I actually headed west when I left Andrew’s house that morning because I had to spiral my way around to Chepstow before I could get up onto the deck of the massive motorway bridge which would allow me to walk eastward across the Severn. I crossed the Wye twice in the space of that first hour and the tortuous route I took through Chepstow’s housing estates was a foretaste of a day which would find me making detours and walking in circles.
Up on the motorway bridge above the churning River Severn the sheer size of the river struck me again. It took me the best part of an hour to get from one side of the bridge to other. The traffic on the bridge was light that morning, Pauline and I stopped on the way across and enjoyed the view of the new Severn crossing being built a little way further down the river. I felt dwarfed by everything around me.
The rest of the morning went by slowly. A new motorway link was being constructed to the second Severn crossing and the work had ripped up the foreshore route I wanted to follow. When I came away from the bulldozers walking inland I found that way blocked by live firing at a gun club. I abandoned the back way and walked south towards Avonmouth on the grass verge of the main road.
The sour smell got stronger as I came closer to the ICI works. As I walked the remote controlled cameras panned keeping pace with me along the perimeter fence. I walked head down feeling like an intruder. I felt like a criminal and tried to hide my face.
The things that steam steamed, the things that whirr whirred and the continuous processes of this giant works continued on processing without drama or human intervention.
After the chemical works came the fuel depot, then a wrecked looking smelter and a four mile walk along an industrialised A-road that led to the modern port. I lumbered along like an overladen lorry. It was Sunday and I had the road to myself. I tried to work out where Pauline would be on her journey home and wished that I had gone with her.
The next set of circles I walked in was a desperate attempt to find a way up onto the deck of the massive M5 bridge. The bridge that would take me south over the River Avon. I circled along the main streets and then up through side streets and alleys gradually working my way from the river. The frustrations of looking for a way up was nothing compared to the frustrations of actually walking along the bridge.
Unlike the M4 earlier in the morning, the M5 was heaving with traffic. A mad production line of cars, caravans and terminally bored children. I had spent so long in the clean air I shrank from the stink of car fumes. By the time I reached the other side of the Avon I had a headache and felt depressed.
This was obviously the day I was destined to get lost. I wandered south finally breaking out into open countryside as I headed towards Bristol Airport. I had half arranged to stay with Pauline’s second cousin and was trying to reach the village of Wrington but somehow, instead, I found myself stuck in the wooded folds of Goblin’s Coombe. I consulted the map but it was no help so I fished out my compass hoping for guidance. My little metal friend was also having an off day. I settled on a straight line keeping the sinking sun to my right and ploughed south through the woods like an angry bear.
Next morning at four I woke up with a deep seated guilt about washing up. Passing through so many homes I had been the recipient of a never ending stream of good will. I felt that the washing up was one way I could say thank you even if I ended up causing more harm than good. I am sure there are one or two pieces of china that I put away that will never see the light of day again. Still it was a rule that the walk had commanded into being and last night I had somehow broken it.
I only went back to sleep after I had conducted a hunt that ended in finding a dish washer.
I did not really have a route as I headed off from Wrington next morning. This was one of those sections of the walk where I knew where I wanted to go and had just joined places in my head with a dotted line. The dotted line took me south towards the Mendip ridge.
It seemed like a short stroll going up and over the Mendips and before I knew it I was above the town of Cheddar heading down town centre to a buy a cheese sandwich.
I had planned to find a way to walk up the Cheddar Gorge. However after taking one look at the tourist road that ran up the gorge I decided that I would have been like a skittle in a bowling alley if I had gone up that way. I did not fancy my chances with the descending holiday traffic and settled in a restaurant to enjoy the holiday makers instead. I could get used to the easy life.
I had been walking now for many days over hills. I was struck by how flat the fields were going south out of Cheddar. I was coming to the edge of the Somerset Levels.
I walked on out into the fields crossing over the deep drainage ditches on narrow plank bridges and then hit up against the ditches where the bridge had been removed. I long-jumped the first ditch landing like a sack of spuds and then improvised a pole-vault with a rotten looking stick to get me out of the field. Fortunately this first taste of the wetlands was not very wide and I soon found myself climbing up the side of Callow Hill. From here I got my first view of the Tor. The ruin on the hill that told me that I was coming to Glastonbury.
Glastonbury. No personal crusade could possibly avoid Glastonbury. Its very name rings with romanticism, with escape. It had been one of the first places that I had pencilled in on my route around England. On a previous visit I had enjoyed a good few hours tripping around the skeletal remains of the Abbey enjoying the legends of Joseph of Arimathea. Glastonbury has always been more than just a town based on archaeology.
Glastonbury has become a New Age Mecca. The capital city of the crystal world. A shop-front for the incredibly badly written books about crop circles and sorcery. Its name resonates with myths and legends, of Arthur, of Lancelot and the Holy Grail. It is a dream for straw clutchers, for ley liners, for errant knights and anyone else who happens to put a foot into the alternative camp. Is it any surprise that I gravitated there too? Gawain in his bruised arms rode quietly into the glade.
The glamour of Glastonbury makes its own problems. Just like me, many other people come here following rainbows. Unfortunately the pot of gold is closely guarded and many of the people who come to Glastonbury find nothing but homelessness and the problems that they were trying to run away from.
I am embarrassed to admit that I barely noticed the begging in the other towns I passed through over the summer. In almost every shopping street that I walked I saw at least one individual begging. Often young, often able-bodied, beggars were people that I had to make myself see. Here at Glastonbury I took off the blinkers I had needed to survive in London.
As a teenager I had read George Orwell’s great odysseys of the 1930’s ‘Down and Out in London and Paris’ ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’. I remember reading about the tramps with curiosity because he was describing another age. In my naiveté, in the safe house of the Sixties - the degradation that Orwell described was as anachronistic as the dirt and disease of Dickens’ London. Begging, kids dying on the streets from malnutrition were a thing of the past. The generation that won the war had given me the Welfare State which had undertaken to inoculate me, to educate me, to rectify my lousy eyesight. It would have housed me if I had needed it. After five years of commuting into London through Euston, I had become disgustingly tolerant of the sight of beggars.
That night I stayed with the Quest Community. A safety net provided by a religious couple who saw it as their work to catch the people who came falling off the rainbow into Glastonbury. It is difficult work and in a short time of being at Quest I felt the tension that inhabited the house. One of the people who had been staying at the Community stormed in during the family meal, melodramatically threatening to return his wooden cross and leave. It is not work that will attract any glamour and my hosts spent most of the evening trying to restore peace to the Community.
Next morning I woke up and smelt the coffee.
Walking back through Glastonbury looking for breakfast I realised just how ordinary and just like everywhere else it really was. The nice lady who served me breakfast had dyed her hair red and wore it in tiny plaits but despite the hippie skirt and the Indian crop top she was a business woman. While I ate she talked on the phone to her accountant about personal allowances and annual returns. Somehow I found her conversation reassuring.
As I headed over Wearyall Hill I took in a last view of the town. I wondered why the view of the Tor behind me had given me such a thrill as I had strolled into town yesterday. I should have remembered that being mazed by sorcery is part of every errant knight’s journey.
