English Walks — I
I think of walks a lot these days. My year in England was the most rewarding when it came to walks, even with the rain and the chill (or because of them?). You could walk in the South Downs or take that tiny, leaf-strewn path that led to the pond tucked away amidst houses, like a scene out of Barbara Pym. It was in a proper parish, as I just learnt! Or you could just walk into Brighton — there are pavements! — and look at the shops and hotels, which could easily take you back to the glamorous Brighton Rock years.
Walking the stretch from Brighton to Hove, applying a little imagination, you can see hansom cabs conveying men in top-hats and veiled women with fancy parasols to the doors of their hotels. You can stop at the graveyard to look at the moss-covered markers, reading names and creating histories in your head. I learnt from Bill Bryson in The Road to Little Dribbling that Sir George Everest, after whom the peak was named, was buried in Hove. If you fancy looking up his grave, he lies at St Andrew’s Church in the helpfully named Church Street.
There are few things as lovely as a sunny day in England. The skies are vast and alluringly blue, and you only have to walk a short way before you hit green swathes of hills or meadows or cliffs. To be fair, I do find it difficult to imagine a verdant setting when I come across the words ‘Thames Valley’, because the Thames was introduced visually to many people of my generation through Hindi movies, where London was the river, Big Ben, and Westminster. The recent addition of the London Eye and the Shard offers filmmakers some more variety, and explains why London is a better destination for a business tycoon than Sydney, where the male protagonist can have an office overlooking the Opera House only. (The women usually go shopping or have to be saved from misbehaving men on the subway and that can happen anywhere.)
When you walk in English towns or cities, you are bound to frequently stumble upon places made famous by people who lived there or stayed there for half a night on their four-day coach travel across the breadth of the country. Or you come upon pretty places with commonplace names, or instructions to do something. Let’s take a walk, and I’ll lead you randomly from Falmer to Canterbury to wherever else my photo album takes me.
From one of my first English walks, which transported me straight into Austen.
What does this tempt you to do?
The Barbara Pym pond in Falmer. Close to it is a church, which I presume is St Laurence. The church has been closed since 2008, and there were hardly any people around every time we visited. The graveyard was always steeped in a lovely quiet, and I remember a sunshiny afternoon when it wore its best green for us.
More instructions.
The sign on the Sun Hotel at Canterbury, formerly known as the Little Inn and built in 1503, says that it was made famous by Charles Dickens “in his travels thro’ Kent”. I like towns where a castle pops up in the middle of a bustling, contemporary area. Cardiff, Kent, Pune, and Baku are splendid examples. We need more of these.
While we’re on the subject of writers, some gossip. What was Mama up to, was she feigning illness earlier?
On lazy days, when both mind and body were lazy, you could just wander to the edge of the university campus, and wonder what wonderful act of fate had put you in such an ethereal setting — you could turn anywhere and find beauty.
England, how I miss you! (But I also see that few of the photos above show sunny days, so we’ll remedy that next time. It wasn’t all grey.)
