around their head (boing). Must I just flee England for the continent where I know I wouldn't always be asked 'why are you walking/I can't believe you're walking all that way'!
Thursday.
A nice night's sleep at YHA Beverley I leave the Priory early ready to set off for Kingston-upon-Hull. Around seven thirty, and after coffee and porridge from Caffe Nero on Butcher's Row I come to see if the Minster will let me in. The doors will remain locked until after eight thirty for morning prayers. Suffering this severe spiritual setback I set off walking out of Beverley along the Wilberforce Way and I should reach Hull by noon.
***
In France every village provides the locals with bread, cheese and meat at the crack of dawn, but in England none ever do; supermarkets are open early, but there are rarely any 'award winning' Delis or Butchers open before nine - I expect that there is somewhere in Beverley to find the equivalent but I could see none the route I took to leave the town.
***
Coming out of Beverley I ask a local if he knows where the Wilberforce Way goes to at the roundabout but he stumbles over his/her composite, aluminum or steel fettered words. Asking a car user, out with their dog, the route a rambler may take they will always struggle beyond words not beginning with the letter A, B or M. If we could construct a new route away from the motor car then I would fill it with these feet of solid clay, minds of dry cement; hearts of tarmac.
The Wilberforce Way has vanished, or I missed an arrow, when I thought I found it again the overgrown state suggests the route passed wrecked cars, caravans and camper-vans isn't the Way. So now I am travelling along the main Beverley to Hull road until I can find any way to escape the raging foaming chaos of motor bike, motor car and lorry. Can we ever get paradise back? Dog shit, blue bottles, nettles and brambles stand in stark contrast to factories, processing plants, cranes, rusting boats and mountains of breakers yard motorcars guiding my feet to the glory of Stoneferry: more industry! So I stop on a road junction for a moment to catch my breath, feed my gob and be courageous walking through industrial north Hull.
***
Well Hull I will let you off a little. There is definitely something worth seeing in the old port town, even if Minerva purports to be a brew-pub but quite clearly isn't when I question the proprietor. After the omissible industrial view coming along the Hull, and smell, the art centre near the Fruit Market is something unique and interesting and it is a shame it all drifts back to the dole drudgery propping up the Princes Quay. Where to next? Feeding at Burger King prior to noon means I need not linger in the unemployed areas about Primark and I must reach the southern banks of the Humber Estuary before anything else.
At low tide I came out at a dry dock alongside the mouth of the river Hull and birds wade along the muddy shoreline picking succulent crabs, crustaceans, worms from the freshly uncovered pastures. Following signs to the Marina I leave Hull behind catching the 350 through Hessle to Barton and Lincolnshire and another night in a garden. The only camp site in Barton has closed due to declining numbers and the only option for this evening is a garden at what used to be the Waterfront Inn (now it is a lovely home), opposite the 'world famous' Ropewalk. Our hostess has a fantastically fragrant and bountiful garden plush with soft mown grasses, pond, ripening vegetables, apple trees and tasty strawberries - picked fresh from bush and eaten this afternoon. This excellent bed was a discovery on the website 'campinmygarden.com'. A chance discovery is Theo Basson's signature on a bottle Tesco's Finest Darling Sauvignon Blanc which puts me in a fine mood as the sun sinks and we drink in its wonder. Tonight I dine like a king on supremely valued Haslet and Finest Matured Leicestershire and I feel sometimes the past can return smiling to wave you forward into the future. Jean, our hostess, lets me freshen up in a huge bathroom, after I bash my head on the low landing, and relax in this garden of Eden.
***
Set out after a snooze to give Barton-upon-Humber the once over. Worth seeing are the charming simplicity of the wonky windows and brief romanesque of the windows in Saint Peter's Saxon Church contrasted next to the more uniform St Mary's Parish Church; but you must watch out for screaming maniacs, blasting gabba from souped up VW Golf(mark two) reminding you this one town is threatened on all sides by Scunthorpe, Grimsby and Hessle. All the tranquil simplicity is ripped out of the throat as a head banging eighteen year old flies through the otherwise quiet twilighting streets, whacking Saxon queens and Norman kings up their ronsons. Once he is thankfully fled, in his 180bpm haste, they rejoice themselves finding this serene bed; rubbing shoulders pleasantly and sleeping again.
Friday Twelfth.
Due to the most amazing night's sleep in this garden I've started this section, which follows the Viking Way over the Lincolnshire Wolds, really early, before Breakfast, and it feels right for me to walkabout for most of this very warm day?
Breakfasted at a lonely Chowder Ness facing Yorkshire across the Humber around seven forty five and now seeking coffee as I reach South Ferrisby. Setting off again I grimace at the camp coffee I was served in the Post Office/Cafe and it felt like we're stuck in a Nescafe, late seventies, pullover dreamscape and I have come to think this excuse for coffee is now only available in shite villages/towns. What I should have done, as I was leaving, was pretend to be Gareth Hunt shaking a warning fist at the kaff, not waving, as I off loaded some solid shit into their shitty toilet.
It seems that the more diverting nature-life becomes the lesser specifically connected it appears to me as all humanity vanishes along the route and for a while I am 'none' in this wilderness, until I break into Barnetby at one o'clock. It was a constant battle between the sun, the growing distances, the straight lines through fields, bloody big bastard horse flies, nettles, thistles, sweat and, for the final couple of miles, another case of utter fatigue. This humid thirty degrees is a test, and without proper coffee, I couldn't hit the toppermost of the poppermost today.
Set off from the pub after a tidy meal and again really shouldn't have spent so little time in the toilet. At random house number eight I begged to use a toilet, but the first gentleman refused and I hope he gets incontinent as he ages. Number twos dropped at number ten, apologised for the circumstances in which we 'only' meet, stare back and put up two fingers at the un-gentleman of number eight and cursed him to his mowing neighbour across the road; he sniggers and surely I shouldn't stoop to call such a wanker Sir ever? Bloody little Englander, one day he will meet a nurse in his dotage who he will crave to pump with his final seed and yet shit shall explode and fly from him like a mortar bomb - vengeance!
It's a hot one, but in little over 8 miles I will have completed two sections of the Viking Way in one day.
Minor break on route. Six miles to Caister from Bigby let's cream this baby.
***
Around five my body stumbles spinning wildly into the Marketplace needing to stop. Finally I decide a bed is needed tonight and maybe Saturday too? One day off won't hurt. Chinese for tea and to bed - bye bye Friday!
Saturday Thirteenth.
Here I am; a Saturday morning sausage sandwich, Coffee times two, hang about until lunch then a singular Aspall's cider. Warning: Do not get drunk without seeing Caistor first, Daniel. My first joke of the day was 'do you do breakfast in bed?' to the gap toothed grandma handing over serviette. The old mamma from Oak Tree Farm frowned at my humour: "certainly not" and there isn't anyway I would snuffle that moisten bint. Bring your mother-IN-law to serve while biting my hand – I return to coffee and stare and stare at her furrowed brow! At this monthly farmers market there is no bread, no cheese(except a little goat) and no charcuterie – blast no afternoon bites à la française. There are loads of cakes, chutneys, jams and other Women's Institute and flowers to chomp our overbite and sharpen our razor sharp beaks: inbred yeasty proletariat of none Roman descent – why am I so bitter this morning?
Jo of The Settlement could retire to Brazil on all the coffee beans she has ground, pressured and cupped this morning. The profit margin of Arabica and Robusta must be one thousand percent. Apparently she wants this bar to be reminiscent Nellies in Beverley; stop fussing I guess. The years of neglect and random collections made that the place what it was.
As I drift away between sausage, coffee and cider a voice, the thickness of golden syrup, pulls me back from oblivion - "do you have a toilet?" to which I chirp "no, Jo decided to build a bar but make sure everyone pee'd on their shoes, poo'd in the bushes and any sanitary items can be thrown at passing stupidity!" Go away empty headed animal food trough wiper!
Later as I go in search of the 'Roman' Caistor I find a wonderful traditional Lincolnshire sausage lattice made by a local butcher, who was hidden from my initial view at this farmer's market, a banana and a full flask of Syfer Spring water for lunch; taking delight from the source of all the fuss in the first place – crystal clear and refreshing. Whatever it does to my stomach I took the risk and if no Delhi belly another flask for the walk to Market Raisen on Sunday. There is little to see of Roman Caistor really – some very ruined walls – I leave the square back to the White Hart Inn to pack for departure in the morning – all clothes cleaned - and a light siesta until the seventies fiesta which kicks off at five.
Not that many years ago I would have been exceptionally excited by the prospect of getting legendarily drunk at a town fayre/fête, filling my then corpulent gut with curry, kebab, pizza and becoming cardinal chunder by dawn, however there is every chance this behaviour will occur to a vast percentage of those turning up at Caistor's summer themed live music event this evening and mostly I'll find the low level scum floating through the fête all evening boulder-dash, tish-tosh, cish-cosh, wank-shaft; are you such a bore Daniel? No wonder I am usually shunned at these festivities; the soundtrack to my life would quite clearly be How Soon Is Now? This might be Caistor's stab at the seventies, but I really do hope the food isn't a reflection of this era otherwise it is Vesta curries and Findus crispy pancakes all the way!
Bathed for the second day running - sheer luxury -showering never leaves me feeling well and is usually the option when we are rushed by our busy lives. Pumping upstairs from the young bar is some dissolving 'core' metal that has me thinking of reaching for my ear plugs while I compose after relaxing into cleanliness. Blanked out from this poisoned vapour weaving, creeping and corroding I am thankfully unaware while I cool off.
The funky chords of a bass and smash of cymbals at the sound check crash me out of this regression. Time to see what people look like in Caistor!
Is the first song of the first set, backed by feedback, I Wanna Hold Your Hand from 1964? We've slipped a decade right at the beginning. 'Must be a Beatles/Sixties cover band' I am thinking (oh aright, you are Ringo) – I hope they're worth the distractions of alcohol and bad food? I'd like to contribute to natural selection!
...it was just a sound check...
Sunday Fourteenth.
Is this a hangover I see before me? No haste required for a lazy 10 miles towards Market Rasen today? Meandering beyond the old mine workings and the top of the Wolds. Awake to a pulled shoulder muscle: this is what comes from a boozy Saturday; all the strains my body has had from walking and a lot of singing and dancing and rushing the stage has set it off; I'll never fear and just pain-kill it until latter day faintness sets in: there is a campsite near Market Rasen racecourse if the other hope is impossible.
From Caistor some S&M runners departed at midnight for ten times ten kilometres. Seven started and one by one I hear they have dropped out and I will not find out who is left as I depart the town early; mad as both white and black pawns masturbating transfixed on the queens, eating prawns in garlic butter and fresh brawn on toast between diagonal confrontations. Today is Elena's birthday - Happy Birthday to you: I miss our promenade around Greenwich, Eltham, London Bridge, etc., still think of all the books I read that you recommended and I still dream of you. It is pleasing to think I'll never consciously or subconsciously forget you, Treacle?
Like the queen, I often camp it up to be when ABBA filled the frequencies, singing and dancing with heart and soul before my mind was torn into a universal blank. My thoughts vanished and it was lights out before ten. Three too many lovely refreshing Aspall's and one too awful Strongbow.
***
Warning, leaving Caistor I will meet fate in Nettleton and this village might be my hungover doom?
The warm welcome by all the event organizers must be praised and the copious histories (I no longer remember) between some great old time standards that were performed brilliantly by the Moggies (quite successful in the 90s) and the very hot ABBA tribute duo wedged between a simple burger with onions and processed cheese and I left wishing Jo every success at The Settlement and I hope it blooms over seasons, during these difficult times, with her excellent venture, superb employees, winning passionate smiles and it is worth stopping here for good times!
Departing the town I recall an excellent voice from the night Grace Cooper-Hall who faintly reminds me a little of Joni Mitchell and Joanna Newsom but is also singular and original juggling the keyboard alone on that stage. At ten pm I gasped for the remainder of my Tesco's Finest matured Leicestershire and listened to the new album by Animal Collective to progressively comatose and fade out of existence.
On the minus side there was no local beers on draft and none of the guys from the farmers market came back to sell any of their foods on the evening event which seems poorly thought out. The burger I had from The Settlement was adequately standard and wasn't locally produced, made, etc., and it may have been locally sourced but that is an empty statement.
Time to build up some happy Sunday morning sweat and get utterly off piste, by missing the acorn sign for the Viking Way, and head along a steep bank walking east and not south which brought me to the High Street B1225, but now after that stenous diversion I am back on the Viking Way and heading towards Normanby Le Wold, I pass a radio mast and radar station by Acre House.
At the White Hart Inn this morning my breakfast was bountiful, sumptuous and really great value for money - which more than makes up for its inadequacies as a pub, so the blind alley I found myself in, up a this gully, felt like an engaging distraction on a slightly overcast morning; I pass dog walkers coming the other way and mentioning I am off 'being pissed' (not off piste) which might have seemed a very odd thing to say unless you knew where I was last night!
There goes a lifetime first: me crapping in a field in Lincolnshire, while those blasted summer of 2013 horseflies eat me raw, and now I am returning to the path a little lighter, refreshed and eating tender asparagus shoots, which I pluck and munch walking away from another dead end to finally join the track back into Market Rasen; and relax. The sun has moved from behind the clouds and burns down on me as a clay shoot blasts from Claxby Wood; Range Rovers all. Note to self - carry toilet roll and/or wet wipes. The more I tread, thread, thimble, stumble, huff, puff and push through wildernesses it becomes self evident that very shortly, upon the passing of man, nature will surely eradicate our centuries footprints to naught but faint patterns. In that brief test of wild cleanser I put will dock over plantain leaf.
Getting to Market Rasen it is time to rest this tired head but first I must thank Sara of Brandthing for her generous hospitality and giving me a room/floor for the night and feeding me brilliant gnocchi and a traditional and cloudy Weston's Old Rosie cider. Tonight I rest easy before seeing Market Rasen and heading off by more mechanical means towards Suffolk otherwise I will clearly run out of steam, money and time; my body is feeling pushed too far this summer and I can't get my stamina back.
After a fish and mushy pea supper I tripped towards the station to see when the train leaves for Lincoln: seven thirty nine am, approx. Stood amongst the many Chopper Club Harley Davidson crew collected here this Sunday evening I wonder will I ever be part of a community or a society with our society again. My isolation from people is a reflection of my isolation from the universe and my loneliness is an insanity I can't seem to escape. Once I dreamt of heading down the highway driven by grease and piston but not attired in the forever black and leather cyclic cliched, clique, cliquish liquidly pasteurised hegemony. All Back in Black, Motörhead, Mötley Crüe, oily, bearded crew and having no separate identity standing out of this crowd.
Leaving this unexciting congregation I wonder why, in the 21st century, do mens urinals always spray back? Is it a reflection of a modern design led world where utility has been made into crap flawed porcelain. Whatever happened to the solid, safe and reassured Adamant, Royal Doulton or Armitage Shank? It's all become Armitage Shanghai/Beijing? These are piss poor pissing basins but I will remain unafraid of urea as my body becomes like a pincushion for them yellow flying devils - bed, I am dirty already.
Monday Fifteenth.
Market Rasen.
Another day dawns with a loud whistling man around four am, a reversing delivery truck horn at five am and Cooplands taking in frozen 'home-made' pies, pasties and sausage rolls to bake for Lincolnshire's artery pleasures at six. Finally I achieve some pitiful sleep for the second time on the hard unforgiving wood floor and am now off to catch the train to Lincoln and beyond – the Wolds I now leave behind knowing forever where they are if I were ever to return (and I will). Sara told me to leave the keys in a Manila envelope posted downstairs from the office and I pick up a couple of bananas from a Nisa before being prompt for a little more modernity this Monday morning – the continent is getting closer.
There has been some attempt to jazz up the station in a distinctly Victorian theme with silhouettes of ladies in gowns, gentlemen in stove pipe top hats and chimney sweeps in rags. Some pre-war advertising for Golden Shred and Guinness confuses this air: it's good for you. The train arrives at platform two and we leave Market Rasen behind. Last night I did a quick tour of the town and recall nothing of merit, so no need to wait around while Monday blues catch up with me again, like they did in York, as I must be in the Netherlands soon.
Lincoln.
There is a pilgrimage still alive in England: the one into Norfolk - Walsingham, but I am in Lincoln and not going east this time. Not sure where to go when my body is without much energy after sleeping on wooden floors, they always leaves me in such poor shape. Dan is a man of cloth in the Cathedral and he seems very helpful, kind and makes me question whether our churches are all filled with the dead. He tells me he usually walks to Walsingham once a year from Lincoln and one day I will do that when I return. The climb from train station to Steep Street is a strenuous one, but is truly worth it for the advantage of the historic core that rolls our era back to another time as the graven heavy bells toll nine am. The Minister points me in the direction of the the Diocese House who he knows looks after pilgrims, but at £48.50 per night there is no way my pockets can stretch to that and I have decided against Lincolnshire as another town calls my name: Ely. The alternative E2 European long distance path runs from the Fens to Harwich and that is my route, but it's getting too hot for me to walk with the backpack for too long. Sorry to say goodbye to you so soon Lincoln, but I really don't get the people who stare without seeing, have two brain cells, failing to find each other like two atoms in the heartless depths of dark empty space and slurping ice blended frappu-crapo-cino; these are blander tubs of dole lard-ons below the ancient city.
Ely.
Stopping for a spot of food after seeing grandiose Ely Cathedral; Wildwood for plenty of good grub for only £10 for two courses and glass of house trebbiano. Very adequate for lunch but normal for an evening affair. Two east European beauties to fondle in my lonely troubled dreams. Solitary existence on this walk is affecting me a little and I am getting little desperate to collude/talk with someone male or female fleeing England for the same reasons or a not-too-wild tangent.
Cambridge.
Today was a day of two trains, two cathedrals, a nettle thrashed eight miler into the Fens to finally fight, gasp and grasp the hand of another friend at the end of number nine bus from Stretham (and another Aspall's at the Clarendon because St Radegan, King Street, was off my radar by one street). Sara meet Susannah - another generous female soul; but I am too tired to emote much care; so drained! No messing about in back gardens or hard wood floors, fighting wind, delivery men, mosquitoes and horseflies tonight.
It is a real shame to hear the news that Cambridge YHA will close 2nd September for refurbishment and make everyone redundant; I wonder if YHA management are from the school of Gradgrind and their hearts are surely made of basalt. It does need comprehensively revitalizing, but I know that this will mean the distance between guest and hostel will be further than at any time since 2007.
Walking through Cambridge I recall all those persons who have made it so rich in my memory: Alexandria, Katy, Vicky, Nick and globe trotting Susannah; the punts, the Colleges, the backs, the Fitzwilliam and mustafa figs; getting soaked, getting lost and then saved by a yellow haired angel. Nothing wrong with Cambridge from an outsiders brief point of view, but the elitism of the town would bend my ears and drag my feet below, as I look at a line of majestic chestnut trees spread on the banks by Kings: rat a tat tat, knock on the door and please let Jude in.
Loving Cambridge is easy because it is beautiful. Wandering the streets trying to locate the Saint Radegun I began to fear this wouldn't occur without frustrated efforts, knowing it was between King Street and Jesus Pieces wasn't enough; three years the memory tarnishes. Just as I passed the Clarendon Arms for the second time a noise of raucous persons was on the edge of my field of hearing and I was convinced this was Hash House Harriers boozing after running. Turning a corner on a roundabout stood perhaps thirty persons dressed in Cowboy and Indian attire. Home at last. A quick hello to the wrong chap thinking he was the proprietor who sent me full of Croatian info in 2010 and I settled down to a Rioja Cask Cider 6.7% to observe how popular hashing and the pub had got over the previous three years. At my second pint a lady with the most original tattoo I have ever seen delivered a disco ball with a cowboy Stetson to the mix; quick fondle, mentally, and to retrace my footsteps to a very warm room 110.
Tuesday Sixteenth
Zonk! Something cruelly vacant and opiate-ly detached has replaced chilled vibrant crazy people in YHA-land. Now too worried about rebranding exercises, computer systems, management blah-blah and performance stats; selling breakfast, latte, crap wine and snow globes of Cambridge(made in China), sent me searching for something real down to Cambridge Market munching, sucking Saturn peaches to pick me up from that flat lined breakfast at seven thirty am: time for coffee, and stir not until Kings College folds in twain, continuing my social experiment from York I ask 'good morning' to passers by outside the Copper Kettle facing Kings; a lot of delegations this morning (Indians mainly) make up for the lack of other punts during close season at the universities. Eight out of ten twats say zilch in return, some smile subtly and one laughs. Yet I maintain the phrase. With declining fortunes comes refraining, declining brows and a rush tunnel vision tonsured head furrows - wake up!!!
***
This morning, after two coffees, I was welcomed as a pilgrim into both King's Chapel and College FoC, for a scoot about, and now my mission is to try to get fixed with accommodation in a College during close season - away from the YHA and its manners. Returning to the porter's lodge in King's I explain my mission for the summer between being interrupted by two very rude and intrusive octogenarian toffs, and they suggest I try at the accommodation office over at Corpus Christi; they tell me to return at 1300 hours to see the accommodation office; I return to another 'no' (unless I pay £120 a night (blimey)!). Most of my hope for charity from our monolithic institutions seems to be coming to a capital oh! So on Wednesday morning I will be wound-up, from suburban Cambridge back to Kings and Silver Street, to spring onwards into the east. Knowingly knowing where to get proper bread for the onwards journey (The Earth's Crust); I have the fig extra jam.
Five to none. No college can help me rest my head closer the citadel. There are thousands of foreign student come to learn England's English, but all they'll hear are Ps and Qs, smart tings and a grammar like we ne'er use properly in the colonies. A big' 'NO' from King's, Christi, Saint Catherine, Radley or Darwin. I need to be a member of a college or pay one hundred and twenty sovereigns for a guest room at Corpus and my body definitely isn't worth all that.
The two posh-beyond-caricature octogenarians forced their Etonian tie, lack of etiquette, down my gagging throat (the porters and I were stunned ridged). So what ever happened to manners in this seated minority surely they would expect it from the poor standing majority? Weren't both Eton and King's were set up for poor students by a righteous and holy King? They all tried to kill Henry VI who the first such, since Edward the Confessor, who wasn't a battle hardened LandsKnecht and violent megalomaniac and reflected a benevolent goodness - yes I've seen the play too.
Today I will wait quietly in the rest of the day ready to turn my full attention back to the east; going over the top when the whistle blows for the big push comes. Even if the weather sticks, violently stabbing, within the frequency of light and the thermometer mercury stilettos deep my mind. So it will be bayonets out and the firing of seven mortar shells shall define the limit of my presence in this hallowed yet reducing bastion (and I may never preempt a return here again, with a treaty permanently agreed).
From another blank faced charmless gurner, selling books, I purchase the "one-inch" ordnance map sheet 149; published 1946 fully revised in 1930. Apart from our missing rails, our bulging suburbia and its greatly reduced trunk roads, this guide might help me on the E2 between Wixoe and Burstall for only one pound; I do wish he'd had 148 to 150 so I could be thoroughly off piste, in a different era, wearing tweeds or oxford bags! A memory of Cambridge 2013 will repeat on me every time I reveal that map.
Before I leave I must do a little more beer venturing in capitol Cambridge. Advised by S to the Flying Pig on Hills Road and collect a beer: it is good and was public house of the year 2013 according to CAMRA. Good old-time CAMRA who now seem like a crusty 1980s Brontosaurus club complete with prehistoric gills. A pint, I switch on Spotify to find the original Further on up the Road and return to the hostel where a man from Japan walks into a backpackers with a bright yellow suitcase and I know some insanity must surely occur in room 110?
Wednesday Seventeenth.
Hotter and hotter walking in the insanity of summer 2013. What will become of me if this heat persists between here, Harwich and through the Netherlands and Germany? Oh to be cool; I feel like ditching western Europe for Iceland, Svalbard, Greenland and glacial springs.
On Monday gone I wrote a email to Sam Alper's (Caravans International) widow informing her of my current pilgrimage and route passing Chilford Hall wondering if there was any possibility of resting somewhere on route along the E2 close to Fiona Morton's home in Linton Cambridgeshire. In my youth father often recalled to me happy times working for Sam, from the late 1960s until just after I was born, as his chauffeur. He was convinced there was a connection between them, beyond mere servitude, although this was probably all it was to Sam. My hopeful approach, like the other attempts to find solace in Lincoln and Cambridge fails to win some of the selfless compassion that has occasionally arisen in the North on this walk and occurred regularly in France and Spain. It is meaningful and true for me to claim I feel a constant resistance as the only result of my ardent simple requests. So I will not waste my declining energy and efforts hesitatingly expecting some hugely significant butterfly wing effect to spring forth within my salty body - I will walk on alone.
Dragging my lonely feet along the ancient adverse camber of Via Deva Street for nine miles I depart right to locate another random toilet on near Hildersham Road then hunt food and liquid refreshment, perhaps? The Pear Tree appears wavering and hovering into view along the High Street and a glorious Ploughman's later, complete with a edge wedge of old Lincolnshire Poacher, homemade chutney and Aspall's, I wait for this sultry thirty five degree afternoon to chill a little before I continue solo straight ahead.
Gone now has most of the day while I am still trying to locate somewhere to sleep and eat. A bus from Linton delivered me to Haverhill, I walked from there to Sturmer with directions for a possible garden to sleep in and, after a can of coke provided in freely, I looked over the field by the pile of wood to burn and thought lack of sanitary amenities (local pub had closed down I think) and white van man dropped me in Stoke by Clare. It took me three houses and a long drive way to finally locate the home in the country but now I am in a town called Clare to try to find somewhere to sleep for the evening. This was a very tiring day, but I finally got a grass beneath the stars.
Oh, I will be gone from Clare by seven am. The slapping hands of the godless suggesting they're not here to help. Two empty hands, palms out, left me I in tears. It was another long and demanding day and men of god refraine from following the very words they repeat to themselves and the congregation. Religion is full of 9 to 5 bullshitters playing lip service to a congregation of unwise, old and thoughtless humanity. How could you stand there and tell a pilgrim of the twenty first century you had no room in your heart. Tonight I sleep in a beer garden because both the Priory and the Vicarage refuse my need and The Cock Inn make money from my hungry mouth.
My memory will always recall Clare as the town where the doors of the Augustinian Priory and the Vicarage for the Parish Church of St. Peter and St. Paul were forcibly slammed against my urgent needs. Pub grub and a beer garden will be my only sanctuary tonight. Tomorrow I will battle to escape England and its inflexible unhelping stances (but the Cock Inn do a fantastic smoked duck salad washed down with a lather of Adnams beer).
Thursday Eighteenth.
There is really nothing left in my tanks, I am at zero, I can't walk anymore and my soul feels battered by last nights episode and all I can see in England are more difficulties for me making any progress in this pilgrimage free zone. So running frantic, in case I shit myself looking for a toilet, amongst the historical aspects of Clare, a burly fireman provides rapid fire directions to save my arse from ridicule. Waiting to catch the 360 bus to Sudbury, thence to Ipswich (the arse of England), I leave on the bus less internally threatened if my head is still in turmoil. We vanish quickly through Newtown and Long Milford, which provide a charming contrasts to a gutter swearing and anger flexing youth bound for the bike sheds with a packet of Lambert and Butler silver. Jumping off in Sudbury I wade into Porridge and then head away eastward as the temperature threatens to overwhelm my nothing to less than zero!
***
To come to this! Twenty pounds for room number one in Jack's Cafe. Rock burns in the bedding, a lingering smell of urine, seamen and bovine sweat, random blood stains upon the wall and a ramshackle creaking bed. This is Ipswich? Yep, the armpit's armpit is where I am now. In an overly busy industrial/commercial zone beyond Portman Road and sandwiched between a petrol station, a Sainsbury's and the very loud and busy Hadleigh Road. Being so very tired and really fed up, and over England, now how do I find myself here and how will I manage a night here? Hoping I hear no gunshots or screams later this night, and Tourist Information recommended bleeding and detritus swelling pus-pit, how do I get out of this mes?
Since I arrived shit free in Market Rasen my thoughts have been wandering further into blind alleys and now I feel less connected to France or Spain the further I disappear into this furious furnace: East Anglia, perhaps this fury is helping me to recognise what my mind needs more to be really at ease and free of trouble? I must remind myself that this tired and weary me is not the one lingering in the shadows and I will appear again soon enough: just get out of England!
***
It was simply impossible for me to deal with that 'last chance saloon' on the day before the ferry takes me to the Hoek van Holland and now I, finally, await the indigo dusk, before an early departure, in Dovercourt. Lying is easy to do when your health depends on it - I told the owner I had got my times wrong for the ferry. Zero out of ten seems an impossible score to give anywhere, but in Ipswich it is an omnipossible reality. Apparently it was once a very wealthy town (really?); yes: in the middle ages. Now it shudders and stumbles under the ricket bowlegged gate of some hundred fold grumbling and toothless old git. Luckily eighteen pounds was handed back to me as I departed Jack's Cafe in haste to catch the train.
Old Harwich was such a pleasant surprise - leaving my bivvy at the Greenacres Caravan Park, the Dutch youth (who I'd seen and spoken to briefly back in Cambridge Youth Hostel) and I walked along the seafront, went to eat a proper traditional fish supper at Pieseas (but he doesn't eat fish) and found the true traditional Alma Inn waiting (where instantly I lost my soul to a London Wench and my brain to deep discussions of red shift, blue shift and the Sagittarius anomaly) and a wholly dry, yet refreshing, Gwatkins Kingston Black (but he doesn't drink) which all conspired to bring on a slight feeling of regret because I knew I had to return to the caravan park, far far away, and attempt to comfort my body fighting its losing battle against those maddening, head spinning, blood sucking and forever feeding proboscises. Catching the ferry in the morning, with the bright orange youth who is setting off for his home after discovering the English 'world' first, I feel less lost and alone than at any point since Caistor. Away from England on Friday morning!
Back in Ipswich, before disaster hit, I collected a couple of items to increase my happiness or double my joy escaping east over the sea - Pump Street Bakery and Memorable Cheeses (tasty Harlech cheese and exciting Kelsale Sourdough). Keeping some of this fine fare back after lunch (below Saint Mary le Tower church and a brief sojourn in Christchurch Park) while I was observing wafer thin drunks leaving and returning brown bagged. Now I have a grand breakfast for Saturday morning on the Stenaline ferry: figs extra jam, sourdough, cheese and garden peas. Sleep and forget the stress and tension that has developed since I sought to escape England.
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