THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE
1; WALKING FROM SOMERSET TO LONDON
I have always had a yearning to do a linear walk across a slice of England. When we moved to Frome Somerset I started having day dreams of walking to London. The dream slowly took the shape of examining maps and planning a route. It was possible to walk all but the first ten miles along waterways the Kennett and Avon Canal and the Thames Pathway.
I decided to walk to London In May 2008, taking six days, immediately after my 69th birthday. There was plenty of walking background in my past. In my teens I was a keen hiker in the hills of Scotland and Wales. In recent years I have been turning out regularly with the Mendip Ramblers, always opting when there was a choice to do the longer walks. So I booked myself into bed and breakfasts at Devizes, Great Bedwyn, Newbury, Reading and Windsor.
This would mean walking about twenty miles a day. But it would be flat. There would be no navigational problems and hardly any stiles. A doddle. I decided to end up in west London.
I have in recent years walked along the Thames at different times from Hampton Court to Rotherhithe, as well as on canal towpaths between Brentford and Camden Town. I decided to end up at Richmond Bridge.~
So here we go.
Day One. I set off at half past seven and walk along roads to Bradford on Avon. I have never walked through this part of Frome before and notice things I never see when driving or on the bus. One house has the Arab Bismillah on the gateway. I reach the canal at Bradford at half past ten, have a coffee and pull out my copy of Nicholson's Guide to the River Thames and the Southern Waterways. This has 1:25,000 maps of the whole route, enough for my purposes. There are brief notes about things to see although the guide is mainly targeted at boat users. It is twelve miles to Devizes. The canal skirts Trowbridge to the south and Melksham to the north. We go over a main road that I have often driven along, totally unaware that I was passing under water. Two miles before Devizes are the Caen (pronounced to rhyme with lane) Locks, sixteen locks, one after the other. I am beginning to feel tired, and I do not welcome the gradient at this stage of the day. I reach my B and B, pleasantly exhausted. No blisters, but I do wonder if I may have been over-ambitious.
Day Two. I stock up from a supermarket with a sandwich, a banana and a bottle of milk. For fifteen miles there are no locks. The canal keeps to the contour and winds gently among the hills, with occasional cuttings and embankments. It is warm but not too sunny. A gentle breeze. At Wilcot one most elaborately decorated bridge, Lady's Bridge, was built to butter up a lady who demanded £500 from the Canal Company for permission to drive the waterway through her land. Nearby a bizarrely small suspension bridge crosses the canal. There are one or two locks after Pewsey Wharf, and then a tunnel, Bruce Tunnel, where the path has to leave the canal and go over a modest hill. After the tunnel the locks start to go down. This is a psychological fillip. It means I have crossed the watershed of southern England. I have left the waterways that flow into the Severn to the west. Henceforward the water flows into the Thames to the east. For many miles the canal runs alongside or close to the railway.
The occasional wharves have been transformed into popular spots for boaters, with pubs and services available. But older buildings, warehouses and former chandlers' yards suggest the past. The canal was built between 1794 and 1810, joining the Kennett that had been navigable from Reading to Newbury, and the Avon that was navigable from Avonmouth to Bath. It transformed the economies of the areas it passed through. One of the minor visible impacts it had was to change the pattern of building materials used.
Before the canals, buildings for the most part used materials available only within one day's cart journey. Bricks and stones were now used far from the kilns and quarries where they were shaped. The canals had a fifty year heyday, until the railway changed local economies further.
Railway construction used many of the techniques pioneered by the canals ' cuttings, embankments, tunnels ' but the railway companies saw the canals as competition. Some including the Kennett and Avon were bought up by the railways and deliberately run down.
I reach Great Bedwyn and stay at the Cross Keys inn. It is primarily a village pub but is able to put people up, but never more than two or three people a week. Run by a young couple but, of course, everyone is young these days. It serves the village, and the price is reasonable. It seems to be a survival of those village inns that would have been patronised by 1920s bicyclists in their plus fours.
Day Three I pass by Hungerford Church, built in the nineteenth century of Bath stone, brought here by the canal. Then Kintbury, with a splendid nineteenth century Gothic vicarage. The canal meanders through meadows and is joined by the river Kennett. Often the towpath is between canal and river. Occasionally, facilitated and controlled by weirs and locks, the two waterways merge.
After the railways strangled the canal trade, this canal fell into decline. Regular traffic continued until the 1930s and the last through passage was made in 1951. During the Second World War it became one of the country's internal defence lines. The canal is four feet deep, and, if well maintained, is sufficiently awkward to impede advancing tanks. We presume that the bridges have already been blown up. Pill boxes along the route bear witnesses to the canal's wartime role. In 1962 the Kennett and Avon Trust was formed to restore the canal. Voluntary efforts were supplemented by increasing support from British Waterways and by 1990 the whole canal from Reading to Bristol was open for navigation. Wharves became marinas and the Queen sailed through one of the Caen locks at Devizes.
I reach Newbury by mid-afternoon. This is actually the shortest day of the walk, only about 15 or 16 miles. Just as well, as the bed and breakfast I have chosen is a mile away from the canal.
Day Four The weather continues to be fine. I am travelling light with only one change of clothing. I carry nothing I do not need. If I need something I can buy it on the way. I carry everything in a school satchel. I hardly notice the weight.The whole route has been beautiful but the stretch between Newbury and Reading is particularly so. Sometimes the canal seems to pass through a tunnel of trees, the branches arching the water. I wish I could identify birds and trees and flowers. But ignorance does not lessen my appreciation. At times I pause to listen to the wind in the trees, the rich and diverse birdsong. It is like some celestial symphony. I have it all to myself! And it's free! And even more amazing, it continues even when nobody is around. I have no proof of that but I presume so.
A century or so ago some of the wharves, such as the one at Aldermaston, were places for picnics and outings, even organised games. There used to be a cigarette race where participants had to swim over a designated stretch with a lighted cigarette in their mouths.
The canal passes under the M4, whose rumblings can be heard miles away. Things change perceptively. The meadows are attractive enough, but I am conscious of the motorway and the network of railway lines as I reach Reading at rush hour. But I do meet Chris. I am sitting by a lock as he is working his barge through. He used to travel the canals with his wife. She died in January and he is tracing a journey they made together. He is scattering some of her ashes below each lock as he recites a poem. He is alone apart from a dog called Deefer. Deefer? I ask. Yes, Deefer, D for Dog.
Day Five I realise that I have made a miscalculation in my plans. I knew that Reading was forty miles from London, and that Windsor was twenty miles from London. It therefore made sense that it would not be more than twenty miles from Reading to Windsor. If you are a crow or a motorist that may be so. But the river winds up to Henley and round by Marlow and adds fifty per cent to the journey. I set out early thinking I may have thirty miles to walk, planning to walk ten miles, rest for an hour, walk another ten miles, another hour's rest, and then into Windsor by seven in the evening.
I walk the last mile of the Kennett to its junction with the Thames. I am now in commuter range of London. Houses, gardens, cars, accents all indicate comfortable affluence. The larger houses have swimming pools and/or tennis courts. Some have a paddock. One garden actually has a miniature railway running around it. There are more places where you can drop your poop scoop than where you can deposit my kind of rubbish, banana skins and empty milk cartons. But the countryside is beautiful if more manicured. And full of associations. The original W H Smith had a house north of Henley. I walk through Cookham churchyard past the grave of Stanley Spencer. The path rejoins the Thames below Cliveden and then I walk on to Maidenhead, passing Boulter's Lock, a great social venue in Edwardian times.
My strategy of ten miles walk, one hour's break, is not working. I stagger into Maidenhead at about six, calculating that I have walked twenty six miles so far and there is another six or seven to go. I see a bus, am tempted and surrender to temptation. What the Hell! I have in the past walked this stretch of the Thames Pathway.
Day Six I have arranged to meet my friend Sean at Shepperton at one o'clock and walk the last fifteen miles with him. I realise that the whole route, thanks to the unanticipated windings of the Thames, may be thirty miles again. I decide to take the train to Staines and to walk from there. River traffic is heavier and houses line the river. One striking feature of the river, and the canal, is the variety and attractiveness of the bridges. You hardly notice them when driving over them. But walking along the canal you are looking at them and have time to appreciate them. Henley, Marlow, Maidenhead, Chertsey, Walton, all contrasting and memorable examples.
I meet Sean at the Anchor Inn Shepperton, which lies on a village square by a church and other old buildings. Most people charge through Middlesex, commuting or heading for Heathrow. Yet off the beaten track, insofar as any track in Middlesex is unbeaten, there are these unexpected corners of rural England. We take a passenger ferry to the south bank and stride along. Sean is a racing historian and, just before we reach Hampton, we make a detour to see what is left of Hurst Park racecourse which closed in the early 1960s. We find what we want - some gates and a plaque by the river. Hampton Court and the curve of the river round to Kingston. I am now in touch with Theresa, my wife, who is coming to meet us, walking from Richmond to Kingston on the Surrey side. Yes, I am tired - actually, bloody knackered - but the finishing post of Richmond spurs me on. Near Teddington weir I see Theresa and stagger into a run to greet her. We reach the bridge at about 7. Sean leaves us and hobbles towards a bus, and I make the adjustment to a life that is shaped by cars, roads and rush.

PETER CLARK 2000