Making Haste While The Sun Shines

O heat dry up my brain!

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

I don’t know whether it rained any more last night, because after finishing the blog at 12.46 I slept like a log until 4.37 when I was awoken by the dawn chorus. I was quite happy to listen to it for awhile, and let myself drift back off to sleep — because I planned on having a café breakfast in Evesham, and there was no point in arriving before the joints had opened. The late start had another advantage too: it meant that the sun could finish its work of drying the tent, and once I had taken the worst off, the slight breeze and the (already fairly uncomfortably warm) sun finished off the job.

I was sad to leave Bredon-Vale campsite without spending more time there, and chatting some more with Jackie and Jim in their campsite shop. They run the place on ninja level eco-principles, and every detail is thought of, from the sustainable soap in the shower to the recycled or repurposed furniture. The plantings around the site are superb, and I did love my little grassland flat pitch. I wish you all the luck with your endeavour, Jacqui and Jim, and I hope to be able to visit again soon. I decided this morning that after yesterday’s battle with the environment, that today I would dedicate the blog to focusing only on the positive aspects of the natural world and our relationship with it.

The water of the last few days and the heat has brought out the insects. I associate flying ants with August, but perhaps the thundery weather is bringing out the queens. As I walked into Evesham the road was lined with entrances to their nests – although perhaps they are all connected underground? There are so many of them, and so close together (the mosquito bites I got from thrashing about in the overgrowth are not a positive externality of the desperately-needed rain).

There was another infestation which I forgot to mention — or should I say overpopulation, since ‘infestation’ seems a little unfair to these faultless creatures doing their thing in the wild — on the Herefordshire day. These webs look as though they have been produced by spiders, but in fact they are the work of the ermine moth. They sling their webs between every twig, like miniature Aragogs or, dare I say it, Shelobs, stripping the leaves almost completely in late May and June, and then the webs disappear. The hedge usually recovers.

When I got to Evesham I followed our rule to ask locals for recommendations, and absolutely struck lucky with Delicious. Spanish omelette – walking food of gods.

Whilst in the café, I checked the distance calculator for today’s walk. Factoring in the end point where I was to be picked up by my son, it looked like the day was shaping up to be the thick end of 30 km in total — half as much again as my preferred distance. So I was leaving it very late to begin, and another Internet check, this time with the Met office, revealed that there were more bombastic thunderstorms forecast for 5 o’clock in Stratford upon Avon, compounding the time pressure. Oscar and I sketched out a few timing scenarios by text as I chugged as much water as I could, and then I hightailed it out of town, walking smartly on the back of the Delicious cappuccino.

With trainers rather than boots road walking is much easier and I always like looking at gardens. One in particular struck me: an eco protest garden. I liked the way Bredon-Vale and this household are both trying to raise awareness, but in completely different ways.

On the edge of the residential part of town I was treated to a good example of some excellent urban planning: a patchwork of green spaces had been included in this estate, connecting up with a much larger area around the railway line, including a ruined orchard, which one might call “wasteground“, but which is precious habitat for flora and fauna.

I know I said the blog wasn’t going to be about the running, but after the railway line my route took me across a busy A-road and, despite the heat, I had to pick my moment and scurry across as fast as my Inov8s could manage.

On the other side the flat, fertile and fossiliferous Evesham soil had been put to good agricultural use. I threaded my way through fields of curcurbita, admiring the wildflowers left to grow tall in the middle of the cart track. Mallows and Artemisia, the ‘wormwood’ that is mentioned in the Book of Revelation as the sign of the coming apocalypse heralded by the Third Angel, and the bitter herb that Hamlet references in the play-within-the-play.

On the map this area was marked with what I thought were greenhouses, but I discovered that one at least of the crosshatched squares was a different kind of agriculture altogether: a solar farm. It’s beyond me why people object to solar farms being sited in their neighbourhoods. This one was surrounded by lush vegetation, and I saw a bird rather like a woodcock flying in off the path to seek shelter.

A little further on, the cross-hatched map turned out to be one of the promised greenhouses: huge, highly mechanised systems on an industrial scale. I peeked in through some of the windows and in the first saw enormous blocks of agapanthus being grown,

and then other units awaiting planting with bags of soil, ready on tables, and another with stacks of tiny growing modules being set out.

Mindful of the ticking clock and the miles ahead, I determined to make headway, and took a shortcut along Three Cocks Lane, a long, straight road which I thought would be faster than the meandering river path. Unlike my ill-fated shortcut yesterday, I was so glad I took this one. This area is intensively farmed for agriculture, with beans grown under glass

And monoblock rows of lettuces

but they are clearly also putting strategies in place to support the environment by re-planting hedges with hawthorn, hazel, field, maple and other native species, and planting wide wildflower strips by the side of fields, with a seed mix designed to last throughout the summer, and into autumn: as well as cornflowers, poppies and oxeye daisies out now there were sunflowers, borage, viper’s bugloss, vetch, campion, and a host of others that I did not have time to identify.

(Perhaps not so friendly, was the pile of fleece dumped in a little patch, leaching polypropylene fibres into the environment)

The road section enabled a quick tempo and also allowed me to admire the trees: I have seen so many really healthy ash trees on this walk — I don’t think I had realised quite how beautiful they were, especially full grown. Maybe Herefordshire has been particularly hard-hit by the chalara dieback.

Another tree that was a constant companion and seemingly the favoured tree of the cuckoos who called constantly along the full length of the riverbank today, were the willows. Sometimes cool, green, branching canopies above my head,

Sometimes cracked and ancient,

Sometimes ‘willowy’ and graceful.

There is a willow grows aslant the brook…

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

They seem to be the archetypal feature of this river.

It was desperately hot by midday. I was making for a pub marked on the map where I could get some water, by the ford at Offenham (which looked to me like a weir rather than a ford — although there was a track going into the water on both banks it would be a foolhardy endeavour to try and drive across).

The pub was shut.

Sandra in the caravan park behind the pub told me it only opened at the weekend. But she and Doc the collie treated me to some ice-cold citrus water. It was unutterably refreshing – thank you, Sandra! Enjoy your holiday.

On the other side of the road I interrupted sparkily-eyed Jane, planting out what will be a stunning array of bedding plants at the Offenham Holiday Park. She kindly let me use the loo, and we chatted about long-distance walking. Jane, do John O’Groats to Lands End! I recommend Mark Moxon’s blog if you want to read an amusing account of it. There is also a really Cicerone guidebook.

At the holiday park I rejoined the river. The water flowed slowly and gently past me back the way I had come — it was quiet and peaceful and the perfect haunt for kingfishers and otters. Total tally: 0

The meadow paths were quiet and unpeopled. Alongside the damselflies I started to see dozens of mayflies hanging in the grasses, having completed the second of their adult moults, from their ‘dun’ to their ‘spinner’ skin. They are all about to fly back to the water for their extraordinary Attenboroughesque mating swarms. I am hoping to be lucky enough to see this phenomenon.

I was so busy listening to the cuckoos and trying to identify the other birdsongs that I didn’t hear the car coming up behind me — just driving plumb through the middle of the meadow. I think the driver was going to have a wild swim in the lake I passed. I heard a giant splash on the other side of the screening willows which might have been him diving in, and there certainly was a very defensive swan on the water.

The path left the hot, airless meadows for a while and climbed up into the cooler green corridor of Cleeve Hill. There was evidence of the deluges of the storm of the night before in the form of downed branches and muddy puddles.

Again to save time and miles I sliced off a corner of the riverbank, and walked through the villages of Cleeve Prior and Marlcliff to my lunch and water stop at Barton. Cleeve Prior had a beautiful church with the obligatory ancient yew,

a non-standard line of poplars,

And an extraordinary show of roses by the footpath. It was as though someone had gone to David Austin and said ‘oh – I’ll take one of each’.

By Marlcliff even the Inov8s could not shield my feet entirely from the effects of the pounding, and I was having to be careful to hydrate. A cheery man directed me on towards Barton, and I passed into my third county.

I’d been going four and a half hours by now and the first thing I saw in Barton was a small Mercedes sports car on sale by the side of the road for £2,500. Readers, I was tempted, but the thought of the pub lunch just round the corner made me keep my wad of £50 notes on my pocket.

The pub was shut.

I sat down one one of its empty tables and took my pack off, emptied most of it ought to get to the packet of hazelnuts at the bottom of it and crunched them up, then went round d the back of the pub into its campsite and filled up my water bladder with water from their pot wash tap. I asked the builders working on the house next door and they said the Shakespeare in Welford on Avon up the river had a pub. So there was nothing for it but just to plod on. It was back down to the river now. I kept my fingers crossed for some good paths — I still had twelve kilometres to go and at a good pace that would take me three hours. If I had to slash my way through I’d be slower.

A party of cheerful folk from Doncaster and Lincolnshire were camping by the river by a lock. They warned me that the path ahead was full of nettles all the way to Welford — nearly three kilometres of it. ‘Right,’ I said, ‘I’m going to put my long trousers on,’ and took my pack off. ‘Would you like to use our awning to get changed?’ asked one of the ladies, a little alarmed. I had been about to change right there in front of them! I must be going mad. Perhaps that’s what the cuckoos have been trying to tell me. It was just that I was totally focused and determined on just bloody getting through it.

Oh it was a pretty stretch of the river, only lacking a kingfisher and an otter to be completely perfect.

But there were also the nettles to contend with—

And hundreds and hundreds of damselflies. I just barged through, clouds of them flying up in front of me.

The Shakespeare pub in Welford was OPEN. Lawrence, professionally unfazed by my beetroot-faced and probably demented-looking appearance, gave me iced water, a packet of mini cheddars and a blueberry muffin. Water, salt, sugar: the three major food groups. It was now four o’clock, and I had been walking since nine.

The sustenance enabled me to appreciate Welford. It struck me as being the home of master thatchers: full of picture-postcard houses

and wonderful examples of the old craft.

I still had about seven kilometres to go and an hour before the storm was supposed to start. It was time for the last push. I usually walk at about 5km/h on decent paths but if I’m stopping to take photos it’s down to 4.5km/h. That just wasn’t going to be fast enough.

The gathering clouds reflected in the still water beyond the yellow water lilies and flag iris.

I tried not to look at them as I forged through the meadow grasses.

At last the outskirts of Stratford came into view — first a rusting old railway bridge in the distance, dwarfed by the storm clouds,

and I crossed it, sightly anxious about the increasingly yellowing light.

I figured the old railway cycleway would be faster than the river path and just race-walked the last three kilometres in under half an hour. A sudden, brief squall of wind blew up out of nowhere, which only served to make me walk faster. Surely a harbinger.

I crossed the footbridge to reach the recreation ground, with no time really to admire the two bridges,

But I did appreciate the spire of Holy Trinity Church on the other side of the river, where William Shakespeare and members of his family are buried at the foot of the chancel.

I had made it before the rain. I felt quite exhilarated at my mighty efforts.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!
You sulfurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts…

King Lear, William Shakespeare

I sheltered under a chestnut tree, almost completely dry, until Oscar arrived. Day 4 — over.