Historical Diversity

At seven a.m. on day seven of Rachel’s walk from Manchester to London via the canal towpaths, she set off across the fields to where she left off yesterday - Bridge 63 over the Grand Union. According to our rough estimate her average progress is 27 miles per day and she should arrive at her intended destination, The Rosemary Branch canalside theatre pub in Islington on Sunday night, after nine days of relentless toe-bashing. Her blistering pace (now I see where the phrase originates) has created extra work for logistical support (me) in the form of medical care. This morning I lanced a blister so swollen that the fluid squirted into her curious face. My daily shopping list now includes plasters as well as food and drink.

But, despite my onerous duties and our rapid transit, I have found some time to appreciate the route itself and the opportunities it presents to experience slices of England’s history at first hand. Through unpopulated farmlands there are stretches of canal which still have the feel of the 18^th century about them: the silence of the pre-machine age, the grooves worn by tow-ropes on the edge of a bridge - even the act itself of walking to London evokes a time when travel did not generally involve wheels. Then there are the reminders that canals were built as vital transport for industry: the ancient and often ruined mills, factories and kilns; the abandoned quays and warehouses – the numbers of which demonstrate the huge scale of enterprise during the industrial revolution. At times the railway runs alongside illustrating the fact that technological innovation disrupts status quo. Elsewhere lorries on the motorways thunder close by, in their turn replacing the trains as the preferred means of transport for industry.

Now that we are in Northamptonshire, the Pennine hills at the start of the walk are a distant memory. The terrain has been flat through the Midlands and will remain so until we reach the Chilterns on the outskirts of London. What does change, however, is the colour of the soil and, as if sympathetically, the local accent. I like to think it is no coincidence that the stony soil on the fringe of Manchester is a suitable match for the clipped vowels and abrupt speech patterns of the locals; and as we moved through Cheshire the relaxing of the Northern voice seemed appropriate to the fields of reassuringly dark brown earth. Around Stoke, famous for its clay, I noticed a peculiarly sticky, rounding of the accent which made even large, macho-looking blokes sound slightly camp; the terrain of the West Midlands is particularly flat and dull which, around Droitwich, is reflected in the accent – unenthused and pessimistic sounding, with hints of Brummie; and in Northamptonshire, with its tilled fields of rich, reddish-brown earth, the local accent comes across as relaxed and imbued with the confidence of  a predictably good harvest.

Nor is it really true that all towns are now the same. Along with their traditional patterns of speech, some retain a good proportion of the buildings and layouts that formed them in the first place. In many of the High Streets it is evident which towns evolved from rural markets as opposed to industry and, despite the omnipresent national retail outlets, there are local names lingering nostalgically over the offices of solicitors and estate agents.  On the outskirts they do all look the same: but when you are in a hurry and in need of a supermarket, there is some satisfaction in that. No responsible logistics support person has time for searching out local organic produce in specialist shops.

I would like to tour the shires of England in a more leisurely fashion one day but, for now, I must make haste to the next rendezvous. I phoned to book a pitch for tomorrow night near Iver in Buckinghamshire: the lady sounded awfully like The Queen.