WHEN WALKING

Magic Mountains and Worrying Sheep

Craswall to Ewyas Harold, 25 kilometres

The first miracle of today is that I wake up after a good night’s sleep. I think I’ve got the hang of the camp bed now and how to make it comfortable, or maybe I was just that tired.

The first part of the day continues equally well. There are a few hours of perfect walking along the foot of the Black Mountains: a springy path with bracken all around, sheep leaping out of my way, the mountains rising bare and beautiful on my right-hand side, glimpses of the valley below. I’m on the mountain, albeit the lower reaches. I couldn’t be happier. Maybe I am a hiker after all. I decide it’s rambling I’m not fond of.

I’ve developed a habit of talking to the sheep I come across, the lambs in particular, after reading a story of a farmer who had the RSPCA called out on him as his dog was worrying his own sheep. The lambs tend to stare when they first see me, and I tell them: don’t trust the dog when the dog comes. He’s on the farmer’s side. Hide in the bushes! Don’t follow the others! Don’t do what the dog wants you to do! And then they baa and run away. But still, I enjoy the little mantra.

Later in the day, I hear the familiar stampede of hooves. Luckily this time on the other side of a hedge from where I’m walking. And at the gate, a group of bullocks come to meet me. I swear their eyes are just as soulful as horses’. Slowly they get used to me and I scratch their noses as they push their faces through the fence, and I mutter: you poor, poor boys!

At the far end of the lovely stretch, there is a car park from where a footpath leads up to the top of the hill, and I see a couple coming down with their dog. I say hello. They don’t reply. Maybe I should persist. I don’t want to start forming unfounded opinions about them, but their silence leaves me no other option.

I start theorising that they’re too used to being separated from everyone in their cars. And I wonder, as I often do, how people can really understand the landscape if they just drive to a place. Walking makes you realise how the hills slowly rise, how the rivers cut through the landscape, because you have to deal with them. You understand what forms the extent of villages, peoples, nations. You understand why neolithic walkers built monuments as they came over the crest of the hill and saw that whole new landscape spreading out beneath them.

I am just moving on to another favourite theory about drivers being daleks, invisible in their metal exoskeletons, when I consider “Maybe they just didn’t hear me”. And I remind myself, I’m not averse to being taken for a little drive out sometimes.

Time to come down from the mountain.

After a short break to have lunch by a lonesone church, and reacclimatise to humanity, I arrive in Longtown, where the pilgrimage notes refer to a wonderful shop. However, when I get to Longtown, it’s the castle that impresses me. It’s a proper ruin, but also a proper motte and bailey, like in the school books. I read the descriptions on the notice boards and get a feel of how this place once was. I start having theories about landownership, so I quickly move on.

Just outside the castle grounds there is a small garden dedicated to a local man who taught boys and girls to grow vegetables and herbs. There is a board telling you what’s in season today.

When I get to the shop, it’s okay, but to me not as friendly as the more run-of-the-mill village post office shops I’ve been to. And outside, a little girl talks to a grown-up about her upcoming visit to Orlando, sitting there with the most beautiful Black Mountains behind her… Again, I stop myself. I grew up next to an area of outstanding natural beauty and I’m sure I committed similar sins. It doesn’t mean I didn’t love the hills.

But what’s really missing from Longtown, I realise, as I make a diversion on seeing a tower, is a church. There seems to be no real heart to this community. The church has been converted into a home, which, although beautifully well kept, means it is closed to everyone else. I’ve got used to the idea of messy church for kids and reading groups and community causes. I question whether the church has the right to sell off buildings which have been paid for by people over the years. But then I think, if they have no choice, at least they’re using the funds well elsewhere in the diocese. But poor old people of Longtown.

Maybe they’re fine. Maybe they’re in the pub. And besides, Dorstone is just down the road.

The walking will soon become as difficult as ever. Beautiful bits and difficult bits where my childhood dream of living in a bush seems to be coming true. Eventually I have to completely give up on Walterstone after wading twice through a quagmire of cow-churned muck and finally seeing a broken bridge hidden thick in an overgrown bush of nettles and brambles. I take back to the lanes.

This decision leads to my happy encounter of the day, as a woman out watering her plants calls me over for a chat. She tells me there is a shortcut from Rowlestone she used to take years ago, but it’s probably completely overgrown by now. I feel sure this will be the route I am supposed to take. But she continues, you’ll pass a farm, Hill Farm, if you take that way. I lived there in the 80s, escaping the Handsworth riots. I tell her my mother and my auntie also came from Birmingham, and my auntie ended up in Madley, and she said, yes, this is the place you escape to if you can.

I carry on to Rowlestone and over the roads that she had described, the old Roman road, she called it, although she had no idea why. And it’s pretty plain sailing until, just with the church of Ewyas Harold in sight, I come across a field and the sign: cows and calves and a bull may be in this field. And there they are, running to greet me.

So I’m forced to trespass, luckily just walking over fields cut down for hay, and make my way, a little bit late, to the village of Ewyas Harold, greeted briefly by donkeys on the village green and by a village hall which is warm, has a kitchen, and even offers blankets as well as the beds.

Walking too far and thinking too much is an indulgence for me. Thank you for yours.