WHEN WALKING

London to Birmingham, Day Two

Berkhamsted to Milton Keynes, 42 kilometres.

Today was a day of two halves, as they so often are. The morning, a continuation of a happy tradition. The afternoon, the culmination of decades of wondering. The halves have little in common, save their 80s roots.

Packed lunch

I was 19 when I met James, an 18-year-old standing at the door of his college room, not letting me in. Eventually he relented and thus started a nearly forty-year tradition of feeding me sandwiches and pork pies.

So today, it was with great joy that I woke up and found the message on my phone: “Could you be at Tring station at nine o’clock?” I was delighted to do this. He barely needed to send the follow-up, “I’ve made sandwiches.” At nine o’clock he arrives at the station. I have run across the hill, taking a shortcut to get there in time.

James is as delighted as I am by the world of the canals. We both have a hankering for a pre-car world and find it as we stroll along the wooded tow path, past the 18th century mechanics of the lock and the canal. We are delighted, and we practise hard, as we always have done, not to judge anyone on what they’ve done with their boat.

Although we stop for breakfast at a café by the water, the highlight, we know, will come later. From half past twelve onwards, James gives me the go ahead to find a suitable spot. At one o’clock I find the perfect bench placed in front of a lock, and for our entertainment a woman and her boat emerge into sight, lifted by the water. We sit there, and James produces his sandwiches: homemade bread, cheese and onion, two for him, two for me. No pork pie; apparently it’s hard to find them nowadays. But the old man’s chocolate is produced as an after-sandwich treat.

Soon after, James peels off at Leighton Buzzard, drawn by the old narrow-gauge railway tracks leading to the preservation railway. I carry on, briefly befriending Kim, who takes me to the Tesco, and then walk on alone.

armageddon

My destination today is Milton Keynes. A place I’ve been desperate to see since 1984, when an advert at the cinema showed a small boy cycling through the underpasses, through the country, through the streets, with his red balloon, off to the Milton Keynes balloon launch. I was mesmerised by this liveable town of the future, of children free to whiz around the town and country on their biked. And despite being told by everyone that the idyll is not real, I felt convinced Milton Keynes would offer something I could love.

But there’s also a niggling thought in the back of my mind. I don’t know if something strange happened in the minds of creatives in 1984. The date must have resonated. But it was in that year that Nena released 99 Red Balloons, and also in that year that Threads came out and showed us all the reality of post-nuclear war.

And in my fourteen-year-old mind, all three things — the advert, Milton Keynes, Nena and Threads — joined together. And I remembered that dread I felt as a 14-year-old when I worked out what the chances were that I’d live my life before the bomb dropped, and if there was a warning, how quickly I could make my way to the epicentre, and strangely, and most important of all, whether or not I’d be able to get to Marks and Spencer and buy myself a treacle tart and eat the whole thing before the end came.

I met two men on the canal who laughed when I told them about my wish to see the place, but they remembered the advert too, and they sang 99 Red Balloons. They warned me not to walk up to Netherfield and I was glad to have that line thrown at me. It seems that the people of Netherfield are getting their money from trade, but not of an Austen-esque variety.

And I carry on.

It was much too far today. Forty-two kilometres is beyond me at the moment. And for the last eight kilometres I’m checking the miles, looking for shortcuts, even considering buses, god forbid. The last three and a half kilometers, as I enter Milton Keynes proper, both me and my dreams of a utopian Milton Keynes are shattered.

I’ve never been to a town before, that I couldn’t find some good in. I thought that this would be a town that was built for cars and pedestrians and cyclists to share, but it’s not. It is a place ruled by the tyranny of cars. For me, it is hell on earth, designed by men in large country homes, who have no idea of the realities that will be faced by the people who live here.

The good people of Milton Keynes avoid the underpasses, and the overpasses and I wish I could do the same as I take walkways over roundabouts and enter tunnels under the dual carriageway. There are no streets of shops or cafes on the way in, just me motoring along on a scale that is not human. The cars are constant and the city feels designed to never be walked. I look forward to returning to the canal where I can overtake the traffic.

But 42 km was too long, and maybe the people here have a lovely time in their city, with their fresh legs and local knowledge. I too hope to see the place afresh as I leave tomorrow. Tonight I stay in EasyHotel Milton Keynes. The room is comfortable but has no windows, and for once I do not care.

I feel it only fair to do justice to all but the last hour of this afternoon’s walk with a few pictures. I shall also try and find some positive images of the city itself when my legs grow back tomorrow.