WHEN WALKING

London to Birmingham Day 6

Warwick to Pineapple Road, Birmingham: 33km

Suddenly, after six days, I’m back in car world again and I’m struck more than ever how spoiled car world is. Nevermind. There are practicalities to life, and walking to escape them.

It is a beautiful walking day today. Had I looked at the weather forecast, I probably would never have set out, but apart from a few heavy showers, where boaters battle the locks, it is sunshine with a few shady breaks from the clouds.

Where there are locks, and there are flights of them on this stretch, there are cafes. The first shower at Hatton locks coincides with “the best scones on the Union canal” and a last day cream tea for second breakfast.

I have learnt a lot in these few days, of canals, conspiracies, boats and birds. And one very good lesson I learn again and again is to be cautious of imagining people I see. This is not judging people, but seeing them and making up life stories and personalities that are simply not there. It is a gift to a walker with thinking time to fill, but a greater gift, as I’ve got older and developed the habit of actually talking to people, is getting the chance to discover how I have got them all totally wrong.

Coming back down to the canal at Shrewley, I turn back to photograph my own little accompanying tunnel, built for the ponies, damp and dark. A faint chugging comes from the darkness and a faint light. So I wait, and as the boat comes through, I get a slight acknowledgement from the man steering, who then responds authoritatively to the woman, “NO! I’m the captain!”

And thus the story of an awful toxic relationship is presented to me. I take an instant dislike to the man and pity for his wife and spend the next few kilometers imagining their miserable lives, and using their example to speculate on the nature of canal cruisers in general.

Later, when I stop and thank them for letting me finally get my tunnel photo, I discover, as always, how wrong my stories are. They are a lovely couple, Penny and Bruce, quite happy to tell me all about boating life. They live most of the year on their snug little boat. He used to work as a locum, he tells me, and found it a better way to go between jobs than staying in hotel rooms.

They let me, and it is the greatest treat, step into the boat and have a look at the setup. They tell me, as others have done, how I must watch the vlog “Cruising the Cut”. It seems this series is the voice of the canalling community. They tell me about different types of boats, the sort of boat I’d want, all the misinformation I’ve gathered from the internet, that you can get a boat that doesn’t need blacking, that a boat under a certain size can go on a trailer, that thirty foot would be quite enough for my needs, and toilet solutions ancient and modern.

I am tempted, dangerously tempted at that point, to get a canal boat. This is the point where I always ask myself: am I overthinking, or am I thinking through? I think what is actually happening is that I am being evangelised. However, susceptible as I am in this moment, the boat, I suspect, will join the list of establishments: the Galician farmhouse, the cottage in Uppony, the hollow on the South Downs, which over the years I have happily lived in in my mind alone. A boat is anchored, after all, and there’s nothing so free as feet.

I move on, turning onto the Stratford canal, but it is slow work with the growing friendliness of the midlands offering chats around every turn. My last stop before Birmingham is at a middle-of-nowhere baker’s shop I see advertised on a bridge. As I am leaving I am approached excitedly by a woman who declares “you are the woman we saw walking by the canal!” She shouts to her companions, “It is her! The woman we saw walking! It is her!” I appreciate her enthusiasm, but her companions from the boat are less impressed at a display of pedestrianism, and just nod and smile politely. She continues to question me undeterred until her companions call her to drink her tea. I hope she too may be inspired to take a stroll some day.

And so I follow the canal, idyllic to the end, through the suburbs of Birmingham before switching to the Birmingham and Worcester for the last stretch of water to Bournville and a quick hop on the roads to my destination on Pineapple Road. And when I get there… Cath isn’t in

Finally