It was quite by chance that I stopped in the early morning heading north out of Dunwich. I would not have heard the marsh song later in the day over the sound of my breathing. I had stopped on the track at the end of the tree line looking for my hat, screwing up my eyes against the low sun. I listened. Out there, beyond the familiar noise of the trees, something else called to me. As I sat down on the path I heard the music of the wetlands.

Most of the time marshes are inaccessible to humans. Not really land, not really water, they are a boggy, blurred line between the two. I was lucky however as this piece of Dunwich Marsh had been opened up by a series of boardwalks. I was able to walk out over this mysterious place following my instincts.

I remember sitting down on the edge of the boardwalk in the sun, closing my eyes again and really listening to the marsh song.

It’s the sigh of a lover. A silken rustle of the rushes which then turns to a hollow moan as the stronger gusts of wind set the tassel tops vibrating like cheerleaders’ pom-poms. A layered siren song, mixing the reed notes with an unknown threat moving through the black water.

I had told myself earlier that morning to take a good look at Dunwich before I strode off ; at the grey flinty walls of the ruined friary; at the excellent Ship Inn - as it would probably be gone by the time I next came back to it. Over the centuries, the erosion of this coast has claimed a lot of land and almost all of thriving Dunwich has now tipped into the sea. This prosperous town is not much more than a footnote in history now and the occasional ghost story about the church bells ringing under the waves.

I had many reasons for the route I took. I walked, for instance, through Steeple Bumpstead in Essex simply because I got a laugh out its name. I came here to Dunwich because I remembered it from history classes. Dunwich was one of those anecdotes in history that, like a sweetened pill allowed me to swallow whole the endless dates of O Level British Political history. Dunwich was a rotten borough. Even now I can recall the explanation.

Reaching back over many centuries Dunwich traditionally had MPs and the local landowner who controlled the ruins of the town found it convenient to keep this anachronism going despite its obvious unfairness when towns like Manchester had no representation at all at Westminster. Under the veil of a respect for tradition Dunwich had become a very cheap way of buying power. The great democratic reforms of the nineteenth century finally swept away the privileges of the borough of Dunwich but its story stands as a reminder of the need to keep our political processes renewed. Perhaps Parliament should meet in a small skiff off Dunwich once a year just to remind everyone of the hazards of rocking the boat for personal gain.

Later that morning outside the elegant church of Blythburgh I realised that I had a choice of routes. Originally I had planned to go all the way up the coast to Yarmouth. But I had been offered a bed by some friends of friends in the village of Ellingham and this tempted me to walk inland, cutting off a large corner on my way to Norwich.

At first I followed the River Blyth upstream. It was an intoxicatingly easy route which I followed for want of thought, still hoping to hear more sounds of the reeds. The character of the river, however, changed abruptly, and it became a glorified drainage ditch. The reeds of marsh gave way to enormous tangles of nettles. I was tipped out of my day dream on to a small country road.

Without really thinking about it I was heading for Halesworth. This had been one of the places on my original list of places to visit and I felt nostalgic as I walked towards it. My mother’s Aunt and Uncle had decided to retire here from London, though by the time that I remember visits to Halesworth Aunt Peg had been a widow for quite a while. As I walked, Peg’s face came back to me, that and the quality of her voice. Nothing else about Halesworth came to mind so I skipped through the town itself, happy that my memory recalled what mattered from there.

As I said, this was my day for getting acquainted with my senses and as I walked I was blithely unaware that I was just about to have a reunion with my sense of smell.

What a character smell is. The most guttural of the senses. It’s like an earthy old relative with a basic sense of humour. It’s a great leveller as well, as it is hard to prattle on about anything intellectual when Old Uncle Olfactor is in the room. He’s too busy guffawing and yelling at you that someone’s dropped one.

I had been aimless as I wandered north passing through the village of Holton and wanted to get off the roads. The map clearly showed a couple of good footpaths that crossed what looked like an airfield so I decided it would be worth the threat of planes just to find a decent route. However what I found might once have been an airbase but now it was the battery farm. A concentration camp for poultry.

I felt uneasy as I walked beside the tarmac passing the huge wooden huts which were laid out on what had once been the runway. Huge fans ventilated the sealed windowless buildings, and as I walked I got a blast from one of the huts. I felt a deep seated animal fear rise in my guts. The sickening smell told me all I needed to know about battery farming. No intellectual premise I know carries the weight of argument of that smell. Its states emphatically- Buy Free Range or die of salmonella.

As the day drew on, it became more and more golden. A sweet Spring/Summer’s day, a message from June, saying to me that good things were coming. To complete my re-acquaintance with all of my senses I lay in some grass by the side of a field to rest and felt my back stretch out with an audible crack. It was good to get my rucksack off my back. It was good to feel England, with something other than my poor tired feet.

Early evening came on and I crossed into Norfolk, whistling as I entered Ellingham coming up the mill road. I began to believe that I might enjoy this walk, after all.

Next day I was back to sheltering from the weather.

I had taken out a bet with the bookies before I left home in May that the Summer of ‘96 would be the wettest on record. It did not seem likely after the scorching heat of 1995 but I considered it was a sort of weather hedge, a hang over from my days of working with Risk Management. I didn’t mind losing my money in the blazing sun of June but in May my bet looked like being a nice little earner.

I wished, as I stepped out in the wind that morning, that I could have stayed in Ellingham a couple of weeks. I felt at home there. The people I had stayed with reminded me of my parents and when I saw them happily doing the washing up in their bath I decided that a scruffy looking walker turning up on their doorstep would be nothing to them. I was right.

I learnt from them the value of the practical host. Rather than probing me with metaphysical questions about my walk the first things they offered were food and a drink, followed by a bath. They taught me the art of letting someone be. One of the most prized commodities that they gave to me in the short time I stayed with them was space. It is nice to be treated like a visiting celebrity but also nice to be left lick your wounds and collapse into a bed for a twelve hour kip. Mary explained they had sons; an unassuming way of passing off their kindness.

This day should have been an easy day’s walking. But I made hard work of stomping across the fields heading towards Norwich. I had naively assumed that I could find a route that satisfied my desire to see the Norfolk Broads. Being on foot is an excellent way to see any number of different types of landscape but the flooded world of broadland is, not unsurprisingly, best seen from water. I had to make do with hanging from a bridge watching the first rain drops of a shower performing a circle dance on the water’s surface.

Over the summer I became a regular church-goer. That is to say that I could be regularly seen coming and going from churches (as well as pubs, cafes and out of the way bus shelters). I came to realise their essential charm. Shelter. However, although at first the churches were places of sanctuary, places to escape the rain, after a while I took to visiting them for their own sake as I fell in love with this most traditional part of the English landscape. I particularly came to relish the first moments of walking into a new church. The satisfying clonk of the lifted latch, the Hammer Horror squeak of the old wooden door opening. Then that most refreshing of high summer moments, when the cold, stone air of the church brushes over your over-heated brow. Its so sweet, that cold air. Its like a nice old lady offering you lemonade.

I also came to appreciate that parish churches are mirrors to the communities that had grown up around them. I became a connoisseur of the one-page pamphlets that you find in churches. I added a whole array of architectural words to my lexicon, words I enjoyed, without understanding their meaning. I enjoyed the list of names of the flower committee rotas. The whole human hub-bub of these buildings.

You’ll never know what you will find in a church as your eyes struggle to adjust to the lower levels of light. Traditional polished brass eagles, or Sunday school class daubs. I saw just about everything from organs, to a drumkit and electric guitars. Not to mention the courting couple I flushed out of one small chapel in Lincolnshire. The latter, of course, underlining the true beauty of the country church. They are open, they are empty and they are out of the way.

On the last stage of my walk to Norwich, I led with my head. I walked to check points, ticking off miles. I marked the places I past like an over worked school teacher. Tick VG, Tick VG. Village of Buggermy, see me after school!

I walked to make the distance diminish.

I had been out in England for eleven days now and I had not even begun my education. I had only begun to realise that there was more this trip than distance.

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© Gavin Stewart 1996-2004