Juniper Green

The show had finished and the applause had died down; it was time to go.

“Thanks for coming!” said a voice, as we made our way up a couple of steps and slowly along a narrow dark corridor. We passed a door on our right; an entrance to a bar, where the air was hot and humid and smelt of booze. Someone blundered in front of me, holding a plastic pint glass filled with lager, and followed our path to the exit.

Outside, it was dark. Although the air was fresher, it was still humid. After a couple of minutes of loitering, I had managed to plot a route on my phone to our accommodation. I didn’t know the route, so I started to blindly follow the path of blue dots that were set out in front of me.

After a couple of turns, we were walking down steep steps of a cobbled path towards familiar roads. Street lights soaked everything in orange and cast dim shadows over our path. On a normal night, I would expect the path to be empty; on this night, we were one of many people who were all heading somewhere. Voices were louder than usual because of the booze. Young women held on to each other as they descended, careful not to fall or trip over discarded bottles. A claustrophobic section widened and led us to a road where we took a left turn. I glanced at the phone; we were going in the right direction.

It was not too long to go before midnight when we reached a bus stop. A bus had arrived. The pavement was packed, forcing the crowds towards the closed shop fronts. We had stopped moving, hemmed in, surrounded by people, chatter and the repetitive thrum of a diesel engine. I put my phone in my pocket, out of view. Being a Londoner, I was used to crowds, but these seemed intense. I took a breath, accepting the moment, and accepting that we would be through to the other side once people had either got onto their bus, or had moved aside so the walkers could pass.

A few streets later, we were walking on some familiar streets; streets I recognised from the morning. I recognised posters, and signs; signs advertising comedy shows and theatre events. On our right was a park. Dance music and cheering emanated from a distant corner where there was some kind of open-air disco or rave. I could see little, except for shadows of figures hiding the street lights.

“Could I do that?” I thought to myself. “Would I enjoy doing that?” I began to reflect on my age and my tiredness; a day of walking had diminished my energy. Although the idea of a late-night disco had distant appeal, the idea was nothing more than a distant curiosity.

We reached the end of the park, and crossed a road, and followed a path until we were next to an arterial road that led out of the city centre of Edinburgh.

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“After the Olympics and The World Cup, the Edinburgh Festival is probably the third biggest public event in the world” said Jean, who was renting us a room for a couple of days. Jean lived in a neat art deco apartment block, close to the centre of Edinburgh, with her Ragdoll-Bengal cat, Timo.

“Are you here for the festival?” she had asked the first morning, whilst we made our way through an impressive continental breakfast. I explained that we were visiting a part of the city called Juniper Green, and that our destination had been chosen randomly by a simple Excel function.

“Do you know what there is in Juniper Green?” I asked.

“I think there’s an Iceland supermarket” Jean replied.

The following day, Jean had asked her brother about a walking route from her flat to the centre of Juniper Green. She gave us a slip of paper which contained approximately six written instructions. I had become accustomed to trusting my phone; it seemed to be reliable, having helped us to find our way back through the busy late-night streets of Edinburgh. Whilst my phone plotted a route that included a ride on a bus, or a walk next to a busy road, Jean’s route included a walk by a canal.

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The canal was easy to find. We took a left out of the apartment block, followed by a right onto the main road that heads towards Edinburgh, and then another left onto a residential street. At the end a street we found a section of a canal that was known as the Lochrin Basin.

The Lochrin Basin lies at the end of the Union Canal (also called the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal), which runs between Edinburgh and Falkirk, and then onto Glasgow. It sits in a district that is called Fountainbridge. A sign, entitled “Coal, wellies and beer” says something about its industrial history. It was closed in 1965, but then reopened in 2002 following a period of restoration.

Jean’s brother had suggested that it was an interesting site, and had been subject to redevelopment. The sign offered some suggestions about its distant industrial history: “The North British Rubber Company made everything from hot water bottles and wellies to tyres and boots for soldiers in the trenches during World Wars I & II. Fronting the canal, the factory site was the size of eight football pitches.”

Another sign offered hints about its modern use; it was a part of a 54-mile canoe trail between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The sign gave suggestions about “your next challenge”, which might include the “Great Glen Canoe Trail” or the “River Spey Canoe Adventure”.

Canoeing wasn’t the central sporting activity of the day. Instead, it was running; there were lots of runners. Runners who were clearly part of some kind of running challenge. As we slowly ambled along the tow path, numbered runners passed us, followed by the occasional serious cyclist.

Jean’s instructions had mentioned two key bits of information: we were going to find an aqueduct, and a river that was known as The Waters of Leith. Before our night out at the Edinburgh Festival, I had taken a short trip to a part of Edinburgh known as Leith to visit a former colleague, Maggie, who was a mathematician and folk singer.

I had met Maggie for lunch in an exclusive club called The Scotch Whisky Society, which also seems to double up as her ‘local’. The main club room is a unique combination of spectacular, friendly and cosy. Walls were painted in a deep maroon colour and adorned with the occasional painting. It is furnished with aging leather sofas and smart wooden chairs surrounding practical tables. At the far end of the club is the bar, which had hundreds of whisky bottles on show. Rather than giving names of whiskeys you wish to try, you give numbers which relate to individual distilleries. Maggie had her favourite distillery, and was in the market for a new bottle.

Over a scotch and a sandwich, we caught up. Maggie continues to teach mathematics at the university where I work, is currently studying Ancient Greek. She had also recently completed a short folk tour. She shared an anecdote that connected a folk singer with the origins of the Scotch Whisky Society, and said that she would send me a CD that contained a recording of a song which dates back to 1649.

After about an hour or so, it was time to go. She took me to see the nearby Waters of Leith, a striking riverside, which was just around the corner from the Society.

“If you follow the path of the river for 9 miles, you’ll get to Juniper Green” On the river, I saw a pair of canoeists, having a break.

Maggie stopped to take a picture of them.

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“How do we get from Juniper Green?” asked Sarah, at the Water of Leith visitor centre.

We had walked along the length of the canal and had found an aqueduct and a path that took us to a tourist information centre.

I wandered around an exhibition which shared some information about the area; in the 1880s there were 70 water powered mills along the river, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, the SS Sirius was built in Leith, and up until 1967 there was a railway between Edinburgh and nearby Balerno, known as the Balerno line, which supported industries and villages that followed the path of the river.
It was apparently easy; all we had to do was to find a path that followed the river, and this led to a disused railway line that went all the way to Juniper Green. We crossed a road, followed some signs and soon found a narrow tree-lined path that meandered its way with the river. As we walked, an occasional canopy of leaves darkened parts of the path, and took us away from any sense that we were in a capital city.

The winding path gave way to a straight one, and our route became very clear. With a mile or two ahead of us, we shared stories.

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Whilst I was deciphering a set of whisky tasting notes, Sarah was attending a 9-year old’s birthday party on the other side of Edinburgh. A visit to Juniper Green had also meant an opportunity to visit her goddaughter, who was incidentally visiting the city from nearby Bridge of Allen, a small town half way between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

“They’ve stolen my shoes!” was the first thing Sarah had said to me, when I met her at a communal garden in the centre of Edinburgh.

“They’ve stolen your shoes?” I slowly repeated her announcement, trying to understand.

Introductions were impossible. There were about five children, most of them around nine years old. It was a game of alliances being created and broken. Three children were ‘against’ Sarah and wanted to confiscate more than shoes, and another was ‘on her side’, who wanted to get her shoes back. Since I was the newcomer, and clearly knew Sarah, it was deemed that I was ‘on her side’.

Whilst Sarah was being chased by the children that were ‘against’ her, I got chatting to some of the adults of the group; the parents. We spoke about the Edinburgh fringe, the Scotch Whisky society, and parties.

“Have you seen this before?” asked the father of Sarah’s god daughter. Sarah had been wrestled to the ground by the ‘against’ gang. She had clearly charmed all of them. I heard children’s laughter, and screams of “stop it!”

“Once before. I saw her playing football with my friend’s kid once; she was very good. She really challenged him. He really liked it.” I remember that she kept the ball away from him, and didn’t let him win it back.

With Sarah on the ground, one child, had found a foam rubber sword and was approaching the ‘against’ gang with a degree of menace.

“Can you do something!?” Sarah implored.

“They’re not my children”.

After the menacing child had been called off by his father, Sarah made her escape.

When I found her, she was bent double and out of breath. She had a rest of seconds before being caught up by two giggling girls; one in the ‘for’ contingent, another in the ‘against’.

“Where are my SHOES!” she shouted.

It was time for piggy-backs. The two girls look turns to be carried. Sarah was now starting to sweat and stumble. I couldn’t help but admire her strength and resilience, and how much joy she had given those kids.

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The path led to a wide tunnel. A van was parked just outside the tunnel entrance. Someone was sitting on the side of the path with a clipboard and pencil. He was sketching something; a plan for a mural. Inside the tunnel was evidence of earlier paintings; a mural of flowers, followed by white paint that obliterated evidence of earlier graffiti.

At the other end of the tunnel we found a sign for Colinton station. It told us that the last passenger train had travelled on 30 October 1943. There was a reference to a stationmaster called John Kerr, who lived in a house at the top of a staircase that went from the tunnel entrance. The sign also told us that “Mr Kerr we renowned for his loud voice and hot temper”. I couldn’t help but feel that there was an interesting story here somewhere.

After a mile and a quarter, we reached the point in the path which was the site of the former Juniper Green train station. We left the path, and found what was a modern housing estate on a road called Woodhall Millbrae. The houses were modern, large and detached. Fancy cars sat on driveways.

The remainder of our walk was through a place called Dr MacKay’s Wood. A sign offered quite a bit of information. The land had been donated to Edinburgh council in 1939, by a local doctor, who had purchased it “partly to keep a pony, and partly to preserve the views”. He had stipulated that the area be “kept as an open space and laid out as an ornamental pleasure ground”. The area was said to be planted with a range of different trees, including juniper trees.

Juniper Green is a small village that sits just off the A70, a road which roughly follows the path of the Water of Leith. The village comprises of a small number of residential avenues, crescents and terraces which are populated brick and stone bungalows and houses. You could walk from one end of the village to the other in about ten minutes.

It wasn’t too long until something struck me; the people who we passed on the street said hello and smiled as we passed. There was the old couple who were coming out of the church, arm in arm.

There was a couple taking their aged Labrador for a ‘walk’, which involved wheeling it in a trolley that resembled a child’s pushchair, and a chap who was busy cutting his hedge. This was the second time we had come across Scottish friendliness on the A to Z.

At a cross roads, we found the heart of Juniper Green, perhaps the green itself, which was represented by a simple stone monument, that sat on a patch of grass next to a set of tennis courts.

“So, this is it, then?” asked Sarah.

I looked around. I was standing in the middle of a village that was just outside Edinburgh. In the distance I could see the Pentland Hills, a regional park which has 12 peaks; a place where people go mountain biking, walking, and horse riding. I had really enjoyed the walk from Edinburgh on the disused railway track. I quite liked the place. It was very different from where I was living.

We wandered to the main road, where we found the landmark that Jean had mentioned to us: the local Iceland supermarket, and then made our way to a place called Molly’s Café.

Molly’s Café seemed popular. It was split into two parts; a delicatessen on one side, and a café on the other. It was busy. A group of lads came in and sat down; they were after a lunch time fry up, and were possibly recovering after a night out. Behind us was an old man on his own who was trying to read the paper. There were two young women who were sitting down next to the counter, catching up over a coffee.

With sandwiches ordered, I asked the waitress about the area.

“There’s not much here, really… You can get your hair cut in a couple of places, though” I brushed my hand over my bald head, making her laugh.  “I really like living here; you’re close to the city, which is small anyway. There’s a real sense of community and there’s always a lot going on in the Parish Church. Nothing bad, really”.

In the deli, Sarah bought a copy of the local newspaper, which was called the C&B news, a glossy full colour publication which covered the areas of Currie, Balerno, Juniper Green, Baberton and Colinton. The front cover highlighted three key features: a beer and curry festival, Molly’s scone recipe, and an article about busses, trams and the climate crisis.

As local publications go, I can only describe it as excellent. It contained a lot of articles: a letters page, a detailed ‘what’s on’ listing page, a summary of planning applications, and an article about bins. It seemed to convey a sense of positivity.

An inspection of the planning pages revealed an interesting story. Molly’s tea room had recently moved, crossing the Lanark Road to its current location. The planning application was to “recreate the hole in the wall between the Deli and the former butcher’s shop”, where Molly’s café is currently situated. It goes on to say that “the application is unique in that it includes historical information – and a poem by Delia Perves”.

Delia’s poem was about Michael who used to run the butcher’s shop and his wife, Eileen, used to run the adjoining delicatessen. The last four lines of the verse, “a customer’s lament” reads: “the pensioners too would respond to your wit, mostly by collapsing and having a fit, but now that you're gone and decided to sell, to you and Eileen we wish you both well.”

After spending about an hour at the nearby Kinleith Mill pub, it was time to go. Although we could have easily spent more time talking to people and uncovering more stories, we had a long journey back to London.

We began the return journey by catching the number 44 bus back to Edinburgh.

Idmiston

We stopped at a village called Middle Wallop for something to eat. The M3 and M25 had been kind to us; there had been no accidents, roadworks or queues, and any worries about the journey taking “forever” had been unfounded. Our destination for the night was a boutique bed and breakfast room in an area of outstanding natural beauty that was slightly west of the cathedral city of Salisbury.

“I want to stay somewhere nice!” Sarah had insisted.

The place we had rented for our trip Harriston could only have been described as ‘functional’ if one were being brutally honest. If one was being creative, it could also have been described as ‘cosy’, if cosy meant that we had a room that kept us slightly warm and mostly away from Cumbrian snow.

I’m pretty sure I must have pulled a face when Sarah had insisted on staying somewhere ‘nice’; I worried that staying in a village that was in a slightly different area to the one we were visiting would be breaking our own self-imposed rules.

“I’ve looked; I can’t see anywhere to stay in Idmiston. There isn’t anywhere.”

I remember having a quick look online, and I couldn’t find anywhere either, but I did find some pubs that provided B&B accommodation, some small hotels in Salisbury, and a Premier Inn that was situated just off the A30.

“It could be like a mini-break!” insisted Sarah.

It didn’t take much for me to relent; to give up control of the choosing and booking of accommodation for our trip to Idmiston. There was, I told myself, something to be said for a nice good night’s sleep in a place that was nice and pleasant, nice and comfy, in a nice location.

Our meal at The George could have been described as nice too; the waitress was attentive, the food was nice, and there was a nice family in the restaurant area enjoying a nice meal together. The soap in the gents was also nice; a luxury brand that was said to smell of Espresso and Martini.

We found ourselves chatting about where we had just travelled from; about changes that were taking place in our local community: the building of a new block of flats and the opening of a new ‘micro pub’. I told Sarah that I had been in touch with the manager of a new three-screen cinema that was going to be opening in a disused part of a shopping centre that was a ten minute walk away from where we lived. I wanted to explore a vague idea of whether it was possible to run a comedy event there.

“Is that what happens? We travel all the way to all these places and then talk about where we’re living at the moment?” said Sarah. It was an interesting point.

It took a further half an hour of driving to arrive at our destination, which turned out to be as nice as expected. There was a TV, tea and coffee making facilities, hot water, and no evidence of any spiders. When everything was turned off, there was silence. There were no drunken voices, no police sirens, and no hiss of tyres or sound of engines.

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We had plans to do some exploring and walking the following morning, but this plan had to be curtailed.

“I think I’ve got the plague” said Sarah.

She had succumbed to a heavy cold overnight and was confined to bed. Leaving Sarah to recover, I donned walking boots, a waterproof jacket and explored parts of an area known as the Chalke Valley.

This was my first proper visit to Wiltshire. I had visited twenty years earlier, which involved a touristy trip to Stonehenge. I have a distant memory of parking, a cloudy sky and a drive back to somewhere, possibly London, but maybe Brighton, in a car that was the same age that I was. I have another memory of that trip, but not one that involved Wiltshire; a visit to the nearby cathedral city of Winchester, situated in nearby Hampshire.

Holding a map I had borrowed from our accommodation, I plotted a path across a stream and onto a narrow farm track. After picking up a bit of pace, it wasn’t too long until I started to notice a disproportionate number of large thatched cottages, which seemed to be an architectural feature of the area.

I crossed the stream again, which I realised was actually a river. I continued to follow a narrow track which led to a church that dated back to the 12th century. I have a generally ambivalent attitude towards churches or other buildings that are associated with collective worship. I find them to be mildly baffling curiosities; a physical manifestation of history and place, and distant symbols of control and power that I don’t fully understand or appreciate.

I crossed the path of the track and found a footpath that made its way past a farm. Five minutes of walking took me to an eerie expanse of open land that was marked on my map; the foundations of a ghost village that had been laid to waste due to the plague. There was a comment about the burning of houses and the shifting of the village to a new location. For some reason, I thought I would see something, some evidence of human habitation, but I saw nothing; just an open expanse of land; evidence of earth works that offered a distant suggestion of foundations.

The footpath took me across some fields filled with cows, and back into the main part of the village where we were staying. I passed dog walkers, and thatched cottages, and then onto a track that looped back to our accommodation.

Whilst Sarah recovered, I managed to find an online community or group called the “Porton, Idmiston and Gomeldon Forum” and made a short post explaining what I was doing (going through the alphabet, and visiting places randomly) to ask if it would be possible to speak with someone.

The first reply was from somebody called Simon who had written: “Keep going, and when you reach Dover get a fast boat across the water and join your EU mates.”

Simon had clearly seen my profile picture, which implied that I held a certain view about the political relationship between United Kingdom and the European Union.

To be honest, I had forgotten that I had changed my profile picture. I checked out Simon’s social media profile, and quickly realised that Simon and I were, quite possibly, very different people.

After having a restorative cup of tea, and a nice read of The Guardian, I received a further couple of messages. One message was from someone wanting to receive a fridge magnet from wherever my “EU mates” lived, and another was from someone called Kathy.

Not only were we going to visit Idmiston, we were also going to meet Kathy and Alan, who had lived in the village for three years.

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“That’s the River Bourne, which eventually goes all the way to Bournemouth” I noticed a tiny, barely flowing stream by the side of the road that runs through the heart of the village of Idmiston. Alan told us that during the Second World War, some Portuguese workers from the nearby Porton Down military complex built the wall that protects the road, and parts of the village from floods.

One of the features of Idmiston is that it serves as a staff entrance for a military site that I feel I had always heard about, but never really knew where it was. Porton Down is the headquarters for the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and another organisation called Public Heath England (PHE). The DSTL website says that it is responsible for providing “specialist science and technology services” for the government, provides expert advice and monitors national security risks. The PHE website offers a fluffier and less cryptic summary: “we exist to protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing, and reduce health inequalities”.

I knew a little bit about Porton Down from two TV documentaries, and a couple of news stories.

“One of my hobbies is, I think, watching television!” I confessed to Kathy.

The first documentary I remember was about how the site was dealing with the legacy of chemical weapons that had been manufactured during the First World War. I have a memory of mustard gas shells being transferred into some kind of hut, and the shells being opened by a remote controlled saw, and its contents being incinerated. I remember scenes which featured men in chemical protection suits and being surprised at how long it would take to safely dispose of all the stockpiles.

The second documentary I remember had a slightly different tone to it, but one that was a little more unnerving. It was a documentary about chemical weapons – in particular, nerve agents. If I remember rightly, the documentary covered a broad history of the subject, from their origins and use, to the present day. The present day section featured a scene from Porton Down, where a scientist was reportedly synthesizing a very small amount of a deadly nerve agent called VX.

I found this part of the film unsettling because it seemed to present a paradox; I couldn’t help but feel that the scientist seemed to really enjoy his work. There is, of course, another paradox that I understood: the capacity to detect and to protect against weapons means there is the need to have the capacity to fully understand and manipulate them.

“I think the site also works with bacterial agents too”, I continued, no doubt impressing Sarah with my documentary informed romantic chit-chat.

During our drive to Wiltshire, I had chatted about what little I knew about the genetics of the Smallpox virus (of which I know next to nothing about) and the ethical dilemmas that accompany its destruction, and hypothesised, without any sense of understanding, that Porton Down might hold strains of Bubonic Plague.

As we walked, crossing the tiny River Bourne, we passed pretty thatched cottages, Victorian looking houses, and neat bungalows. We were led to the grounds of the All Saint’s church, situated on a junction that led to the adjoining village of Porton. Kathy told us that she was one of the people in the village who had the duty of locking and unlocking the church.

Kathy led us inside. Although the church is open for visitors, it wasn’t used regularly, but there were signs of relatively recent activity: there were some papers on a desk close to the entrance, and hymn numbers were showing. I was drawn to the stained glass window at the back of the church which depicted familiar scenes; Mary with a child, a shepherd holding a crook. Scenes presented in different shades of green, bold reds and pinks; items of clothing shone in sharp yellow. Some parts had been repaired with clear glass, leaving the viewer to imagine the rest of the scene.

As I wandered, looking at the different coloured stone that made up the internal structural arches, Alan mentioned an interesting link to literature. A vicar of Idmiston called John Bowle, edited an annotated edition of Miguel de Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote that was published in 1781. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Bowle was an Oxford educated scholar who was understood to be “well acquainted with French, Spanish, and Italian”.

Interestingly, Bowle’s edition Don Quixote was published entirely in Spanish, and wasn’t at all well received by his “EU mates”.

An account of Bowle’s accompanying reaction, written by a researcher and academic Ralph Cox paints an interesting picture. He wrote a series of angry letters to a publication known as the “Gentleman’s Magazine”, singling out Giuseppi Barette, an important literary critic of the time.
Bowle doesn’t hold back. In one letter to the Magazine, he calls his nemesis a “sly, petulant, impudent, a slanderer and flatterer, a bully and poltroon, dissolute, fool”. He then concludes by saying that Berette is “adorned with every abominable endowment”. In his article Cox is reflective about Bowle’s contribution. Even through Cox describes his work as “an interesting pot-pourri of facts” about Cervantes and Don Quixote, he is also clear that “the development of truly modern Cervantean investigations” began with Bowle.

Outside, Kathy pointed out a house that was known as The Rectory, where presumably Bowle had once penned his very angry letters and done a lot of swearing in Spanish.

We continued our tour by walking up Church Road until we met a railway arch that was guarded by a set of traffic lights. We were at the entrance of the Porton Down complex. We could go no further, and could do nothing more than imagine what might be inside the military gates that were, without a doubt, monitored by security cameras.

There was one further more part to our visit; Alan led us to a small road just to the right of the main entrance, and we started to climb a steep hill. During a short five minute walk we passed a series of well-maintained residential park homes, and arrived at a summit.  It is a cliché to say that hills rolled, but these did. Wheat had been recently cut, and looking out in the distance, I tried to locate the church, but it seemed to be hidden by trees. Looking out, I could understand aspects of the geography; I recognised a gentle valley, and pictured the River Bourne below.

Kathy and Alan like Idmiston, and I could see why. It was quiet, except for in the morning rush hour when the Porton Down workers drive through Idmiston. It was picturesque and there were things going on. Alan gave a list of activities: there were exhibitions, walks, social events at the church, and some theatrical performances.

One of the reasons why they moved to the area was its proximity to Salisbury, which provides nights out, gigs, shops, and everything else that a large city has to offer. Idmiston isn’t too far from main roads, giving quick and easy access to other places. I remember comments about day trips to the coast, and easy visits to family members.

I really liked Kathy and Alan. On this random journey, I was again struck by the generosity, and trust, of strangers. Despite only meeting them for a couple of hours, I felt as if I had known them for a lot longer. We had things in common; Kathy had many years of experience of working in education, and Alan had worked in IT. Their friendliness and welcome had overwhelmed a mild feeling of unsettlement which accompanied the virtual welcome that Simon had offered me.

Later on in the day, I checked my phone. Simon had deleted his comment. It was almost as if it had never existed.

Harriston

It was snowing outside. It was luxuriously warm inside. As we drank our beers the cheery landlord of the Masons Arms, Gilcrux, poured the contents of a coal scuttle onto a very hot fire. Six locals stood around the bar, chatting, listening to music from an internet device that had replaced a juke box. The restaurant area was empty except for Sarah and I. Our chef (who was also our waitress) was happy to oblige and cooked us a couple of meals.

Gilcrux is a small village in Cumbria, and the site of a one bedroom terrace house that we rented for a couple of days. It was the nearest place that we could find to our destination, Harriston, which was an even smaller village.

Like some of the other places on the A to Z, I knew little about the area that I was visiting, other than simple headlines that are influenced by my own experiences and prejudices. If someone would ask me to quickly name two things about Cumbria I would say two things: the Lake District, and the Sellafield nuclear power plant.

I can count the times I’ve been to Cumbria on one hand. We had briefly been to Carlisle during our visit to Dornock. I had once been to a stag party in Ambleside, which involved a stay in a caravan park and the ironic joy of having to listen to an impromptu lecture about the rules of rugby. There was another time when I stopped off at Kendall to visit my parents who were retracing the steps of their honeymoon; their visit coincided with a leg of a motorcycle tour, which took me from Inverness, the outskirts of Glasgow and then down to Kendall via Carlisle. If I had been there another time, I can’t remember it.

My knowledge and experience of visiting Cumbria to complete the ‘H’ is, in some ways, similar to my knowledge and experience of visiting Powys, Wales to complete the ‘F’. I know little about these areas other than I know I’ve had a nice time whenever I’ve visited them and both are beautiful places. Another similarity (and one that reflects the reality of a pretend East Midlander who lives in London) is that it is necessary to make a concerted and dedicated effort to get to these places. This simple fact of distance is, perhaps, the most significant justification for my own ignorance.

The journey to Gilcrux had been punctuated by a stop in Macclesfield, and then a short diversion into Manchester, where I met Andy, an old university buddy.

I met Andy half an hour after he had finished coaching a group of teenagers; somehow they had willingly chosen to go on what I understood was a ‘cross country run’. I have a lot of respect for Andy: he’s bright, very charming, articulate, and has run his own business for twenty years, but I simply cannot understand why he likes running so much. I find running a challenging past time to understand. I place golf and running in the same category. To obnoxiously paraphrase a well-worn phrase, both activities, in my opinion, spoil a good walk.

We spent about an hour chatting; we spoke about career stuff, family stuff, and relationship stuff. His situation was different to mine; he has a family, whereas I don’t. In some respects, I’ve now hit a point in my life when I’ve started to notice families a lot more than I ever used to.

I see families on the Tube, families on the bus, and families occupying my local park. I avoid them. I’ve even been known to change carriages when a big gaggle of children and their parents step onto a Tube carriage, whilst pushing all their children-paraphernalia. It’s not because I don’t want to be brought out from my London ‘please don’t talk to me’ bubble by all the babbling and shrieking (although that might well be a part of it); it’s simpler than that. I’m starting to feel as if I’m missing out, and it’s a feeling that is starting to feel slightly uncomfortable, and a little unnerving.

Although I had been thinking about all these things for quite a while, my chat with Andy brought everything into focus. He has a great family setup, one that is clearly busy and full. In some respects, we’re contrasts. I’m filled with respect for my Andy, and that feeling is lightly tinged with envy that comes from a positive place that is called admiration.

I looked at my watch; it was about half past ten. I was tired with all that driving. I paid the bill and we both padded out into the snow and then onto our lodgings. When we got in, I noticed that the wood burner that our landlady had lit in anticipation of our arrival had gone out. It was time for bed, and it nearly time to discover Harriston.

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We followed the signs to a town called Aspatria, where we joined a road that took a curving path towards a railway station and then over a railway line that runs between Carlisle and Whitehaven. Having memorised a map, I roughly knew where I was going: a right at the end of the road, second right, and then the first main left hand turn towards the village.

The road climbed upwards. The residue of the previous night’s snow clung to the single pavement, but the road was clear. I remember fields to the left, and a view of a gentle valley to the right, until we reached the first houses, painted yellow, terracotta and white. We were met by an abrupt right hand bend, which revealed the village of Harriston to us.

“It’s adorable!” said Sarah.

We drove along the main street; neat terrace houses sat on either side of the road. Pavement and open spaces were punctuated by trees. I turned the car around, and parked in a space that was opposite the village hall. We were bang on time; we had an appointment with Henry, who heads up the committee that runs the hall, which acts as a community centre.

I knocked on the door to the village hall, pushed the door, walked through a short entrance corridor and into a large, warm hall. We found Henry immediately. We found our way to a table towards the front of the hall, and sat down. Whilst we were introducing ourselves, we were offered welcoming mugs of coffee by his wife, Janice.

Henry told us that he had lived in the village all his life, and he had been working on a history project. Harriston owes its existence to coal mining; it sits on the site of a former colliery that was established in 1870 and ran until 1902. Its name comes from the name of its former owner, Joseph Harris, and the current structure and layout of the village relates to the houses that had been built to accommodate its miners.

It was only then I realised something: all the houses in the village that we had driven past were not the original two up-two down northern terraces that I thought they were. Instead, every single house on the village had been rebuilt in the 1970s by the local authority, and was now owned by a housing association. Two buildings had survived the redevelopment: the village hall, and an adjacent building that was once a factory that used to make spools for cables.

In the 1970s the local authority decided to condemn the entire village. Henry told us that there had been three plans: demolition, rebuilding, or the creation of a new housing estate on another part of Aspatria.

I asked him about the hall, and what it used to be; its large windows reminded me of Methodist chapels. The hall used to be a school, a miners welfare club, and briefly functioned as a local coroner’s court when three miners had lost their lives in an accident

Henry told us about how the hall had moved between owners and towards neglect. It was a story of patience, meetings, the establishment of trust, and civic persistence with Henry playing a pivotal role. The committee was now clearly taking very good care of the hall; it appeared to have been recently painted, and new radiators had been installed.

The hall has its own Facebook page and website that advertised coffee afternoons which take place three days a week, and a craft club. There were more activities that took place than were advertised; there were prize bingo events, Macmillan cake baking competitions, a new year’s eve party, and a Halloween party.

With mining now a distant memory, I was curious about what employment there was in the local area. Henry mentioned farming; there was a big dairy in nearby Aspatria that made Lake District Cheddar. There were also factories; there used to be a steel plant in Workington until the early 1980s, with heavy industry giving way to light industrial units. One factory in Aspatria, I later discovered, made mattresses. Another aspect of employment was, of course, tourism. Henry mentioned the lakes, and Keswick being a big draw for visitors. A challenge that anyone would face would be, of course, transport. Aspatria was a mile walk away. Trains and busses ran hourly.

After we were refreshed with another cup of coffee, Henry started his laptop and dug out some further files; he had some photographs to show us. He had pictures of the old Harriston. The new Harriston was built alongside the old Harriston. Occupants from one part of the village were moved into the newly built modern 1970s three bedroom houses.

I was struck by many of these pictures, most of which were in black and white. Old cars sat outside a row of uninhabited terraces. Henry showed me where his family used to live, and described some of the neighbours. He showed us a photograph of two large extended families; he seemed to know everyone. There was another photograph; a photograph of beauty, poignancy and change. It was of an ally between two rows of terraces; yards backing onto other yards. In the middle sat a child’s bicycle, complete with stabilisers. In the distance, there was evidence of construction work, a fair way away from the then intact houses. Other than the village hall, and the adjacent building, a part of the old Harriston exists in the present: the tiles from the original buildings have apparently made their way onto the roofs of the houses that they replaced.

There were other photos; one of the mine manager’s house, another that features the wheelhouse chimney. Henry also mentioned that somewhere in the village there used to be a bowling green.

Towards the end of our visit, we briefly touched on the subject of politics; specifically how a policy, known as the ‘bedroom tax’ can have (and has had) an impact on a village like Harriston. Simply put, if living in a house with more bedrooms than you need, then you will have to pay more for those additional rooms. If you can’t afford those additional rooms, you may then have to move away from the community. What was clearly evident, was how important community was to the village.

I was struck by a sense of how Henry was linked to and connected with Harriston. I was struck by this since my relationship to my own community is very different to his. Henry seemed to know who all of his neighbours were; I only know two of mine. I was also struck by his generosity (in terms of his time), and his openness. I was also very struck by a sense of closeness too; how the hall is a central place, and how it can play a totemic role in the identity of place.

Whilst Harriston might be ‘close’, I didn’t come away with the impression that it was closed. Henry shared an anecdote about people who had moved to the village, and had participated in the cake baking competition. He shared other stories about people who came and went; different people, from different backgrounds.

I liked visiting Harriston, and speaking with Henry. I came away with a strong impression that ‘community’ played a very important role in the village, and I came away feeling slightly envious; my own sense of community is made up of people who are spread across different cities, towns and villages, rather than being in one place. I love seeing and interacting with my extended ‘virtual’ community, but I miss seeing and interacting with people who I live close to.

I thought of the different events that were happening, and had happened. I really liked the idea of a Halloween party, and I’ve always really enjoyed the very few occasions I have played prize bingo. As I left Harriston and drove through Aspatria, my mind returned to the discussion I had with my friend, Andy, and how our conversation had been linked to the the theme of family.

Golcar

Ann welcomed us to the Colne Valley Museum. She wore a practical grey dress, a simple white apron that my grandma used to call a pinny, and a cotton shawl. She was expecting us; Sarah’s friend, Bob, had managed to persuade the museum staff to open early, so we could be treated to an exclusive guided tour, enabling us to rapidly acquire an insight into the history of Golcar, a small village that is three miles from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

The museum was formed from three weavers’ cottages that had been knocked together. Not having been a very good student of history I didn’t know what a weaver’s cottage was, but it didn’t take me long for my interest to become thoroughly piqued: my day job is all about technology, and the museum was all about industrial history.

Ann introduced us to her colleague, a fellow volunteer, who was also called Ann.

 “All my family come from around this area” said Bob, not wasting a moment to learn more about the area. Sarah had known Bob and his partner Miriam since she was little; they were close friends of her family from when they lived in Manchester. Not only was this trip an opportunity to do a ‘G’ and visit Golcar, but it was also an opportunity to visit them both and to catch up.

“You remember my mother?!” exclaimed Bob after chatting with one of the Ann’s for a few minutes. Bob had been recently doing a lot of research into his family history. In some respects, Bob’s trip to Golcar was a lot more significant than my own. I had no reason to visit the town other than it began with a letter, whereas Bob’s identity seemed to be bound closely to the valley.

A neat graphic charted the history of the property, showing how it was divided and subdivided and occupied by different families. A sign, entitled ‘a family weaving business’ offered some useful background information: “Cloth makers James and Sally Pearson built two cottages here at Cliffe Ash in the early 1840s. By 1845, two more cottages had been added and the row was called Spring Rock. The four homes housed textile workers until the early part of the 20th century”.

I chatted with the first Ann. The entire area was defined by the wool and textile industry, which had all but disappeared. Ann’s woollen shawl wasn’t produced from a mill in Yorkshire. Instead, it was bought from Primark, made in China and was probably polyester. Ann had been a mature student, studied science, technology and engineering in her 40s.  Her dissertation was about the architecture of the textile industry.

After walking through the length of the ground floor, we found ourselves in one of the main exhibition rooms: a kitchen. There was a range that had been recently lit, a couple of tables, and a frame on which you could hang things using tenterhooks, used for the stretching of woollen cloth. On the tables were period items; jugs, pots and bowls. There was a room at the back of the kitchen which contained washing paraphernalia: a mangle, a bucket, and a device which was used to agitate your laundry. Our attention was drawn to a couple of framed pieces of needlework, which were made by girls and young women to demonstrate their skills.

A sign directed us upstairs towards the 1840s bedroom, which contained period furniture: a substantial chair, a bed, a dresser, and a spinning wheel. Ann told us something else about the bedroom: it had been used for drinking when the building was taken over by the Golcar Socialist Club. Ann told us about the hard drinking Colne Valley MP, Victor Grayson, a skilled orator who mysteriously disappeared in 1920.

There was another room at the top of the building. I was struck by two things: the light streaming in through the windows, and two large looms.

“Everyone does that” said Ann, who saw me walk towards the window.

I wanted to catch a glimpse of the surrounding countryside, to learn more about the valley. I wanted to see what the weavers saw. “When we first opened, we had the looms directly next to the windows as they would have been, so there would be as much light as possible for the weavers to work, but then visitors would move between the looms to look out of the window, so we moved them to where they are now” explained Ann.

It was only then that I noticed the size of the windows. They were different to other windows I had seen in buildings of a similar age. They were massive; the windows frames hewn from stone. Behind me were two massive wooden framed weaving looms. A volunteer demonstrated how they worked.

Bob was fascinated by its operation, how the shuttle moved back and forth, and told us how the mechanism changed to create different patterns in the material.

“Jacquard” Bob said, referring to the Frenchman, Joseph Jacquard, who had once visited Huddersfield.

I knew of Jacquard through the history of computing. Jacquard invented a system where looms could be programmed using sets of abstract cards that could be used to realise physical cloth that contained complex repeating patterns.

The final room was different to the rest. Rather than focusing on spinning and weaving, it was all about shoemaking. The weavers of Yorkshire, like textile workers in Lancashire, wore clogs. After the death of one of the last clog makers, the entire contents of a cobblers, including stock, tools, and materials were moved to the museum to be preserved. Visitors could sit on a bench and try on pairs of clogs in different sizes. Our visit to the museum ended with a short walk through a café and gift shop, where Bob continued to chat with the two volunteers.

Our journey to Golcar had been a journey through personal and industrial time. It began at the town of Macclesfield, spending the night at Miriam and Bob’s house. Bob explained that Macclesfield used to be a famous silk town, but I only know it as an anonymous train station that I always used to pass on the way to Manchester. Macclesfield is a part of the North West that I didn’t know anything about, but in this instance, the notion of the place was secondary: it was friendships and shared personal histories that mattered. Sarah shared stories and greetings from her parents, and Miriam and Bob gave us a tour of a well-tended garden that overlooked a quiet canal; an important echo of industrial heritage that we were only just starting to explore.

When Bob had heard we were visiting Golcar, he was very happy to help. He prepared us a printed information pack entitled ‘Golcar: a West Yorkshire village’. His pack introduced the Colne Valley and highlighted sights, such as the village church, the valley museum and a café. A very concise history referenced wool, the building of canals and industrialisation. Bob also offered to guide us from their home in Macclesfield to Golcar, which was really helpful, since I had no idea how to get there.

On the morning of our drive to Golcar, we followed Bob and Miriam in their car. Bob’s route took us to a place called Standedge which is the site of a series of canal tunnels connecting West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. We stopped at Standedge visitor’s centre, a former warehouse, now a museum.

We wandered around the visitor centre for around half an hour, looking at the various exhibits; a set of display boards that explained the term ‘legging it’, and revealed that Standedge tunnel was ‘the highest, longest and deepest canal tunnel in Britain’ and a series of wooden life size cut out characters who played a significant role in its construction. One board explained that its construction began in 1794 while it opened in 1811. “The railways” said Bob, reflecting on its closure in 1944.  The tunnel was restored and reopened in 2001, and is now open to canal tourists.

Just as Sarah was catching up with Miriam and Bob, I had the opportunity to catch up with one of my old friends: Dave. I met Dave on the first day of university at a cheese and wine party. I remember Dave because I was envious of the way that he could seemingly talk to anyone and the fact that he had a bold plan, which was to liberate some of the free wine and take it to the lake side, and continue drinking. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I think I was party to his scheme. There is something else that I need to mention about Dave. Just as Bob had a connection to Golcar, Dave was, more or less, a local: he was from Huddersfield.

We met Dave in the Golcar Liberal Club, a working men’s club. The club was almost empty, except for a single family celebrating a birthday. A huge television on a back wall displayed an ignored football match and two bored barmaids chatted with each other. A flyer on our table suggested that there would be a club singer performing during the evening. Later on that evening two local lads started playing pool at a table that was just behind us.

Dave lived on the opposite side of Huddersfield, but had cycled for over an hour from Halifax, which was where he seemed to be spending most of his time. I asked Dave what it is like around Huddersfield.

“You look around you and you see history everywhere; it’s just there. You see it when cycling around, next to the canal and going into the different parts of the town. You’ve can’t escape it. It surrounds you. It’s everywhere, and you’re a part of it too. You see that parts of this area were once really very wealthy, because of the industry, because of what this area used to mean”.

After an hour or so, we invite Dave over for dinner. We were staying in a small house situated two hundred metres away from the Colne Valley Museum. Our house had been built on a steep hill. The bottom floor contained a kitchen and a living room, and access to a garden. The ground floor contained a single bedroom dominated by a series of substantial windows, like the windows that I had seen in the museum. Although it had a high ceiling, it didn’t seem to be large enough to have once accommodated a loom, but it was certainly a place where someone worked. Perhaps it used to be a finisher’s cottage; a place where fine detail to cloth was added.

The house was dwarfed by the adjacent building, which appeared to be a former industrial building, perhaps a mill. There was one main tell-tale sign of its former use: an external beam that was used to haul materials up from the ground level and into the building for processing.

I ask Dave about what he was doing in Halifax. Dave was between jobs having recently returned to the UK from a university in central Europe. He was working on a personal research project that was connected to his doctoral studies. Dave has interests in philosophy, politics, sociology, economics and computing. He connects these subject together by writing computer simulations and studying the emerging patterns. Writing simulations, or any types of software forces you to really think about your assumptions. If you’re using a computer to simulate anything, the computer becomes a philosophical tool because you need to define everything that the computer does. In some respects, you can describe a whole universe within a computer and define the laws that govern that universe. Dave cycles to a well-known pub chain in the morning, orders a coffee and gets to work on his simulations. He says it suits him: it is warm, he’s not disturbed, and the coffee is cheap.

The discussion moved onto politics and the debates regarding the European Union, and I sensed that Dave had different views to many members of his immediate family. One of the last things that I remember from our discussions was his point that it is important not to condemn those who have different perspectives, but to understand.

Dave left our weavers cottage at around 11; he had a long ride home in the cold but he didn’t seem to mind. It looked like he was used it. He donned a waterproof jacket, turned on his lights, unchained his bike and cycled to the centre of Golcar and followed a road that travelled downwards to the centre of Huddersfield.

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We found some time to walk around the village, which didn’t take us very long. The heart of the village seemed to be a road called Town End which contained a library, a post office, a hairdressers, a tanning salon, a small supermarket and what appeared to be a wine bar. As I walked, I looked upwards, towards the windows and again saw evidence of distant industry.

A walk took us to a closed pub and a small deserted industrial estate that contained a brewery. We retraced our steps, found another pub, and soon discovered a narrow footpath. We nodded at dog walkers as we made our way to an unknown destination, and I looked around, gradually falling into my own thoughts about what it would be like to live in one of those weavers houses. The footpath emerged in a part of the village that felt unrecognisable from the Golcar of Town End.

We found ourselves in a version of Golcar that belonged to the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties; streets with cul-de-sacs and closes, filled with simple box-shaped detached houses with integral garages, and homes that an estate agent might describe as ‘alpine bungalows’. I felt unnerved and disorientated. In my mind, Town End gave Golcar its sense of place, whereas its estates reminded me of the time I spent in a similar sized village in rural East Anglia. Somehow, time and architecture had collapsed space and distance through childhood memories.

Whilst Golcar is its very own place, every place exists within its own geographical context which deserves exploration. We had a choice; we could either head into the metropolis of Huddersfield, or follow further footpaths to leave the town and into the next village.

The following day we decided to head to Slaithwaite, a village to the west of Golcar. We began from our weavers cottage and walked down an adjacent snicket, twintern, or passage and onto a road that roughly followed the course of the river and the railway line. As we walked, I started to play a simple game with myself called: ‘spot the weavers cottage’.  It was a very easy game to play; stone houses with large sets of upper windows overlooking the Colne valley could be easily found along the road to Slaithwaite.

I liked Slaithwaite. I like the stone uniformity of its buildings and the way that stone shop fronts offered visitors an assortment of useful establishments: cafés, butchers, and newsagents. The village was dominated by what was called the ‘Globe Worsted Mill’; an imposing monument to the industrial revolution which sat ominously in the middle of the village, its location dictated by the river and connected by canal. The mill opened between 1887 and 1889, and closed in 2004. I later read somewhere that it might become a technology and innovation centre with a connection to the nearby Huddersfield University, leading to a delicious play on words: the establishment of a Sili-Colne valley.

We discovered further abandoned mill buildings in Slaithwaite; industrial buildings that could be described as a five storey wall of windows, like the weavers cottages, expressly designed to let in the light. Some of those windows had been bricked up, others had been smashed. Dark streaks ran from the top to the bottom of the building, following the path of downpipes. I didn’t feel sad looking at these buildings. Instead, I felt curiosity: what stories emerged from those buildings, and a curiosity about what those buildings would or could become.

On the way back to Golcar, we stopped in a local pub called The Swan for a couple of pints. The Swan felt timeless. It had two bars; a saloon bar and a lounge bar. Musical hall era posters adorned the walls. One advertised ‘five Braemar Pipers’ and ‘eight dancing lovelies’. An extended family came and sat down for an afternoon pint; grandparents, parents and children all occupying a set of tables.

We left the following morning. It had snowed heavily overnight. We had opened the curtains and white night blazed through the windows of our weavers cottage. Clouds hung low in the sky threatening further snow, but it was clear that it was melting quickly. We loaded the car, and followed the snow to the motorway, where it disappeared.

This trip had a slightly different feel to the others. Golcar was Miriam and Bob, and Golcar was Dave. It was a trip that seemed to be less about place and more about people.

I liked Golcar. Perhaps it was the light, the large windows. I like that it was idiosyncratic. I liked that there were wine bars and closed pubs, weavers’ cottages and alpine bungalows. I liked the friendliness of all the volunteers who all seemed to be called Ann. I liked that their museum seemed to be saying: “this is Golcar; it’s a small place, but what happened in these valleys was important for a time, and this is a part of us”.

Fron

I pointed towards a solitary sign, took my foot off the accelerator and edged the hire car to the side of the road. We were there. We were at Fron, Powys, mid-Wales.

I got out of the car, took a photo of the sign and then a celebratory photo of Sarah. It was just after ten o’clock in the morning; the air contained a touch of cold, reminding me that we were now in autumn.

“Shall we have a walk about?” asked Sarah.

I had spent a few minutes studying the map before we had set off; I had a slightly different idea.

“I want to go up one of these roads; I’ve seen one on the right which looks like it might be, you know, the village”. I turned the ignition, put the car into gear and pulled out onto the A483. As soon as I was on the main road, I took a right turn onto a residential street.

“This is nice!” said Sarah, who was looking at all the houses as we passed. “Look! That one’s for sale! We could move to Fron!”

The hill got steeper, then narrowed and began to wind its way up the side of a valley. I passed a pair of well-maintained iron gates and drove into an empty church car park. We got out and found a path that led us on a route past the side of a well maintained building that looked less like a church and more like a residential home; there was signs of life, but nobody was about. The path led us to an unkempt graveyard, complete with tall grass, gravestones with faded lettering and a warning sign that said they were dangerous and may cause serious injury.

We rounded a corner and found another graveyard. This one was different; it was tidy and well maintained and was situated on a steep hill. As I climbed the hill towards the boundary of the church my eyes caught the names: Evans, Jones and Morgan. I saw something else: distant hills filled with light valley fog. This was the Wales of my imagination.

Wales features little in my personal biography. I have one main memory which has faded with time. It is a memory of when I was fifteen; I had joined a scout group out of my own volition after realising that I had inadvertently become a teenage recluse. I lived in a different part of London from where I went to school and I felt as if I was under house arrest since I wasn’t yet allowed to roam the streets and hang out with my friends; joining ‘scouts’ seemed a way around this.

My fifteenth year was punctuated by a trip to ‘climb’ Snowdon. It was an adventure that I remember finding entirely baffling. I didn’t understand why anyone would walk up a mountain ‘for fun’, especially when you had to share bunk beds with a group of malodorous teenagers. There was another aspect of bafflement: the endless car journey from London to our simple hostel was accompanied by a soundtrack of endless heavy metal music that was favoured by the nineteen year old driver who gave the impression of being impossibly grown up.

One thing I did get out of that particular adventure, other than a profound feeling of exhaustion, was a sense of achievement, awareness of different way of being or living; the scenery I encountered during the adventure was an overwhelming contrast to the urban environment in which I was familiar. In some respects, that trip had changed my teenage self. I had returned tired, but happy.

This trip was very different; Sarah had booked an AirBNB that was a ten minute drive away from Fron. Our journey had taken us to the borders of Birmingham and into the county of Herefordshire. Our route had changed from dull motorways into A-roads that were devoid of traffic.  Strips of asphalt and bridges had given way to picturesque landscape of gentle hills and pretty settlements. Half an hour of post-motorway travel made me realise that I had thoroughly escaped my familiar urban environment of buses, crowded trains and streets packed with idling cars.

Leaving London had been brutal. Although we had set off outside of rush hour, it took us over an hour and a half to wrestle free from the urban traffic and onto a densely packed but free flowing motorway. Our route out of the city took us past districts of Forest Hill and Shepard’s Bush, rural suggestions that were at odds with the claustrophobic city.

Our AirBNB in Fron was a 17th century stone cottage, owned by Michelle and Peter who were, like us, both in their mid-forties. Michelle took us through a hallway, past Peter’s dismembered Ducati motorcycle and into a kitchen that was warmed by an exotic emblematic fixture that you only tend to see in rural homes: an Aga. Michelle talked us through how to use it, before returning to the lounge area where Peter explained how to use the wood burner. Our room was on the first floor through a second living area that also doubled up as a bed room. I remember highly varnished stripped floorboards that sloped downwards from one side of the room to another. Our room was small; a dark structural beam was set in the wall. My eyes later traced the grain of the wood, following a line from the top of the room to the end of the beam, my imagination trying to visualise a network of beams, all working together to support the structure of the building. It was very different to the beige box of a house that I had in London.

When the tour of the cottage was done and Michelle and Peter had left I suddenly began to realise this was their main house; I had initially thought that it might have been a second property, an investment holiday let, or a house that may have once belonged to a deceased relative. It was immaculately clean and well prepared. Although we were paying for the privilege, I was also struck by their trust: all their possessions were on show, which included a guitar and accompanying music, a CD collection and a carved wooden duck.

The outside was equally lovely: the back yard was small but offered adventure. I later found a small path that followed a steep incline, arriving at a weathered bench. Peter later told me that there was more land beyond the house, which now I understood had been built in what appeared to be a semi-sheltered cove.

The front garden was different. To complement a stone outbuilding, which doubled up as a motorcycle workshop, Peter was building what appeared may become a warm wooden hut, or some kind of showroom where he could store his motorbikes. Beyond the garden lay a gate, a single track road, a neighbouring farm, and a stream.

An hour later, it was dark; we had followed the single track road and had driven to the nearest major town, Llandrindod Wells, to find a supermarket.

“Did you see that woman?” I whispered to Sarah as we walked back to the car, laden with milk, bread and pasta.

“What woman?”

“That woman! The woman we just passed!”

“No. What about her?”

“She smiled at us.”

“What did she want?”

“I don’t think she wanted anything.”

I unlocked the car and put the bags in the boot. Minutes later we were back on the road, heading towards our cottage, anticipating the very middle class challenge of figuring out how to use an Aga and wood burning stove.

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We were up early the next morning, ready for our trip to Fron. Our journey was straightforward; a short ride over scrubland, a right hand turn towards a settlement called Crossgates and then onto Fron and a layby; the point where I got out of the car and took a photograph of the sign to document our arrival.

“There’s something satisfying about seeing a random place on a page and actually getting there” said Sarah.

I couldn’t help but feel that there must be more to Fron than a bunch of houses and a church. Fron is a part of a community called Llanbadarn Fawr. I had a need to collate stories and facts to get a sense of the area; I chastise myself for not taking time to visit the Crossgates community centre, or loiter in the only pub in nearby Penybont. Later, I would think: ‘maybe I need to go back, to find those stories’. In some ways, the visit to Fron had morphed from journey of accomplishment to a journey of tourism. Instead, we were again drawn to the more urban environment of Llandrindod Wells, a couple of miles to the south.

We parked up not too far from our previous visit to the supermarket and started to walk around. We discovered an imposing municipal council building called The Gwalia, a park, and a pleasant high well-used high street. A trip to the town museum had an exhibit that explained how the town had become a tourist attraction due to its natural spa.

“The waters contain lithium! That might explain it!” whispered Sarah, as we walked around the museum.

Before our trip Sarah had found a survey that reported that Llandrindod Wells was the happiest place in Wales (and twelfth overall in Britain). A bit of research revealed that I lived the 145th happiest place in the country, and Sarah lived in the 124th, but neither of us could identify any qualitative difference between our two locations other than my area had a park and chicken shops and Sarah’s area had a Tube station and Irish pubs.

After being forbidden to use the museum toilets by an enthusiastic receptionist, we popped into a local landmark, the Metropole Hotel and Spa, to inspect their plumbing. There was a conference going on. We found ourselves surrounded by very jolly farmers, most of whom were wearing tweed, clearly relishing the opportunity to network and discussing loudly the subject of farming processes and development; a subject entirely alien to us both.

Following the advice of Elena, who worked in the tourist information office that was practically attached to the museum, we drove across town and parked up next to Llandrindod Wells Lake. The lake sits just on the edge of the town. In summer, it would be glorious; in deep autumn, it was merely ‘pleasantly quiet’. I could imagine myself looking forward to a walk around the park, ending up at the café called The Lakeside, which was a clear draw for locals. I began to see why Llandrindod Wells was a happy place to be.

In the space of a couple of hours, we had walked around the lake, got vaguely lost in a wood, and traipsed back into town to look for something called the Bicycle Museum, which was closed. Realising that we had covered a lot of ground, we returned to the car and set off, heading south, to the nearby town of Builth Wells.

Builth Wells is a small market town that sits next to the rivers Wye and Irfon. After crossing a road bridge over the Wye, we parked up and set off on a walk that was listed in a guidebook that Michelle had said we could borrow. I looked at my watch; we had a couple of hours of light left. I looked at the sky; it wasn’t going to rain. We found a riverside path and followed it until we found the Irfon, and then tried to follow that too, until we realised that we didn’t really understand what the guide was telling us. After a few turns, we followed some increasingly steep roads that took us onto a housing estate, before following other roads that made a gentle descent into the town.

In the town, we found evidence of its rural heritage; a large livestock market situated at the back of the high street. In the late afternoon, shops were starting to close. We also found a smart looking café that was still open. It was empty except for ourselves, and a solitary customer.

“Is there anything to do around here, in the evening?” asked Sarah. The café owner paused, before eventually saying: “Not around here… You could go to Llan’dod, but there’s not much going on there either; there’s more going on in Newtown”.

We found a sofa and sat down. Sarah had bought a copy of the Radnorshire County Times and Gazette. Amidst stories of local tragedy, and a feature about a potential ‘tourism tax’, there was a report that Preseigne town council had made a decision about the species of cherry trees that they were going to plant. The story, sadly, omitted to mention the name of the species.

I liked Builth Wells. I liked the houses that we passed on our walk, and the fact that there was a group of middle aged motorcyclists congregating by the bridge next to the river Wye, perhaps out for one of their last rides of the year. I liked the quietness, and that there was a café where I could read about cherry trees.  A visit to Builth Wells marked the end of the day that we had visited Fron, but we had booked another day in Michelle and Peter’s house. We traced our route, heading north to Llan’dod to Crossgates, and then across the scrubland to our cottage.

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Rhayader is eight miles to the west of Crossgates. Like Builth Wells, Rhayader is a market town. At its heart lies a war memorial and a simple clock tower which sits adjacent to a road junction. We parked up and walked up and down the high street, which took around fifteen minutes. I liked it for the simplicity of its topography and practical array of useful shops: a newsagent, a picture framer, and a kebab shop named ‘Turkish Delight’.

We stopped off at the local tourist information office to learn more: Rhayader’s heyday was between 1893 and 1904 when the nearby Elan Valley reservoirs were being constructed. Thousands of workers flocked to the area to work on a series of dams and reservoirs which were designed to provide clean water to the Birmingham area; a necessity due to the industrial revolution.

After our wander, we took a drive to one of the reservoirs, parked up, and attempted to follow a trail that had been recommended to us by a chap who manned the Elan Valley visitor centre. Well-made paths led to well used foot paths, and then onto a roughly marked woodland trail that was encouraging us towards the shores of a reservoir. This unexpected and somewhat muddy hike, complete with confusion about which direction to take, led thirty year old memories to resurface. There were differences; this time my legs didn’t ache as much and I wasn’t engulfed in a tiredness that gave way to an existential teenage crisis. Rambling around a series of muddy hills and fields was, in some ways, something that I had been looking forward to.

In anticipation of this trip, I had tried to make contact with some community groups through social media. I had been mostly unsuccessful; perhaps my limited success had been down to my choice of social media tools and unfamiliarity as to the communities that I could approach. There was one online community that were willing to chat, and they were based in Newtown.

Newtown caught my attention since it was the largest town on the main road that runs from Fron to Crossgates. The journey from Rhayader, to Llangurig and then onto Newtown was fast, quiet and lovely. The main road we followed sat in a valley and traced the path of the River Wye. As I drove, I remembered a vague plan that Sarah and I had discussed some time earlier; a plan to visit the Machynlleth comedy festival. Sarah would catch a train and I would go by motorcycle to experience the elements and drama of the countryside. The scenic roads reminded me of those thoughts, as did a road sign as we approached Newtown.

Newtown was more than twice the size of Llandrindod Wells and felt noticeably busier. Our timing, however, was unfortunate. After chatting to the manager of a co-operative store that was called Newtopia we discovered that all the key attractions, the Robert Owen Museum (which celebrated the founder of the co-operative movement), the Oriel Davies Gallery and the Newtown Textile Museum were all closed. To kill time, we wandered around Newtown, exploring its streets and studying its character. I liked it. It was a town with a definite centre. Although it had the same type of shops you would see on any high street, it appeared to be punctuated by independent businesses. Before heading off to a restaurant we settled down for a pint in a back street pub called The Sportsman.

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“This is it…” I said, turning to Sarah. An hour and a half had passed. It was now dark. We walked towards a community centre situated on the corner of a small housing estate. I pushed a set of red double doors that opened up into a short corridor and into a large open room, where we met a chap called Patrick who had invited me to ‘bell ringing’. Patrick greeted me enthusiastically, said hello to Sarah and introduced us both to his wife, Sam.

Patrick asked me what we were doing in Newtown. I explained that we had just done an ‘F’, and that meant visiting Fron.

“Did you know that Fron means ‘breast’ in Welsh?”

Patrick ran Newtown Handbell Ringers. As we talked, furniture was moved around and cases of hand bells were unpacked and carefully placed on tables that had been covered by a thick felt-like material and arranged in a simple horse shoe configuration.

“Can you read music?” asked Patrick.

“No.” I replied. I admit to being slightly worried; I had musical baggage. I had once been fired from the school orchestra due to my inability to play the triangle; my ineptitude was down to a bad case of day dreaming.

“You don’t need to read music; you just follow what everybody else does; it’ll all make sense”. Sarah had grade seven for flute and piano. I felt out of my depth.

I assumed that his group attracted a diverse group of people but this particular evening Newtown Handbell Ringers was comprised entirely of retired women.

“Stand over there, next to Sally. You’ll be taking over from Gladys. Gladys can’t make it because of her sciatica”.

Each ‘ringer’ was given two bells and a music book. Each book was different and had been annotated for each performer; Patrick has highlighted exactly where each bell should be rung. Further annotations connected the notes to the left hand and the right hand. With books allocated, bells grasped and a few directions offered about how to hold the bells, it was time for first performance of the evening: a rendition of Waltzing Matilda. Patrick stood at the front of the tables and conducted, enthusiastically pointing and announcing each note. Our performance was halting, confused and yet vaguely recognisable. We gave it another go. This time our rendition was slightly better, even though I managed to confuse my left hand with my right hand.

We soon moved onto another song: a Christmas carol; I forget what it was. I have never been in a band or a choir. This session of bell ringing is one of my very few experiences of communal music making. While this experience might be familiar to some, the translation of highlighted notes in a photocopied book, to the movement of two different bells, and onto the creation of a simple collaborate enterprise felt unfamiliar and exciting. Although I didn’t know who Sally, Edith or any of the other bell ringers were, I know what they did; they were different notes in time, connected through Patrick’s highlighted score.

After our visit, I asked Patrick why he ran Newtown Handbell Ringers. His answer was brilliant and simple: it gives something to the community; it makes Newtown become a better place.

“It allows non-musicians to play music” he continued. “There is something good for the soul to play in a group or band or orchestra. It has a bit of physical exercise and mental stretching, which is good for preventing dementia. When you perform, there is an element of fear; you should know about that, and it's good to face fears. [I run it] because the members of the group want to play and I get a thrill out of giving them music arrangements that no one else has ever played, and I get to hear them play it for the first time ever.”

Our drive back was fraught; our simple journey back past Fron and onto our cottage was interrupted by a road closure. I adopted a simple and pragmatic approach and decided to retrace our route through Rhayader.

In the car, we were silent. I couldn’t quite believe that we had played Waltzing Matilda in a community centre in Powys with a group of pensioners.  What’s more, I was surprised that I had thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

“We could move here” said Sarah. “We could live in a stone cottage and I could take Aga lessons”. It was a thought. It was a thought that was not entirely unappealing.

Evesham

If you were to mention Evesham to me, my imagination conjures up sepia tinted images of tractors, and perhaps a vicar driving around his parish in a Morris Minor; a place where people would greet one another as they pass on the street. I would also think of the Cotswolds; a part of Britain that I immediately associate with being terribly middle class. Truth be told, I knew nothing about Evesham, other than it being located between Worcester and Stratford-upon-Avon.

“Are you Simon?” asked Sarah, after finding a very tall and well-built man who was standing next to a ridiculously expensive Audi.

Evesham train station garden

Simon, our AirBnB host, said he would collect us from Evesham train station and drive us directly to his home where we were staying. AirBnB seemed to be an interesting alternative to staying in hotels. Plus, renting a room in someone’s house could provide the opportunity to gain insights about the town from a local.

The process of booking into Simon’s house had been fraught: Sarah had spent two hours on the phone speaking with Vicki, an AirBnB operative as part of a desperate bid to authenticate her identity. This involved pressing non-existing buttons on an app that had a feature that ‘wasn’t quite finished yet’ and sending various photos of her passport from a range of different devices. After Sarah had recounted this tale, Simon said that it was all about insurance. I wasn’t quite sure what kind of insurance it was, whether it was for Simon to protect himself from dodgy house guests, or us house guests being insured from dodgy hosts.

“So, what brings you to Evesham?” asked Simon.

“You explain” said Sarah, turning towards me.

“You know the alphabet, right…?” I began. I explained that we had been to Adlington, Batley, Clock Face, Dornock and that we had now randomly ended up in Evesham. Simon gave us both a smile. He liked the idea.

After a ten minute drive around the outskirts of Evesham we arrived at his house; a recently built four bedroom detached property with integral garage. We were taken to one of his spare rooms. It was bright and spotless, and although in terms of size it wasn’t much larger than our room in Adlington (which has now become a form of measurement), it didn’t feel at all oppressive.

Simon worked in IT and had recently turned freelance. He lived with Heather, who had given up her job and was in the process of retraining as a healthcare professional. They advertised their spare room as a way to earn a bit more money. I also sensed that Simon enjoyed it. One of the obviously enriching things about travel is your exposure to different people from different places; as an AirBnB host this principle is inverted: you meet different people from different places without actually having to go anywhere. It turned out that Simon and Heather were pretty booked up with visitors from Australia and Hong Kong, business people going to interviews, and a film editor from America who regularly visited for a couple of months for the sole intention of playing football at the local Church football team.

“What is the main industry in Evesham? I mean, what do people do here for work?”

“House building. It used to be agriculture. When the financial crisis hit local farmers sold off bits of land to developers so they could keep going, which has meant there’s been all these estates popping up. When we moved here it was different; the town was hit really badly; you could really see it. It’s only recently that it has started to recover with new shops opening.” Simon paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts about what else he could say. “We’ve been here for three years, and Evesham was very much a compromise. We wanted to move to Chipping Campden, where everyone wants to live, but we couldn’t afford it, so we ended up here.”

I had no idea where Chipping Campden was, but I later discovered it is a village or very small town in the Cotswolds; a place that was very much on the tourist map.

With our bags packed, we navigated our way through the very middle class estate and onto Port Street, heading towards the heart of the town. Along the way, we were struck by the number of Eastern European and international supermarkets that we passed. There were eight within just a few hundred metres: the Port Street Super Mini Market, Balkanika Food Shop, Europa Food Store, Lifestyle Grocers Limited (with the catchy slogan of ‘make it your… lifestyle’), Stokrotka, International Mini Market and off licence and finally the Port Street International Food Store (all produce English, Polish, Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish and from many other countries).

Evesham sits within a horse shoe shaped meander of the River Avon, which defines both its topography and size. Bridge Street rose from a gentle valley. Following its path to a cross roads we embarked upon one of Simon’s suggestions: a visit to the ‘award winning’ Royal Oak pub where we stopped for lunch. I indulged with a pint of local beer, whilst Sarah studied the menu. Although it was a Saturday lunchtime, it was quiet, except for couples in their sixties on double dates.

Our explorations continued. We found the Word of Mouth Café (another of Simon’s recommendations) and a sign to some ‘award winning’ toilets, which we couldn’t seem to find. We did, however, find the Tourist Information office, which also doubled up as a quaint local museum. I spoke with Phil, the tourist information officer, who suggested that we looked at the two local churches: St Lawrence’s, and the All Saints Parish Church. An accompanying website for St Lawrence’s is enticing, suggesting that it is: ‘full of activities for the whole family, taking you on a journey of historical discovery’ also mentioning boxes of treasures and a ‘bishop’s mitre’.

A visit to the Almonry museum offered a better journey of historical discovery. Situated on the site of the former abbey, the museum is housed in a wooden building that appears to be dealing adequately with some quite significant structural movement. A walk through the museum took us through a series of galleries dedicated to the history of the town. The rooms were busy and eclectic; objects were displayed sat and hung in every conceivable space. Whilst it was crammed, it wasn’t oppressive. One corridor took us to the formal garden, which was also a museum all of its own. We found a bench. A solitary volunteer sat on the ground, tending to the garden, pulling up weeds.

Almonry museum

Outside the museum, my eye caught a sign for something called the Asparagus Festival. Asparagus is for Evesham what biscuits are for Batley. Asparafest, as it is called, is an initiative that was established by British Asparagus Growers association, and has been cited as the Best Festival in Worcestershire. As well as a stage for music, there is also a cookery stage and an asparagus eating competition. I read that there would be the crowning of the ‘Asparagus King and Queen’. Everything seemed to be fronted by a jolly asparagus related cartoon character who goes by the name of ‘Gus’. Compelling as Asparafest seemed, we were unfortunately a week early.

We followed Phil’s advice and wandered around the two churches, but we didn’t linger for long; churches mean little to me. I see them as lovely buildings and interesting historical artefacts that are connected to the very human and earthly need for community and companionship. The echo of our footsteps and a small loud speaker that played piano music in one of the churches didn’t encourage spiritual connection, but instead made me think about the complexities of acoustics.

A short walk around the corner took us to another church of Evesham: the Riverside Shopping centre; a modern building with a light interior made possible by a glass roof. Very few shops were open. Wherever the people of Evesham went to shop on a Saturday, they certainly didn’t go to the Riverside Shopping centre.

Riverside shopping centre

There was something else to do; a walk. We retraced our steps to the churches, made our way through the well-tended Abbey Park towards Crown Meadow to the north bank of the River Avon. We had a very simple and manageable challenge; to trace the horseshoe meander of the river.

The walk can be is best described as ‘pleasant’; it was warm enough to dispense with a jumper, and there wasn’t any hint of rain. We walked along a foot path and under canopies of trees, passing the infrequent jogger and dog walker. On the south bank of the river, we saw some very fancy houses. Fifteen minutes later, we found a ferry boat that operated across the River Avon. It was a ‘chain ferry’; it was operated by a man who pulled the boat along using a steel cable. The cable was anchored at the end of a street known as Boat Lane, and was situated next to an establishment called Raphael's Restaurant, which sold (of course) asparagus.

We wandered along Boat Lane back to the town and decided to find something to eat. We followed Simon’s final recommendation: a newly opened Italian restaurant, which also served asparagus. As we ate and talked, I noticed the cars that were pulling up in front of the restaurant and parking. They were smart, expensive cars, which suggested an abundance of money. I couldn’t decide whether it was the choice of restaurant, or something specific about Evesham that was the cause.

After our meal, we had a drink, and leafed through the local newspaper to see what was on during the evening. After reading stories about kittens, Asparafest, the theft of a van, and news about a new Waitrose, we discovered that we had missed the knitting circle and a meeting of the Hardy Perennials Society. We visit the Evesham Arts Centre to attend a comedy show.

A fifteen minute walk to the arts centre took us past some boarded-up shops, a heavy metal pub advertising a performance by an ex member of Judas Priest, and eventually onto a cul-de-sac. The arts centre turned out to be a modern theatre that was physically connected to a reputable school. Our entertainment for the evening was provided by comedian Zoe Lyons, a regular on TV panel shows. Zoe spoke about the challenges of working with technology, politics and, of course, asparagus.

After the show, we found ourselves in what I assume was the main  market square. I spotted an establishment, Chancer’s which advertised a disco. There was music coming from another place called the Valkyrie Bar, which seemed to be filled with young middle class people on an entirely respectable night out. For a few moments, we wondered what to do; whether we should take a chance and go to Chancer’s, but in the end, we opted to call it a night. Perhaps it was tiredness. Or perhaps Evesham had instilled within us a powerful feeling of respectability and responsibility that we couldn’t quite escape.

Simon had told us that there were some areas that were a bit ‘rough around the edges’ but we didn’t see any of them; it all remained civilised, tidy and well kept. Other than the eerily empty but perfectly clean and quiet shopping centre, Evesham didn’t raise any eyebrows to us casual visitors; there was nothing to suggest that Evesham had any kind of ‘edginess’ to it.

Despite its proximity to a famous and very lovely river, and having a set of glorious churches, a charming museum and an art deco cinema, it seemed to lack a little ‘something’. Perhaps this has more to do with my own experiences and expectations and less to do with Evesham; I didn't have the time to wind down from the perpetual challenge of being a city dweller.