Alistair is a natural story teller and even on the dull stretches of the path that passed the back of an industrial works he could whip up a tale. He knew these factories by name -by nicknames even - and he told a few choice tit-bits about the companies behind the security fences. Who had polluted the ground water? How little they had been fined by the local council? Which sad official had allegedly committed suicide in the fallout of publicity? He daubed conspiracy on these high walls.
Who knows what’s true? I did not fancy playing spy on these companies, their privacy maintained by razor wire and the careful manipulation of the media. I was told that one of their worse weapons they deployed was to threaten to axe local jobs. It bought loyalty and silence from those who had a conscience.
The various strands of Alistair’s anecdotes twisted and jinked as they made their way back along the line of our party. They fanned out into other similar stories of corporate greed. The ‘campaign for this’, the ‘action against that’ sprang up in the conversation. The whole tone of the talk brewed up into a meta-conspiracy.
I found it difficult to stay up with the logic of all these strands. I felt like I had landed a part in an episode of the 'X-files’. It felt odd standing on the other side of the corporate fence.
During the day the group walked slowly, pointing out wild plants, eating up sandwiches, bunching and then spreading out like a caterpillar walking along a leaf. I enjoyed observing the dynamics of the party ebb and flow. I found myself floating from conversation to conversation picking up the name of a hedgerow plant one minute and then listening to the story of the Ploughshares raid on an aerospace factory the next.
I love these kind of walking parties. A strolling self-contained world like a Jane Austen novel, full of the courteous conversation of people who do not know each other very well, and with a well-written script of understatements and terse one-liners. It was a shame that I did not get many opportunities to walk with other people.
It was about four o’clock that afternoon by the time the party reached Blickling Hall. The rain had come on again, and as we sat in Blickling’s tea shop it became obvious that Alistair and I were the only members of the party keen to keep walking to the coast. I think that neither of us had realised how late in the day it was.
My impression of Norfolk had been fixed in my mind by prejudice. I imagined it to be flat, a featureless county made up of the huge fields. My walk up from Ellingham two days before had done a little to dispel my prejudice but the walk from Blickling to the coast completely destroyed my preconceived ideas. By the time we came out onto the cliffs above Sheringham we had walked through woods, crossed pretty streams and climbed hills while walking some of the best estates I had seen anywhere in the country.
It was a long walk. Alistair kept going with a stream of information and we stretched out across the parklands trying to see in the falling light. Even with the long days of May it became obvious that we were going to end up walking right into the night before we reached our end point at Sheringham.
I slept as we walked, slipping off into lazy dreams, only to be snatched back when a rude root tripped me up.
I remember that we ran for awhile. Stomping down the slope of a sandy hill, breathing heavily like the hunt was after us. I was asleep as we half jumped, half fell through the snagging leaves and branches of the woods. We walked on and the miles kept coming. I felt our feet slowly turn the Earth.
It seemed appropriate next morning that I had to trespass to get back to the sea. I had the impression all through the walk that the sea was being denied to me. At Orford by a barrier of shingle and the night before by the dark hanging over the water. The sea came to symbolise my desire for something I could not name.
I loped around the edge of a golf course that blocked my path, arriving at the cliffs on the western edge of Sheringham. I stood and peered down over their edge to the sea and I felt the proximity of its smells and sounds. But the sea was down there and I was up here. I walked and my route took me away from the cliffs before I had a chance to get down onto the beach.
This was the morning that I finally understood the title of one of my favourite books. ‘A Time of Gifts’. In his wonderful story of walking, Patrick Leigh Fermor captures the essence of the Europe of his youth. His descriptions of the Thirties give a sense of a world that has now completely gone. Not only does he describe the variety of landscapes he saw on his walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople but he also gives an insight into the gifts of kindness and wisdom given to him along the way. This book was one of the reasons why I set out to see England.
At breakfast that morning I sat and listened to the chatter of a happy, relaxed family. I had to laugh when I learned pretty quickly that the young son of the family had been named after the family’s stove. Behind the humour I was impressed by how seriously this family had taken to being a family. They had bucked the trend that says you need money to be happy. The father and the mother had decided to be around when their children were growing up and had given up opportunities to earn conventional livings. It made me think about how I had been living for the last few years.
Alistair and his partner Chantal had done an amazing job of finding me places to stay while I was in Norfolk and rather than tread the well known bits of the county I found myself wandering through unsung bits of heathland and farms as I walked to places I had never heard of.
After the hills of North Norfolk the west of the county marked a contrast. A wide land of arable fields most of which was reclaimed from unproductive sand. A landscape of capital. A wide world with hedges and quiet roads.
I had been walking for most of the day. It had been quiet and I had made slow progress against a fierce head wind. My legs were tired and my mind kept flashing back to the night before. As my eyelids closed to cut out the sun I was walking with Alistair in the dark again. I dreamed as I walked through the villages of Great and Little Walsingham. My stupor was shattered by a blast of a police siren.
"If I were you I’d get orf the road" said a policeman leaning out of the window of his car. He seemed irritated but also concerned so I stepped up onto the verge. It was only as I stopped and turned round to talk to him that I became aware of the fifteen coaches that I had backed up behind his police car.
Walsingham has long been a place of pilgrimage and I decided to come here this morning to take in the sights of the old Abbey and the Slipper Chapel. Places that had seen many a walker in its time, including a barefoot Henry VIII doing penance for the nastier deeds of his life. It just seemed appropriate to come to this place. What I had not planned on was that the shrine of Our Lady was still a place to pull a crowd.
Your modern day pilgrimage has become a bit of a day out. The sack cloth and bare foot walking of the Middle Ages have been replaced by the cardigan and a ride in a coach. After a dazed day on my own this whole scene took on the quality of a dream. Suddenly the quiet lanes of rural Norfolk were filled with milling, talking, singing people, none of whom seemed able to see me.
I rounded the next bend and was welcomed back into the silence. I focused on my footsteps and where I was going to stay; another kind family who had offered me a bed for the night.
© Gavin Stewart 1996-2004
