Day twenty-eight

28th May 2009       WALES - ENGLAND

The raggedy man that I am

I wake up early… don’t think I slept that well last night… maybe I’m getting soft; my bed was just a thin sleeping mat on top of a sheet of hardboard. I shouldn’t grumble, I had three walls, a roof over my head and a digger protecting me from the weather, and for that I was glad, looking out of the barn this morning I see puddles that were not there yesterday. Still in my sleeping bag I sit up and lean against another board. I move to one side to pick up my water bottle, only to find my neck doesn’t want to work, to turn the head I’m having to turn the top half of my body… great.

While brushing my teeth, I dig out the map… where to aim for today, a few hours of walking and I’ll be in England. These tired old pair of boots sat alongside my water bottle have taken me from the top of mainland Scotland, into Northern Ireland and then into the Republic of Ireland, back over the ocean and across the top half of Wales and this morning they will pass by Offa’s Dyke and step across the border into the kingdom of Mercia (England)… the last of the four nations that make up these islands of this United Kingdom. These old boots with their holes, broken laces and a tread that is on the borderline of breaking the law (will need to try and stay away from the traffic police)… these boots just need to hold out a little longer… the south coast is no longer a million miles away.

It’s a little after six o’clock before I climb out of my sleeping bag. It takes a moment to straighten my back… It’s not a map I need in hand but instead a defect sheet … I’m feeling as if I need a service. The muscles in my legs ache… I have a knew blister on my left heel… for reasons I don’t understand my right shin is a little painful… not only can I not turn my head without turning my shoulders, but the head also seems to be fixed at a slight angle… and for the shoulders they really are not wanting to carry a bag. I sit on the bucket of the digger looking down at my worn-out boots… the boots seem to be looking back up at me, not sure but I think I hear them mumble something about a kettle calling the pot black… I have no idea what they’re on about. With boots on and laces tied, I push myself up of the digger… I try to move my head using my hands… it’s not happening… I stretch as best I can and then hobble out of the barn and back into a world of wide open skies, birdsong, quiet country lanes and the smell of last night’s rain.

No bread this morning…I guess I’ll just have to eat cake instead … life is not all bad … again I say a quiet thank you to the couple that had fed me yesterday evening and had allowed me to stay in the barn overnight and for the extra slice of cake. Walking along the lane I try to separate the cake from the tissue paper that it had been wrapped up in… not a bad breakfast, cake, some tissue paper, and a couple of mouthfuls of cold Welch vintage water.

Today much of my walking is in the direction of East with a little bit of South thrown in… I will need to keep the map close, on these islands most of the major roads (not all… but most) go up and down the country, when heading across country (away from the major east / west corridors)… a map is needed to keep track of what the smaller roads it is that your on and what the bigger roads are that you bump into and then figuring out which and where the next smaller road is that I need to pick up, so as to keep heading east (not sure if any of that made sense… it did to me)… basically the aim today is to wind my way east, through country lanes, over the Shropshire hills and walk down into the town of Church Stretton, and if I make good time, push a little further.

The walking is still a little slow, I guess for now that’s OK, only I’m not wanting to stay in a low gear for too many days… as the morning gets going the aches and pains slowly ease up a little. I walk with the map close to hand… when needing to read the map, I’m having to lift it up to eye level and tilt it to the right… the neck is still kinked.

Today I feel like a raggedy old man and yet here I stand… raggedy as maybe… in a world as beautiful as can be… all around me, a thousand shades of green, the smell of wildflowers and wet grass, the sky above a mix of blue and white… in my head it is not the song of the blackbird I hear, instead the song stuck in this crooked head of mine, is the one from yesterday… ‘Don’t they know it’s Christmas time at all’…

Hmm… the other day I talked of how Ebenezer saw everyday as Christmas… a grouchy bitter old guy turned good... and that is no small thing… The who it is we are, and all of that of what we see around us, stands on the bedrock of what is good, of what is true, of what is beautiful and above all, of what is possible. Scrooge with a little help from the spirits of Christmas past, present and future found himself standing back on that bedrock… overwhelmed at the possibilities and choices that lay ahead of him… he was given a second chance… and he took it.

Within an hour of walking, I pass by Offa’s Dyke… the old border between Wales and England… from the Welsh perspective it is the border line between Cymru and Lloegr. I know I rattle on sometimes; I have a fascination with place names… the name Cymru originates from an old Celtic word combrogi… its meaning refers to the bond that existed between warriors… the loyalty and camaraderie between friends and fellow clansmen… I guess today we would say ‘brothers in arms’… (cannot help but recall the many troops from my RAF Mountain Rescue days, a bond that is as strong now as it was back in the day… I can still sometimes hear the banter and laughter amongst the guys… looking back on those days, how young we were, a little naive for sure, and as for fear I don’t think we had none at all).

The Welsh name for England is Lloegr, it means ‘lost lands’… much of England was lost to the Saxons… many Britons were pushed to the west… it is the west side of these islands, from Cornwall to the very top of Scotland that there is still to this day a strong connection to the Celts of old… the name Cumbria (a county in the northwest of England) finds its origin in that same word combrogi… step into an old language and it’s not long before your lost in history.

… never mind lost in history… I need to figure out where it is I am now, I’m not sure but I think I have (or I am about to) crossover the current border between these two great kingdoms… I didn’t see a sign telling me I was now in England… probably because my head was someplace up in the clouds, or I was watching the stone that I’m kicking down the road. Twenty minutes later I walk into a village called Marton… the map tells me Marton is in Shropshire and Shropshire I know to be in England…so here I am at the start of the last chapter of this adventure.

Stepping into the village store; I explain what it is I am doing and ask if a cup of tea would be possible. The lady behind the counter asks if I take sugar, I’m about to say one please, but the body answers before the head “Three please”… guessing there are times when the body is needing a tea more than what the head is. I say thank you as I step back out of the store with my polystyrene cup… I don’t think a tea has ever tasted so good.

Within an hour I pass a guy cutting his hedge, we both say ‘Good morning’… he tells me I look a little worn out (and there was me thinking I was hiding this raggedy appearance pretty well). ‘Have you walked far’. It is only after saying ‘From the top of Scotland’ that I realize that doesn’t sound very plausible, I quickly add ‘Not today’. He laughs, we get talking ‘Would you like a bite to eat’. Five minutes later I’m sat on a bench in Ron’s Garden with a huge sandwich and a pot of tea.

A few more hours into the day and I stumble into one of the last remaining buildings of a long gone lead mining village by the name of Bog, the village sits on the edge of the Shropshire hills. The now visitors’ centre and café used to be the village school. I am given tea and chocolate cake… grateful to sit for a while… the village is now a nature reserve, birds nesting in the remaining building, bats living in the deserted mines and a bunch of other creatures making good use of the old reservoirs and ponds. I sit for a little longer than I should before pushing myself up of the chair, say my Thankyou’s and head for the hills…

…again and again, I am knocked sideways with the kindness and generosity of the people that I am meeting on this walk.

That bedrock that I spoke of earlier, the one that I had left Scrooge standing on, I somehow believe it to be real… yeah OK maybe not an actual rock… but the qualities of truth, beauty and goodness are what we need to embody (to make our own) so as to play our part in creating the foundations for a better world...

…hmm, I’m struggling a little bit here…you know when you have an idea in your head, and you try to articulate it or get it down on paper… only you somehow muddle it up… the hope is while hobbling across the top of these Shropshire hills, with big skies above and a steady breeze I can un-muddle those thoughts… One of my favourite artists is a man called L.S Lowry (he too would many times head up into the moors to clear his head) he lived on the outskirts of Manchester and was famous for painting industrial scenes, the old cotton mills, factory gates, raggedy men and chimneys. Like any artist he had his own style, and through his creative work you came to understood something of his character. The same can be said of a favourite author, read enough of his (or her) books and you start to get know them a little… or take a band, The Clash for instance, the rift of two guitars, the lyrics… it’s not long before you have your very own air guitar plugged into the wall, and in your head you’re up on stage playing alongside Joe Strummer and the guys, as if you had known them for the longest time. The above can be said of any creative act… a chef, the candlestick maker, a drystone waller, this morning in the near distance I saw a tractor, it was two thirds through ploughing a field, the lines of the furrows were as straight as straight could be. I will probably never get to meet the guy behind the wheel of that tractor, but here’s the thing, it is through his work that I can understand something of his character… I think this is what Jesus was talking about, when somebody had asked him to show them God, He replied “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father… Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me”… and Jesus goes on to say “… If you don’t believe that at least believe, like the tractor driver you saw earlier, in the works that I do”… yeah OK, He didn’t mention a tractor driver, that was me… what Jesus is talking about, is how we should strive to embody the character and heart of God… the more we can do that, the closer we get to creating (for want of a better word) Heaven on Earth… yeah I know, I’m also not one for pretty phrases that trip of the tongue and in the next breath forgotten, I’m a truck driver remember… but I do believe in the power of vision… I was once told that the greatest gift that can be given is that of vision… Heaven on Earth is I think a pretty cool vision…

…only that vision is not always easy to hold on to… there are days, when I feel that I’m standing on that same rock Scrooge found himself on… and I battle with the contradictions within me… questions and answers, truth and lies, the good, the bad…and the ugly, the beautiful… love and hate… there are days when I do the things, I know to be wrong and don’t do the things I know to be right’ raggedy man that I am… I guess the thing is to keep fighting, why because we know we have the potential to be a thousand times better than who it is we see in the mirror each morning… I think in this day and age it is easy to question the existence of a God… but I don’t think we can argue about the idea of goodness existing… in my head that is as real as that pencil I keep dropping. And the flipside of goodness… we only need to look back in history over the past hundred years or so, to know that evil is also as real as that pencil… I wonder at the origin of evil… nobody wakes up in the morning, looks into the mirror and thinks to themselves ‘how can I be a more terrible person today than what I was yesterday… that is not who we are…

…I wonder at what it is I (we) will be remembered for, the things that we have said or the works that we have done… I turn full circle… close my eyes, clear my heart… and I again wonder… are we human or are we dancer?

…I guess I’m a walker… never been on these Shropshire hills before, I’m thinking I must come back another day, explore a little more… the sun is out, hands in pockets, the neck is moving a little better… me I’m in a good place… not so sure about the body.

As I head down the hill into the market town of Church Stretton… my brother’s daughter comes to mind (not sure why). I remember when she was small, in church instead of singing ‘Go tell it on the mountain’ she would instead sing “Go teddy on the mountain”. Children have an innocence a purity, they don’t struggle with who it is they are… there is no ego, they live each moment of each day with all five senses wide awake to the wonders of the world around them. The concept of hate doesn’t exist (that is if you don’t count cabbage soup and Brussels sprouts). When you hear a little one giggling it is impossible not to smile… I often wonder if we can learn more from a child, than what it is we can teach them.

That’s me walking the streets of Church Stretton… the word Stretton is an old English word meaning ‘settlement on a Roman road’ (“straet” and “tun”). Over a thousand years ago, a church was built in this little town that sits on that Roman road... and by the time I arrived they had built a café called ‘Flinders’… thank you for the tea and scone and just up the road they had also built a bake house called ‘Mr Buns Bakery’… thank you for the hot pie and sausage roll. I guess maybe I could have found a place to stay the night in Church Stretton, but felt I needed to keep moving…slowing down a little is one thing, but to do the walk in forty days I need to maintain the mileage… the thumbprint walk of each day.

You know that expression where runners talk about hitting the wall, they break through and find new strength… I right… a few miles out of town and I’m really slowing down… that wall has been a hundred yards in front of me for much of the day … and then suddenly its right there… I stop, reach out a hand and touch it, the bag comes of my shoulders, falls to the ground, followed by me… there’s no breaking through happening here… that’s me done…

An hour goes by and I’m still flat out on the grass verge… there’s a handful of rooks hanging around, a magpie joins them (…One is for sorrow). I guess best make a move before these scraggy birds make their move. Back on my feet, bag over my shoulder. Just around the corner I walk into a small village called Wall-under Haywood (not funny). I step into the local pub, the Plough Inn, to see if I can fill my water bottle up. The owner behind the bar looks up, and before I have the chance to say anything, he tells the guy he’s talking to “Now there’s a man who needs a drink”. After explaining myself. The barman (his name is Mike) gives me a gallon of Coke and then makes me a huge sandwich. Both Mike and David (a guy from a company called Absolute Construction) are both fascinated with what it is I’m doing… David buys me another Coke plus another sandwich for later. I was there for a good half hour… incredibly grateful to both, not just for the drinks and food but also for the interest and enthusiasm they had shown for what it is I was doing… I was glad of their company, they had fed the body and lifted my spirts… David being in the construction industry knew a thing or two about knocking walls down and Mike was more than happy to pick up a sledge hammer. We are not alone in this world, if you come up against a wall… there are people out there that will get you through.

Less than an hour out of the village I come across a field, a meadow I climb over the gate, walk fifty yards along the hedge (out of sight from the road)… roll out my sleeping bag and climb in. I am worn out… so this is me… I have not had a proper wash for a number of days, not a penny in my pocket, I’m sleeping in a field, my raggedy clothes folded up inside a bin bag to keep them dry, battered old boots in another bag alongside… and yet all is good… I close my eyes… I hear the harsh sound of a couple of magpies calling out “chak-chak… chak-chak (I have no idea who Jack is)… eyes open again for a moment, there are two magpies hoping around on the grass (…Two for joy)… yeah I’ll take that. Zzz