Walking the Chesters

Chesterwood, Northumberland

2012-01-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

This month’s Chester walk saw us travelling ‘up North’ again, to walk through Chesterwood in Northumberland, about 30 miles outside Newcastle. When we first planned the walk a couple of months ago, I imagined we’d be walking through a winter wonderland of snow and ice, but this winter has been incredibly mild and the weekend’s weather was surprisingly sunny, although still incredibly windy.

Victuals and Lodging – Eve of the Walk

Chesterwood itself is merely a collection of farm buildings, so we found accommodation at Haydon Bridge, on the banks of the South Tyne. Haydon Bridge is 254 miles (410 km) from London, which is the furthest we’ve travelled for a Chester walk, so we decided to make a weekend of it and stay two nights instead of our usual one.

The General Havelock, Haydon Bridge

We weren’t sure what to expect at Haydon Bridge, but it was a pleasant place, with a couple of pubs and churches. We stayed at Shaftoe’s B&B, right beside the old bridge, where we had ‘well-appointed’ accommodation and a spacious room. We decided to have dinner at The General Havelock Inn, a quaint village pub on Haydon Bridge’s main street. General Havelock was an important player in 19^th century British India and died at the Siege of Lucknow in 1857. I must admit, I’d never heard of him before, despite walking past his statue on Trafalgar Square many times.

Eat Drink Watch Movie

It just so happened that Friday night was cinema night at The General Havelock, which included some yummy Chinese food and Ang Lee’s movie, Eat Drink Man Woman. It’s a wonderful movie about a father and his three daughters and, if you’ve not seen it before, I’d definitely recommend it. The movie club is run by the Haltwhistle Film project (South Tyne Cinema Circuit), which moves around between Haltwhistle, Haydon Bridge, Slaggyford and other places. Being a rural area, most people travel to the events by car, so they encourage car-sharing. The car with most people is rewarded with a nice bottle of wine. It was a lovely evening and people were really friendly to us, as we were very obviously ‘outsiders’. If you live in South Tyneside, or you’re visiting the area, you should look out for the cinema club!

Haydon Bridge to Chesterwood – 1 mile

St Cuthbert's, Haydon Bridge

After a hearty breakfast on Saturday morning, we set off across the bridge to St Cuthbert’s church and the Tourist office, so we could stock up on information about the local area. Haydon Bridge was the birthplace of the English Romantic painter, John Martin and they seem very proud of the connection.

It was no surprise to see that the local church was named after St Cuthbert. We last came across St Cuthbert on our Chester-le-Street walk, as we walked part of St Cuthbert’s way and his body rests at Durham Cathedral. After the church, we crossed the Newcastle to Carlisle railway line and followed the North Road, out of the village.

About ¼ a mile out of the village, we turned off on a small country road to Chesterwood, starting an ascent up the South Tyneside Valley that would eventually take us to Hadrian’s Wall.

Dead mole

My abiding memory about Chesterwood is finding a dead mole lying in the middle of the road. Neither of us had seen a mole before, which is hardly surprising as they mostly live underground. We felt sorry for the mole and, not wanting it to become a squashed entity in the middle of the road, we used our walking sticks to move it to the verge. I’ve since found out that the word ‘mole’ comes from the Early Modern English mouldywarp, which basically means ‘dirt thrower’ – mould being the word for dirt, related to our modern English word ‘mould’.

Chesterwood to the Byway – 1.4 miles

Tree with a rainbow

From Chesterwood we continued along the country lane towards Chesterfield, crossing the North road again and walking to the start of a public byway. It’s a lovely stretch of country and as we ambled along, BAM (Best Aussie Mate) told me about some charity work she has been doing with homeless people in London. Northumbria felt a million miles away from London and issues like homelessness. I admire her compassion and it’s humbling to think that it’s only a veneer of luck, family support and employment that keeps any of us from a life on the streets. Tramping around the countryside is incredibly liberating, but it helps when you know you’ll have some hot food and a warm bed waiting for you at the end of a winter’s day.

The Byway to Stonecroft – 1.7 miles

The Byway near Fell House

The Byway is one of those roads marked on the map with a thick green line that looks a bit like a bicycle chain, according to BAM. I remember the byway on our Silchester walk which is, rather romantically, called ‘the Devil’s Highway’. Byways are quite pleasant to walk on, being slightly dilapidated country roads with hardly any traffic. This byway took us over a small hill, past Fell House and Cottage. Eventually we came down to the main Newbrough road. We crossed the road and went down through a steep field until our lunch stop at Stonecroft.

Stonecroft to St Peter’s Church – 0.4 miles

Stonecroft

From Stonecroft it was a very short walk along a country lane to St Peter’s Church. We talked about the prospect of Scottish independence and how much tension there seems to be in Westminster right now, at the thought of a Scottish referendum. The future of Scotland has been on my mind a lot recently and this Chesterwood walk was an apt reminder of the troubled times of the past, when the English/Scottish border moved from North to South several times, before going North again.

St Peter’s Church to High Teppermoor – 2.1 miles

Teppermoor

From St Peter’s Church we also headed north across some moorland, continuing uphill to reach the ridge that Hadrian’s wall runs along. This was the most difficult part of the walk, as the path was less well-defined and the terrain was still quite wet from the rain of the past few weeks. The weather also seemed to change, with the clouds darkening and the rain coming on. I remembered crossing Rannoch Moor in Scotland and how dark and oppressive moorland can be. But there’s also a silence in the moor, which is a relief after all the noise and stress of London.

Perhaps, it’s no coincidence that, as we picked our way carefully through the moor, our thoughts turned to Charles Dickens and this year’s centenary. This time last year, we walked across the Hundred of Hoo, just outside Rochester, at the heart of Dickens’ imagination; you could almost hear Pip cry out in terror at the groans of convicts being sent off to Australia.

High Teppermoor to Black Carts – 1.4 miles

Tree with clouds

Coming out of the moor, the sun appeared once more and lit up the landscape around High Teppermoor, our first encounter with Hadrian’s Wall. Parts of the original Roman wall are still intact and we were lucky enough to see these, especially around Black Carts. When we first arrived at the road, we were struck by sight of the B6318, heading west in a series of dips and rises. I guess, in some ways, the 2^nd century wall became a 20^th century road. There is a path that runs the entire length of Hadrian’s wall, so we turned right on this path and headed back east, in the direction of Newcastle and Wallsend.

Black Carts to Walwick – 1.3 miles

Hadrian's Wall

It’s amazing really that the Romans invested in a building project as ambitious (and expensive?) as Hadrian’s Wall. I guess it shows how threatened the Roman province of Britannia felt by their wild Celtic neighbours to the North. It’s quite moving to see these ruins still standing there, all these centuries later, at a time when the idea of an international border in Scotland is again a possibility. I also learned that there was another Roman wall, called the Antonine wall, further north, linking the Forth of Firth to the Firth of Clyde. I guess the northerly extent of the Antonine border was too ambitious and the Roman Empire later retreated to Hadrian’s border, a much more realistic proposition!

I’ve always wanted to walk Offa’s Dyke, another national trail that follows the border between England and Wales. I’m sure Offa’s Dyke was constructed with the intention of keeping the Welsh at bay, but by the Saxons this time rather than the Romans. In Roman times, the river Severn seemed to serve as a natural barrier between Roman settlements and Wales, as we discovered during our walk in Wroxeter. There is no equivalent of Hadrian’s wall in Ireland (that I’m aware of), but I guess the Irish Sea was enough of a natural barrier.

Walwick to Chollerford – 0.8 miles

Walwick

We’d arranged to spend our second night in Walwick, but decided to walk on to Chollerford, which is on the banks of the North Tyne river, so we could pass the Roman fortress at Chesters. The weather had turned again by the time we got to Chollerford and, with darkness falling all around us, we turned at Chollerford and made our way back to the Walwick Farm B&B.

Lodging and Victuals – the Evening of the Walk

Walwick Farmhouse B&B

Walwick Farmhouse is a beautiful 200-year old building, which has been open as a B&B for less than year. It’s run by a local woman called Maggie and her partner Paul, both of whom have worked for years in the catering industry. I have to say I really enjoyed my stay at Walwick Farmhouse and I would highly recommend it. The view from our bedroom window was entrancing and Maggie & Paul prepared a lovely evening meal for us, after which we read the I Ching and relaxed by the open fireplace.

Access for Wheelchair Users

The first part of this walk, from Haydon Bridge to St Peter’s Church (on Newbrough Road) would be accessible for wheelchair users. The hills are fairly steep and, although the country roads around Chesterwood are fairly quiet – I would advise caution at all times. The Byway was a bit rough and tumble, but fairly accessible. The main Newbrough Road was much busier so, again, I would advise caution when wheelchairing along this stretch.

The moor is inaccessible to wheelchair users, as is the part of Hadrian’s Wall path that we walked along (it has lots of stiles which walkers need to climb over). There are parts of the wall, especially near Black Carts, that are accessible, even if only to have a quick look.

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BAM walking on the wall

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Chesterton, Shropshire

2011-11-13T08:48:00.000-08:00

This was our second trip to the West Midlands in our series of Chester walks. The countryside we were walking through lies between Wolverhampton and Bridgnorth, which is on the Severn. Usually, myself and BAM (Best Aussie mate) find the nearest long-distance path and follow this, but that wasn't practical this time round, so we invented our own path - a rather circular one, at that - which is more in keeping with the concept of trailblazing!

It was difficult to know, just by looking at a map, whether our chosen route would be a mucky slog through difficult countryside, or a pleasant stroll through wonderful autumnal colours. Luckily for us it was mostly the latter!

Lodging and Victuals

The Old House at Hilton

Chesterton is just a small village and the nearest lodging we could find was at a neighbouring village called Hilton, which lies on the A454, the main Bridgnorth to Wolverhampton road. The nearest train station to access this Chester walk was Wolverhampton, but we were lucky enough to get a lift to Hilton with a lovely lady called Fifi Sharplin, who is the owner of The Old House in Hilton, where we spent the night.

The Old House is a beautiful building and we stayed in the main ground-floor room in the cottage. It was an incredibly peaceful place and Fifi gave us a lovely welcome and talked to us about her time spent living overseas, in faraway places like Botswana and Sri Lanka. She is also a wonderful artist and produces her own floral drawings which can be bought as prints or cards.

Hilton to Claverley (2 miles/3.2 kilometres)

Hilton view, November morning

We were incredibly lucky with the weather during yesterday's walk and were treated to the most glorious November sunshine, as we set out from Hilton in the direction of Claverley. Turning right on the main road outside the Old House, we headed back in the direction of Wolverhampton, before crossing the Hilton Brook and turning right through some buildings to follow a public footpath that follows the brook all the way to Hopstone.

The distance from Hilton to Bridgnorth is only 4 miles by road, so we started off walking away from Chesterton, rather than towards it, as otherwise the walk would have been too short and we would have missed out on some amazing countryside. The path alongside the Hilton Brook is pretty clear and soon brings you to an interesting area of rock formations, known as The Clouds.

The Clouds, rock formation

Shropshire has a particularly diverse geological make-up and this area, to the east of the River Severn, has a lot of red sandstone rock formations, which date back to the Triassic period, so they are around 240 million years old! I've certainly not seen rock formations like this before in England and they reminded me of the rocks I saw on a recent trip to Wadi Rum in Jordan. They give the landscape a very 'romantic' quality, which is more 19th-century Black Forest than 21st century England!

Once we'd passed the rock formations of The Clouds we came out onto a small country road which took us past the hamlet of Hopstone, downhill to the village of Claverley.

Claverley to Ludstone Hall (1 mile/1.6 kilometres)

Claverley

Claverley seemed like a nice village. I bought some chocolate at the Post Office shop and saw a very touching sign on the village noticeboard about the local Women's Institute, which was forced to close down, after 61 years of continuous existence. I don't usually get sentimental about change, but you could sense the genuine disappointment of the person who wrote the notice.

The demise of Claverley's WI was due to falling membership, which could only be turned around by an influx of young members. The notice was posted in 2008, which also served to give the village an aura of timelessness - I don't think life moves as quickly in Claverley, as it does here in London!

We walked through the village, past the pubs and turned left before the local school, to follow a small path that runs along the back of the village. This eventually brought us to a wider path, where we turned right into a birch coppice, which is more or less on the grounds of Ludstone Hall.

Path through the Birch coppice

The public path continues to the left of the birch coppice, but we got a bit lost here, going through the trees to a small meadow and some artificial ponds, where we stopped for some chocolate and banana. There was one magnificant tree by the upper pond, which had turned bright orange, shedding half of its leaves and looking spectacular in the afternoon sun. Rather than retrace our steps to the right path, we continued across a field to meet a small road, then turned left towards the gates of Ludstone Hall.

Ludstone Hall to Rudge Heath (1.25 miles/2 kilometres)

Ludstone Hall is a fine building and has a long history, having been part of the monastic lands of medieval Bridgnorth. The current building is Jacobean (ie from the era of James I, early 17th century). It's privately owned, but is open to the public once a year and has a small museum which is also available for private viewings. You can find out more on Ludstone Hall's website.

Ludstone Hall

We continued along the public path to the left of the building, crossing a couple of fields until we came to the B4176, the secondary road between Dudley and Telford. We didn't cross the road at this point, but backtracked towards Hopstone before turning right onto the Rudge Heath road, a small country lane which passes Rudge Heath farm. This brought us back to the main Wolverhampton to Bridgnorth road (the A454), which we crossed to access a small lane between a shop and a plant nursery.

As I'm sure you can imagine, crossing all of these roads was the least intersting part of the walk, but the most convenient way of getting from Ludstone back towards Chesterton.

Rudge Heath to Chesterton (1 mile/1.6 kilometres)

Meadow near Ludstone

For some reason, we didn't really make good time yesterday. I guess all the stopping and checking of maps delayed us somewhat, as yesterday's route was a lot more 'involved' than merely following a national or long-distance trail. Also BAM was a little bit slower than usual, being covered in bruises from a recent kayaking experience!

Crossing the B4176 at Rudge Heath, we entered a field with some horses and then came to a diversion sign, which was telling us to go up-hill to Littlegain, rather than along a small valley to the Littlegain footbridge, as we had planned.

BAM investigating the footbridge

I'm not sure why the diversion around Littlegain is in place, but I do know that Littlegain is very aptly named, as we lost a lot of time trying to figure out where to go next. We eventually found the foot bridge via the diverted route, but the sound of gunshots and the sight of birds flying upwards from the forested area at the end of the footbridge put me off following the public footpath to Chesterton. BAM was much braver than me, as usual, and she was prepared to stick to our original route, but we hadn't factored in 'getting shot' as part of our walking plan, so I managed to convince her to divert back to the dreaded B4176.

We followed the road again to the turn-off for Chesterton, but we never made it to the village. Time was pushing on and the sun was slowly making its way downwards, so we decided to pick up our route again at the crossroads and avoid an unnecessary diversion to the village itself.

Chesterton to Worfield (1.7 miles/2.7 kilometres)

House near Lowe Bridge

Crossing the road again, we climbed a stile to enter a long field following Stratford Brook, then went uphill across a ploughed field to meet another country lane just outside Bradney. At the country lane we turned left and continued downhill to a triangular junction, taking the road on the right to reach Lowe Bridge and the edge of Worfield village. We got a little bit lost here, taking the footpath to Wyken, but we soon realised that we'd taken a wrong turning, so we backtracked to Worfield and found the correct path which led uphill past Davenport House.

Worfield to Rindleford (1.6 miles/2.6 kilometres)

Wheel in the River Worfe

The rest of the walk from Worfield to Bridgnorth was stunningly beautiful. Davenport House is an example of English Baroque architecture and has a long, winding drive, which we crossed twice on our way to the River Worfe. The river is crossed by a footbridge and there is an old mill wheel still standing near the footbridge, which was no doubt put to good use during the Industrial revolution.

The signposting around Burcote House is really good and we often remark that farmers who make sure public footpaths are well-signposted around their land, ultimately have less problems with walkers getting lost and inadvertantly trespassing. At Burcote, we turned right to follow a narrow path above the River Worfe and alongside the Burcote Rocks. Like The Clouds over at Hilton, the Burcote Rocks are made of red sandstone and have interesting formations.

Mist at Rindleford

After about 15 minutes, we crossed the river again, over a footbridge and continued along a small open valley towards the village of Rindleford. The temperature was dropping at this time of the day and (hopefully) you can see, in the photograph, a wonderful mist over the Rindleford valley.

Rindleford to Bridgnorth (2.5 miles/4 kilometres)

At Rindleford we crossed the river again and backtracked on a small, sodden path before turning uphill through a fantastic wooded valley towards Batch Lane. I think this was my favourite part of the whole walk and I've never seen so many pheasants in one place in my entire life! It's an incredibly secluded valley, which makes it really peaceful and the walking was easy up through Batch lane to a small country road.

Secluded valley

Crossing the small road we took a path uphill past Woodside Farm. At this stage, it was dark enough to warrant using a headlamp and, as BAM rustled around in her bag, I looked backwards towards distant ridges and the ghostly orange glow of the West Midlands conurbation.

After Woodside Farm, we entered a steep wood called Hollybush Coppice, picking our way carefully along the top of the ridge, before taking a small path downwards to meet the A442, which is the main Bridgnorth to Telford road. We stumbled out onto the road by the impressive sight of Fort Pendlestone, an old textile mill, which has been converted into a modern apartment block.

Bridgnorth signpost

It looked quite imposing in the dark and our imaginations were running riot as to the building's fort-like attributes! From Fort Pendlestone, we had wanted to join a path along the Severn, which leads into Bridgnorth, but it was too dark by the time we got there and a very inviting roadside path became our preferred route into town.

Bridgnorth looks like an interesting place. We climbed up the Cartway to the High Town, had a wander around the High Street, looked at the Town Hall and made our way back to the Low Town via the Stoneway steps. I wish we'd had more time to explore Bridgnorth (or at least seen it by day!), but time wasn't on our side yesterday, so it was back to Wolverhampton and our train to London.

I've calculated that the walk was around 11 miles (17.7 kilometres) in all. It definitely felt longer than that and, in a way, distance of little relevance during a walk like this, it's the landscape you cover that matters most.

The Stoneway Steps, Bridgnorth

Access for Wheelchair Users

The nature of yesterday's walk meant that it wouldn't be very well suited to wheelchair users. The walk involved lots of country lanes, which are dangerous because of traffic and climbing over stiles, which would make the walk inaccessible for wheelchair users. The only accessible bit might be the route from Rindleford to Batch Lane, although, even here, the terrain was incredibly rough.

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All photos were taken by me - please feel free to reuse these images via the Creative Commons License, Attribution (especially to this blog), Share Alike and Non-commercial.

Chester-le-Street - Concangis

2011-09-04T08:15:00.000-07:00

This was the first time our Chester trip brought us to the North East of England. Chester-le-Street is a market town in County Durham, just to the south of Newcastle, it lies on the Roman road which ran up the east coast of England to Wallsend. This trip certainly had a very different feel to it and I think it's fair to say that myself and BAM are now thoroughly familiar with the east coast route, due to the delays and difficulties we had getting there and back!

Lodging and victuals

Tribley Farm near The Moorings

We might have arrived in Chester-le-Street two hours later than we'd expected, but our accommodation at the Moorings Hotel in Hett Hills, just outside the town, more than made up for the long journey to get there. Unfortunately, because of the delay, we didn't get a chance to eat at the hotel restaurant, the Prime Rib, which has great reviews. Apparently, it's a really popular spot for Sunday lunch and people drive there from miles around to sample their famous Yorkshire pudding!

We'd found it hard to get accommodation in the town itself and we now know this was because of the one-day International between England and India at Chester-le-Street's Emirates Durham International Cricket Ground. That would explain why every room in the town was booked out! By all accounts, tickets for the match had sold out in December of last year! We couldn't have ended up in a better place than The Moorings and I'd recommend it, if you're ever up Durham-way.

The Moorings Hotel to Edmondsley (2 miles)

Horses at Tribley Farm

Weird sculpture on the ground

We didn't intend to visit Edmondsley on this walk! Whilst we have, on occasion, got a little bit lost in previous Chester walks, this time we got spectacularly lost and somehow walked in completely the wrong direction, away from Chester-le-Street rather than towards it! In our defense, I have to note that the landscape between the Moorings hotel and Congburn plantation looks completely different to what you see on the map. It feels as though they have been tearing chunks out of the surrounding fields and re-creating the landscape to turn it into something else. There were lots of eerie pieces of wooden sculpture, like the one in the photograph, which seemed to have been run over by a digger.

Congburn Plantation

The myriad of paths through Congburn plantation are also partly to blame, as well as the interesting conversation we were having about hostage-taking, which led us to take that fateful right turn, when we should have gone left! In case you're not already aware of it, I have a sister blog to this one called Learning about the World, which recounts my armchair travels to different parts of the world. I'm currently blogging about Yemen, which is why we were talking about hostages in the first place! I guess the path to Edmondsley had taken us hostage and, although it seemed like a nice enough place, we were keen to get to Chester-le-Street and back on the track of our intended walk.

Place of the horse people

I'd managed to convince myself, before this trip, that, in true English fashion, Chester-le-Street should be pronounced something like Chester-l'Estrey or something equally pretentious, but no, in true North East fashion it's just Chester-le-Street! The accent in this part of Durham is fascinating - not quite Geordie, definitely not Yorkshire, but somewhere in between.

Front Street, Chester-le-Street

After all of our Chester walks in the south of England, the North East was suddenly very exotic, like being in a different country - the place names are very different - Ouston, Birtley, Kibblesworth, Nettlesworth - definitely not southern English names. Then there were curious names, like No Place and Pity Me and North American names like Washington, Canada, Philadelphia and Quebec, as though the Americans had colonised England and not the other way about!

The Romans called Chester-le-Street Concangis, which was their approximation of the original Celtic place name, which meant something like 'place of the horse people'. It's also the name of the small river Cong which runs through Chester-le-Street and the plantation where we got lost! Interestingly, the Russian word for horse is also конь kon'. The name Chester-le-Street was used to differentiate this Chester from all the other Chesters in England, ie. this was the one on the Roman road (or street) to Wallsend. Chester-le-Street's Roman history isn't very visible these days, because the town was built on top of the Roman fort, so everything Roman is underground.

The Pilgrim's Way

St Mary and St Cuthbert's

Signpost for Cuddy's Corse

We restarted our walk on the main street, which is called Front Street, with a view of St Mary and St Cuthbert's, Chester-le-Street's main church. St Cuthbert seems to have been phenomenally popular in the north of England and his body rested in Chester-le-Street for 112 years in the 9th/10th century, before being moved further south to Durham cathedral. It turns out that the walk we did from Chester-le-Street is actually part of a pilgrim's route known as Cuddy's Corse (ie. the path that they carried St Cuthbert (Cuddy's) body (corse). The route runs from the Farne Islands (north of Newcastle) to Durham, but it's not exactly a direct path, as it goes via Edinburgh and Carlisle in a highly circuitous loop.

Chester-le-Street seems to be a popular stopping off point on the way from North to South and it was also the first stop on the famous Jarrow March of the 1930's, when 207 protestors marched from Jarrow in South Shields to Westminster Palace in London, to highlight the extreme poverty and unemployment faced by people in the North East at that time.

Chester-le-Street to Great Lumley (2 miles)

England v India at the Emirate Durham ICG

The first two miles of our walk took us past the Emirates Durham ICG where we could hear the cheers of 75,000 spectators and we could see the stadium draped in English and Indian flags. As we were passing, the weather was fine and everything was going well, but I heard on the news later that they had to call the match off because of the rain which fell at around 3pm. We crossed Lumley Bridge, then turned right onto the Weardale Way, passing the magnificent Lumley Castle Hotel (rooms starting at 185 GBP for a twin. Hmmm, maybe next time!) The way followed the River Wear for a little bit, then turned left to pass Lumley Riding, skirting a hedgerow and wheat fields which brought us to Great Lumley.

Horse at Lumley Ridings

Front Street, Great Lumley

All of this land was once part of the Lumley estate, the Lumleys being a prestigious local family of Anglo-Saxon origin. Great Lumley was also known for its coal mines in the 19th century. Intriguingly, we spotted a pub on Great Lumley's Front Street called The Warriors Arms.

Fields outside Great Lumley

We often hear the sound of gun shots on our walks through the country, usually a regular sound created by machines to scare away birds. This time we heard real gunshots, down towards the river and it reminded me of a great Spanish movie I've seen recently called El rey de la montaña. If you've seen the movie, then you'll know why. If you haven't seen it (and you like thrillers) then it's well worth watching!

Inside Finchale Priory

Great Lumley to Finchale Priory (1.4 miles)

The entrance to Finchale Priory

We continued following the Weardale way, through some fields and onto a small country road called Cocken Lane, which brought us back to the river, crossing a pedestrian footbridge to reach the ruins of Finchale Priory. This one is pronounced differently than it's spelled, so it's pronounced Finkle not Finchale. The priory is really beautiful and reminded me of Bolton Abbey. Like Bolton Abbey the priory was abandoned during the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century. Walking around the ruins, I couldn't help but feel appalled at the ruination of such a wonderful site. It's now managed by English Heritage and maintains an atmosphere of dignified contemplation.

Finchale Priory to Brasside (1.1 miles)

The lonely road to Brasside

Finchale Priory lies at the end of a very lonely road, which brings you down to the village of Brasside, the location of two Category A prisons, Low Newton womens' prison and Frankland mens' prison. We've seen a few fortified buildings on our walks, notably Fort Nelson in Portchester, but nothing as frightening and impressive as the prisons at Brasside. The Weardale way, rather nonchalantly, goes right between the two prisons and we crept along, in awe of the prison walls, as the clouds burst suddenly and the rain pelted us angrily. I've found out since our walk that Rosemary West is currently being held at Low Newton and that Frankland holds the child-murderer, Ian Huntley. It makes me shiver just thinking about how close we were to such evil minds!

Brasside to Durham (2.3 miles)

View of Durham cathedral

The rest of the walk to Durham was pleasant enough, despite the rain, and we could see Durham cathedral in the distance, romantically lounging in the mist on top of the hill. I'd never been to Durham before this walk, but I'd heard a lot about it and it certainly lived up to my expectations. We arrived with about an hour to spare before our train, so we walked around the city, through Market Place and up Saddler Street and Owengate to Durham Cathedral. The cathedral is a fantastic structure and we walked around inside, listening to the choir singing and reading about the history of the building. We also visited the shrine to St Cuthbert, thereby ending a pilgrimage that we didn't know we'd started!

Access for Wheelchairs users

Durham castle

The part of this walk that I would recommend for wheelchair users is the Weardale way from Finchale Abbey to Durham. If you don't mind wheelchairing through a prison(!), this part of the route is fairly accessible, with a few bumpy bits coming down Frankland Lane and a slightly steep slope down from Frankland Farm. Durham has a new pedestrian bridge which is wheelchair-accessible and will bring you to Market Place via the Gala Theatre. Alternatively, you could get an elevator to street-level in the Gates Shopping Centre and cross the bridge at Leazes Road, just as we did.

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me - please feel free to use them under the Creative Commons license:

Attribution (especially to this blog)
Share alike
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Silchester - Calleva Atrebatum

2011-07-10T08:02:00.000-07:00

Signpost for Roman Silchester

Like Wroxeter, which we visited in March of this year, Silchester - known to the Romans as Calleva Atrebatum - didn't really take off as a settlement in modern times. Most people would be hard pushed to pinpoint Silchester on a map and myself and BAM (Best Aussie Mate) were no exceptions, before we did this walking trip!

The modern-day village of Silchester is located in the north of Hampshire, in the countryside between Basingstoke and Reading, just outside a town called Tadley. Although there is a hotel in Silchester, the reviews were off-putting, so we did some research and decided to start our walk in Stratfield Mortimer in Berkshire. Mortimer station is located, quite handily, on a small branch line that runs between Reading and Basingstoke. Although it's a small line, it dates back to the early days of rail travel and the station and line has been in operation since 1848!

Reading to Basingstoke line

Like a lot of railway stations around Berkshire and Oxfordshire, Mortimer station is quite far from the main village of Mortimer Common. It might seem a bit incongruous to 21st century travellers, but I believe this is evidence of a stubborn compromise for 19th century villagers who weren't all that interested in having steam-driven technology ploughing through their idyllic lives.

Victuals and lodging

We travelled down from London Waterloo, via Basingstoke, arriving at Mortimer just in time for a delicious curry at a popular local restaurant called The Cinnamon Tree. Time-travelling 19th century Mortimerians might well be bewildered by a restaurant in their village specialising in Bangladeshi and Indian cuisine, but we were well-pleased, feasting on Misty Lau and Murgh Jalfrazi.

Our room at the B&B

Little Park Farm B&B

BAM had booked us in to a lovely B&B called Little Park Farm, which is in a 19th-century farmhouse, a short distance from Mortimer station. We stayed in a Twin room in the loft, with lovely views over the surrounding countryside. For city-dwellers like us, it's great to wake up in the countryside, with the smell of bacon being fried in the kitchen and the sound of birds twittering in the garden. Once we'd had our fill of food and coffee, we ventured out into the countryside and set off in the direction of Silchester.

Little Park Farm to the Devil's Highway (1.2 miles)

BAM walking through a field of wheat

Like most Roman settlements, Calleva Atrebatum had a Roman road, which ran from modern-day Silchester all the way to London. As it passes through this part of Berkshire, the Roman road is known as the Devil's Highway, although I couldn't quite find out why it's called this. Perhaps, it was related to the fact that the road brought Roman invaders to what was a regional Celtic capital? Perhaps, the name comes from a later time, when weary travellers along this road would have journeyed in fear of footpads and highwaymen? Whatever the reason, the name in itself was enough to attract our attention, so our first 1.2 miles involved a loop from Little Park farm, walking down the farm driveway to the main Beech Hill road (known, oddly, as The Forehead). Opposite Perrins Farm, we turned onto a public footpath leading through some beautiful wheatfields, which eventually brought us onto the Devil's Highway at the Home Farm, just outside Fair Cross.

The Devil's Highway

Yesterday's weather was a bit unsure of itself and our arrival at the Devil's Highway was greeted with a shower of rain which, in the nature of English showers, decided to finish, as soon as we'd got our raincoats out of our bags. We noticed a group of young people with maps standing at the junction to Fair Cross, looking a bit uncertain as to whether or not the Devil's Highway was the right option for them.

The Devil's Highway to Calleva Atrebatum (3 miles)

Roman roads are very easy to walk on! They're straight, for a start, so no chance of getting lost and, unlike most of the main Roman roads, which have been superseded by national highways and motorways, the Devil's Highway to Calleva Atrebatum is, blissfully, devoid of modern phenomena such as trains, planes or automobiles! We passed south of Little Park Farm again, then through Butler's Land, where we passed another group of young people with maps and then crossed onto a small country road leading to a railway bridge.

Field full of cornflowers

We were quite startled when a silver-haired lady called Ann suddenly appeared from a gap in the hedge. As it turned out, she is a local leader for the Duke of Edinburgh awards and had been looking for some of the same young people we'd seen wandering around the area with maps! We had a quick chat, then crossed the railway bridge, coming to a T-junction, where we left the road and crossed a hilly field full of the most amazing cornflowers, daisies and poppies. The end of the field brought us onto the road again and the amphitheatre of Calleva Atrebatum.

Calleva Atrebatum to Silchester (0.8 miles)

The Amphitheatre at Calleva Atrebatum

The Roman name for the settle Calleva Atrebatum could possibly have been adapted from a local Celtic name that translates something like, 'wooded place where the Atrebates tribe live'. Calleva sounds like a Romanisation of the Celtic word for wood/forest, if you compare the Irish word coillte or the Welsh coedwig. I wonder if the origin of the name Silchester, also has its roots in the Latin word for wood/forest Silva? The Atrebates occupied most of modern-day Berkshire and they were unusual in that their culture seems to have more in common with Belgic tribes living in (modern-day) France, than the other Celtic tribes that were living around them in Britain.

The churchyard at St Mary's

Wedding guests

One mystery surrounding the Celtic settlement at Calleva Atrebatum was the fact that a stone with Ogham script was found on the site. Ogham is mostly associated with Ireland and there are very few examples of Ogham script in England, the others being found exclusively in Cornwall in Devon. The presence of Ogham in Silchester is attributed to a lone Irish settler, so perhaps, with its Belgic and Irish connections, Calleva Atrebatum was an ancient melting-pot of Celtic cultures?

Another mystery surrounding the site is the reason for its having been abandoned. During the Roman times, it's believed that several thousand people lived in Calleva Atrebatum. The site not only contained an amphitheatre, which you can still see today, but also Roman baths, temples, a mansion and a Forum Basilica. According to The Guardian's Heritage writer, Maev Kennedy, in her article from 1999, the site might have been cursed by the Anglo-Saxons, evidenced by ritualistic remains involving a dog's bones!

Silchester Town Life Project

Excavation at Silchester Roman site

Whatever the reason for its abandonment, Calleva Atrebatum has an air of otherworldiness about it. Just inside the walls of the site is a beautiful church called St Mary the Virgin. We stopped for lunch in the churchyard and watched wedding guests milling around the church, congratulating a newly-married couple. We then continued our walk through the heart of the ancient settlement, passing a group of young excavators from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Reading, who are currently working on the Silchester Town Life Project. Eventually we came to a road at the edge of Silchester, where we turned around again in the direction of Mortimer.

Silchester to Mortimer (1.4 miles)

Sign post for Wall Lane

We had to walk along a fairly busy road, past Catthawlands Farm, before turning onto a quieter road called Wall Lane and back-tracking past the Roman walls and onto a public bridleway that took us all the way to Mortimer. We had intended to take a smaller public footpath to Mortimer, rather than the bridleway, but I'm glad we went the way we did, as the bridleway passed through some lovely countryside, full of sheep and horses, past the Nine Acre copse and Simms Stud Farm, which is on the outskirts of Mortimer village.

Horses at Simm's stud farm

The wedding at St Mary's and the bridleway passing a stud farm has us thinking about all kinds of horsey-matrimonial connections we'd never thought of before. It's interesting that the word groom is used mainly in two contexts, ie. a man who is getting married (or has just got married) and the person who looks after a horse. It's also interesting that the word bride is very similar to the word bridle, ie. the idea that young, free women are bridled by marriage and reigned in by their new husbands, who are, by definition 'house bound'. Horses were incredibly important to the development of modern technologies and societies, but it's not very flattering for a young woman to be described in language usually reserved for horses!

Boundary marker

Another thing that caught our eyes on the way into Mortimer was an old boundary post, which marked the border between Hampshire and Berkshire. I'd seen references to these on my Ordnance Survey map, but this is the first one we've spotted!

Mortimer to Wokefield Common (2.3 miles)

Wood for the signs?

The rain came on again as we sat at the church in Mortimer. Mortimer seems like a nice place - quiet Berkshire village life went on all around us, as we sat munching our chocolate Koala bears! Passing a playing field, we skirted around the north of the village and then took a path through Starvale Woods, eventually leading us to Wokefield Common on the edge of a village called Burghfield Common. The woods were really beautiful, but it's always harder to orientate yourself in woodland and the bewildering array of signs for public footpaths and bridleways meant we couldn't see the wood for the signs!

We got a little bit lost, but eventually made it to a crossroads, where DoE Ann spotted us and stopped her car to give us an update on her groups and an interesting history lesson about Mortimer Common and the Silchester Roman site. We would loved to have spent more time talking to her, as she seems to know her local history really well, but time was pushing on and we had a train to catch.

Wokefield Common to Mortimer Station (2 miles)

Wheat fields

The last two miles brought us down Lockram Lane, then through some amazing wheatfields and hilly country, passing over Lockram Brook, we took a wrong turning and detoured down to Mann's Farm, then walked along the road to Wheat's Farm where we joined our original path, going downhill to Mortimer Station, just in time for our connection to Basingstoke and back to London.

Access for Wheelchair Users

Wokefield Common

Again, I'm basing this on someone using a heavy, electric wheelchair. I would start this walk at Beech Hill, rather than Little Park Farm or Mortimer Station. The second part of the walk I've described above, along the Devil's Highway, is completely accessible and relatively smooth-going, until you get to the T-junction before Calleva Atrebatum. At the T-junction you could turn left along a small country lane, then right to the gates of St Mary's Church. The Roman site seems to be, for the most part, wheelchair accessible. We didn't walk on the walls of the site but, from a distance, they looked really inaccessible to wheelchair users.

Church at Stratfield Mortimer

I wouldn't recommend wheelchairing along the roads around Silchester and the bridleway to Mortimer was also not accessible. Some of the paths in Wokefield Common seemed accessible, but the rest of the route described above, especially the last two miles, would not be accessible, unfortunately.

Image credits:

All images were taken by myself or BAM, please feel free to use these images under the following Creative Commons license:

Attribution (especially to this blog)
Share-alike
Non-commercial

Dorchester - Durnovaria

2011-05-22T08:14:00.000-07:00

Sign at South Dorchester Rail

Thomas Hardy statue in Dorchester

The walk we did yesterday in Dorchester was our first foray into the Chesters of South West England. I've been a big fan of Thomas Hardy since my teenage years and I've read almost all of his novels, including Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge, both of which are set in Dorchester, fictionalised by Hardy as Casterbridge.

The Military Keep Museum

I'd been in Weymouth and Portland before, but this was only my second trip to Dorset and the walk we did was one of the most beautiful walks of the Chester series thus far. Dorchester is an interesting enough town to spend a day. Whilst BAM couldn't make it down from London until the evening, I arrived in the late afternoon and took a walk around the town, browsing in the shops of South Street and exploring the sights of the High Street, made famous by Hardy's novels. I also walked around the old Roman fortifications and walked as far as The Keep Military Museum. Dorchester seems to have a lot of museums - as well as the Keep, there was a Teddy Bear Museum, the Dorset County Museum, a Tutankhamun Exhibition, a Dinosaur Museum and an exhibition on the Terracotta Warriors (one of the few permanent exhibitions outside China which is devoted to the Terracotta Army!)

I overheard two ladies on South Street talking about an upcoming dramatisation of Tess and local posters informed me about Friday night's ceilidh, although we missed the Ghost Tour which took place on Thursday! It's always a bit of a culture shock coming from London and dipping suddenly into the life of a rural town, like many of the Chesters we've been visiting. By the time BAM arrived at Dorchester South Railway station, it felt as though I were one of the locals and as though I'd been in Dorchester for years, rather than hours!

Lodging and Victuals

Visiting the Chesters isn't just about walking, of course - food and accommodation play an important part as well and we were really lucky to stumble upon a lovely little restaurant off Trinity Street which was called Billy's Fish Restaurant. It has a very unassuming entrance and could be easily missed, but once you get inside, the decor is great and the food was absolutely amazing! I had King Prawns with potatoes and I'd highly recommend Billy's place, if you ever find yourself in the locale.

King Prawn's at Billy's

We stayed at a B&B called The White House on Queen's Avenue, which was very good value for money, incredibly clean, with a spacious room and lovely red tiles in the bathroom. Queen's Avenue is rather a grand driveway, planted with lime trees, leading up to The Thomas Hardye School. I've learned this weekend that there was more than one Thomas Hardy, this one being a 16th-century merchant who founded the school to educate local boys.

The B&B owners, Mr and Mrs Lees were very welcoming and have been running the B&B for 26 years! We met an interesting older couple at breakfast who moved from England to Adelaide more than fifty years ago and had come back to meet some old friends their daughter had managed to contact through the Internet. We got a bit distracted listening to their story and set out on the walk later than expected.

In previous walks, I had been using pen and paper to try to measure the distances between one point on the map and the other. However, it always seem to be longer than we'd expected and most of our previous Chester walks were around 12-16 miles, rather than 8-12, which is more comfortable (especially when you get chatting over breakfast and set out late!) Not to be outdone by my erratic cartography, BAM invested in a small piece of technology, a kind of map measurer, which made planning this walk much more straightforward (and accurate) than previously. It definitely made a big difference and we felt less rushed towards the end, which was a contrast to past walks when we were racing along the countryside outside Sleaford so we would be on time for our train, scrambling up over the Portchester downs in the failing light and finding ourselves plunged into the darkness of muddy fields in the Hundred of Hoo!

Dorchester to Maiden Castle (1.7 miles/2.7 kilometres)

A sheep at Maiden Castle

After stocking up on water and chocolate on Maud Road, we made our way down to the Maiden Castle Road and a very pleasant walk out of Dorchester to the site of this Iron Age Fort. The area that is now Dorset, Somerset and south Wiltshire was originally inhabited by a Celtic tribe called the Durotriges - it's from this tribe that we get the Roman name for Dorchester, Durnovaria and the Saxon name for the county of Dorset. It's one of the best preserved Iron Age forts in Britain and I thought it was fantastic, especially the steep ramparts, which still look incredibly formidable. It's mostly inhabited by sheep these days, but the view from the top is wonderful and it was a great start to our day's walking. It's the kind of landscape you could imagine Thomas Hardy's characters to be roaming around in and I think this part of England is very beautiful, with its roly-poly hills and views down to the sea.

BAM walking through Maiden Castle

Maiden Castle ramparts

Maiden Castle to the South Dorset Ridgeway signpost (1.6 miles/2.6 kilometres)

Bridleway to Higher Ashton Farm

When I'm planning these walks, I usually 'cheat' a little bit, by getting us on to one of the National Trails - partly because it's easier to follow a way-marked trail, but mostly because the way-marked trails go through some of Britain's most spectacular scenery. Dorchester doesn't lie on any of the way-marked trails, so I improvised the 1.6 miles from Maiden Castle to the South Dorset Ridgeway, using a combination of public bridleways to make sure we didn't stray onto private land.

South Dorset Ridgeway signpost

There's a bridleway that runs to the west of Maiden Castle and it was really easy to follow this until it came out onto a small country lane and then a slightly bigger road (the B3159) which runs between Broadwey and Winterbourne Abbas. We crossed the B3159 at Higher Ashton Farm and took another bridleway running diagonally uphill through two fields and then along the eastern side of another field until it meets the South Dorset Ridgeway with a handy signpost outlining your options! The options at this point are east to Bincombe or west to the Hardy Monument, so we turned west, as planned and in keeping with our general direction.

South Dorset Ridgeway

I've done quite a bit of walking in England and have walked more than half of the South West Coastal path, which also runs along the Dorset coast not far from our Dorchester walk. The Ridgeway is an interesting alternative to the coastal path and one that I'm getting very interested in. There are quite a few ridgeway walks in the south of England, the most famous one being in Oxfordshire/Berkshire (reputedly Britain's oldest path). The South Dorset Ridgeway is a 17-mile walk from Osmington Mills to West Bexington and can be walked as an additional stage or an alternative loop in the South West Coastal route. It was certainly a very pleasant walk and the views over Portland and Chesil Beach were second-to-none!

The South Dorset Ridgeway signpost to the Hardy Monument (2.3 miles/3.7 kilometres)

It's quite windy on top of the Ridgeway and the shadows over the landscape added a dramatic tone to early afternoon light. You can see the Hardy Monument in the distance, as you're walking and, at 239 metres (784 feet) above sea level, it was the highest point of the day for us.

The Hardy Monument, Portesham

Blackthorn

The monument was built in honour of yet another Thomas Hardy, the Vice Admiral Hardy who was a commander in the Battle of Trafalgar, famously close to Admiral Nelson and remembered in (one of) Nelson's dying phrases Kiss me, Hardy! Myself and BAM had a discussion about the significance of Nelson's words and how they could be interpreted so differently in the modern era of gay rights and recognised relationships between men. We concluded that it was a very different time and that, perhaps, it would be a little bit unfair to apply a modern interpretation to Nelson's words. It's an interesting thought, all the same and no-one seems to know whether or not Hardy kissed Nelson on the head, the cheek or gave him a good old-fashioned snog! I guess we'll never know . . .

Unfortunately for us, the Monument is undergoing repairs and the bottom half is currently covered in scaffolding. Nevertheless, it was an apt compliment to our Portchester walk, when we rested in the shadow of the Nelson Monument on Portsdown Hill.

The Hardy Monument to Abbotsbury (2.9 miles/4.7 kilometres)

Benecke Wood

From the Hardy Monument we went downhill through Benecke Wood, then followed a stone wall running along the bottom of three fields until we reached another small road at Portesham Hill. We crossed the road and passed Hampton Barn, sticking to the top of the Ridgeway with sweeping views over Abbotsbury Plains we could see parts of Chesil Beach, in the gaps between the low-lying hills of the coast. Eventually we crossed Bishop's Road, which links Abbotsbury to the Hardy Monument and then we turned downhill again, leaving the South Dorset Ridgeway to follow a small valley down through fields full of sheep, until we reached the road again and continued into Abbotsbury.

Abbotsbury

The weather was glorious with a late-afternoon sunshine and Abbotsbury was full of daytrippers, eating ice-creams, walking their dogs and shopping in the local gift shop. It was a nice way to end the trip and Abbotsbury has a lot of quaint thatched cottages, as well as a famous swannery and tropical gardens, just behind Chapel Hill.

View of Chapel Hill and Abbotsbury Plains

Gable-end cottage in Abbotsbury

Disabled/Wheelchair Access

Bluebells near Abbotsbury

As my sister is disabled and has one of those clunky motorised wheelchairs, I've promised to include information about wheelchair access (if any) in our Chester walks. Unfortunately, most of this route was completely inaccessible to wheelchair users, the only exception being the walks around Dorchester and the road leading to Maiden Castle (although wheelchair users would find it difficult to get into the fort itself).

View of Portland Bill

It's always dangerous walking or wheelchairing along country roads, even quiet ones like Maiden Castle Road, but an alternative to this walk might have been to continue along the cycle path from Maiden Castle to Martinstown (although I'm not sure if the cycle path is completely accessible) and then along Bishop's Road from Martinstown to the Hardy Monument and down in Abbotsbury. Maybe some day, wheelchair users will have access to routes like this one, without too much interference from drivers (who, let's face it, have lots of other options!).

Thatched cottage in Abbotsbury

The landscape is the same as the one we passed through, although I imagine that wheelchair users, especially people in motorised wheelchairs like my sister's, which are dependent on electric batteries, might want to limit their journeys to shorter stages such as Dorchester-Martinstown, Martinstown-the Hardy Monument or the Hardy Monument-Abbotsbury.

Image credits:

All images were taken either by me or my Best Aussie Mate (BAM). Please feel free to re-use these under the Creative Commons license for Non-Commercial, Share Alike and Attribution (especially to this blog).

Wroxeter - Viroconium Cornoviorum

2011-03-06T08:32:00.000-08:00

Our last -chester trip was to Rochester, which is at one end of Watling Street, the ancient Roman road running across the British mainland, from the coast at Kent to the Severn. This time we found ourselves at the other end of Watling Street in Wroxeter, Shropshire. Although these days it's barely even a village, in Roman times Wroxeter was the fourth largest settlement on the island of Britain, with an estimated 15,000 people and a Roman civitas that included public baths and a forum.

Wroxeter Roman City, English Heritage site

Last year Channel 4 made a programme called Rome wasn't built in a day which documents the reconstruction of a Roman-style villa at the site of Wroxeter Roman city. I only managed to catch one episode before we did our Wroxeter walk but, now that I've been there, I'm definitely interested in watching the whole series! This new feature of the English-heritage owned site was opened to the public last month but, unfortunately myself and BAM arrived in Wroxeter too late and left the next morning too early, to have to time to explore the site properly.

The West Midlands Cornovii

Roman villa at Wroxeter

We like to stay in the -chester we visit, when that's possible and, although I'm sure there were lots of interesting accommodation options in nearby Shrewsbury, there is a lovely hotel in Wroxeter, which is reasonably priced and has a wonderful setting. Trundling up from London on the train (via Birmingham, a sign of the times, there is no longer a direct rail service between Shropshire and the capital) and then catching a bus from Shrewsbury, followed by a short walk to the hotel, we went from one extreme to the other. The hustle-bustle of one of the world's largest cities, to the tranquility of the Shropshire countryside.

Our room had a view of the Wrekin, in the distance, Shropshire's iconic hill. Indeed, the name Wroxeter, or as the Romans called it Vironconium Cornoviorum, was borrowed from the nearby hill fort on the Wrekin. The origins of the name are obscure, but it might have something to do with the Celtic/Welsh word for werewolf!

Snowdrops

Before the Romans arrived on the scene, Shropshire was the territory of a Celtic tribe which the Romans called the Cornovii. We don't know much about them, they produced no coins or other artifacts that might have preserved their culture, so the Roman records on the history of this tribe are our main source of information, apart from the hill forts and other archaeological evidence that they left behind. There is a theory that the Cornovii of Shropshire and the West Midlands migrated south to Cornwall and gave that part of Britain its name, but this theory is controversial and the official story is still that Cornwall was so named because it resembled a 'horn'. Another theory is that the Celts worshipped 'horned gods' (this may later have become our image of the devil) and there is a small village, called Abbot's Bromley, in neighbouring Staffordshire, where villagers still enact a 'horn dance', which has been around since time immemorial.

Wroxeter to Atcham (1.8 miles)

The road out of Wroxeter

The weather in Shropshire was rather strange yesterday. A mist hung over the Severn valley for the whole day, that gave us the impression we were walking through someone else's dreams! The path that we followed is part of the Severn Way, a 220-mile walking path that starts in mid-Wales and finishes somewhere near Bristol. It's hard to imagine how much of a obstacle the Severn was, in Roman times - their great trans-Britannia road seems to have literally ground to a halt at Wroxeter, as they settled down and tried to figure out how to cross the river! It practically separates England from Wales and, being the longest river in Britain, I think it has an iconic status, that is barely recognised, in our era of motorways and high-speed rail. It was certainly the main focus of our walk yesterday and I think myself and BAM are confident that we now know this part of the Severn pretty well!

Old bridge at Atcham

The first couple of miles from Wroxeter to Atcham were easy road-walking. Atcham was a pretty place, with a wonderful old bridge, which has been superseded by a newer road bridge. Atcham was the birth-place of Ordericus Vitalis (or as BAM so cruelly renamed him, Odorous Vitalis), the English chronicler who wrote one of the most famous histories of the Middle Ages, the Historia Ecclesiastica. It also has a fine country house called Attingham Park, which is a National Trust property.

Something of a pattern on these walks is the mysterious links between places in Britain that are physically distant from each other. Atcham/Attingham is named after Saint Eata, a 7th century bishop from Hexham in the North East of England. It reminds me of the Hoo St Werburgh, the village in Kent, which is named after the patron saint of Chester. It makes you wonder to what extent communication was possible between places that were really distant. We tend to assume that there was little communication, because of the distances involved, but this obviously wasn't the case. Nevertheless the connections are still somewhat obscure!

The Shropshire Loggerheads

An interesting thing about Shropshire is that the county symbol is three loggerheads (which is the heraldic term for leopard's heads). Again, it hints at something much more exotic and makes me more curious than ever, with conspiracy theories about werewolves running riot in my imagination! The loggerheads in the picture are from a sign in Atcham. BAM was terribly amused by the county motto, Floreat Salopia - Salopia being the Latin name for Shrewsbury. As I also speak French, I can understand how that might sound a bit funny to a French-speaker! I must admit, we did have a guilty giggle, as we walked past the Salopian Leisure Centre.

Atcham to the A5 (approx 2 miles)

The Severn near Emstrey

Shortly after leaving Atcham, we also left the road, continuing our walk much closer to the river, along one of the many bends that is characteristic of the Severn in this part of Shropshire. The walking was pretty pleasant and, before long, we found ourselves at the modern bridge which carries the A5 over the river. The A5 is an incredibly important road and was one of the earliest road building projects of modern Britain. Although it more or less follows the route of the old Roman Watling Street, it's been altered and changed so many times that the original road no longer exists. The bridge we were looking at was a pretty modern one and replaced an earlier version of the A5, which was the road we'd just walked on from Atcham.

The A5 in the distance

In 1800, an Act of Union was passed which united the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland, effectively creating a new country, which we still call the UK! Seeing the importance of establishing effective communication between London and Dublin, the government of the UK invested heavily in creating a unified road system, the A5, which would make travel between the British and Irish capitals relatively high-speed (by early 19th century terms!). I guess, as an Irishman, the A5 is pretty important, as a symbol of Britain's relationship with Ireland and it's another iconic feature of the landscape, that I had no awareness of, before I started planning for this trip! It runs all the way from the Marble Arch in London, to Holyhead, where you can connect by ferry to the Irish capital. It used to run right through the centre of Shrewsbury, but now bypasses the town and the bridge in the picture is the point where it first crosses the Severn.

The A5 near Shrewsbury

Overall responsibility for building the A5 lay with the popular engineer, Thomas Telford. I wish I'd had more time to read up on Thomas Telford, as he sounds like a fascinating person. He was a self-made man, born into poverty and self-taught, he became one of the most prolific civil engineers of the late-18th and early-19th centuries. He built numerous bridges in Shropshire and around Britain, he was famous for his canals and was even invited to Gothenburg by the King of Sweden to build the canal there. The modern-day town of Telford, which has overtaken Shrewsbury in terms of population, was named after this Scottish engineer. Another interesting thing I learned about Telford is that his mother's name was Janet Jackson!

The A5 to Monksmoor (approx 2 miles)

A lonely tree on Monkmoor

This part of the walk was incredibly quiet - passing under the railway bridge and another A-road, the A49 which was a 1920's project, built for motor-cars, rather than horse and carriage, linking Lancashire with South Wales. The river meandered peacefully and we walked along, mostly in silence, lost in our own thoughts. The river bends again, just opposite Uffington and the houses of Monkmoor are set back from the river. Although you're incredibly close to Shrewsbury at this point, it feels as though you're in the middle of the countryside! I was quite taken by this image of the tree on Monkmoor, which seemed incredibly forlorn by itself in the middle of the field! I guess the area was called Monkmoor, as it's at the back end of Shrewsbury Abbey. Shrewsbury is prone to flooding at several points along the Severn, some of the worst floods being at the other end of Shrewsbury, in Frankwell, which was flooded three times in 2000! It would explain why some parts of Shrewsbury aren't particularly built up.

Monkmoor to the English Bridge (approx 3.5 miles)

The promenade at Ditherington

We found Shrewsbury really interesting. It's not a place you hear about much, in the news (which can only be a good thing!). Although you have the feeling that you are in any typically English market town, you can sense the presence of Wales and, as I understand it, much of Shrewsbury's economy these days is focused on the many Welsh shoppers and visitors the town receives. I was keeping an eye on the local news before going to Shropshire and it was interesting to see the reports of protests and campaigns by local people who are angry at the cuts to Shropshire Council's budget. Whilst I'm used to protests, living in London, it surprised me to see this level of anti-cuts feeling in a part of England that traditionally votes Conservative.

The walk into Shrewsbury

The local Conservative MP, Daniel Kawczynski is 6 foot 8 1/2 inches tall (that's 2 metres four) and is believed to be one of the tallest MP's ever to sit in the UK parliament! He belongs to a more right-wing grouping of conservatives, called 'the cornerstone group' and he is of Polish descent.

This part of the walk took us through the suburb of Ditherington, where we crossed the road bridge and then walked on a really nice promenade all the way down to the centre of Shrewsbury. We passed under another railway bridge, just below Shrewsbury Castle, then walked along the Gay Meadow to Shrewsbury's English bridge.

The English bridge to the Welsh bridge (1.2 miles)

The Shrewsbury School

We'd spent a couple of hours wandering around Shrewsbury when we arrived on Friday, but we hadn't done the riverside walk before yesterday and this was definitely the highlight of the day. It says a lot that Shrewsbury's two main bridges are called the English Bridge and the Welsh Bridge and Shrewsbury itself acts as a kind of gateway between England and Wales. Saturday seems to be a really popular time for the town's rowing clubs and, as we walked along Victoria Avenue, we saw lots of rowing teams zipping up and down the river, being shouted on by their coxswains and chased along the bank by friends videoing their performance.

Statue of Hercules

Some of the teams were from The Shrewsbury School, a well-known educational establishment founded in the 16th century. Former pupils, known as Old Salopians (I can hear BAM giggling on the other side of London!), include Charles Darwin, Paul Foot, Michael Palin and Christopher Booker (the founder of Private Eye).

Despite the bad weather, it seemed as though the whole of Shrewsbury had come out to jog, cycle or walk through Shrewsbury's main park, the Quarry. The photo is a view of the Quarry with the statue of Hercules in the foreground. Apparently, the statue used to face the other way, with its back to the park, as its front was deemed too shocking for the local womenfolk! I'm also showing you the back, so as not to offend my more sensitive readers :-)

The Welsh Bridge to Shelton and back again (approx 4 miles)

Street Sign at the Welsh Bridge

At the Welsh Bridge, the Severn Way joins up with part of a local walk called 'the Darwin town trail', which has interesting plaques telling different aspects of local history and highlights Shrewsbury's Darwin connection. This side of the river is known as Frankwell and grew up as a separate place to Shrewsbury. It's where Darwin lived, as a boy and some of the fields we were walking through, especially the Doctor's Field, are places that he would have known well as a child and are where he developed his interest in the natural world. We followed the river for a couple of miles to the suburb of Shelton, then turned back onto the main road and made our way back to Frankwell and across the Welsh Bridge for some well-earned victuals in a very popular restaurant called The Armoury.

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All photos were taken by me. Please feel free to reproduce them, using the Creative Commons License for non-commercial, attribution (especially this blog), share-alike and you can make derivative works.

Rochester - Roman Durobrivae

2011-01-23T08:25:00.000-08:00

I always really look forward to my -chester walks and Rochester was no exception. This is one of the closest -chesters to London, just a half hour on the train from St Pancras, nowhere near enough time for myself and BAM (Best Aussie Mate) to catch up on all the gossip since our last walk. Getting off the train at Strood we managed to swap stories about our New Year trips to Hong Kong and Iceland, as we made our way to the Medway Bridge Marina for our night's accommodation aboard the Sovereign B&B.

A Cruise Ship on the Medway

View from the Yellow Cabin

Considering the importance of boats and shipping to Rochester's history, the Sovereign B&B/Flotel was the perfect place to start. Originally a 1930's cruise ship on the Rhine called the Deutsches Eck, the Sovereign has been lovingly rennovated by Sue and Bob Forkner and now offers B&B accommodation for a very reasonable rate. Sue and Bob were lovely to us, a real 'Irish' welcome and it was exciting to stay in such an original setting. We had the Yellow Cabin, which was incredibly cosy and I would definitely recommend a night on the Sovereign for anyone who is interested in staying somewhere really special! The breakfast was delicious and hearty, a great start to our day's walking. You can find out more about The Sovereign B&B at their website.

Medway Bridge Marine to Rochester (1.9 miles)

The first part of walk was along the Medway Valley trail from the Marina to Rochester Castle. The Medway is like a little sister to the Thames, not quite as wide or as busy, it has, nevertheless, played an important role in the development of shipping in the south of England and the defense of the main estuaries against foreign invaders. I've got somewhat of a soft spot for the Medway, having lived for a short time in Maidstone and been around during the Medway festival, I sense the importance of the river to local people - as it quietly meanders through north Kent, it hardly dares to live up to the expectations of those who live in the Medway valley. The Medway separates east and west Kent - interestingly people in west Kent are called Kentish men (or maids), whereas people in east Kent are known as men (or maids) of Kent.

A view of Rochester across the mudflats

I think the Medway valley has a different feel to it, than other parts of Kent. It's certainly a lot more urban - the combined population of the Medway towns is about a quarter of a million - I guess, collectively they are almost a city! The difference is recognised by the fact that Medway has its own local government structures, in the guise of the Medway Unitary authority. It's a Tory stronghold and the MP for Rochester and Strood, Mark Reckless is the grandson of an Irish politician from my home county, Donegal. Mark was one of the few Conservative MPs who voted against the rise to tuition fees in December, so I guess he's a 'good' Tory (or a reckless one!)

I wouldn't say the landscape at this part of the Medway is beautiful, what with the M2 motorway tearing through the background - but it's certainly very interesting and has, what BAM calls, an 'intrinsic' beauty. The photos I've taken aren't exactly beautiful either, but there is something that appeals to me about the low intensity of the light at this time of the year and they way it contrasts with the dark mudflats and the grey backdrop of Rochester Castle.

Rochester, too cold for bananas?

Rochester Castle

Like all of the other -chesters we have visited, there has been a settlement at Rochester since Roman times. Durobrivae means something like 'stronghold at the bridge' and this important bridge over the Medway is central to Rochester's strategic location. The castle is spectacular - it looks like the perfect prototype for the sandcastles that are built by millions of children the world over. In a quirk of history, Rochester lost its city status due to an administrative error - a very English story, it has to be said!

Rochester used to be a base for the shipbuilding company, Shorts, before they decided to concentrate on their shipyards in Belfast. There seems to have been a pattern of business moving elsewhere - interestingly the other places that have benefitted from the Medway towns' losses are Grantham in Lincolnshire with Aveling and Porter's steamrollers (see my blog about our Ancaster trip) and Bicester in Oxfordshire with the centre for bomb disposal training (see my blog about our Bicester walk). Whilst BAM went off on a reverie about leylines, songlines and how our -chester trips are somehow going to restore the world's karma - I was busy concocting a conspiracy theory, involving crusaders, masons and shady underground business/military networks! What's more likely is that, the more we learn about Britain, the more its history and culture starts falling into place, like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle!

Sign outside Pip's of Rochester

We stopped in a lovely coffee bar on Rochester High Street called The Deaf Cat - it's got a very chilled atmosphere and is connected to a business which sells the works of local artists. Most businesses on Rochester High Street seem to be called after characters or scenes from the novels of Charles Dickens. Pip's of Rochester, the greengrocers where we stocked up on fruit and nuts, was no exception. When I do these walks, I'm always fascinated by the range of signs we see on the way - signs telling us things, signs trying to sell us things and signs that seem to make no sense at all. The sign in my photo, Too Cold for Bananas had me scratching my head for a while, trying to figure out why some of the bananas had been left there - were they somehow hardier than the others? If it was too cold for bananas, what would that mean for people?

Rochester to Upper Upnor (2.5 miles)

Upnor Castle

Crossing from Rochester to Strood is like entering a completely different world. Strood has the feel of an inner-city slum, but without the advantages of being in an inner city! I don't know how Strood came into existence, but I'm interested to see what happens to Strood in the future - no doubt it will eventually be gentrified and prettied up, in an effort to attract more affluent inhabitants, on the high-speed rail that provides an easy commute from Strood to London. Our path took us along the riverside and past a pub called The Riverside Tavern which had a massive rainbow flag flying outside! It never ceases to amaze me how gay bars turn up in the most unlikely places. I felt a mixture of fear and excitement, as we slunk past, it looked like a decent enough establishment.

Weatherboard House

Once out of Strood and past the industrial estates that border the river at Frindsbury, we entered another completely different world, ie. the quaint village feel of Upper Upnor and the quiet beauty of Upnor castle. Upnor castle was built during the Elizabethan period to protect ships that were being repaired on the Medway. I was fascinated by the buildings which were constructed in a very traditional Kentish style (or is that style of Kent?) using weatherboards, it reminded me a lot of houses I've seen in Scandinavia.

Upper Upnor to the Hoo Marina Park (approx 3 miles)

Boats at Lower Upnor

By this stage we were following the Saxon Shore Way a 163-mile trail that starts in Gravesend and ends in Hastings. The signage was quite good and this part of the trail was relatively easy to follow as it runs, more or less, along the coast. As BAM told me about her recent foray into the world of tree-planting, we picked our way along the shore, past Lower Upnor and the colourful boats moored in the various marinas and parks along this part of the coast. The rain came on, as we passed the last of the slipways at Hoo Marina park and the sky darkened over Kingsnorth Power station, looming in the distance.

Kingsnorth Power Station, Hoo

Kingsnorth Power station is coal-powered and, under EU regulations, will be shut down in 2016. There are plans to replace it with another (regulation-compliant) coal-powered station, but this has caused a lot of protests from environmental campaigners. Apparently the replacement power station would have annual carbon emissions that amount to ten times the total emissions of Rwanda! Coming from rural Ireland, I find power stations extraordinary - I'd never really seen one until I first came to England and, on those long journeys by bus and train from Holyhead to London, my first sight of power stations left an impression on me that hasn't fully evaporated.

Hoo Marina Park to Newlands Farm (approx 2.6 miles)

Not long after Hoo Marina Park we turned inland, skirting the villages of Hoo St Werburgh and High Halstow, as we crossed the Hundred of Hoo. I must admit, I got no small amount of pleasure telling colleagues that I would spending my Saturday walking across the Hundred of Hoo. The who of what? was the most common reaction! For anyone who doesn't know where it is, Hoo peninsula is the little bit of land that sticks out to the southeast of London, between the Thames and the Medway.

BAM on the Hundred of Hoo

For a place that's so close to London, it's very sparsely populated, but I think there are historical reasons for this, a major one being that the area was rife with malaria until the late-19th century. It's naturally boggy land and most of the peninsula is taken up with farmland or, at the extremity of the Isle of Grain, warehouses and factories. I would love to visit the village of Grain sometime - looking at it on the map, it seems to be an incredibly remote and isolated place. In the 1930's, the Southern Railway company tried to turn another Hoo village, Allhallows, into a major seaside resort, along the lines of Margate or Brighton. They even renamed it Alhallows-on-the-Sea, but it didn't really take off and I imagine Allhallows also has an isolated feel to it - my curiousity has been roused by both places, that's for sure!

Newlands Farm to Cooling (3.7 miles)

BAM's muddy boots

Just after the turn off from Newlands Farm, as we were making our way across the fields to Northward Hill, we suddenly hit a major obstacle - mud! Mud of epic proportions. Mud that was so sticky and heavy I thought I was going to have abandon BAM to her fate and come back with a rescue team! I'm exaggerating slightly, of course, but I'm including a photo of BAM's muddy boots, so you can get an idea of what it was like.

Northward Hill is home to the High Halstow National Nature Reserve and Britain's largest heronry. It's a beautiful part of the world and, as we came to the edge of the wood, overlooking the Cliffe and Cooling marshes, the view literally took my breath away! It's an amazingly rich, but fragile, environment and was under threat of destruction in 2003, when the (then) Labour government was considering whether or not to build a new 'Thames Estuary' airport here. I think the 'Cooling Airport' plans have been put to bed, thankfully, although the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson has revived the idea of building an airport at Shivering Sands, near Whitstable in Kent, further down the coast. I don't see why they can't build an 'offshore' airport, like the one in Hong Kong. There was a suggestion at one time to build an artificial island off the Isle of Sheppey, but this was rejected as a option that would be too expensive.

Sunset over Cooling marsh

The Cooling and Cliffe marshes that you can see in my photo were also used as a substitute for the Paddy fields of Vietnam in the movie Full Metal Jacket. I read about this before the walk and I couldn't quite picture it. Standing on the edge of Northward Hill, looking across the water-logged expanse in front of me, I finally understood why they'd chosen this spot - it's certainly very different to anywhere else I've been in England.

Cooling to Cliffe (approx 1.9 miles)

I recently watched a classic British horror called The Vault of Horror. It consists of a series of nightmares that are told by the five main characters. The first sub-plot is called Midnight Mess and tells the story of a young man who wants to kill his sister, so he can come into a substantial inheritance. He tracks her down to an eerie country village which, it turns out, is soley inhabited by vampires. For some reason, Cooling reminded me of that village! My imagination was helped along by the fact that the sun had just gone down and the graveyard of Cooling church is believed to have been the inspiration for the opening scenes of Dicken's Great Expectations. After her trauma of almost being 'stuck in the mud', poor BAM had the wits scared out of her by the idea that we were walking through a village full of vampires!

The gatehouse of Cooling Castle

Cooling castle is also pretty impressive and was the home of Sir John Oldcastle, the inspiration for Shakespeare's Falstaff and leader of the late-13th century Lollard movement, an early form of Protestantism. The Lollards were hated by the establishment, because of their revolutionary ideas, such as pacifism and the existence of a lay priesthood. There was a vicious campaign against them and contemporary pamphlets depicted them as cunning foxes who were using fancy words and ideas to misled the uneducated (and blameless) peasantry. Cooling went down in history as the capital of Lollardry! By all accounts, Jools Holland lives in the residential part of the castle. I've included a photo of the gatehouse, which was all lit up.

The last part of our walk was done in almost complete darkness. I don't have much experience walking across muddy fields in the dark, but it was spookily peaceful and we'd come prepared with head torches. We ended our walk at Cliffe, celebrating with a feast at the Indian restaurant attached to the Six Bells pub. If you ever have the pleasure of going to Cliffe, make sure you have planned an escape route. Naively our plans of getting a bus back to civilisation proved to be a tad ambitious. The restaurant very kindly rang around the local taxi firms until they found someone who would be willing to take us back to Strood station. Being Saturday night, it was a long wait before the taxi driver could come and get us.

So there we have it - another Chester done and dusted - can't wait until the next one!!

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me - please feel free to reuse them, under the Creative Commons license, with Attribution/Share Alike.

Portchester - the Walk

2010-11-14T10:05:00.000-08:00

Regular readers will notice that, after a reassuringly alphabetic start (Ancaster, Bicester), we've suddenly jumped to the letter 'P' with Portchester. When she realised the way my mind was working, BAM (Best Aussie Mate) was adamant that we wouldn't be going through the alphabet letter by letter on this one, but would pick our -chesters at random, increasing our sense of expectation, as we never really know which 'chester' will be next. She's absolutely right, of course, and it's good to have someone to curb my incredibly predictable approach to planning!

I must admit, I'd never heard of Portchester before we'd settled on it as our next destination. For those of you who don't know, Portchester is in the south of Hampshire, between Portsmouth and Fareham. Sheltering beneath the ridgeway of the Ports Down, it looks enviously across Portsmouth Harbour to the hustle and bustle of both Portsmouth and Gosport.

Nell Wycherley - the operatic belle of Barbados

Portchester was an adventure, from start to finish and we were lucky enough to stay with a wonderful lady on the Portchester Road called Nell Wycherley (nee Hall), who was born in Barbados, but has lived in Portchester since the 70's. She has a fascinating story to tell, training as a classical singer with a well-known Italian maestro, she travelled the world before settling in England and getting married to the retailer Mr Wycherley, settling down in Portchester, where she continues to entertain and entrall local church-goers with her beautiful voice and buoyant optimism.

We were privileged enough to hear Nell sing before we set out on our walk and her love of music shone through with a vigour and passion that was incredibly captivating. She told us stories of her days travelling around South America, the capricious humour of her maestro, the audiences that filled the concert halls, her nerves when performing onstage in New York and London, her MBE, awarded for services to opera.

I could picture her childhood in Barbados, practising on the baby piano, with the doors open, fans whirring in the tropical heat and the polished wooden floor glistening in the sunlight. We were sorry to rush off so quickly, but daylight hours are precious at this time of year and we wanted to push on with our walk.

Portchester Road to Portchester Castle (1.9 miles)

After spending most of the morning chatting to Nell, we ended up getting to the centre of Portchester quite late and almost in time for the 11am Remembrance service on West Street. I never feel more like a 'foreigner' than during this time of the year, when it seems as though the whole country is organising services and wearing poppies to remember the fallen of the two World Wars. It makes me feel distinctly 'uncomfortable', not just because I don't really have cultural reference points for Remembrance services, but also because I'm anti-war and poppy-wearing seems to somehow endorse current wars, as well as past ones.

It was a bit surreal, watching the brass band followed by lines of soldiers, navy cadets and scouts parading through the centre of Portchester and I realised that these parades happen all the time in various parts of Britain - I've just never been aware of them, as they happen in places outside multicultural London! I guess that's the whole point of doing these -chester trips, ie. to see life in Britain from an everyday and non-touristy point of view. Military parades and marches are just as much a part of British culture, as rustic cottages in rural Oxfordshire and cornfields in Lincolnshire. It was also an apt start to a discernably militaristic day!

Myself and BAM were more concerned with stocking up on nuts and chocolates at the local Somerfield and before long we were making our way along Castle Street, past the quaint little cottages, every second one sporting a blue plaque, before long we'd reached the impressive sight of Portchester Castle.

Portchester Castle

Portchester Castle is a grand building and the best-preserved example of a Roman fort in Northern Europe. It's surprising that the Romans would choose this part of England to secure their new colony (as it's much further from the continent of Europe than, for example, Kent), but I guess the location is ideal, protected from its hinterland by the low-lying downs and sheltered from the sea, the fact that the castle has remained on this spot and was used by the Saxons and Normans is evidence enough to explain the enduring popularity of Portchester, and ultimately Portsmouth, as the centre of British Naval forces.

You can walk inside the castle's outer bailey without paying a charge and this is also where the Norman church of St Mary's is located, a wonderful orange-roofed building in the south-western corner of the castle grounds. We were incredibly lucky with the weather (yet again), although BAM still compares the beautiful, cloudy days of England to the endless sunshine of her native Australia!

Portchester Castle to Downend Road (2.4 miles)

From Portchester Castle we followed the Allan King's way along the northern side of Portsmouth Harbour. This route was created as a memorial to a local man called Allan King, who was a publicity officer for the Hampshire Area Rambler's Association. The way runs for 45 miles in total, starting at Portchester Castle and finishing at Winchester Cathedral, we did the first 10 miles (or thereabouts) of this walk.

The view from Portchester Castle is amazing and we couldn't help but notice (in the distance) the (in)famous Spinnaker Tower of Portsmouth, which was opened in 2005. The tower is a useful landmark for the area and reminded me a lot on the Burj al Arab in Dubai, although I've only ever seen pictures of that tower. Just as Burj al Arab means 'Arab Sail' - the Spinnaker Tower is named after the type of sail that billows in high winds and gives the spinnaker its distinctive curved shape.

The design was chosen by local people and it was intended to be Portsmouth's answer to the new millennium, however, it caused a lot of controversy, being completed almost six years behind schedule, it also ended up costing the local council millions more than expected and its popularity with tourists has been declining since the day it opened. There were also problems with the external glass lift, which never really functioned properly and the building has seemingly been dogged with one crisis after another. It's a shame really, as I think it's an eye-catching building.

Portsmouth harbour is almost lake-like in its shape, having a very narrow outlet to the sea between Old Portsmouth and the Gosport marina. It's considered to be a Ria, which means a coastal river-valley which was flooded, probably due to rising sea levels. I was impressed by the abundance of wildlife around the harbour, so many birds and interesting plants. The harbour shoreline was an array of colours, which I hope my little camera has been able to do some justice to.

Downend Road to Nelson's Monument (1.3 miles)

Eventually we turned inland, crossing the Portchester Road again, only five minutes away from the B&B where we had started the walk, we then crossed the railway line and the M27 heading up over the ridge to its highest point at Nelson's Monument.

The M27, at 25 miles long, is probably one of the shortest motorways in England. It links Portsmouth to Southampton and, just like the Spinnaker Tower, was supposed to be part of something much greater than it actually is. I think the original plan was to build a massive motorway all along the south coast of England, from Penzance to Dover, but (luckily) this never happened and the M27 is the only bit that was actually built.

Going up onto the Ports Down, we passed the massive structure that is Fort Nelson. One of five Portsdown forts (also known as the Palmerston forts) built in the 1860's, Fort Nelson is somewhat of a showpiece and has been preserved as a museum, whereas the other four forts have either been demolished or adapted for non-military use. The location of the five forts is ideal, with views south across Portsmouth, Gosport, the Isle of Wight and Southampton - the views inland go right back to the South Downs, you can see all of the farmlands and forests in between.

We arrived at Fort Nelson at the same time as a tour bus full of young soldiers, no doubt cramming in a bit of military history on their day off! Again, Fort Nelson had been destined for greater things (I'm beginning to see a pattern here) being built during the era of Lord Palmerston who believed in an imminent threat from Napolean III, across the channel in France. By the time the forts were built, the threat from Napoleon III was no longer imminent and there was a great public outcry at the waste of public funds, Palmerston's towers were popularly re-named 'Palmerston's follies'. Determined not to have them exist only as 'follies', they were put to use during the World Wars and Fort Nelson was used as an armoury in preparation for the Normandy landings.

The forts were built in the polygonal style popular in the mid-nineteenth century, which modernised the 'star fort' design of hexagons and cannon-proof towers, by creating even more complex shapes and angles, burying half of the fort underground, so that its real size would be barely perceptible from a distance. The design of Palmerston's forts and the fact that Fort Nelson is mostly underground has led to all kinds of conspiracy theories that the Ports Down is full of secret tunnels and atomic shelters! I do like a bit of mystery and sitting under Nelson's Tower looking out across the Solent with the wind whistling around your ears, it's easy to let your imagination get carried away with secret military plans and hidden agendas!

Nelson's Monument to Lodge Farm (approx 3.4 miles)

Walking around the back of Fort Nelson, we continued along Allan King's way, downhill this time, zig-zagging between the roads and fields around Boarhunt village and Manor Farm. Something that was really interesting about this part of the walk was the fact that the fields in this part of Hampshire don't have hedges. It reminded me of France, where you can see cars driving along country lanes and it looks like they are driving through the middle of a field. We were a little bit worried about walking along the winding roads around Boarhunt and took short-cuts through the church yard and along the edge of fields, to avoid dealing with the (surprisingly) busy traffic.

Once through Boarhunt, we turned off along a forest path which brought us down to a bridge across the River Wallington. We got a bit lost here, as we debated the possible difference between streams and brooks, we ended up losing the river and detoured slightly in the wrong direction before using the GPS on my iPhone to get us back on track again.

Unlike the lovely, tidy farm that BAM was so fond of on our last walk in Oxfordshire, Lodge Farm was less impressive and we found ourselves wading through rivers of cowshit, trying to get past the farm and back to the main road. It's not usual for public ways to go right through the middle of a farm, but it does occasionally happen, which is a great inconvenience for farmers and walkers alike. Unfortunately for us, our arrival at Lodge Farm coincided with milking time and the Allan King way was telling us to go through a pen crowded with cows that were waiting to be milked.

I have a great fear of cows, or 'the Beasts', as my grandmother used to call them. Whilst they are not normally aggressive, cows have been known to trample people to death and you hear stories all the time of people being attacked by cows in England. Walking through a field of cows generally makes me feel a little bit frightened - walking through a small farmyard filled with cows is something I absolutely dread. Luckily BAM, with her robust Australian ways managed to lead the way and I got enough of an adrenalin rush walking through that herd of cows to keep me going well into next year! It was terrifying and I never want to be that close to a herd of cows ever again, but somehow we got through it. BAM was more concerned with the overpowering smell of manure than with the cows themselves, which helped lighten the moment!

Lodge Farm to Southwick (1.1 miles)

Having met my greatest fear head on, I was relieved to see the road outside Lodge Farm and cross the fields leading to Southwick village. The village itself is very pretty, most of the buildings being of the same, thatched roof style and I understand that Southwick is an unusual place, being one of the few remaining villages in England that is (almost) wholly owned by one landowner, the Southwick Estate (only the Church house doesn't belong to the estate). The church in Southwick was very pretty, but we didn't hang around too long, as Lodge Farm had delayed us somewhat and, being 4.30 the sun was already starting to set.

Southwick to Portchester Railway Station (2.4 miles)

The last part of the walk was both exhilarating and rushed, as we were walking against the setting sun! We tore up the ridgeway along the Crooked Walk lane - the view of the sunset over the South Downs, as we climbed the Ports Down was spectacular and I know that this time our cameras couldn't do justice to what we were seeing. We were really surprised to see two deer bounding along a field near Offwell Farm. As we reached the top of the ridge and the junction with Portchester Lane, the sun had set completely.

Luckily, we'd just made it onto roads with pavements before it got completely dark and the last mile or so of our walk was spent in silence, descending the hill into Portchester, forlornly eyeing the warmth of suburban sitting rooms and flickering televisions.

We celebrated our return to civilisation with a slap-up meal in the Red Lion, before jumping on the train back to London and the welcome of a familiar bed!

Image credits

All photos were taken by myself or BAM. Please feel free to use any of these images under the Creative Commons License with conditions of Share Alike, Non-commercial and Attribution.

Bicester - Famous Bicestrians

2010-09-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

As I was reading about Bicester for our second -cester walk, I decided to do some research into famous people who were born in Bicester. Britain has contributed a lot to the world in terms of the sports, sciences, politics and the arts and one can only presume that each small town in the UK will have it's own celebrities, sons and daughters who left their town or village behind and went on to greater things. Amidst the usual plethora of sports' stars and entrepreneurs, I've chosen three famous Bicestrians, who interested me, for one reason or another.

The Muse

Being a 19th-century artist's model doesn't really guarantee you any fame these days and, compared to the overpaid supermodels of the 20th century, Maud Franklin ended her career in relative obscurity having been, for a time, the mistress and muse of the famous American painter James McNeill Whistler. Whistler was somewhat of an eccentric character, travelling to Russia and Chile, studying art in Paris, living with Maud in Venice but ending his years in England. By all accounts he didn't treat Maud particularly well. She had two children by him, but he never married her, eventually ditching her for a young woman called Beatrix Godwin, the widow of his friend and architect, Edward Godwin.

It is said that Maud was so loved by Whistler because she was the only woman who could put up with the demanding sittings his portraiture required. After her relationship with Whistler ended, she moved to Paris and, later Cannes, where she died sometime around 1942.

The Doctor

Another interesting Bicestrian was the 19th century doctor and obstetrician, Albert Freeman Africanus King. King owes his unusual name to his father's obsession with Africa. The family moved from rural Oxfordshire to the USA when King was ten years old and King followed his father into the medical profession, graduating from the Columbia Medical College and the University of Pennsylvania.

King is famous for two things - being one of the physicians on hand, at the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and being one of the first doctors to suggest a connection between mosquitoes and malaria. People thought he was joking at first, when he suggested that there might be a connection between the presence of mosquitoes and incidences of the disease and it was not until 1898 that the British Indian doctor, Ronald Ross, proved that this was indeed the case.

The Modern Major-General

George Rose was an actor, remembered primarily for his comedic roles and his interpretation of, what must be, one of the hardest songs in the Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire, I am the very model of a modern Major-General. Although he acted in quite a few movies, Rose was better known as a stage actor, both at the Old Vic in London and later in Broadway, where he first graced the boards in 1946.

More controversial than his life, was Rose's death in 1988, in mysterious circumstances in the Dominican Republic. Rose bought a house in the Dominican resort town Sosua in 1984, where he'd seemed very happy, with his coterie of animals and 17,000 jazz records. Being gay and childless, Rose had taken in a 14-year old boy in 1984, who he later adopted and had intended as his heir. What was first reported to have been a terrible car accident in May 1988, turned out to be something more sinister and Rose is believe to have been brutally beaten and killed by his adopted son and his son's real father.

The boy claimed to have been Rose's lover and, by all accounts, was worried that Rose was going to disown him because they hadn't been getting on very well. Rose's friends insist that his relationship with the young man was purely a father-son bond. The case, which remains unsolved, certainly exposed the press's homophobia in their attitude towards Rose, as well as the Domincan Republic's desire to make as little fuss about Rose's death as possible, not wanting to discourage the lucrative stream of British tourists visiting the island. It's very much a story of its time and I can't help thinking that if this had happened ten or twenty years later, Rose's killers would have got the punishment that they truly deserved.

Whether ending their days in Cannes, Pennsylvania or the Dominican Republic, these famous Bicestrians certainly led interesting lives, leaving the town of their birth far behind, in their pursuit of fame and glory, whether on the canvas, in the medical world or on stage.

I'm going to leave you with a Youtube video, showing George Rose as the Major-General in The Pirates of Penzance.

Credits

The images of Albert Freeman and Whistler's Arrangement in White in Black are in the public domain and (therefore) copyright free.

The photo of Sosua, Dominican Republic was taken by flickruser Eaulive, a lighting designer from Montreal, Canada, who currently lives in DR. Thanks Eaulive for sharing this image with us, using the Creative Commons License. If you'd like to see more of Eaulive's photos, check out his photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/eaulive/

The photo of the sign in Bicester was taken by me.

A lot of the information I've used came from Wikipedia. I've also referenced an article on the death of George Rose, which was written by investigative journalist Alix Kirsta and first appeared in the Sunday Times on the 25th of May 1997. You can see the full article at http://www.alixkirsta.com/articles/georgerose/index.htm

Bicester - the walk

2010-09-12T06:06:00.000-07:00

When I first starting writing this blog, I thought I would do all of the research before visiting whichever -chester myself and BAM (Best Aussie Mate) had agreed upon, then finish with a final blog about the walk itself. We're only on our second -chester and I realise that it's better to do things the other way round - ie. start with the walk and pick up ideas for further research along the way.

Although I've been living in England for almost two years (and BAM has been here a lot longer), I feel there is still so much to learn and our walk in Oxfordshire yesterday has proven to me that you can plump yourself down in any random place in England and there will be a whole lot of history, landscape and village-life to observe and absorb!

Bicester

I didn't really know what to expect with Bicester. Enquiries from work colleagues and English friends drew blank looks or, at best, vague references to a massive shopping mall. In my mind, Bicester was slowly becoming Stevenage or Milton Keynes! Arriving anywhere at night is definitely disorientating and, walking along Launton Road in Bicester, through the eerily abandoned office buildings of an industrial estate and past a factory with the ominous grinding of machinery, we were beginning to wonder what God-forsaken place we'd ended up in.

We sought refuge in the King's Arms and steeled ourselves for rural Oxfordshire on a Friday night, with cheap red wine (BAM) and a yummy Oxfordshire ale called Hobgoblin (me). It also gave us a chance to catch up on all of our news since we last met and we talked about my Irish lessons in Hammersmith and the difficulties of Cantonese with its seven tones and rapid delivery. The B&B we stayed in, Ava House, was really lovely and we would definitely recommend it, if this blog inspires you to venture down Bicester-way.

After a fab breakfast and a chance to stock up at the local Co-op, we wandered through the town centre. It's funny how different things look in the daylight! Bicester is really a charming little market town, bustling with shoppers on a Saturday morning, there was a nice feel about the place and we were impressed by some of the quaint buildings along Church Street in, what seemed like, the older part of town. I'd also like to say a big Thank-you to the lovely woman in Vision Express who mended my glasses after the frames had (somehow!) got bent the evening before. There was a prominent Methodist Church in Bicester and we noticed others during our walk, so it's something I'm going to look into and (perhaps) blog about later.

Bicester to Wendlebury (3.2 miles)

When we were originally talked about this trip, we'd planned to go in a completely different direction via Middleton Stoney, past Upper Heyford Airfield to Somerton then along the Oxford Canal Walk to Lower Heyford where we would catch our train back to London. Totally on a whim, we changed our minds. Whilst looking over the map in the King's Arms on Friday night, we decided instead to follow a cycle path south via Wendlebury, getting to Lower Heyford via the Oxfordshire Way and the south-north route on the Oxford Canal walk. We also thought it would be apt to walk past Alchester, the site of a Roman 'vexillation camp'. Vexillation doesn't mean, as I thought, that everyone there is angry all the time, but refers to a camp which can be set up quickly, part of a movable front line protecting the south-north movement of the Roman armies.

Leaving Bicester via King's End and the Oxford Road (A41), we passed the famous shopping mall, Bicester Village which, although we didn't have time to visit, looks very modern and a pleasant place to while away an hour or so. Our main concerns were avoiding occasional cars coming round the sharp bends and deciding whether or not Germaine Greer had gone too far in her attempts to gain notoriety (BAM is a fellow-Melbournian and knows more about the subject than I do).

Wendlebury didn't fail to impress and we particularly liked the 'Broken House' which added atmosphere to the village.

Wendlebury to Oddington Grange (2.9 miles)

Wendlebury seems absolutely idyllic until you realise how close it is to the M40! The M40 is something I'd really like to come back to in a future blog, as I think it has an interesting story to tell, being Britain's latest major motorway, it cut a controversial swath through a rural Oxfordshire unprepared for its speed and purpose. I couldn't help being impressed by the speed of cars on the motorway, as we stood on a bridge just south of Junction 9 - it seemed so at odds with the peaceful countryside around it.

By the time we crossed the motorway, BAM had had enough of roads, so we decided to go off-piste on one of those 'rights of way' that appear as a series of red dots on Ordnance Survey maps. The route took us through a landscape that has been utterly changed with the end of summer, the land being ripped up and the path being, at best, a conjecture. What had started as a rainy morning in Bicester, suddenly transformed into a gloriously sunny afternoon and I couldn't help falling into a reverie about walking and how it's not all about mountains and the land but, especially in flatter landscapes like Oxfordshire, it's also about the sky and the clouds. I've long been impressed by the landscapes of the Dutch painters, where the land appears as a sliver along the bottom and the sky dominates the painting, in all its glory. I tried to create my own version of this in the photograph accompanying this paragraph.

As we were negotiating our way through tilled fields and along the edge of Weston Wood, we saw several pens with quails running around inside. We also saw lots of pheasants, near Weston Park farm and, in case the farmer is reading this, BAM was very impressed with how orderly and well-kept the farm was.

Oddington Grange to Weston-on-the-Green (2 miles)

At Oddington Grange we met the Oxfordshire Way, a waymarked trail that runs for 68 miles from Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire to Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire. We used the trail to cross the A34 and followed it over the fields to Weston-on-the-Green. Weston is an idyllic Oxfordshire village, with little thatched cottages, a very solid looking 13th-century church called St Mary's and a busy Village Hall, which was hosting a horticultural show. We had a rest on a bench outside St Mary's and were talking to some of the volunteers who worked in the church. Village life in England fascinates me - with its Women's Institutes, marrow contests and home-made jams - it's a million miles from the world I grew up in, that's for sure!

Weston-on-the-Green to Kirtlington (2.4 miles)

We left Weston-on-the-Green following the Oxfordshire Way through a field full of sheep and with a view of parachutists towards the north of the village. I've since learned that RAF Weston-on-the-Green is used as a parachute training site. I get the sense that there is a tangible Army presence in the county and, I suspect, many local families have sons and daughters who are in the RAF or other military units.

It didn't take long to be in the middle of nowhere again and, at this point, we did get a bit lost, being distracted by a lovely hedgerow that took us a quarter of a mile in the wrong direction, when we should have been concentrating on going straight ahead. When we finally got back on track again, crossing a line of trees, we came to the stunning grounds of Kirtlington Park, an 18th-century Palladian country house, the park itself having been designed by Britain's most famous landscape gardener, 'Capability Brown'.

Kirtlington was yet another idyllic Oxfordshire village - lots of sighs and gasps from BAM this time, as she admired the layout of the village and its pretty little buildings - you certainly get an inkling of how the other half lives! It helped that the village was basked in a glorious late-afternoon sunshine, adding a magical hue to the stone houses, apple bowers and thatched cottages.

Kirtlington to Pigeon Lock (1 mile)

We followed the Oxfordshire Way along Mill Lane, passing a disused Quarry and on the east bank of the Oxford Canal to Pigeon Lock. BAM is very interested in Canal boats and knows all about locks and narrow-boats - she filled me in on the standard measurement of narrow boats in Paddington dock (63 metres) and we talked to boat owners, as we met them along the tow path, BAM quizzed them about the length of their boats, as she admired their paintwork and remarked on the names their owners had given them.

Pigeon Lock to Lower Heyford (5 miles)

For the last part of our walk we turned onto the Oxford Canal walk, a long-distance path that is 82 miles from Oxford to Coventry. As a keen walker, I've spent quite a bit of time on towpaths and it's always very pleasant walking, away from the roads and fields, life seems to slow down immensely, as the canal boats drift past, then stop at the locks, where there is usually a bench, so you can rest and have a chat with the boat owners.

We did about 15.5 miles altogether on our Bicester-Lower Heyford walk, so (after 7 1/2 hours) I think we were both genuinely relieved to get to Lower Heyford, in the end, for a pint and a meal in the beer garden of the Bell Inn.

Image credits

All photos were taken by me during the walk on Saturday the 12th of September 2010

Ancaster - How I made Lincolnshire Haslet!

2010-08-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

As part of my learning experience about Ancaster, I was interested in finding a traditional Lincolnshire dish that I could cook and after some research, I decided to make a (non-traditional) Lincolnshire Haslet, which is a type of pork meat loaf, traditionally made from innards and other icky bits of the pig, with stale bread and wrapped in caul, which is a sheet of fat.

My version was non-traditional, partly because I used regular pork mince, not innards, but also because, try as I might, I couldn't get my hands on caul fat and decided to wrap the meatloaf in less traditional, but infinitely tastier Parma ham!

Ingredients

For once, I didn't follow any specific recipe, but had a look at a few versions of Lincolnshire Haslet and came up with my own. The ingredients I used included:

1/2 kilo of Pork mince

1 onion, which I chopped up very finely, although you could also mince this in the food processor

Three slices of slightly stale white bread

Garlic puree

Sage

Parma ham, to wrap the Haslet in before bunging it in the oven

Foccacia to accompany - I didn't make this, but bought it freshly baked from Marks and Spencers

Long-grain rice with peas, as a side

Gravy made from flour, red wine and vegetable stock

Process

I started by soaking the stale white bread in water for about 45 minutes, afterwards squeezing out as much of the water as possible and mixing the bread with the onion, garlic, sage and pork mince in a bowl.

Once this is mixed together, I gently kneaded it into a loaf shape, as you can see below.

I then wrapped the Haslet in Parma ham, as you can see from these pictures. I oiled an oven tray, having pre-heated the oven to 170 degrees and left the Haslet in there for about 50 minutes. I must admit, I did have a moment of panic, when I thought that the Parma slices wouldn't be as durable as Caul fat and I really didn't know whether they were going to come out burnt after 50 minutes in the oven, but it turned out that I needn't have worried about the Parma ham, everything turned out just fine.

As I was waiting for the Haslet to bake in the oven, I prepared the rice, mixing in frozen peas at the end, as I love rice and peas together, with or without the Caribbean spices!

Making the gravy was also quite simple. I tossed some flour in a small pot for a minute or so, then adding half a glass of red wine, mixing the wine into the flour before pouring over 400ml of vegetable stock. I let the gravy bubble away for a while, eventually turning down the heat, when the mixture had reduced a bit. There was no gravy in the original recipes I looked at, but I thought the Haslet might be a bit dry without it.

In general, Haslet was a really easy dish to prepare and we'll definitely be having it again. The pork was delicious and the Parma gave a nice salty taste to the Haslet that, otherwise, would have been missing. I think next time round I would spice it up a bit, by adding chillies or spices like cinnamon to the meatloaf!

Image Credits:

All photos were taken by me.

Ancaster - Isaac Newton and the great Ocean of Truth

2010-07-31T05:12:00.000-07:00

In my quest to do some research before the Grantham-Ancaster-Sleaford walk, I decided to learn more about Isaac Newton, who was born in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, just a few miles south of Grantham and a stone's thrown from the ancient Roman road, known as Ermine Street. It's amazing really that this son of an illiterate farmer from Lincolnshire, could become one of the most influential thinkers in human history.

Early life in Woolsthorpe and Grantham

Newton was what is known as a posthumous child, meaning his father died before he was born. The consequences for Newton were severe, in that his mother was forced to remarry and, as part of her marriage contract, to abandon the young Isaac, leaving him in the care of his grandmother. Newton hated his mother's new husband and I have no doubt that the experiences of his childhood would go some way to explain his antagonism towards society in later life and his desire to live in a world of numbers and equations.

Newton had a wide variety of interests throughout his life and, although we usually associate him with the sciences of physics and optics, he was also interested in subjects like Linguistics (he wished to design a common, global language that would be based on mathematical principles) and History (towards the end of his life, he spent weeks and months calculating the reigns of Kings and Pharoahs and trying to predict the end of the world.)

Cambridge and the Lucasian professorship

Newton's mother had always intended that he would go into farming and continue the familty tradition at Woolsthorpe, but Newton was so phenomenally bad at sheep rearing that money was found to send him to Cambridge, albeit in a very lowly position as sizar, ie. a kind of servant to the richer boys. He managed to make a name for himself and did so well at Cambridge that, aged 26, he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, currently one of the most prestigious academic titles in the world, having been held recently by people like Stephen Hawking.

Newton was only the second person to hold this post, mathematics being a new arrival on the academic scene and somewhat derided for being the science of merchants and traders. In the historical context of the Interregnum, the Age of Exploration and the new politics of Cromwell and the Puritans, mathematics was becoming increasingly important as a subject matter. By all accounts, Newton was a great academic, but a poor lecturer.

Light, Space and Colour

During his time at Cambridge, Newton continued his research into the nature of light, space and colours. He's famous for inventing the reflecting telescope, which increased the ability of astromers to explore the sun, solar system and far-away planets. Late 17th-century Europe was a bit obsessed with space and the solar-system. Early scientists such as Copernicus and Galileo had exploded the myths about the Earth being flat and the solar system revolving around the Earth. Much of Newton's time was devoted to understanding the relationship of the solar system to the sun. He was amongst the first to posit magnetic fields of attraction, that held the sun and the planets in orbit and meant that the movement of planets and comets could be predicted. The 1690's saw an unusal number of comets pass through the Earth's atmosphere, no doubt leading to a sense of panic and a feeling that the end of the world was nigh. Newton wasn't an astronomer, but he was able to apply mathematical principles to rationalise the orbit of celestial bodies. One of his biggest fans was a young astronomer called Edmund Halley, well-known to us in modern times because of Halley's comet.

Alchemist or Scientist

Newton's era saw a revolution in attitudes towards the older science of Alchemy and the new sciences being explored by the newly-founded Royal Society. Because he believed in invisible fields of attraction or magnetism, Newton was accused of being an Alchemist. Alchemistry was starting to get a bad name, as science moved into the Age of Enlightenment. There was a real desire among the new scientists to rid science of all quasi-religious or supernatural associations. To his credit, Newton spent all his energy rationalising that which seemed irrational, but he still allowed for an element of magic or the unknown. Later critics of Newton, like the poet William Blake criticised Newton for taking modern science down the road of mechanisation and away from the very obvious spirituality of the Earth. In many ways, I think it was inevitable that Newton's rationalising would consign Alchemistry to the footnotes of modern Science, although I'm not sure that this is what Newton had intended.

Rivalries and the Royal Society

My work is all about helping teachers collaborate online, across borders and with teachers in other parts of Europe and the world, so I'm really interested in the history of global collaboration. In many ways, the Royal Society was the very beginning of this. Not only did the Royal Society, which was founded in 1660, seek to bring science into the realm of experiment and away from the endless theorising of previous generations, but it was also the first time an international review of scientific developments was published, mostly organised by Henry Oldenburg, a German diplomat and first Secretary of the Royal Society. For me, it was exciting to learn about this early example of international collaboration and how, by building on and developing the ideas of their counterparts on the Continent, British scientists and mathematicians were able to leap forward and add a new element to the debates that were raging across Europe at the time.

I would love to say that Newton embraced this collaboration whole-heartedly but, in fact, the opposite was true. Having been stung early on by the criticism of his arch-rival Robert Hooke, Newton became obsessively secretive about his work, refusing to share his research with others and refusing to listen to any criticism or questioning of his theories. In many ways he was right! It seems as though Newton was ahead of his time, which would explain why he found the endless questioning and doubt of his contemporaries frustrating. Time has proved Newton correct on many points, most notably the existence of magnetic forces and also atoms, which he struggled to conceptualise or define. His rivalry with Hooke and later with Leibniz reminds me of children squabbling over a favourite toy. It certainly wasn't the best example of scientists collaborating.

Principia - Newton in a nutshell

What Newton is most remembered for is his publication Principia, reputedly one of the most boring books ever written. I have an abhorrence of maths and physics, so a lot of Newton's discoveries have gone right over my head, as no doubt is the case with many of us. Nevertheless, I'll try to summarise Newton's Laws of Motion, so apologies to the real scientists out there!

Law 1 - Everything will stay in its original place, unless compelled to move by force (especially important to know this one if you have to get a teenager to school in the morning)

Law 2 - There is a relationship between the rate of change and the force applied and this can be calculated mathematically (although I wouldn't even know where to begin)

Law 3 - probably the most famous one: every action has an opposite and equal reaction, eg. when a horse pulls a cart, the cart (although seemingly inanimate) also pulls against the horse.

Whew! Back to Newton's biography.

Working-class boy makes good

I don't know whether or not it was to do with his poor upbringing, but when Newton was offered the chance to become warden of the Royal Mint, under the patronage of Charles Montagu, the first Earl of Halifax (who was boning Newton's niece), he jumped at it! It might seem like a strange profession for one of Britain's most eminent scientists to pursue (by all accounts he was ruthless in his pursuit of counterfeiters), but it kind of makes sense, given his background in alchemistry (manipulating metals) and mathematics. Also it made him fabulously wealthy, which he celebrated in true rags-to-riches style by decorating his new London home in a gaudy crimson and by dying intestate.

Newton and the apple

His resounding legacy for those of us who are not scientists is, of course, the apple. I remember as a child, reading about Newton discovering gravity by sitting under an apple tree and having an apple fall on his head. I tried the same experiment a few times, but you have to wait an awful long time for an apple to fall - better to give it a bit of encouragement with a stick (see the First Law of Motion).

Of course, the story of the apple didn't really happen. Newton had a fair idea about gravity already and didn't need an apple to prove it. However, he did have apple trees in his garden at Woolsthorpe and he did speculate about the amount of gravity it takes to bring an apple crashing to the Earth, as opposed to the Moon, which has never been drawn in by the Earth's gravity in this way. I guess this was the birth of the Second Law of Motion and the relationship between force and rate of change. Newton realised that the Earth's gravitational pull on the apple must be a lot stronger than its pull on the Moon and was able to calculate the difference in a way that made absolute sense to him and his mathematical buddies (I guess the rest of us just need to trust them!).

It's no surprise really that the story of Newton and the apple caught the imagination of 18th-century Europe, when Voltaire started retelling the story, as though it had actually happened. Of course, in Christian mythology, the apple is associated with Eve and the Garden of Eden. It's about sharing divine knowledge and breaking the last taboos of man's dependence on God. I guess, like Adam, Newton also tasted the apple of Eden and moved science in a direction it would never again return from.

I want to leave you with one of Newton's most famous quotes, which sums up his assessment of his life's work.

I don't know what I may seem to the world but, as to myself, I seem

to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting

myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell

than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered

before me.

Credits:

The image of the sign at Grantham station was taken by me.

The portrait of Newton is one he commissioned in 1689 and was painted by one of London's most fashionable portrait artists, Godfrey Kneller. This image is in the public domain and copyright-free.

The drawing of Newton with the graph is by the poet William Blake and it's an image I absolutely love. It depicts Newton as a semi-Godlike being, rippling with muscles and animal energy. This is also in the public domain.

The image of the statue of Newton is one I took on Grantham High Street last weekend.

Most of the information in this blog is from a book I've just read called Isaac Newton by James Gleick, the third edition published by Harper Perennial in 2004.

Ancaster - The Walk

2010-07-26T05:20:00.000-07:00

This weekend myself and Bam (Best Aussie Mate) did our first 'chester' walk, through Ancaster in Lincolnshire. The weather was absolutely amazing, in fact, probably way too hot to be outdoors for seven and half hours! But we had a great walk - the first one I've ever designed all by myself and I would recommend it to anyone who is living in or visiting the area.

Grantham to Belton Park Gates (2 miles/3.2 kilometres)

We arrived in Grantham on Friday night, after work and stayed at a lovely B&B called The Red House on North Parade, run by a couple of (Thai?) ladies. We had dinner in the restaurant of The Angel and Royal, which was a really nice place to eat and gave myself and Bam a much needed opportunity to catch up on our respective lives, not having seen each other for about two months. Bam told me about her favourite new song, Bang Bang Bang by Mark Ronson and the Business Intl, so that became our them song for the trip!

After a hearty breakfast, we set off to St Wulfram's Church at about ten the following morning. The volunteers at St Wulfram's are incredibly friendly and we had an interesting time exploring the crypt and the exhibition room. St Wulfram was a 7th-century Bishop of Sens, in France and is remembered for his missionary work in Friesland. There are only two churches dedicated to him in England, the other one being in Sussex. Grantham ended up with one of his arms, somehow, and St Wulfram's Church sheltered this relic for many years, although his arm seems to have been mislaid sometime during the Reformation. I guess St Wulfram was the 7th century version of a celeb! Perhaps this isn't such a modern phenomenon after all. The church also has the sixth highest spire in England, which is surprising, as Grantham isn't exactly famous for it's landmarks or religion.

Grantham is famous as the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher, who lived above her father's shop in the town. It was also the place that Isaac Newton first studied mathematics and lived above an apothecary. It's amazing that this, most unremarkable of English towns, should produce two such influential people. I'm going to blog more about Isaac Newton later and I'm interested in the influence that his upbringing had on his genius. Grantham was also the first town in Britain that had women police officers on the beat, Edith Smith and Mary Allen! I found this plaque on a bench on the High Street and it struck me as being quite ahead of its day, having a Business and Professional Women's Club in the 1950's. Perhaps not that remarkable after all for the town that produced Britain's first (and to date, only) female Prime Minister.

Our walk really began in the centre of Grantham, just outside the Guildhall Arts Centre (pictured), we started by walking down Avenue Road, across the Stone bridge and then left alongside the River Witham on a path which is part of the National Cycle Route 1. At Hill Avenue we turned right onto Belton Lane and followed this all the way down to the gates of Belton Park. It's a pleasant suburban walk, but the array of signposts related to the cycle network and circular town walks can be confusing.

Belton Park Gates to Belton House (1.5 miles/2.4 kilometres)

Belton Park is a really amazing place and I had planned my route through it, without expectations as to what the park might be like. Arriving at the park gates, with that sweeping view of the park and Belton House at the end of it, I was immediately transported back several centuries and could almost hear the carriages rattling up the 1.5 mile drive to the house, amidst the grazing sheep and sunburnt landscape. Belton House has a really lovely visitors centre, with giftshops, toilets, cafes and an exhibition of carriages. We didn't have time to go inside and visit the house, which is a National Trust property, but I bought a book about the house and its history which, hopefully, I will be able to share with you at a later date.

Belton House to Ancaster (5 miles/8 kilometres)

Belton village itself is an amazing little place. When you come to the fork in the village, just after the telephone box, take the road to the right, which skirts the grounds of Belmont House and takes you through Barkston Heath, via Syston Grange, along a relatively quiet country lane with surprisingly hilly bits and fantastic views over the Lincolnshire countryside. The only part of the walk that got 'hairy' was when we finally reached the B6403, a.k.a. the High Dyke or Ermine Street, the route of the Ancient Roman road from London to the Humber. I don't know if it's legal, but you could possibly walk along the outside of the airfield which is on Barkston Heath and has a road running parallel to the B6403 and is certainly a less treacherous option. My abiding memory of this part of the walk was Bam telling me about Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and the novella it was based on by Daphne DuMaurier, which was more explicit in its references to the Cold War and fears of a Communist invasion.

To get off the B6403 we turned right down a country lane leading to the village of Wilsford, turning left about halfway down this lane to follow a bridleway along the top ridge of a small valley, eventually leading us to Ermine Street in Ancaster.

Ancaster to South Rauceby (4 miles/6.4 kilometres)

Ancaster was the main focus of our walk and we stopped off on Ermine Street to have a banana and a soft drink. I don't usually eat a lunch when I'm doing a full-day walk, but prefer to have a massive breakfast and then something substantial at dinner time. I do however spend most of the day eating nuts and dried fruit (or Trail mix, as Bam likes to call it) and, with the high temperatures this weekend, I also drank three litres of water during the walk, which just about kept me hydrated.

The church at Ancaster is called St Martin's and it'll be interesting to see how many other casters/chesters have churches dedicated to St Martin, who is the patron saint of soldiers and an apt choice for what used to be a Roman camp. It was also interesting to note the RAF presence around Ancaster and I find it intriguing to think that there has been a military presence in the area since Roman times! Channel Four's Time Team visited Ancaster back in 2002 and found evidence of a Romano-celtic shrine to a God named Viridio. This is thought to be an incorporation of Celtic animist beliefs, such as the Green Man and the Roman temple which stood on the site of today's church.

We left Ancaster on a trail recommended by the Lincolnshire County Council, called the Ancaster to Sleaford Railway walk. It wasn't really signposted, but I had marked the route out on our map and we improvised. This was one of the most beautiful parts of the walk, skirting the higher end of Wilsford Warren, walking through fields abundant with wheat, passing haystacks like monuments abandoned by an extra-terrestrial life-force. We did get a little bit lost during this part of the walk, but eventually found ourselves coming out onto Church Lane by Lodge Farm.

It was then a short walk through some fields and sheep pens to the village of South Rauceby.

South Rauceby to Sleaford (3.5 miles/5.6 kilometres)

The last part of the walk is always the hardest, I find and we bombed along from South Rauceby to Sleaford, the evening heat beating down on our heads as we flew through chicken farms and over Bouncing Hill, along the sticky bank of the River Slea, under the railway bridge and finally getting our breathes back at King Edward Street in Sleaford, where we emerged, dazzled into the welcoming arms of civilisation. The photo shows our route through a most beautiful cornfield outside Sleaford, almost at the end of our 16 mile (25km) journey.

I think 16 miles was quite a long day and, perhaps, next time we won't do quite as much. Unfortunately we didn't see much of Sleaford, arriving just half an hour before our train was due to arrive, we were more concerned about getting dinner than seeing the sights of the town! The Chilli Hut on Station Road is definitely to be recommended and, apart from the friendliness of the manager and his staff, who wanted to know all about our walk, Bam swears it's one of the best curries she's ever had (and she should know!).

By all accounts Sleaford is an up-and-coming kind of place. Jennifer Saunders grew up here and Emma Thompson's Dad, Eric, who did the Magic Roundabout (the English version) was a local. I guess we've missed our chance to see what Sleaford has to offer but, you never know, fate may conspire to bring us Sleaford way again sometime!

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me on my (very basic) Canon Ixus 65. Feel free to use the images under the Creative Commons License and don't forget to reference the source ie. this blog.

Ancaster - Welcome to Learning about Britain!

2010-07-14T12:19:00.000-07:00

Welcome to this first posting on my new blog Learning about Britain. This is a sister blog to http://www.learningabouttheworld.blogspot.com/ which is almost a year old. The idea is to learn about Britain in greater depth than the countries in Learning about the World, because this is where I live and because the focus could be slightly different.

Me and my BAM (Best Aussie Mate) have come up with the crazy idea of getting to know Britain better by visiting every major town/city ending in -caster, -cester and -chester. We thought that this might lead to some random trips to parts of Britain that we've never been to before and, what started off as a crazy idea, has now almost come to fruition in terms of our first trip which, alphabetically, will be to Ancaster in Lincolnshire.

We're going to stay in nearby Grantham and do a walking trip through Ancaster, finishing in Sleaford. I want to document our trip and blog about the learning experience along the way. In true learningabout fashion, I want to also read a book related to that local area, watch a movie or TV programme inspired by the place we're walking through, listen to some music and, if at all possible, cook a local dish - oh, and I won't forget to sample the local brew! It should be a bit of fun really and I hope you'll join us virtually, by following this blog. We've started alphabetically, so I guess that's how we'll continue. We're also limiting ourselves to castercesterchesters that are on the National Rail network, otherwise it could end up being very random indeed!

As I started researching this trip, the first thing that struck me was that our choice of placenames with the etymology 'castrum' is not that random after all and Ancaster, like most of the casters we'll be visiting, has remains of the Roman fort that once stood on this site. Doh! It seems so obvious now and it's a great thematic link for the places we're planning to visit.

Britain's history didn't start with the Romans, of course, but with the Celts. Learning about Roman Britain is, by default, learning about Celtic Britain. The celtic period of Britain's history is not really history at all, ie. documented and attested, but rather pre-history - that which exists mostly through archaeological guesswork and continues to haunt us through its unusual placenames and the names of long-forgotten kings. In my brief dip into Celtic Britain this week, I've been amazed to learn about a whole country full of Celtic tribes - the Iceni of Norfolk, the Catuvellauni of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, the Corieltauvi of the East Midlands and the Brigante of Yorkshire and the north. I had no idea that these tribes had names and histories that could be made out, despite the obscurity of time.

Luckily, I've already read Robert Graves seminal history of Rome, I, Claudius, so I can place the Roman invasions of Britain between their first contact with the Trinovantes of Essex during Caeser's time and the full-scale, forty thousand man strong invasion during the time of Claudius in 43AD. I think the Roman invasion of Britain had an impact on this country way beyond anything that happened later. It was Britain's first real experience of aggressive colonisation, the first time Britain had belonged to a Europe united by the Roman Empire. Before the Romans came along, even the word Britain didn't really exist. They applied it to the islands of Great Britain, Ireland and (perhaps) Iceland, later restricting the use of the term to their subdued Roman province Britannia - corresponding, more or less and rather confusingly, to modern-day England and Wales.

I realise that by visiting the chesters, we will be learning about England more than Britain. But we're going to start with the Roman concept of Britannia and perhaps later, we can move on from that and visit other parts of the country as well. In another, rather controversial way, the Roman invasion of Britain gave birth to a sense of national identity to those north of Hadrian's Wall (loosely called the Scots) and to a lesser extent, those to the west of the initial Roman border on the Trent (the Welsh). The Roman tactic in colonising Britain was to build forts/castrums to secure its newfound territory, then employ local administrators from the friendlier Celtic tribes and have them run the colony on Rome's behalf. Two thousand years later, it's a tactic that reminds me a lot of Western governments' plans for Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'm looking forward to our first trip to Ancaster and hopefully I will have lots to report back on, not just about Ancaster, but also about Grantham and Sleaford. Coming centuries after the Roman invasion, the Anglo-Saxons have formed the basis of English identity and I hope to combine our cester/caster/chester trips with many hams and fords and burys along the way!

Image credits:

The photo of the Green man (Banksia man) is by Graham Wilson, wikiuser Dgu56 and he has shared this with the world using the Creative Commons License. Find out more information about re-use of this image here.

The image of Britannia on her plinth has been supplied by flickuser Tim Ellis and you can see more of Tim's photography on his blog http://tmellis.wordpress.com/

Thanks Graham and Tim for sharing your images with the rest of us!