The next morning, I left my keys with a guy in the kitchen - with a flyer - and walked through the campus, past this building,which looks like the only thing left from the days when this was probably an HE college:
I took the quick walk into town, and found it to be a very friendly place. It got off to a bad start, with me seeing a sign outside 'The Varsity' saying '1.99 breakfasts - 10 till 12', and trying to get in - in vain. It was 11am, and the manager was sitting outside having a fag. 'You do breakfasts?' I asked '..up to 12?' 'Yeah' she said '..but we don't open until 12 on Sundays.' (!!???)
The centre of town looked ok, and it has this statue, of a fat man sticking his foot out:
In a coffee bar, the T-Shirt magic worked again, and I looked through the map to find the places that might like a flyer or two... In doing so, I found that Loughborough was on the Grand Union Canal. I asked the woman, and she confirmed that not only could I walk along the canal to Leicester, I could also go further - to Market Harborough, as well. In fact, she knew, because she had once lived on a narrowboat, and saying that I was going that way, she wondered if I could do her a favour? I was to keep my eyes open for any nice houses for sale along the water's edge.. That was the first of good receptions in Loughborough, I also got into a conversation about the bid with the women in Waterstone's, and in the library, and after flyering the church, got into another one with the guys in this railway museum, just outside the town - they let me put loads of them all around
..as you can see, it still ran steam trains
In all, I left Loughborough thinking it was a cool and unpretentious town - it didn't have many 'iconic buildings' but it just felt good to be in. Perhaps the amount of students keeps it in check - it had its 'hard' places, but they were balanced with the laidback ones.
Just around the corner, was the start of the canal, and I started a great walk, which lasted for the next two days. Being a Sunday, this was the best day, though, because there were hundreds of couples/ families around. A family stopped me within 10 minutes, then I met a guy who knew a lot about Wearmouth-Jarrow. He was a vicar, and after talking, I handed him a pile of flyers, and worked out a A4SML with him, too. As for the landscape, it was perfect:
...and the walking was great:
The day got better, as I ended up in Barrow-on-Soar, passing this hippy-commune-type of place just outside town:
...which had this character guarding the site:
Straight afterwards, I turned a corner, to this view:
The pub was great, and while I was basking in the wonder of it all, Kate phoned me. Apparently, while I was by the in the sun, by a canal, she was in Hebburn looking at a dead frog... A family came over and asked, and then a biker couple, and I left thinking that not only had I made a great decision environment-wise, but I'd also stumbled on a treasure-trove of 'the type of people who are interested in this sort of thing'.
Yet again, though, it couldn't last. Again I became conscious of the time, and that I'd sort-of told my host that I'd be there at around 5. I hurried along the towpath, past this sad-looking horse:
, and away from the canal, back into a town, and 'reality'. The place was called Montsorrel, and although it was an historic place, with a castle mound, the first view I got from the water was of these new, very fake houses:
There was even a fake medieval ruin:
...and some fake Tudor construction:
I mean...come on.. This is Postmodernism gone mad. Ok, it's probably a very nice (and dear) place to live, but it just stinks of a mindset so terrified of its own times that it's run away to some fairyland in the past, that never existed anyway. What's s scary in a lovely village by the canal that you have to build English Disneyland to blot the rest out?
Ok, I'm off on one again..I passed onto the dual carriageway, and picked up speed coming into the northern suburbs of Leicester. At Birstall, I took a risk, and worked my way past 'The White Horse', down onto the canal again, with the idea that it woud be a more direct route into the centre. Not so right - time was getting on, and, for the first time during this walk, I felt that the only option left to me was running.
..Not really running, but 'yomping'. For those of you who don't know what that means, it's effectively jumping and jogging in the same movement. I was ok with doing it, because the towpath had turned in a curving path through a nature reserve, covered in trees. Just as well, because yomping is a ludicrous thing to do: it makes you look like you're running after having -in the words of James May: 'done a mischief in your trousers'. Any time I even felt there was someone around the next corner, I stopped, and in the end, I stopped doing it, because it was, quite frankly, so silly, and turned back onto the main road straight into the centre of Leicester.
Very quickly, I got to the cathedral:
...which is next to the Guildhall:
...one of the best remaining timber-framed buildings in the country. Even better than the Cooperage down Newcastle quayside, I've read..In two minutes, by host, Barry Naylor turned up, and let me into my lodgings - just around the corner from the cathedral:
. He had a service to do, so he left alone in an place that was very similar to what I'd had in Sheffiedl. It didn't take me long to make friends with my other lodger, a 700-year-old feller who was sitting on a wardrobe:
Hoever, it was in a funny part of town, and within 20 mins there was drunk woman hammering on the window to be let in. Barry had told me to ignore anyone who didn't have a key, so i did, and spent some time on the blog, going out at 9ish to meet Barry and a few of his friends in a pub. We didn't stay long, but long enough to get them to sign, and for me to learn how Leicester is the only city in England where parliament has sat outside London. With that, the talk stayed on history, and one guy, Ian, commented on the March. He knew where the Marchers had stayed during their night in the city, and what's more, he offered to take me on a tour of the city. We left soon after, and the tour began with him showing me the darkened interior of the church where he was organist, Saint Nicholas'. Unfortunately, I'd left my camera in the lodgings, and I had to use my phone to take the photos of him playing ( I don't have the little adaptor to transfer pics from there to my laptop). After that, he showed me the Marcher's church, which is past a flyover on the ring road, and is now a conference centre, and the church hall just across the lane where they slept.
The tour lasted about an hour, and after that I was straight asleep.
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