The next morning, I could see what a nice environment the Johnsons lived in. Their garden was really well-kept, and was embellished with many additions which, I'm sure, can be found nowhere else. Most noticeable was this sculpture:
For the sake of all that's good and decent, I made sure the pink flowers were positioned in just the right place, because what you're thinking is absolutely correct. Bear this in mind, and then notice how the guy also has only half a head/brain. The sculpture was done by a female friend of the Johnsons. Its title? Man Limited.
Graham and I walked back into town, where I stopped to make myself know to the council offices. They hadn't heard I was coming, but they were suitably impressed by my story - I'd definately gone past the point where the distance I'd walked was difficult to ignore - The Press officer came down, and took a quick story, flyer, and a few photos of me playing the blues at the bottom of the entrance steps. All this was just behind the ancient old grammar school in the town centre:
...and just around the corner from Saint Dionysius. Outside was a plaque detailing the Battle of Naseby, which took place about five miles south of MH in 1645, and was a decisive victory for Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army over the forces of King Charles Ist.
Inside the church, I met the verger and gained a few signatures, while a group of young string players rehearsed closer to the altar:
They played a piece by Bach, and then went into that piece which customers always used to ask for when I worked in JG Windows in Newcastle. They'd come in and say they were looking this really old piece, perhaps by Vivaldi or someone. I'd flick through the Four Seasons etc, before they'd say 'Oh! I remember now - it was used on that 'a diamond is forever' advert!'. At that point, I'd put the cds away, and get out the one they were looking for -by Karl Jenkins, which was written in about 1988. It's a good pastiche of an old piece, though, and these players here seemed to be getting stuck into it.
I stopped in Tesco's to stock up on water, and Graham led me back behind his house, and to a path he'd recommended the night before. This was the 'Brampton Valley Cycleway', which led all the way from Market Harborough to Northampton along the line of an old railway which was closed by the Beeching cuts in the 1960s. I bidded Graham goodbye, and set off, almost immediately bumping into, and flyering a woman from Sunderland who'd lived down here for years.
In the back of my mind, I knew the cycleway would be a good move: it was direct, and quiet, and seemed as though it would be like a walk along a canal without the water and endless miles of twists. However, I also remembered that Graham had said 'There are two tunnels in there, as well'. This intrigued me...and it should have.
The path led straight for a few miles, just in the manner you'd expect: hedges on either sides, with fields beyond them. Here and there I'd come across some bit of metal or wood which had obviously once formed a part of the railway, but largely, there was nothing to prepare me for the two gigantic legacies of the steam age which lay just around the corner. The first one hit me unawares after about five miles:
There's an optical illusion going on in this photo - look at the light at the end of the tunnel, and it doesn't really look that far away from this perspective. That's NOT true: this tunnel -the 'Oxendon Tunnel' is 480 yards long, and as I stepped towards it, I noticed that my senses were going into survival mode. Everywhere around was silent and spooky -there was just a slight rustle through the trees - and this sense of foreboding wasn't helped by this bit of grafitti sprayed on the gate:
Yip: that says 'Evil Within'. I started walking into it, and immediately, EVERYTHING went black. I couldn't even see my hands infront of me, never mind my feet, and I had to trust that every next step would be the same slightly soggy splat that the one previous had been. After what seemed like LOADS of steps, I turned round, to the second visual illusion:
Yet again, this photo doesn't show the fact that in the tunnels, the entrance never seems as far behind you as you think it should be. The exit - a tiny dot of light way ahead, never seems any closer, as well. I just walked ahead towards the distant light, hearing nothing but my feet, and drops of water. It was the type of silence that your mind can't help but fill in itself, and you find yourself hearing the noise of steam trains on tracks, and the old whistle, and the hubbub of passengers..At what seemed to be the middle, I turned again back to the entrance to see where I'd walked from:
Then..after the middle, some other light appeared from the roof. As I approached, it took a shape, and looked like...well...see for yourself:
..like some close encounter, or something... It was like a little amphitheatre, and was formed by the shaft of light coming from the chimney for the steam, leading up to the surface about sixty feet higher:
once I was under it, it became just a beam of light from above:
Again, the exit here seems closer than it is, and it was another five minutes of walking until the light started getting obviously closer:
..and then I was out, back into the silent trees and old railway line. You could see remants of the railway everywhere - straight away, there was this old signal post just standing there in the trees:
Things like this reminded me of another fundamental aspect of this walk - Obviously, one of main points of this entire endeavour is to highlight the book that kick-started the concept of 'history' in England. It formed the blueprint of how to 'think' historically, and throughout the walk, I can't help noticing 'historical threads' emerging to connect what seem at face-value to be separate towns and locations. For example, during the whole first two weeks I inadvertently walked right through the centre of the English Mining industry. The tales were everywere of former mining pit heaps that had been landscaped(Ferryhill and Mansfield) , of disasters (Wakefield), and in Barnsley and Nottingham, the Miner's Strike. Here, it wasn't my first -or last - encounter with those huge cuts which rationalised most of the railway infrastructure in the 1960s. All of this is confirming me how 'history' is actually the acculmulation of thousands of 'histories', and that the job of the historian - first championed by Bede - is to pick the sense of 'story' out of these events. Obviously, this job is too big, and every historian has their own 'take' on the task - Bede's was the interpretation of events in accordance with an idea of Christianity's growth and development through Britain. With this walk, I'm finding that the only sense of 'order' is coming from the route of the walk itself: IT is cutting a swathe through these histories I'm encountering, and in its sense of destination, is letting them 'hang off it' - the railways, the mines, the Anglo-Saxons, Byron, The Romans - all of these seem incoherent as one big history, but the route of the walk is like a light shining through them all, and letting them speak for themselves.
It wasn't long until I passed the abandoned site of what had been Kelmarsh Station:
...and soon afterwards, went into the second tunnel:
Here, it felt exactly the same, and the sole difference was that the circle of light in the middle was flooded, so a little pool had formed:
As before , the optical ilusions, sensual overload and disorientation remained...until the exit grew, and I was out again:
Almost immediately, I took a wrong turn, ending at a gate where the track disappeared below a field, full of sheep staring at me..like sheep:
I turned back, and found the right path, past more relics of the railway, like this cast-iron footbridge, which would have once been just the type you see in old films, painted green and red, with steam billowing under it:
However, I was getting the feeling that the cyclpath was endless. This sign didn't help:
..and although the route was quiet, and picturesque, it was straight:
...and below my feet, it was covered with pebbles - not grass -which would have been soft - or tarmac, which would have been a constant hard. Because of this, my feet never knew how to predict the next step exactly: some are sharp, others roll your foot a few inches away from where you want - and most dig into your soles. I short, the path was getting boring, long and after the length of the leg yesterday, was starting to hurt.
My next stop was Brixworth - I'd been reminded to visit by both Kate, and the journalist from the Harborough Chronicle, as it was a perfect spot for me to take a photo they wanted to print with my story. I knew the place as well, and all because of its church, which is the most complete and largest Anglo-Saxon church remaining in Britain.
Here's another thread - the Anglo-Saxons. Legend says they came here to fight for a king in the Midlands called Vortigern, and they were led by two brothers called Hengist and Horsa. They were invited over as mercenaries from their homelands in northern Germany, Denmark and Sweden to fight Vortigern's battles during the 5th-6th Centuries, and their main adversaries were the British, who were the remnants of the Celtic tribes who'd been here before the Romans, and had adopted the Roman ways during the latter's occupation of Britain from the 1st to 5th Centuries. After the Romans had left, all order had collapsed, and there were constant battles while the whole concept of civilisation and learning fell into the 'Dark Ages'. During this time, supposedly the Britons found a leader against the Anglo-Saxons in a tribal king from the Oxfordshire/Somerset area called (King) Arthur, while the Saxons turned on Vortigern, and decided they liked this country enough to settle here permanently. They called their area 'Angle-land', and by the 7th-8th Centuries, they were in control of most of the East of Britain, and had massive kingdoms like Mercia, Wessex, and Northumbria. The latter's 'Golden Age' was from about 630 to 750, when it was the most powerful, and had internal stability to develop intellectual powerhouses like Lindisfarne, Wearmouth, and Jarrow, where the first book chronicling the history and religious conversion of these people was written by a bloke called Bede, who called the area they all lived in 'England'...
During this time, the font I discovered in Chesterfield was made, as was this church I found myself at, in Brixworth:
The spire is later, but the main body of the church looks a lot like what the main ones at Wear and Jar would have looked like. This is what it looks like inside:
These window recesses are exactly the same as the ones in the small/oldest part of Jarrow:
This carving is the same interlaced style that's on the entrance at Wearmouth, various stones around Jarrow, and the font at Chesterfield:
..and these columns supporting the window are almost exactly the same as the ones hanging around near the north wall in Jarrow:
Because of all of this, I'd expected my entrance into Brixworth to be some sort of triumph of cultural discovery etc.. But..my feet were killing by this point, and I crawled up the hill to the church in bigger pain than at any other time on the walk. It was raining, as well, and I took these photos after sitting in a pew for ten minutes just..making sure I was doing nothing involving my feet. After half an hour, I penguin-walked through the village:
and into a pub for a coke break. Here, there was a bit of talk about the T-shirt, and I flyered a group of 4, one of whom was born in Middlesbrough, and another who knew exactly where the March had walked , and told me which road to follow. I let my feet live again, and took his advice out of town, and back along the dual carriageway, where I saw this boot, which, quite frankly, took the whole concept of ISSR to a completely different level:
The road was like all the others for another two hours:
until I passed the sign:
...and made the mistake of taking the wrong road through the suburbs. It led me around the top of the town, and into the centre via the north-east. This must be the worst part of town, because all I could see were cars full of boy racers in baseball caps winding down their windows to play 'bonkers' music so all strangers would respect them and realise that they were cooler and harder than the last boy racer who passed looking exactly the same and playing the same 'bonkers'...
The streets looked pretty run-down, too. I passed the racecourse, which had a tacky fun fair on it that looked like a smaller version of The Hoppings, and was saved only by the amazing old shelter on the corner of the street:
One guy did shake my hand and take a flyer in a newsagents, but largely, it was 6 o'clock - just the time when the centre became overrun with kids hanging about, and the type of guys who are in pubs at that time. It had this sculpture, detailing Northampton's history of shoemaking:
I found the main area, and had arranged with today's contact to meet him outside the train station. I lost that, as well, and my feet were aching again as I crawled over some brick wall near some ring road..
..and heard a beep from a car, which stopped, and ...was the guy I was looking for! I must have stood out, because he had no doubt from 50 yards who I was. Anyway, Clive whisked me out of town to his home in Long Buckby. On the way, we passed the back wall of the Althorp Estate, where Princess Diana grew up and is buried:
We also passed a roadsign for 'Harpole' . Anyone reading this from Newcastle will instantly recognise this name as being a fundamental aspect of the lifestory of Abdul Latif, the guy who owned the world-renowned Rupali's curry house in the Bigg Market. Here, Latif came up with the 'Curry Hell Challenge' - to eat what the Guinness Book of Records has verified to be the world's hottest curry -and thus get the meal free of charge, with an added certificate of proven manliness.
Many people have tried, including premiership footballers, Gary Bushell, and I think, Chris Evans, and Rupalis was endlessly parodied in Viz magazine, but to promote his restaurant even further, Latif bought the title 'Lord of Harpole' for a few grand, which he proceeded to exhibit all over the place. Nobody ever knew where Harpole was, and I think there might be a few across the country, but I'm hoping this was the real one. When he died in Jan 2008, the magazine Newcastle Stuff wrote a respectful obituary befitting such a Newcastle legend, although they did end it with the words 'Unfortunately, this time he's gone for good, and hasn't just fallen into a deep korma'.
I met clive's wife, Debbie, and we talked a lot about walking. Clive has just finished a SIX-WEEK long walk to Santiago de Compostella, which took him across most of Spain. He's a more seasoned walker than I am, but still feels the pain in the feet - his limit per day is 20 miles; but, after the last two long legs, mine was becoming less day by day, and I still had tomorrow, the longest leg of all..
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