WHEN WALKING

Birmingham to Hereford Stage 2

Bromsgrove to Worcester: 25km

I write this at four-o’clock after a pint of bitter shandy at the pub in Tyberton. I had only ordered a half, but it was the first place that had been open all day, and the pint disappeared in minutes. With that, I am ready to overshare about oversharing.

I’ve had a particular podcast saved up for a rainy under-bridge moment, and I start listening to it on my three o’clock break, propped against a bridge wall. The woman is doing a series on bad advice, and I feared she was going to say that oversharing was a mistake. Instead, she argued quite the opposite. She talked about the idea of giving too little information—something we rarely consider. We always think about what we might gain by holding things back, but we rarely think about what we might lose by not revealing enough. She suggests it is often when we give too much information that we find our true friends or the jobs that fit us – in my case, the lodger who announced he always paid late, yet always paid in the end. Bless you, Fab.

It makes me realise that this has always been my worry with blogs and diaries. Every diary I wrote as a child or teenager contained almost nothing, for fear that my mum would one day read it. And when she did find them and read them out loud to my teenage niece, my niece’s only comment was, “Auntie Rachel, you were so boring.” I may well have been boring, but not quite as boring as those diaries suggested.

Now I’m blogging, and it’s rather odd knowing I have readers. Some I know, some I don’t. But because the lady on the podcast said it was OK, I feel free to be honestly, openly dull as I like with anyone who cares to listen.

So to get started, I thought the theme for today would be things that move me forward and things that make me stop.

The thing moving me forward today is the promise of a plate of chilli con carne and cake to follow at my cousin David’s house. The country I will be moving through is the country of my Auntie Janet, Uncle George, who met in art school, and their children, Kate and David, and they will be on my mind today.

I start in Bromyard, where David tells me I can find the museum of buildings (a trip for another day) the place where Uncle George learned how to move entire houses. Back in the 1970s, he and some friends rescued a listed Herefordshire farmhouse, dismantled it, and being unable to get permission to reerect it elsewhere, eventually put it into storage.

Memories of visiting the cousins in Worcestershire as a child are idyllic. They lived in beautiful old buildings, surrounded by beautiful things: a farm cottage in the country, a Georgian flat on Bewdley High Street, places with history unlike the homes of anyone else I knew. And one day, when renting became an issue, George remembered the house in storage, sold it to a museum in America, and bought a perfect beamed cottage in Hereford, which I shall pass by in a few days time, with a visit to cousin Kate, who married the farmer next door.

At Stoke Pound I photograph the Lock House, restored by the Landmark Trust and realise what a pioneer Uncle George had been.

These are my walking thoughts. My stopping thoughts are mostly about oversharing with strangers.

I stop by a lock for lunch and lean against it while I eat. Nothing makes me happier than when a boat appears. A woman comes from the boat to work the lock, and after chatting to her about boating life, my moment arrives: she lets me help. I help close the lock gates and feel, for a moment, as though I belong there. (Don’t worry dad, the desire to live on a boat will pass).

At my next stop I meet another woman, this one walking her dog. She seems less communicative at first, but I persist as we shelter together under a narrow bridge during a short heavy shower. I tell her about my walk from London, and she gradually opens up. She speaks about a friend who lost her husband and has recently started travelling alone. “I think she actually likes it” she adds with surprise. After a few more minutes of discussing the merits of doing what you like, we part as friends and I hope she’ll consider travelling on her own one day. She might actually like it too.

My final stop after the podcast break, is at the Speed the Plough pub, where I get the shandy that set this all off. Apart from the barmaid, it is an all-male crowd, all sitting at the bar. I don’t think they get many visitors here. After a while I am asked about my rucksack. “Well,” I say, “it’s brought me from London.” I know that saying this will have an effect and benefit us all. For me, there is a little recognition, which I need from time to time. For them it is something to talk about for five minutes after I’m gone.

The last stretch into Worcester, fuelled by shandy, is trouble free. A large plate of chilli is waiting. As an after dinner treat, David drives me to Malvern where we climb the hills to admire the views of the days gone by and the days to come, watching the weather moving across it all. It is artists’ country.