I either found this on the web or Peter Clark sent me a link to his story,
either way I make no excuses for reproducing in full his story as both myself and my dog are
mentioned in it. Should he or any of his relatives wish me to remove it I will.
THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE
1; WALKING FROM SOMERSET TO LONDON
I have always had a yearning to do a linear walk across a slice of England.
When we moved to Frome Somerset I started having day dreams of walking
to London. The dream slowly took the shape of examining maps and planning
a route. It was possible to walk all but the first ten miles along
waterways the Kennett and Avon Canal and the Thames Pathway.
I decided to walk to London In May 2008, taking six days, immediately
after my 69th birthday. There was plenty of walking background in my
past. In my teens I was a keen hiker in the hills of Scotland and Wales.
In recent years I have been turning out regularly with the Mendip Ramblers,
always opting
when there was a choice to do the longer walks. So
I booked myself into bed and breakfasts at Devizes, Great Bedwyn,
Newbury, Reading and Windsor.
This would mean walking about twenty miles a day. But it would be flat.
There would be no navigational problems and hardly any stiles. A doddle.
I decided to end up in west London.
I have in recent years walked along the Thames at different times from
Hampton Court to Rotherhithe, as well as on canal towpaths between
Brentford and Camden Town. I decided to end up at Richmond Bridge.~
So here we go.
Day One. I set off at half past seven and walk along roads to Bradford
on Avon. I have never walked through this part of Frome before and
notice things I never see when driving or on the bus. One house has
the Arab Bismillah on the gateway. I reach the canal at Bradford at
half past ten, have a coffee and pull out my copy of Nicholson's Guide
to the River Thames and the Southern Waterways. This has 1:25,000 maps
of the whole route, enough for my purposes. There are brief notes
about things to see although the guide is mainly targeted at boat
users. It is twelve miles to Devizes. The canal skirts Trowbridge
to the south and Melksham to the north. We go over a main road that I
have often driven along, totally unaware that I was passing under
water. Two miles before Devizes are the Caen (pronounced to rhyme with lane)
Locks, sixteen locks, one after the other. I am beginning to feel tired,
and I do not welcome the gradient at this stage of the day. I reach my
B and B, pleasantly exhausted. No blisters, but I do wonder if I may have
been over-ambitious.
Day Two. I stock up from a supermarket with a sandwich, a banana and a
bottle of milk. For fifteen miles there are no locks. The canal keeps to
the contour and winds gently among the hills, with occasional cuttings
and embankments. It is warm but not too sunny. A gentle breeze. At
Wilcot one most elaborately decorated bridge, Lady's Bridge, was built
to butter up a lady who demanded £500 from the Canal Company for
permission to drive the waterway through her land. Nearby a bizarrely
small suspension bridge crosses the canal. There are one or two locks
after Pewsey Wharf, and then a tunnel, Bruce Tunnel, where the path
has to leave the canal and go over a modest hill. After the tunnel
the locks start to go down. This is a psychological fillip. It means
I have crossed the watershed of southern England. I have left the
waterways that flow into the Severn to the west. Henceforward the
water flows into the Thames to the east. For many miles the canal
runs alongside or close to the railway.
The occasional wharves have been transformed into popular spots
for boaters, with pubs and services available. But older buildings, warehouses
and former chandlers' yards suggest the past. The canal was built
between 1794 and 1810, joining the Kennett that had been navigable
from Reading to Newbury, and the Avon that was navigable from
Avonmouth to Bath. It transformed the economies of the areas it
passed through. One of the minor visible impacts it had was to change
the pattern of building materials used.
Before the canals, buildings for the most part used materials
available only within one day's cart journey. Bricks and stones
were now used far from the kilns and quarries where they were shaped.
The canals had a fifty year heyday, until the railway changed local
economies further.
Railway construction used many of the techniques pioneered by the
canals ' cuttings, embankments, tunnels ' but the railway companies
saw the canals as competition. Some including the Kennett and Avon
were bought up by the railways and deliberately run down.
I reach Great Bedwyn and stay at the Cross Keys inn. It is primarily
a village pub but is able to put people up, but never more than two
or three people a week. Run by a young couple but, of course, everyone
is young these days. It serves the village, and the price is
reasonable. It seems to be a survival of those village inns that
would have been patronised by 1920s bicyclists in their plus fours.
Day Three I pass by Hungerford Church, built in the nineteenth century
of Bath stone, brought here by the canal. Then Kintbury, with a
splendid nineteenth century Gothic vicarage. The canal meanders
through meadows and is joined by the river Kennett. Often the towpath
is between canal and river. Occasionally, facilitated and controlled
by weirs and locks, the two waterways merge.
After the railways strangled the canal trade, this canal fell into
decline. Regular traffic continued until the 1930s and the last through
passage was made in 1951. During the Second World War it became one
of the country's internal defence lines. The canal is four feet deep,
and, if well maintained, is sufficiently awkward to impede advancing
tanks. We presume that the bridges have already been blown up. Pill
boxes along the route bear witnesses to the canal's wartime role. In
1962 the Kennett and Avon Trust was formed to restore the canal.
Voluntary efforts were supplemented by increasing support from
British Waterways and by 1990 the whole canal from Reading to Bristol
was open for navigation. Wharves became marinas and the Queen sailed
through one of the Caen locks at Devizes.
I reach Newbury by mid-afternoon. This is actually the shortest day
of the walk, only about 15 or 16 miles. Just as well, as the bed and
breakfast I have chosen is a mile away from the canal.
Day Four The weather continues to be fine. I am travelling light with
only one change of clothing. I carry nothing I do not need. If I need
something I can buy it on the way. I carry everything in a school
satchel. I hardly notice the weight.The whole route has been beautiful
but the stretch between Newbury and Reading is particularly so. Sometimes
the canal seems to pass through a tunnel of trees, the branches arching
the water. I wish I could identify birds and trees and flowers. But
ignorance does not lessen my appreciation. At times I pause to listen
to the wind in the trees, the rich and diverse birdsong. It is like
some celestial symphony. I have it all to myself! And it's free! And
even more amazing, it continues even when nobody is around. I have no
proof of that but I presume so.
A century or so ago some of the wharves, such as the one at Aldermaston,
were places for picnics and outings, even organised games. There used to
be a cigarette race where participants had to swim over a designated stretch
with a lighted cigarette in their mouths.
The canal passes under the M4, whose rumblings can be heard miles away.
Things change perceptively. The meadows are attractive enough, but
I am conscious of the motorway and the network of railway lines as
I reach Reading at rush hour. But I do meet Chris. I am sitting by a
lock as he is working his barge through. He used to travel the canals
with his wife. She died in January and he is tracing a journey they
made together. He is scattering some of her ashes below each lock
as he recites a poem. He is alone apart from a dog called Deefer.
Deefer? I ask. Yes, Deefer, D for Dog.
Day Five I realise that I have made a miscalculation in my plans. I knew
that Reading was forty miles from London, and that Windsor was twenty miles
from London. It therefore made sense that it would not be more than twenty
miles from Reading to Windsor. If you are a crow or a motorist that may
be so. But the river winds up to Henley and round by Marlow and adds
fifty per cent to the journey. I set out early thinking I may have thirty
miles to walk, planning to walk ten miles, rest for an hour, walk another
ten miles, another hour's rest, and then into Windsor by seven in the
evening.
I walk the last mile of the Kennett to its junction with the Thames. I
am now in commuter range of London. Houses, gardens, cars, accents all
indicate comfortable affluence. The larger houses have swimming pools
and/or tennis courts. Some have a paddock. One garden actually has a
miniature railway running around it. There are more places where you
can drop your poop scoop than where you can deposit my kind of rubbish, banana
skins and empty milk cartons. But the countryside is beautiful if more
manicured. And full of associations. The original W H Smith had a house
north of Henley. I walk through Cookham churchyard past the grave of
Stanley Spencer. The path rejoins the Thames below Cliveden and then I walk
on to Maidenhead, passing Boulter's Lock, a great social venue in Edwardian times.
My strategy of ten miles walk, one hour's break, is not working. I stagger
into Maidenhead at about six, calculating that I have walked twenty six miles
so far and there is another six or seven to go. I see a bus, am tempted and
surrender to temptation. What the Hell! I have in the past walked this stretch
of the Thames Pathway.
Day Six I have arranged to meet my friend Sean at Shepperton at one o'clock
and walk the last fifteen miles with him. I realise that the whole route,
thanks to the unanticipated windings of the Thames, may be thirty miles
again. I decide to take the train to Staines and to walk from there. River
traffic is heavier and houses line the river. One striking feature of the
river, and the canal, is the variety and attractiveness of the bridges. You
hardly notice them when driving over them. But walking along the canal
you are looking at them and have time to appreciate them. Henley, Marlow,
Maidenhead, Chertsey, Walton, all contrasting and memorable examples.
I meet Sean at the Anchor Inn Shepperton, which lies on a village square
by a church and other old buildings. Most people charge through Middlesex,
commuting or heading for Heathrow. Yet off the beaten track, insofar as any
track in Middlesex is unbeaten, there are these unexpected corners of rural
England. We take a passenger ferry to the south bank and stride along. Sean
is a racing historian and, just before we reach Hampton, we make a detour to
see what is left of Hurst Park racecourse which closed in the early 1960s.
We find what we want - some gates and a plaque by the river. Hampton Court
and the curve of the river round to Kingston. I am now in touch with Theresa,
my wife, who is coming to meet us, walking from Richmond to Kingston on the
Surrey side. Yes, I am tired - actually, bloody knackered - but the finishing
post of Richmond spurs me on. Near Teddington weir I see Theresa and stagger
into a run to greet her. We reach the bridge at about 7. Sean leaves us and
hobbles towards a bus, and I make the adjustment to a life that is shaped by
cars, roads and rush.
PETER CLARK 2000