A chance encounter

When I lived closer to it, I used to walk along the Stort Navigation on the Hertfordshire/Essex border fairly frequently, roughly between Harlow and Bishop's Stortford. Note for non-Brits especially: a "navigation" in this sense is a river converted to make it suitable for barges, straightened in places and given at least partly artificial banks. The Stort is the original river. The area is surprisingly rural, with woods, fielda and marshes.

Since moving further away, I've become seriously interested in dragonflies and took the opportunity of recent sunny weather to revisit the Stort, reckoning it would be classic dragonfly habitat - and so it was. I was looking out for birds and butterflies too and had my binoculars round my neck.

A tractor was harvesting hay close to the navigation. It stopped. A powerfully-built white-haired man, naked above the waist, got out and came jogging across the field and through a rough gap in the nettles and other vegetation to join me on the bank. He'd seen my binoculars. He was the farmer. Had I seen the buzzard, he asked. Note to Americans: this is not the small vulture you call a buzzard, but a kind of large hawk, which was exterminated in Eastern England in the 19th century but has returned over the last twenty years. I hadn't. He said it often came down when he was working in the fields to take any prey disturbed by machinery. We chatted about birds. I explained my number one interest that day was dragonflies. He asked about that.

On my way back I did see his buzzard.

So why is that worth a post? Some farmers are still hostile to birds of prey, but he was seriously interested. More than that, he was working, stopped his machine and went out of his way to reach me and talk to me. I was impressed - humbled, really.

Oh, and the Three Horseshoes at Spellbrook had good real ale...

Favourite places: Naseby

The battle of Naseby was one of the most important battles in British history. It took place on 14 June 1645 in the last but one year of the First Civil War between King Charles I and Parliament. When I studied the origins, course and aftermath of the Civil War as a History undergraduate (my special subject in my last year was "Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution"), I had little interest in the military side, but since then I've found battlefields both mournful and fascinating places. Unlike, say, Culloden (a stand of pines is right in the middle of the battlefield, so you can't stand on one side and imagine how it looked to see enemy forces drawn up on the other side: besides, not far behind the Jacobite position now are brick houses of the Inverness suburbs), or unlike the other most decisive Civil War battlefield at Marston Moor (road through the middle, rubbish dump by the monument when I visited), Naseby is relatively well preserved, though a motorway spur was driven through an outlying area.

The site is in Northamptonshire but very close to Leicestershire to the north, in rolling, mainly open country of fields, small woods and villages. The monument and small interpretative display are just in front of the centre of the Parliamentary position: from there you can easily see the ridge where the Royalist army started and Sulby hedges, which played a key part in the battle, to the Parliamentary left. In 1645 the roads in the area were rough tracks and some ground now farmed was marshy.

The war had been going on for three years with little sign of an end. Parliament's advantage from the major victory at Marston Moor outside York the year before had been squandered in a disastrous Westcountry campaign in which many of the veteran Parliamentary infantry had been killed, many after surrender and disarming by Cornish locals. Parliament had organised a "New Model Army" to clear out half-hearted officers, but the infantry were very green (some got their first weapons training on the march a day or two before the battle)and many were unenthusiastic, unlike the highly-motivated, well-trained cavalry. The Royalist army had plenty of experienced infantry; their cavalry ("cavaliers")were confident but ill-disciplined.

The King's main army had captured Leicester, a city of strong Parliamentary and Puritan sympathies, and had slaughtered a number of civilians. The Parliamentary General Sir Thomas Fairfax had been besieging Oxford, but was ordered away to engage the King, which he did. The King was hoping for cavalry reinfoircements but they never arrived; in contrast, East Anglian cavalry under Oliver Cromwell reinforced Fairfax the night before the battle. As a result, while the numbers of infantry on the two sides were similar (with probably a slight Royalist advantage), Fairfax had a big advantage in cavalry and also some dragoons (light cavalry who operated like modern motorised infantry, travelling fast but fighting on foot). On the Royalist side the King was in ultimate command but under him, control was with Prince Rupert.

The Parliamentary left and Royalist right rested on Sulby hedges. Fairfax sent dragoons behind the hedges so they could deliver flanking fire. Some accounts say the Royalists tried to occupy this point too and were driven off. The King's army charged and won early success against the green New Model infantry and some of the cavalry, but Prince Rupert's cavalry pursued fleeing Parliamentarians away from the main battlefield while Cromwell, having defeated the outnumbered Royalist cavalry facing him on the Parliamentary right, turned to join the infantry battle, as so did the dragoons (on horseback, which was not at all in the rulebook). The Royalist cavalry scattered and the infantry then had no chance, though many fought on. The King's cause never recovered.

I've visited the site perhaps four times and it has a strange power for me. It is not hard to imagine myself there on 14 June 1645.

Other things to attract visitors? A short way to the north over the Leicestershire border is picturesque Market Harborough. There's a good network of footpaths and it's pleasant if unspectacular walking country. There's plenty of good pubs, many of them in the characteristic, mellow local yellow sandstone.

Favourite Places: Pin Mill, Suffolk

Why "Pin" Mill? I don't know. It's on the coast, on the Orwell estuary, just outside the large village of Chelmondiston. You can approach it by a narrow road, but I approach by foot through dense woodland along a ridge overlooking the estuary. As you descend you come to a series of houseboats, all with names, many with postboxes and with wooden walkways out to the boat, with plants in pots and other decorations plus various junk. Some are quite neat and others very dilapidated, plus the occasional rotting ruin.


Beyond the houseboats the path suddenly comes out to a small bay and to a concrete surface sometimes under shallow water, but usually merely damp. To the right are moored yachts, motor-boats and rowing-boats. To the left is a large pub against whose solid walls high tides lap - "The Butt and Oyster", which must amuse visiting Americans. It's an Adnams' pub which means decent real ale.

Beyond that, a road and a shambles of interesting buildings, workshops and the like, then a few brick houses, a marina office and more woodland. People come to the pub to eat or socialise and drink and the place attracts some day-trippers, maybe a few genuine tourists and of course people off the boats, but a proportion of the people walking around or driving vehicles very short distances are roughly dressed, long-haired, weatherbeaten men. I know few places quirkier or beter to rest on a long walk.

How to walk from A - Z

I promised some tips about long-distance trail walking. They all apply to walking for several days on a trail or not. Some may seem obvious, but on the West Highland Way last year I came across people who'd thought the WHW was a good opportunity to try out a new pair of boots and others who'd clearly not found out what a full pack felt like on their back until they set out for the Glasgow train.

PLAN. Use the on-line information. Book accomodation in advance unless there's an abundance of it on the way (as on MOST parts of the South-west Coastal Footpath). Identify places where you have no alternative - just one place to stay - and book there first, adjusting your dates to fit what they've got. Make a list of what you need. Seek maps and guide-books in good time: many bookshops will have to order them. Take into account that the steepest climbs may take two or three times as long as mildly hilly walks - and that while coastal walks may have no mountains, you may have to keep going steep down, across half a mile of loose sand or shingle and then steep up again. Think about what you're asking of yourself. Can you really do an average 20 miles a day? What's your evidence? If you can do 25 miles in hilly but not mountainous country with full pack but that's near your limit, is there any way of breaking up that three-day 25 mile - 23 mile - 26 mile sequence? I fell down on that count doing the Wye Valley Walk - but oddly, the toughest day was the first of the three!

PRACTICE. If possible, not only do all the long walking you can in the months leading up, but take a short break to do intensive walking in roughly similar country about two weeks before you start the real thing, carrying roughly the same weight in your pack and using the same key equipment - boots, pack/rucksack and so on. This is a good time to find that those broken in but newish walking boots are more comfortable with the top toggle left unused or that the combination of fleece and cagoule doesn't work because the cagoule doesn't cover the bottom of the fleece. Do at least three-and-a-half days' intensive walking (but enjoy it too). Make it tough: the first time I did the WHW, I'd trained in the Lake District and there was nothing on the WHW as tough as ascending Blencathra or going over Black Sail Pass. That made me feel good on the WHW! Make sure you know from experience how to use your compass, too, or GPS if you use that.

CUT DOWN ON WEIGHT (unless you're using sherpa services). Think. Most clothes can be washed and dried somewhere on the trip, even if the washing is in a wash-basin and the drying by hanging from the top of your pack. How many pairs of each item do you really need? On any trip of less than 200 miles, I'd suggest you can plan to wear each pair of socks four days (two days, one wash, two more days' wear), but you shouldn't need more than three shirts. Do you need a tube of cream for insect bites, or will a small tube of antiseptic do? Leave the thermos behind: you don't need hot drinks on the walk and it's extra weight. Accept that the only reading matter will be the guide-book and anything you can pick up where you stay and then leave there, plus a newspaper occasionally.

YOUR FEET ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. Despite what I said above, don't skimp on supplies of plasters and the like. A spare pair of foam inner-soles is advisable. Carry a support bandage: if you get a muscular strain, this can make the difference between a huge disappointment and success.

TAKE MAPS. OK the guide-book probably has maps, but they'll show only a narrow band along the route. That's not enough if you go off-course or if you're trying to orient from distant landmarks. Doing without a guide-book is possible, but tends to trip you up on small details, like where to go when the path enters a built-up area or where precisely to cross the river.

CARRY AS LITTLE FOOD AS POSSIBLE. Eat a good breakfast, make do with, say, a handful of raisins, a bit of chocolate and a plum at midday, and eat a good, balanced meal in the evening. The balance is important because on the longer trails like the Pennine Way if you're not careful you'll develop dietary deficiencies which will affect your strength and resilience.

BE BLOODY-MINDED. Rain is NOT going to stop you. That crap guide-book misled you and you're three miles adrift on a day when you have 24 miles to walk? Let your anger propel you until you realise you're reasonably on your time target again. But don't ignore problems like a slight pain in your foot. They'll get worse and there's probably something you can do.

HAVE FUN. Stand and stare at the water flowing under the bridge. Stay in pubs with good beer and company. Celebrate when you finish. It may sound grim if you haven't tried it, but it's huge fun and the feeling at the finish is great.

The Norfolk Broads - in Winter

Fans of the Odanglesex Chronicles: I expect the next post here will be from Odanglesex. In the meantime, I'm describing another favourite place.

For the non-Brits, some explanation is probably needed - even that the term is not sexist.

The Norfolk Broads are a large area of marsh, fen, river, lake and rough grazing in the south and east of Norfolk in eastern England. They start just outside the city of Norwich (or Narj in local pronunciation) and extend almost to the coast. The "Broads" are a series of lakes - for example, Hickling Broad. It used to be widely believed that these were bits of sea that had been cut off and that the area up to Roman times featured sea channels and islands. By the middle ages we had preserved maps good enough to show no such complex of channels and islands. However, archaeological investigation showed the Broads were steep-sided and it became clear that they were the result of human activity - large-scale cutting of peat leading to depressions which flooded. The marshes, though, are ancient.

In summer the Broads and the river Yare are crowded with pleasure-boats and many other aspects of tourism and day-tripping. This doesn't prevent the area having outstanding fauna and flora characteristic of reedbeds and other marshy habitats, though these do rather concentrate in the nature reserves. In winter, the area is largely left to the locals, except for birdwatchers visiting a few well-known reserves.

I visited the day before the snow came. Even so, much of the damp fields was frosted and the normal green vistas were green and white. I came up by train and got off at a large village (or small town) called Cantley, walking along the banks of the River Yare almost to the start of the broad estuary known as Breydon Water before returning as far as the large village of Reedham to get the train again. On the way I found an excellent, friendly, traditional riverside pub, the Reedham Ferry. The land round about is almost entirely flat and the evidence of human activity, other than animals grazing and aged windmills, is very sparse - so in midwinter, it was a scene of vast, bleak, beautiful expanses. Thousands of wintering geese flew over or sounded harsh alarms from the fields. A Woodcock exploded from reeds about three feet from me. For the birders, I saw thousands of Pinkfeet, some Bean Geese, about 25 Bewick's Swans (from a railway bridge with almost the last use of the optics), various shore waders as I approached Breydon Water, several Marsh Harriers, plenty of Bearded Tits and of course that superb Woodcock.

Beyond that, I had a sense of freedom, of space and of humanity in harmony with nature. It's much warmer in summer and the profusion of wildlife is marvellous, but the magic is lost.

In Praise of Real Ale

Subtle, diverse, refreshing, tasty if a little unpredictable, offered in thousands of varieties from hundreds of makers - not wine but British-style real ale. For years it has been the lazy default assumption of journalists and others that traditional real ale was in decline or narrowing to a niche market of discerning well-off middle-aged to elderly middle-class men in places like Shrewsbury and Eastbourne. The opposite is happening: its use is increasing against the trend for most drinks and pub services, supermarkets are now well-stocked with a good range of bottled real ales and the trend is extending to new groups of people, especially young people and women. The one domestic market it will never reach is people who seek oblivion through premium lager.

Real Ale has two weaknesses. One is because of that very variety: fifty or sixty years ago, strong regional breweries dominated trade plus a few nationals. The choice of real ales in nearly all pubs was limited even over a whole year, but a few names kept cropping up. Now the market is split between a huge number of competing beers which pop up all over the country, the only nationally familiar one is Greene King IPA and a drinker unfamiliar with the varieties may be put off by the range of unfamiliar names and instead of experimenmting or asking the bar person for guidance, opt for something really familiar like Foster's or (mea maxima culpa for even mentioning the stuff) Heineken. The other concerns quality. Because real ale is a live product, it can go off and keeping it is a little more demanding than keeping those mass-produced lagers. Consequently, quality can vary, though in many pubs it's uniformly high.

There is also that tired slur about "warm beer", beloved not only of some (but by no means all) Australians and Americans, but also of those far too numerous English (I except the Scots and Welsh) who like to join in sneering at themselves. "Warm" can only mean at or above room temperature. If you get served real ale like that, send it right back. It should be cool. It should not, however, be ice-cold. An ice-cold drink anaethesthetises the taste-buds. Real ales are almost all tasty, so you don't want to zonk out the taste-buds. On the other hand, presented with an American Budweiser, for example, zonking out the taste-buds is the best thing you can do. In fairness to Aussies and Good Ol' Boys, of course, in hot countries ice-cold anything not poisonous is attractive.

Let me tell two true stories.

The scene is a busy real-ale pub in Northumberland about fifteen years ago. Two thirtyish women approach the bar in high spirits, clearly looking forward to having a drink together. As they get nearer to the bar, however, those confident smiles are replaced by signs of uncertainty. They stop dead. They look at one another for guidance.

"What shall we have?" asks one, eying the impressive array of about seven real ales and four lagers.

"Er...lager," the other replies. "A lager, please."

Scene Two is in a small real-ale pub in Essex this year. Most of the clientele in this particular pub are, say, 40+. In walk two studenty young people - an attractive, slightly punky girl and a slightly geeky-looking lad. They share a word as they view the choices.

"What'll you have?" asks the barmaid. The expected answer for many years would have been something like "one Stella and one vodka-and-lime."


"Two milds, please" the lad replies. The barmaid is surprised and checks the order. That's what they want. The mild is Oscar Wilde Mild, a recent winner of the Campaign for Real Ale's Champion Beer of Britain award.

Now just let me dream a moment about Nelson's Revenge, Doom Bar, Reverend James, The Black Douglas, Landlord, 6X, Late Red, Mersea Mud, Workie Ticket...

Plugging Places: the Bawdsey/Ramsholt peninsula, Suffolk, England

I'm going to pick a favourite place or area from time to time and say why I like it. This time - an out-of-the-way corner of coastal Suffolk. The A12 runs like a spine along East Suffolk, from Ipswich towards Norwich and Great Yarmouth, with fairly easy trips off it to Aldeburgh (art), Minsmere (birds) and Lowestoft (traditional seaside stuff) - and the railway follows a similar course -but although the Bawdsey/Ramsholt area is near to Ipswich and even Harwich as the crow flies, we aren't crows and the Deben estuary gets in the way. To arrive from nearly anywhere you need to go round Woodbridge and take quite a long trip seawards.

So the area isn't crowded. The beaches are shingle. But it has the character of an island, quirky, special, running to its own rhythms. The open East coast scenery is beautiful if (and) sometimes bleak. It's a great area for birds (easpecially autumn migrants) and other wildlife such as butterflies, and it has some excellent pubs of which the Sorrel Horse is probably the best, though at the Swan you have good acomodation and Indian meals, and at the Ramsholt Arms an estuary-side location and good beer variety, if not really a proper pub atmosphere weekends. There's history too: Bawdsey was the number one location for the development of radar, without which the history of the Second World War would have been very different. Martello towers from the Napoleaonic Wars and "pillboxes" from the Second World War point out that this has been a possible invasion area since Celtic times.

The villages contain some interesting buildings (Bawdsey especially) but aren't picture postcard pretty. Back towards Woodbridge is more good birding (and UFO-chasing) territory with Hollesley Common and Rendlesham Forest: the latter has signs to a UFO trail, though I doubt if any UFO pilot would understand them, and if (s)he did, might ignore them. Towards Woodbridge also is much older history than 1939, the early Saxon royal burial site and museum at Sutton Hoo (Hoo may well refer to Long-eared Owls, so back to birds again).

It's all worth a day trip, but even more worth staying a couple of nights.