“Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence, Justice and Peace”
PlanningRudyard Kipling once said that the question his father asked of him about his novel Kim was, “Did it stop, or you?” Kipling was able to respond that it did. This was evidently a good sign.
This yarn started writing itself. It carried me along with it. For me this was almost unheard of; I had written many things, but few came unbidden, and those usually turned out best. Precocity seemed a good sign! But then it stalled, or I did. For decades. This was probably not a good sign.
The storyline begins in 2008. I was back in Australia after nearly eleven months on the road. Settling back into my day job was proving difficult. I kept finding excuses not to go to work, reasons not to look for a new position in the company (having destroyed my old role before departing), reasons not to write up the story of my year off. I could not sleep, I was eating too much (and the wrong things), and I was drinking. It was the drinking that alarmed me most. I’d never been a drinker. Guys who live alone can’t afford to become reliant on alcohol. Suddenly I was going through four or five bottles a week, which was half a year’s supply before.
It took almost five weeks for me to realise that all these things came down to a common root: I didn’t want to go back to my old lifestyle. I had travelled to change myself, being dissatisfied with who I was, and indeed I had changed. But having changed, no more than the moth can resume the chrysalis could I slip back into the old, comfortable, dead-end groove.
One obvious way out of the rut was to write a book about my journey, as I had always planned to do. I had the title, I had the theme, and I now had the adventures and the time. The only problem was that the book showed no sign of writing itself. I sat down at the computer one night and hammered out a pretentious beginning, hoping that my muse would take over. By the end of the evening I had a thousand words — and there I stopped to make coffee. That was the end of my writing efforts for the next week.
Instead, I found myself planning a new journey, a shorter one, more tightly focused. Since my return I had become interested in my family genealogy. I could combine this with travel. I could explore my roots, and those of my family, in Britain. It gave me a good excuse to go to Britain, and my impending redundancy offered both the free time and the money. The trip began organising itself in my head. Time, money and inclination were suddenly aligned. Overnight, the trip transformed itself from wistful research to serious planning.
My original draft for this report turned out to be too focused on the genealogy angle, which is probably why it turned itself off. So I have rewritten it, removing most of the genealogy but leaving or enhancing the travel.
LondonMalaysia Airlines offered a good deal on open-jawed flights Melbourne–London and Paris–Melbourne, so on the 22nd of May at 15:00, I set out on Flight 148 to KL. Considering my plans for this trip, at an airport bookshop I bought a copy of Somme Mud by EPF Lynch, to read on the plane and in idle moments.
Over Western Australia at last with the sky turning red along the horizon and the sun shining up on the wing. The desert below us is indistinct. The pretty young woman with the “kiss me” lips is watching a movie. A lot of people are trying to snooze — as was I, earlier and as I soon will again.
After a layover in KL, Flight 2 took me on from KL to London, depositing me at Heathrow at 05:50, 24 hours out from Melbourne. By 07:00 I was on my way into London on the Heathrow Connect. I had last been here in September 2003, having flown in from New York. The view from the windows hadn't changed much.
This time I avoided the City and took a hotel room at the Stanley House Hotel in Pimlico. At £50 per night, it was rather more than the £15-20 I was planning to spend, but instead of a grotty hostel dormitory I got a nice little room to myself overlooking Belgrave Road, with TV, en suite and double bed. I’d decided to move up in the accomodation stakes because of an oversight in timing: the Chelsea Flower Show was on and all the cheap beds were booked out before I arrived. I guessed that anything listed in my Lonely Planet would be chockers, so I looked for something nice but not LP-listed, and found a room without further difficulty. I passed by a couple of suss-looking places offering “cheap” rooms without en suite for £49, and I reckoned I’d fallen on my feet.
I dropped my stuff at the hotel and dived back into the tube, exiting at Mile End about 09:35. From there I walked 5 minutes to Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park for my first genealogical checkpoint.
Soon I was standing beside the memorial to Richard Parnell — the first success in my family quest.
Richard Parnell, long-serving Vicar of Bow, was a 2nd great-uncle on my mother’s side, contemporary with my 2nd great-father in Kent, though they probably never met and wouldn’t have cared if they had.
My visit was sparked by finding this online in a newsletter of the park:
Why Parnell Road?
Doreen Kendall writes: A Road in Bow was named after a former Vicar. Walk down the path from the Soames centre with the wall of Southern Grove on your right, nearly opposite the school on the left of path the following memorial will be found. Memorial No 8081 Sq 69.
In ever dear memory of Frances second daughter of the Rev’d Richard Parnell who entered into rest 12th March 1890 aged 36 years.
On red marble column lying horizontally:
Side One: In loving memory of the Reverend Richard Parnell B.A. for nearly 25 years Vicar of St Stephens, North Bow, who was accidentally drowned off Dawlish, South Devon on the 5th of May 1881 aged 61 years. “There was no more sea” Rev. XX1.
Side two: This tomb was erected by parishioners & friends in testimony of their respect and esteem and their sorrow of his sudden death. “Well done good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord”.
It took a bit of effort to find the spot, and then required more effort to trample down the rampant prickles and peel away the ivy. I especially resented the prickles! But the memorials were still in good nick, especially Richard’s, which was incised in the slab. Frances’ had lost some of its metal letters. They were probably lying in the dirt below her stone, but I wasn’t brave enough to defy the prickles to try and find one.
I hoped more family members might be nearby, but a search didn’t turn up anything. The area was rather overgrown and the prickles discouraged close examination of many monuments. The city held records of who was buried there but I was too buggered to go look them up, and then everything was closed for a long weekend.
The memorial was the centre of some controversy. At some stage Richard’s parish was divided and one William Adamson was given the northern half. The flyer proposing the memorial mentioned Richard’s financial sacrifices in the establishment of the new parish. Not so, declared Rev. William: in fact Richard was of little help and indeed, had continued receiving the fees from marriages and the like, reducing Adamson’s own share of the takings.
The street named after Richard Parnell was dominated by tenement blocks and dangerous local traffic. On the way there I forgot to look for the Vicarage, which according to the 1881 Census was between 27 and 28 Tredegar Rd, near Mosstyn Rd. In 1881 the occupants were Richard, wife Mary Ann, son G H, daughter Frances, daughter Alice, son Arthur, son N C, and a couple of domestic servants. I didn’t see a building of appropriate appearance near the spot, but that proved nothing. I was exhausted after 24 hours of cattle class travel; I might have simply missed it.
Richard’s end was sad:
The Dawlish Times
Thursday, 5th May, 1881
Sad and Fatal Boat Accident Today
Shortly before one o’clock today, a small sailing boat was seen to capsize about half a mile from the shore, the wind was squally at the time. The occupants of the boat were waterman Horsford, the owner; and the Rev Mr Parnell and his wife. It appears that Horsford held on both lady and gentleman as long as he was able, but had to relinquish his hold of the gentleman, himself being much exhausted. A Shaldon boat passing near help was rendered, and all conveyed ashore. Dr Parsons was sent for at once, but it was only to find the gentleman quite dead. He then done everything possible for the lady, who after some time came round to consciousness. The gentleman and lady only came to Dawlish a few days since, and were residing at 9 Marine parade.
My success with the grave was tempered by falling short on some other parts of the RP itinerary. I couldn’t remember all the details. They were stored on my iPaq Pocket PC, which was short of juice. I managed to navigate up Tredegar Rd to Parnell Rd, then fatigue set in and I headed home. At the hotel I showered and lay down to snatch a breather before going to the Guildhall — but that breather was “it” for the rest of the day. By the time I came around, it was too late to do anything and I was too buggered anyway, so I decided to sleep off the lag.
What a frustrating morning! In the morning I chose to walk to Guildhall, saving the price of a Travelcard, as I expected to spend the whole day at Guildhall looking up the records of the Watermen. I walked via Westminster, Whitehall and the Strand. When I got to Guildhall, it was “closed for Bank Holiday”. But the Bank Holiday was on Monday! These guys were getting two days off for the price of one. (It’s practically traditional.) So much for my plans.
I decided to chill out instead, and walk back to the hotel. It was all good, as I needed the exercise as prep for my planned walk from Burwash to Brighton. It should have been familiar ground, as I’d covered the area back in 2003. The Treasury, London Bridge … and then I got lost for a while south of London Bridge due to relying on the LP map. I finally realised the map was the problem, pulled out my Mapguide, and almost immediately figured out where I was. I was so turned around that instead of heading east and converging on the river, I was walking west and away from it. A change or direction soon brought me to the location of the original Globe Theatre and the doors of the new “Shakespeare’s Globe”, which appeared to be closed. I stopped for coffee and a sandwich at a Starbucks facing it. St Paul’s loomed across the river.
People were taking advantage of low tide to make sculptures in the sand of the Thames shore. One guy was making a sandy living room, complete with 3-seat lounge, TV, and what appeared to be a lazy dog. Nearby, a statue of Lawrence Olivier held up a sword with a bent blade. The Invisible man, with a somewhat long torso, touted for tips beneath Blackfriars.
I spent most of the afternoon in my room, resting, but got out again near evening. I walked down to and past the former Battersea Power Station for a Pink Floyd moment, admired some ducks, and had a pretty good pizza at Sole Mio for dinner. Then back to my room and blissful unconsciousness until morning.
On Sunday I did my eternal laundry and bought a ticket to Maidstone, then decided to take another crack at Richard Parnell. Getting there involved round-about routes, as parts of the tube were closed for maintenance. I learned little more in Tredegar Rd, just confirmed that nothing remained. But I found St Mary Bow and Saint Matthias, the latter church attractively renovated but still with its trademark ceiling and columns. The “Verbum Dei” in the pretty stained-glass window at the latter enjoined me to “Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence, Justice and Peace”.
Decided against the Chelsea Flower Show. Tickets were sold out anyway.
MaidstoneI had a comfortable train ride from London, watching rain on the windows and sorting out my plans, then a leisurely walk through a wet and closed-down Maidstone. I had been intending to stay in town until a glance in the window of the (closed) Visitor Information Centre showed me that there were hotels in London Road, hard by where my ancestors lived. So, across the bridge to Rocky Hill, then walk to London Road and along it till I found a likely spot. I ended up at the 4-star Aylesbury House, 56-58 London Rd. At £52 per night it was an expensive indulgence, but worth it for getting into the right mood. My room faced onto London Road, but at the end of the passage was a window looking out over the old family stomping ground. What’s more, this building was shown on an old map of the time. It had been built in 1861.
I celebrated with beer and a meal in a window-seat of the White Horse Inn, 46-48 London Road, a nice little pub that had been in this spot since at least 1798 and was almost certainly used as a drinking hole by my ancestors who lived nearby. The building was the original and it was in good nick.
Alas, all of the buildings my family actually lived in were long gone, swept away by a century of redevelopment. Where “Hills’s Passage” once branched off between what are now 50 and 52 London Rd, there was now nothing. Too-new houses flaunted their garden gates and declared “no passage”. The land behind them that once held a group of cottages, the childhood playground for my great-grandfather, was now divided between backyards, parking lots and housing developments.
Hills’s Passage would have been a narrow alleyway between houses. At rear of the two road-facing properties, it passed one cottage on the right (the south), and three more set back a bit on the left. Then it split. The left (northern) fork went into a sort of courtyard, probably used as a place to park traps and stable horses. At the far end of the courtyard stood several cottages. The right fork led past 8 or 9 cottages in a row that formed the southern boundary of the courtyard and whose doors probably opened directly into the lane. There were 16 cottages in all. My 2nd great-father Robert Golding Hills (“RGH”), born 1820, appears to have lived in #3 or #4, but which cottage that was is unclear.
RGH would have strolled or driven a trap or cart along London Road many hundreds of times. Somewhere near, in Scrub’s Lane, he spent his last two decades. This spot was heavy with family history, if only I could uncover it!
Scrub’s Lane runs from between 23 and 25 London Road up to Queens St, via the top of Bower St and Bower Mount Rd, along one boundary of Oakwood Park. It has various spurs and branches. Although it is mostly tightly bordered by stone walls, there are many places where buildings might once have opened onto it. I had been unable to locate it precisely until now, when I stood at its very entrance. It actually showed up clearly on the satellite view in Google Maps, but until now I had thought that line might be a stream or drain. Now that I had walked the ground, the map made more sense.
I spent Tuesday fiching at the Maidstone Library. Micro-fiching. Boring work, but it was glorious when it popped up the answers to previously intractable genealogical questions. The Library had all the Parish records on fiche, free to browse.
As I digested the info I picked through, my ideas about my ancestry changed, and changed, and changed. Early assumptions turned out wrong. It was very exciting — for me. I was able to find and confirm birthdays, parents, siblings, occupations, family friends, and family events of my ancestors. It looks like a short nothing day written here, but it was very productive for my mission in this trip.
This day became a pattern. I would spend the morning in the Library until my eyes peeled, then explore Maidstone in the mid-afternoon to shake out the knots. One day I went to the Centre for Kentish Studies, a.k.a. “the Archives”, to see some things not available in the Library.
I decided to stay in Maidstone longer than I’d originally intended; I wanted to nail down a nagging question: where were the graves of RGH and his wife? I thought that if I could find them, I’d leave happy.
Not that I’d answered all my questions. I had more questions than ever. But searching out every clue and record would take months of patient research, and I simply couldn’t afford to spend that long in Maidstone. I had answered many of the questions I brought with me and had established a line of ancestors back to 1727, maybe as far as 1594. Not long ago RGH was “beyond here be dragons”. Now I knew the name of his great grandfather (another Robert) and even had a clue to the codger kicking up water in his ggf's own ggf’s baptismal fount (John).
I had spent a while copying down possible ancestors found in Poll Books until I realised that these were always chronically out of date. RGH appeared in the 1843 book, but his older brother did not appear until 1848 even though both were living in Maidstone in in the 1841 Census. I knew that in fact in 1843 RGH was living in Boxley, as he got married there. Poll Books were useful to establish occupations, but eventually the books got too lengthy and complex and I got writer’s cramp. At 10p per page I was not about to photocopy dozens of pages and post them home or carry for weeks without good cause.
Ditto the relatives I found in the Parish records. I wrote down quite a few but by no means all I found, only the direct relatives. I could’ve been more rigorous, as one of those omitted relatives might be the missing piece of the puzzle, but writer’s cramp dictated otherwise.
I wanted to buy some camping gear tomorrow (there was a good outdoors store in town), but my planned walk through Kipling country was now in doubt due to days of rain. Even if the rain went away now — and stayed away, which, this being England, wasn’t likely — the tracks would still be muddy bogs for at least a week. I didn’t so much mind walking in the rain, but I wouldn’t see as much and the mud and water would get into everything. I was a fair-weather walker by choice, and I hadn’t brought any serious camping gear with me.
I woke early, balanced my budget and filled in the last couple of days of my diary from the emails I wrote to family and friends. Resolved to be more disciplined about the diary as these notes would be a major source for writing the report! (Spoiler: I was not more disciplined; I compiled this mostly from emails, photos and receipts.)
I worked in the Library as usual that morning, then went grave-walking. By 16:00 I had achieved closure on RGH, for despite persistent rain I had stood beside his grave in the main Maidstone Cemetery, and Remembered him. He had rested there beside his Ann for 104 years: let him continue to rest there. There was more to find there, but I was sopping wet and had to stop for the day.
Next afternoon, after the Library, I tracked RGH’s brother to his grave, and came within an ace of finding his mother. Would’ve, if her gravestone had survived.
So much accomplished, and yet it felt like nothing. I had to remind myself that three months ago the line stopped with RGH and that my notions of the wider family were still the fuzzy ones from childhood. Now I stood at the centre of a personal map with ancestors marching away at least four and up to seven deep in all directions. A mind map, a family mandala, or perhaps a snowflake.
Family tree tables usually look like, well, tree roots, with each set of parents shoulder to shoulder; but why? Each parent is effectively unrelated to the other. If they weren’t it’d be called “incest”. Their genes merge only in their children.
Of course, once you start adding siblings and second spouses the mandala loses this crisp neatness. It’s no longer a snowflake. It would look cool in a 3D virtual space, but even as a flat drawing in my head it was fun. I was the centre of all creation, for if you look far enough back, everyone is related, receding in all directions to the Big Bang at the edge of time.
That night I had a celebratory dinner at the White Horse.
BurwashI headed off from Maidstone without a reservation, on the busiest night of the week for casual accommodation. Burwash is only about 50 miles from Maidstone, but it was one of those oh-so-British “you can’t get there from here” things. I had to take a bus to Tunbridge Wells and catch a train from there. When I got to Burwash, I found the place booked out for a party night. Argh!
But having come this far, I decided to at least have a look at Bateman’s, last home of Rudyard Kipling. I saw the room where he wrote Puck of Pook’s Hill, Rewards and Fairies, and other late works. I walked all around the area, getting an idea of the landscape as it was in Kipling’s time. I am a long-time Kippler, so like the family history, this was very exciting — for me.
The ticket lady at Bateman’s did some research while I was looking around, and when I came back there was a note on my pack, “Cirrell. Woodlands Farm.” I quickly found it on my Ordnance map. So after my look at the area around Bateman’s, I walked up to Woodlands Farm. They had a room, £40 per night. It was in a lovely old 14th-Century farmhouse, far from the roaring road, surrounded by the birdsong with just the occasional light plane overhead.
Lunch at the Bell Inn — roast and a pint of London Pride. They were the only place that went at all out of their way to help yesterday, so they got my custom today.
The London Pride was a pretty good beer.
I set out to look around Willingford, then walk back to find the Gunway. The first part went OK, though I couldn’t find the old forge; but the second part went astray. Trying to take shortcuts down from the High Wood, I actually took a long hook south of my target, walked through Park Wood, and finally emerged on King’s Hill Road. I decided to dig out my miniature compass for tomorrow’s walk down to Battle, or I’d end up Ghod knows where.
Some paths on the Ordnance Maps were overgrown and impassable. Others didn’t start or end where expected. Many were obviously frequented by horse riders, whose hooves had trodden the soggy path into a mire.
Bell Inn had wireless but, even though they gave me the codes I couldn’t connect. The signal was probably too weak for the iPaq’s small aerial.
BattleI had a leisurely lunch at the “White Hart”, about 4-5 km from Battle. I had expected to be in Battle by now (about 14:00), but a late start plus getting lost in the High Wood cost me dearly. Then the weather turned foul and slowed me down even more. I gave up my plan of making my way via the rights-of-way, which by now were dripping quagmires, and I was just plowing through by road, head down, pack somewhat protected by a bright orange garbage bag and body protected by my green Grand Canyon poncho. I’d get there, but the chance to dry off a little, get the weight off, and raise my morale with a hot meal and a couple of pints of Guinness, was too tempting to resist. I was soon halfway through the second pint and feeling much better toward the day.
I grudged the rain less than the loss of the views I was expecting to get as I came off the downs into Battle. The horizon was smudged out by the rain, as though by a careless thumb.
The high point of the walk was while watching some chickens as I passed a farm. A flicker caught my eye. A grey tabby, barely more than a kitten by her size, with golden eyes. She danced over to me, jumped on the fence, and made it clear that she was very pleased to meet me. The fence post perch was a bit wobbly, so I picked her up. When I gathered the purring bundle in my arms I realised that she may be barely more than a kitten, but she would soon be a mother.
The sun finally broke through. The horizon was still hidden, but suddenly everything nearby was fresh and green and gold, sparkling with jewels. It would require an optimist to hope that this presaged a change in the mood of the weather, and if there is one thing I’m not it’s an optimist. But was that true any longer? A pessimist would surely have taken the bus from Burwash to Etchingham, and the train thence to Battle, and would have missed the sore feet and miserable drizzle. But he would never have met that kitten or sat in a warm terrace restaurant watching sunshine burst across the Weald. Was I becoming a closet optimist?
§
I had a luxurious evening at the Tollgate Farmhouse in Battle. I was flat out in a warm bed, with some laundry drying in the enormous bathroom and the TV playing. I was simply not up to doing anything else tonight — my feet felt like they had been tenderised and my left achilles tendon was twinging. When I got, up my legs were heavy. But the rest of me was fine.
I got to Battle about 16:40, but by the time I checked in and walked down to the Abbey, it was raining again and I decided there was no hope of doing the battleground justice in the 50 minutes before it closed for the day. I snapped a pic of the gatehouse and stopped in at the 1066 pub instead. The walk had been a saga, marred by mud and rain and tired, aching feet. Wouldn’t have missed it for quids!
The rain was predicted to hang around tomorrow, making my plans for walking to Pevensey moot. Despite the rain, which in any event stayed light, I only set out on today’s walk because I hoped the dry weather would hold for one more day. I wasn’t about to head off into the face of the certainty of getting drenched!
The problem was that I was running two days behind my planned schedule. I should have been in Alfriston tonight. Something had to give. Either I must cut something out, or else add days to the trip, putting back the flight home, which would cost me money — both to make the change and to pay for the extra days spent abroad. Bearing in mind my Maidstone experience, Dublin could take longer than expected. So I had to make up three days. With Dalry, four. Plus an extra day to daytrip from London to Maidstone on the backswing. That was a lot of slack to take up, from a trip already barely long enough for its original itinerary.
In the end I cut several days from Hadrian’s Wall. That week-long amble from coast to coast had been dear to me, but was predicated on camping most nights. No tent, no camping. The weather could be wonderful by then, but who could count on that? It was an indulgence rather than a must-do, so it was the logical thing to cut. But I didn’t have to like it.
Battle in the morning. This was the site of the very famous 1066 Battle of Hastings. Considering it involved less than 20,000 men — although about half of them wound up dead — the consequences of this little stoush between rival contenders for the throne of a little country at the edge of Europe are astonishing.
Left to themselves, the Angles and Saxons were never likely to amount to much. On their own the Normans were self-destructive. But put a Norman head on an Anglo-Saxon body and suddenly you had a cultural engine that could create a world empire. Think what might have happened if Harold had won. French and Spanish nations in North America — no USA. India would speak Russian (and Gandhi, if he appeared, would have been quietly “disappeared"). A German-dominated Europe. China might still be an empire.
§
Lunch at “The Heron” in Pevensey. The main station was actually “Pevensey and Westham”; Pevensey Station, just over a kilometre east, received few services. As the Castle was about midway between the stations, the difference hardly mattered.
I made it to Rye, then caught the 16:54 back to Hastings. An expensive day, but both worthwhile and enjoyable. Even though the day turned out fine, I was glad I decided not to try to walk to Pevensey: my legs had no spring in them at all and even today’s moderate kilometrage left my feet sore again. Face it, I was a long way from being as fit as I was at the start of the year. I’d been well on my way to becoming a pillow again. Without the excuse of walking to work, I was too lazy to exercise properly.
Tomorrow, weather permiting, I planned to take a train to Eastbourne and pick up the trail from there to Alfriston, then go on to Rottingdean the next day. Then train to Brighton. That would be enough walking for now, and skipping those two legs would make up a couple of days — and save two other legs!
AlfristonBrilliant sunshine! Blue skies! After raining every day I’d been in England, suddenly the clouds had vanished. Where did rainy old England go? Now I had no excuses.
I took the train to Eastbourne, and started my walk about 11:00. I got to Alfriston YHA, about 1.5 km south of the town, about 17:10. At 17:40 I even had the energy to go for an evening stroll to see the nearby “Long Man", a huge outline originally traced in the chalk on a hillside. Nowadays they’d used white-painted concrete to preserve the outline, the moral equivalent, it seemed to me, of destroying a village in order to save it. I got back to Alfriston about 20:20.
Excluding lunch and the longer rests, I had been on my feet for well over 8 hours, mostly spent trudging up the long side of a down or digging my heels in descending the steep side. I’ve said it before: I hate hills! They’re not so bad if you climb them and keep the height, but today’s constant up and down soon drained my energy. I even got mildly sunburned, although the feeble English sun took eight hours to do what the Australian sun could have done in two.
And so to bed. Glorious rest at last. My new shoes were roomy but didn’t cushion me right. My feet got sore and tired, even when my legs weren’t. Maybe after I got around to fitting them with odour-eaters they’d be easier on my feet.
BrightonThe next day was the first personal failure of the trip. I set out from Alfriston to walk to Rottingdean, another Kipling home. But at Southease, 12 kilometres on, where there was a train station, I realised that the last few days had taken too much out of me and I simply didn’t have the endurance to make it to Rottingdean. The walk had become torture. The thought of climbing back up to the ridgeline on the far side of the valley made me quail. My feet were killing me, and although I found the energy to dash to the station, I was not confident that would last me through the next long uphill trudge. My itinerary in Rottingdean was pointless if I didn’t walk in. It was 8 km to the end of this leg of the South Down Way. I’d have to turn off a couple of km short to go down to Rottingdean, but that walk itself was 5 to 6 km. In short, I would need to do tired what I’d barely managed fresh. I didn’t have it left in me. I cut my losses and took the 13:36 from Southease to Brighton.
In Brighton, I cheered myself with coffee on Brighton Pier. I was tempted by a shady, breezy beer-fish-chips place on the beach, but it was too much effort to figure out their system, their prices and their casual attitude. So there I sat, nursing a £1.20 black coffee in a paper cup, watching the passing parade.
Brighton was crowds, music and colour. It was everything I expected, and more. The biggest surprise was the beach pebbles — golden brown. But I was used to sandy beaches, and golden brown pebbles are still pebbles; tricking the beach out with carroussels and artwork didn’t remove this fundamental shortcoming.
A couple of hours spent people-watching and sipping coffee — and then beer — on Brighton Pier restored some of my confidence. The failure of my plan for the day was depressing. I’d invested quite a lot of time planning those walks. Still, if everything we plan came off, how boring the world would be. If this was the worst flop on this trip I’d have no reason to complain. I didn’t achieve my objective for the day, but I had fun anyway. And it reminded me to always draw up a Plan B!
I was now quite sunburnt. Not badly, but enough to be tender. I hadn’t worn a hat yesterday, and feeble though the English sun may be, I’d been out of the sun since January. My skin was vulnerable, and given enough hours to work, even the English sun could burn. Yesterday was brilliant blue skies and sunshine; today was the same, but warmer.
SalisburyStonehenge was more impressive than I expected. I saw Old Sarum as well.
The local bus company used to run a regular service to Stonehenge, but now they’d phased that out in favour of a “Stonehenge Tour” which was really just a bus service with an option to buy your entry through the bus company, which let you skip the ticket queue at the site — if there was a queue. At £11 for just the return fare (versus say £9.60 for Avebury, more than twice as far) this was not exactly a bargain for the customer, but the bus company seemed satisfied. Stonehenge was sewn up by the bus company and a couple of tour places, and they didn’t seem to compete very hard against each other, so I didn’t expect things to get better soon.
After reading all the accounts online and in travel books I expected a pokey bunch of rocks with a massive crush of people around them, but in fact Stonehenge was better than that (though they were right about the people crush). It was no Colosseum, but it did dominate its landscape.
§
I mentioned Old Sarum above. Here’s the rub: That's all I wrote down, and after a decade and a half my memories of my visit to Old Sarum comprise walking towards a big green mound, through an opening in the side, and up to another big green mound inside. That’s it. That’s all I remember.
I do have some 40 photos that show I looked at a sign about plans for the area around Stonhenge and Sarum at about 15:30 and then spent half an hour walking over to Old Sarum, arriving at about 16:00 and leaving by about 16:45. Several photos show that by the end I was more interested in the local rabbit population than by the sacred ruins beneath me.
I do have the brief description I wrote for each photo back in 2008 while editing them, when my memories were still fresh. Often reading my photo descriptions brings back a rush of memories, but not this time.
Let's see what can be reconstructed. From the sign near Stonehenge I walked a rough path through wild green fields. Back when Sarum was in use and was the main centre of population around here, these would have been cultivated. After half an hour I was approaching a green peak with crumbled fortifications scattered on top, surrounded by a rounded green hill. The path became paved, then turned and bored through a gap in what appeared otherwise to be a natural hill that curved away to either side. Inside, the area that once held a town was a relatively flat lawn and the path led me past a car park to a gap in the peak ahead. Signs told me what had been here.
For 5,000 years, from the Iron Age to the Normans and beyond, this was the local metropolis. William built a castle atop the central mound. Eventually a cathedral was built over at New Salisbury in the 1200s and a sarum info board claims that this was the nail in Sarum’s coffin, which begs the question rather than answers it, as Sarum already had a century-old cathedral that had been enlarged just 50 years earlier and that had to be demolished when Salisbury’s was built.
I went in through the gap in the peak, which had been the castle gate. There wasn't a lot left inside the castle, just some impressive mounds of concrete and a couple of info panels I didn't photograph. I was soon back out and walking clockwise around the peak. At one point I could see modern Salisbury in the distance, marked by its tall cathedral.
Soon I reached the ruins of the old cathedral, whose location had somehow been forgotten until 1834. The excavators had done a meticulous job, revealing the stages of construction and the lay of the walls.
After the cathedral, the rest of the site was given up to grass, weeds and rabbits. I completed my circuit and left. I took a pic of some nice wayside flowers at 16:57, and my next shot was “The Old Mill” back in Salisbury, at 17:16.
On Saturday I went to Avebury, which turned out to be cruder and sparser than I expected and also covered in sheep poo that I was still scraping off my shoes days later. The place was cut by four roads and you must often to walk well away from the stones to cross the roads, so it was hard to appreciate it as a whole. Green green English countryside. Meadows littered with runny-bottomed sheep and large grey and brown stones. Lots of tourists. Avebury was free — except that they charged a stiff £4.20 for access to the on-site Museum. Somehow this didn’t strike me as an exciting bargain, but I eagerly absorbed the free bits of the place. For comparison, they’d charged £6.50 for entry to Stonehenge.
I ended my day enjoying a pint of “Old Sarum” back in Salisbury. It was a tough life — and I was glad I was living it!
BathI took the train on to Bath, to see — what else — the Roman Baths. I came, I saw, I kicked back. I booked into the self-proclaimed Funky Backpackers and for an extra £2 chose a 4-bed dorm. Good choice! All the cheap dorms filled up with penurious backpackers, but I slept in lofty solitude.
It turned out there was quite a lot left of the actual baths, although the early Christians had ensured that the attached temple paid the immemorial price of temples of defeated religions. The modern restorers clothed the bones of baths and temple with light-weight hanging walls and ceilings, creating an illusion of what had gone.
The baths occupied me for an hour or so, and after that there was nothing to do but wander around admittedly pretty Bath. Hungry, I followed music and found a pub. Outside the “Pig & Fiddle” I had lunch and a Guinness, listened to live music, and did some email. In the evening I walked nearly deserted streets and then made my way towards what sounded like a football crowd. Who would be playing in Bath this late? It turned out to be a big TV screen surrounded by a large crowd of beer-swilling locals. Germany was playing Poland. I left them to it and walked the old towpath, admiring the trim little barges tied up there.
Back at the backpackers, I did some rail pricing on the internet, then watched the Mythbusters go to work on the adage “went down like a lead balloon”, meaning something that was self-evidently going to fail. They made a lead balloon that floated, using lead foil and sticky tape.
Stratford-Upon-AvonThree and a half hours of changing trains brought me to Stratford-Upon-Avon, where I decided to blow the budget and checked into an overpriced three-star place. £65 for a single room — my most expensive night in England so far, and it didn’t even come with breakfast! The receptionist sweetly informed me that for just £12.95 more I could enjoy the full English breakfast that cheaper places offered as part of their (lower) room price. I smiled just as sweetly and said I’d think about it, but what I was actually thinking about was the Corn Flakes and other makings I was carrying in my pack. All I need acquire to break my fast was a loaf of fresh bread — which I eventually bought.
But first I did the Shakespeare circuit. I ticked off four of the five “Shakespeare” places, missing only Mary Arden’s farm because it was a 5-kilometre walk and would take too long or else force me to skimp other places.
The Trust presented Shakespeare as a solid historical figure, but looking behind the persiflage, in fact there appeared to be two of him — a bones-of-his-arse writer and a prosperous merchant and man of property. Perhaps they were the same man, separated by years. Or perhaps there were two or more separate men.
But I fulfilled a dream. I had seen Anne Hathway’s Cottage. For some reason this was always a place I wanted to see, and was the main reason I came to Stratford. I also learned who got Shakespeare’s best bed * (he left Anne only his second-best bed, a point Robert Heinlein poked at playfully in Time Enough for Love, with the quip “his will left his ‘second-best bed’ to his wife. Look up who got his best bed and you’ll begin to figure out what really happened.”).
* Oh, all right. The will covered it two ways: he gave the New Place itself to his daughter Susanna, and then all its contents to Susanna and her husband. This left John Hall free to keep, sell or dispose of those contents as he saw fit. Alas, there appears to be no record of what happened to said contents after that. In the context of Time Enough for Love, either John Hall himself was Shakespeare, married to his own daughter, or else Shakespeare successfully perpetrated his change of identity and presumably escaped with enough goodies to set up elsewhere.
“[V]nto my daughter Susanna Hall, for better enabling of her to performe this my will & towardes the performans thereof All that capitall Messuage or tenemente with thappurtenaunces in Stratford aforesaid Called the newe place wherein I nowe dwell …”
“All the Rest of my goodes chattels leases plate jewels & household stuffe whatsoever, after my dettes and Legasies paied and my funerall expences dischardged, I give devise and bequeath to my Sonne in Lawe, John Hall gent & my daughter Susanna his wief …”
[internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/retirement/will+1.html]
HolyheadHolyhead was a 5-hour journey with several train changes. I arrived after 14:00 and thought I’d use the day to acquire some maps and get a sense of the area. This could have been a mistake, as the weather was perfect. By the time I had gathered my maps and munchies it was nearly 17:00, still early enough to get out to Trearddur and back, but I decided to hang fire until tomorrow. Come the TV weather forecast after the 6 PM news, and behold, rain was scheduled for tomorrow.
Damn!
My plan was to walk the holy mountain and try to find Nicholas Monsarrat’s parental summer home at Treaddur. I’d enjoyed his sea yarns as a child, and his two-volume autobiography, Life is a Four Letter Word, as an adult.
Just after 10:00, I was resting on a rocky hillside in sight of Hafod. Yes, it was still there! The second storey seemed to have evaporated, unless it was the rooms behind the roof windows in what would once have been the attic. But the description matched and the location matched and it was still called “Hafod”, unless someone had taken the name.
There was a neighbouring house that fitted even better. It was conceivable that the section was divided and the name stayed with the one that had the original driveway, while the house went to the other division.
I eventually felt rested and satiated with the view, and moved on. Just after 14:00 I reached the top of Holyhead. I pulled myself up the last few metres of broken rock to stand upon the summit, knees trembling and wind broken. I looked down across Anglesey to the mountains. I saw Holyhead spread out like a map. And I saw the sea — FULL TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY METRES BENEATH MY CLOUD-WALKING FEET!
The mind becomes giddy at the mere contemplation of the effort involved in the conquest of such an awful height.
By 16:00 I was back in the Stanley Hotel, having completed a memorable day’s walk — without more than a few drops of rain, one shower almost unnoticeable as I approached the mountain, another more assertive as I came back into town. And now? Who cared! I was home and dry.
That evening I realised the day had taken more out of me than I thought. Climbing the steps to my room was hard. When I lay down to rest up, I slept for six hours! When I woke, my feet hurt and my legs were heavy, and it felt like I had picked up some fresh sunburn on my forehead. But the rest of me was fine, so there was that.
I’d walked at least 17 km and climbed a 220-metre hill. OK, I took the climb slow and easy out of caution, but I had no problem with running out of energy or puff. I might not have felt it at that moment, but the walks in Kent and Sussex had done me a lot of good. I was much fitter than I had been three weeks ago — which was part of the point of all this walking
I was also feeling more optimistic than I could remember. This on top of the positive attitude I got during the career break and started to lose as soon as I was back at ANZ. I might yet rue the loss of that steady, driving income, but so far I had few regrets over leaving that job that had become so hateful to me.
DublinMy Irish itinerary had expanded. I wanted to visit Mullabrack, in County Armagh, whence came Sarah Andrews (McKinnon). Mullabrack was likely a researching dead end, as many records there were burned in 1922, but it might be nice to see the place.
And though it was a faint hope indeed, mention of great-great granduncle Henry Parnell maybe-possibly-perhaps being from Letterkenny in County Donagal was about the only locational lead I had on the origin of Edward Parnell (“EP”), his father. If Dublin proved fruitless I might go there. (In the event I did neither Mullabrack nor Letterpenny.)
Ireland, to me, was a vast dark hole from which ancestors emerged like meteors — brilliant and flashy, but illuminating nothing. Fortunately an uncle Parnell had done a lot of digging a few years back and acquired huge amounts of detail on that side of the family, that served me to good end in Dublin.
§
By 09:00 I was on the 4-hour catamaran ferry to Ireland at last. The ride across the Irish Sea was boring and uneventful. At the other end, I walked onto a bus to the Busáras station.
I now found that although there were plenty of beds on offer Thursday night, most places were already booked out for Saturday night. It took me a couple of hours of slogging to find a place at a tolerable price that could squeeze me in for four nights in a row. I ended up at Abbey Court Hostel, on the bank of the whiffy Liffey. At €31 for a place in a 4-bed dorm, it was not exactly cheap, but at least they were able to fit me past Saturday night. All other places I’d tried had room tonight but were already booked out for Saturday or even Friday.
Abbey was booked out for Monday, a fateful problem, as two of my days fell on the weekend when many things were closed. I’d completely forgotten about the weekend when planning my time. However, since I would have to pack my bags on Monday anyway I decided I’d move on then, unless they came up with a cancellation. But they were just 5 minutes walk from Ormond Quay and Great Strand St, where Parnells once ran a wine business. So there was that.
Due to the two hours lost looking for accomodation, the day was ruined for museums or libraries, so instead I set off to check out the family haunts in Capel, Lower Ormond, and Great Strand. After that I headed south to Wexford Street and on to Bloomfield Avenue. These last streets interested me in particular because Wexford was where my 2nd great-grandmother Frances was living when she met my 2nd great grandfather Arthur (“AP”), who was staying with his sister and her husband in Bloomfield at the time.
On the backswing, I had a look at the Liffey bridges and central Dublin. I stopped in at a pub (run by Polish immigrants) for a Guinness. Dinner was a Sub.
Scratch Friday as a waste of time. It started OK, with a quick early morning zig up Prussia St to see where my 3rd great grandmother Frances lived. But it was all downhill from the zag.
I made my way to the National Library, arriving just after 10:00, which my Lonely Planet assured me was opening time, only to find that it opened at 9:30. Half an hour wasted. Then the pretty librarian in the genealogy section cheerfully advised me that they only had the Catholic Parish Records there. The Protestant records were somewhere in south Dublin. She had a handout showing the street but she wasn’t exactly sure where in the street or how to get there. Perhaps the Luas, the tram, would get me close.
Other useful genealogical information was scattered across half a dozen different locations. I decided to pursue the Parish Records first as the place that held them, the Representative Church Body Library, was closed on weekend. As it happened they are also closed on Friday afternoons when someone in the organisation died.
Due to the time involved getting to and from the RCBL, my options were running out, but I thought I might check the Dublin City Library. However, I changed my mind and went to Mount Jerome Cemetery instead, deperate to get some runs on the board. Wrong again! Although I had the register numbers for several graves, these numbers were useless on their own — they didn’t tell you where the graves were physically located. You needed to ask at the Cemetery Office, and the Cemetery Office closed at 13:00. Snookered, I took a sulky walk around the older parts of the Cemetery, found nothing, and gave up, cursing the relative who dismissed the grave registers as “leading only to graves” and therefore didn’t bother recording where those graves were. I wanted those graves!
By Friday night, there I sat, frustrated and disgusted, my best day for research down the gurgler. My hopes were not yet all gone. Dublin Library and St Jerome were open Saturday, although everything else was closed. But I couldn’t waste more time on the Cemetery until I had checked the library, so the Cemetery now must wait until Sunday. My hopes of clearing up some of the mysteries surrounding the Parnells of Dublin hung by this thread.
In all, a pretty unsatisfactory situation. Bah, Pfooie!
After yesterday’s dud run I was half expecting more frustration on Saturday, but instead I had a good day, with the sole reservation being that the Dublin Library opened at 10:00, too late to suit me, and closed at 17:00, too early to suit me.
In the library, I found some surprises. For example, I thought I knew when AP’s father died — 1852 – but in fact I didn’t. I thought I knew his occupation — wine and general merchant — but in fact I didn’t. I couldn’t even be sure where he lived. In all the documentary evidence available to me the only evidence he even existed was his name on the marriage licenses of his children! So who was he really?
I’ll explain. An account I possessed of AP’s youth in Dublin noted that his father EP was a wine merchant who lived at Lower Ormond Quay, then in Capel St, and died in 1852. The account noted that AP had an elder brother, same name as their father (let’s call his brother Junior, and their father, EP, Senior) who also died in 1852, at the age of 30. The account was confused by Junior marrying in 1849, and by a reference written for AP by Junior’s “widow and executrix” regarding AP’s work for “the late Wine Merchant deceased”. Since Senior was already married at the time to AP’s mother, this apparent second marriage and reference was awkward.
The account got around this awkwardness by finding a gravestone that mentioned a merchant who died in 1852 aged 30 years and his son of the same name (call him Bub), who also died in 1852 aged 3 months. The account then supposed that for AP, “1851–52 must have been a traumatic time, with the deaths of his father and in all likelihod his brother ... and his nephew as well.”
There are just two, not three family burials in Dublin in 1852. I traced both of these records. One is for Junior (aged 30, died of consumption), who was the wine merchant; the other (died of measles aged 3 mths) is for the Bub. Both lead to the same plot in Mount Jerome, which will be the gravestone mentioned in the account.
EP was a merchant, it says so right there on the marriage licenses, but the evidence says the wine merchant was his son, and doesn’t say when EP died. In the end, EP (Senior) just became more and more nebulous, the more I looked for him. Every clue for Senior, except for his children, led either to Junior, or to a stranger.
Sunday started with Mt Jerome Cemetery, where the office was quickly able to tell me where to find the graves.
By 10:12 I was standing beside Junior’s and the Bub’s grave, a broken column, signifying a life cut short, and there, just one metre away, a stone lay flat on the ground, marking the grave of AP’s mother — the very stone dedicated by Richard of Bow as executer of her estate. I placed a bouquet on it. As a bonus, I found a third grave nearby, for another family involved with mine, that eventually brought a tangled web of relationships, in both Dublin and in New Zealand, out of the shadows. I had a quick look around the area but found no additional family connections, nor could I find the grave of Junior’s afflicted widow, which was supposedly also in Mt Jerome, in a crypt.
That evening, Abbey admitted to a vacancy for Monday, so I extended my stay.
Back to the RCBL. Although I got in as soon as they opened, I managed to get in a scant hour of browsing, because reasons, which was made even less efficient because rather than microfilm everything, they worked on a bring-up system. You discussed what registers you needed and they fetched them for you, two or three at a time. The thrill of handling the actual books dwindled as rapidly as my time. Since I was merely trying to use information I already held to elicit new information, it didn’t take me long to skim through a register, and then I had to hang around until they had time to discuss my next search.
I was looking for EP’s wedding. It was supposed to be in 1828, but he had a son in 1820. Either the wedding was in 1818 or 1820, or he had an earlier wife. In the St Kevin & St Peter’s register for 1814-1824 I found a Parnell who married in 1821 and one who married in 1822, which was promising, as although these two men were too old to be children of Senior, both names occurred among the children of Senior and they were the right age to be brothers of Senior. What’s more, they were the only likely names married in that parish between 1814 and 1832, so it was not as if I had just picked two familiar names out of a crowd of candidates. But I found no marriage for Senior, and no sons or daughters of Senior in the baptisms register. But the records for that parish went back to about 1760 — with a little more time I could have checked baptisms around the turn of the century to try to find the parents. I just didn’t think of it in my time there. I did check St Mary’s Parish baptisms from 1820 to 1834, as that was the parish that held Lower Ormond Quay in 1850; but I found no relevant baptisms. Then my time ran out before I could go on to check records for the area surrounding Prussia St.
That evening, I extended my stay again. I was just about done with Dublin, but there were still some loose ends.
Tuesday started with a tour of Caroline Row and Anne St North, which held family locations and gave me a fun romp through central Dublin. In between, I haunted the General Records Office, buying copies of marriage certificates, and — did my eternal laundry. This was my last full day here; I had stayed two days longer than I wanted, and I was looking forward to escaping.
In fact, I didn’t like Dublin. It was ugly, expensive, badly laid out, and above all, pompous and self-congratulatory beyond its just achievements.
Perhaps it was just that I was there during an EU referendum, but I suspect not. Dublin was so full of shite that it would take an ocean to give it a decent enema. But all it had was the Liffey, a river as undemanding and ineffective as its name implied, despite its apt aroma.
Eighty years earlier, the Irish finally made such a nuisance of themselves that the English left in disgust. Ireland had never got over it. The next day, sitting on the bus that bore me away from the place, I felt rather like someone who has just completed a necessary but unpleasant chore. I felt an urge to wash my hands.
My uncle had suggested I look around Dublin on Sunday, there being little else to do that day. “There are some wonderful statuetry there,” he suggested, uncharacteristically ungrammatical. Well, I looked at some statues and I had to give points to a place that erects a statue to a man executed for high treason — except of course that he wasn’t a traitor to the Irish, just to the English. I’d have been more impressed if they’d raised a statue to someone who betrayed the Irish. It would show more sincerity. Most of the statues pushed the point that the past was awful due to what the foreigners did to the Irish and the Irish should never forget it.
Did you know that “Gael” meant “wild men” to the old Irish of the BC era? Back then the ones invading the place and knocking it about were the people who call themselve the Irish now — the Gaels.* There was no protest from the Gaels about this — the protests only started when other nations took their turns at playing invader. Some things never change.
* A study of DNA suggests the gaels came to Ireland from homelands near the Rhine, under pressure from the Romans; that they made their way across the channel and up to Scotland and then down into Ireland, reversing the traditional history by which the Irish Scotti invaded Scotland.
BelfastAfter Dublin, Belfast was lovely. Everywhere my eye fell it rested on gorgeous Empire period architecture, yet the city was dominated by a huge green hill as a backdrop. It had a problem with congestion from too many buses trying to squeeze into the main square, but as local drivers avoided the square, the only ones inconvenienced were the carloads of tourists, who could be recognised by the panicked expressions as phalanxes of thundering buses bore down on them. Pedestrians had no problem threading between the ranks of momentarily stalled behemoths.
I stopped in at a pub for a meal, and sighed happily because it cost half what I’d have paid in Dublin. I felt so happy that I declared a holiday. Instead of flicking through dusty tomes looking for lurking ancestors, which really is what I should have done, I had a relaxed lunch, a ride in the Belfast Wheel, and then, when the weather turned “soft”, I went to the movies and watched the new Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. What a pleasant way to waste an afternoon!
My mood wasn’t even spoiled by discovering that allthough the YHA hostel offered wireless internet, it charged £3 per hour, or about 25% more than even the rip-off joints in touristy parts of Dublin. This absurd pricing was probably driven by British Telecom, who had an exalted notion of the value of their “BT Hotspot” service. Charges of £5 for one hour, £10 for a 24 hour period, of £40 for 4,000 minutes in 30 days were simply outrageous. If you didn’t like those packages they’d happily bill you 20p per minute (£12 per hour) for just the time you actually used. I wasn’t in Kansas any more, Toto! At those prices, the yellow brick underfoot had better be solid gold. Did enough people actually pay these outrageous prices to make it viable?
While sitting in the pub I listened to a guy with a thick brogue explaining why he had spent the last decade on compo. He had a bad back, y’see; the discs were gone, the bones were rubbing. Sitting effortlessly astride a bar stool he expounded at length upon the injury that made it impossible for him to work. There was an injection that could help, but it had to be given every 6 months. He’d had one three years ago, was still waiting for the next. They knew what was wrong but couldn’t fix it, so they just signed his form and told him to come back in three years.
I couldn’t help but wonder if office ergonomists had it all wrong. Perhaps instead of special chairs they should install bar stools. This heroic victim of industrial disease was there when I arrived and was still there when I left, bravely downing one more beer for the sake of the economy.
Giant’s CausewayNext day I headed north to the Giant’s Causeway. Yes, Belfast was lovely, but there was a weekend coming up and if I stayed in Belfast over the weekend I’d have to make up the time elsewhere in my itinerary. I had to go now to avoid the weekend crowds at the Causeway.
I must have been having a stupid spell that day. Nothing went quite right. I missed my stop and had to walk three miles back from Bushmills — forgetting to see the historic distillery while I was there. I couldn’t find a place with a vacancy for two nights and had to settle for one night at the Causeway Hotel. Later they had a cancellation, but by then I had followed a shorter alternative itinerary and didn’t feel like repeating the best bits again the next day.
I went out to picnic at Hamilton’s Seat and almost got blown off the cliff. I had to find a hollow and squat in it — substituting a view for the opportunity to eat my meagre repast without having to chase it along the clifftops. I ended up walking out and back, whereas if I’d been smart I would’ve taken a bus to the east end and walked back from there, taking advantage of the late sunset (after 22:00). And so it went.
The centrepiece of the area, the Giant’s Causeway, was mildly disappointing. It was smaller than expected, and crawling with tourists. But it was just part of a beautiful section of coastline (the Causeway Coast), and once I got away from the Giants Causeway I almost had the place to myself. Oh, it was grand! Oh, my aching feet!
GlasgowNext day I headed for Glasgow and things went wrong again, but somehow it all worked out. The ferry to Cairnryan was late and by the time I got from Cairnryan to Stanraer to catch the train, the train was gone. Next service 19:40. But I managed to catch a bus to Ayr and then another on to Glasgow. By 19:40 I was booking into Adelaide House, Glasgow. For one night: Jon Bon Jovi was playing Glasgow on Saturday and the city was booked out.
This was becoming the usual story. I couldn’t beat it by just booking ahead myself because I usually didn’t know where I’d be a week ahead, or even a few days. A week ago I’d expected to be arriving at the Causeway tonight, instead I was in Glasgow.
But after a day of transfers — bus to ferry to bus and bus and bus — I was too bushed to tramp around looking for a place with rooms for tomorrow night. So instead of getting out bright & early to visit Dalry, I’d be looking for a bed.
Next morning I managed to find a place for Saturday — and for the three nights beyond, although I had to break out my credit card instead of paying cash. The McLay Hotel. No problem after all.
Over the next few days, hot on the trail of my Ayrshire ancestors, I visited their towns, except one, searching out the places they lived; I spent hours in Glasgow’s Mitchell Library, watching microfilmed Parish Registers blur past my eyes. I grumbled over ancestors whose births weren’t written down. I chuckled over ancestors whose births were, shall we say, irregular. It was fun. I found a lot more than expected.
The family trail I followed started in 1809 with John McKinnon, pit miner, in St Quivox, near Ayr. From there it went to Kilwinning, then to Dalry, and finally to New Zealand. The key people were John, 1809-1857, his wife Agnes, 1811-1873, and their son John, 1849-1925, who took his family to New Zealand in 1879. I never got to St Quivox in person, and I visited Kilwinning and Dalry in reverse family order. Since this is a trip report, not a genealogy, I'll tell it as it happened and skimp on the genealogical details. That means this section will be brief.
Dalry was a nice little town with a railway station, three gurgling rivers, and lots of old, old houses. It was the town where my direct ancestors spent most of their later years. I wasn’t able to positively identify the family home of some 30 years, which was in Garnock Street near a large Catholic Church. In 2008, what I calculated to be the site was occupied by new-looking flats, but the street still contained many stone buildings that gave me a good sense of the past. Up where Garnock St met New St was the 18th Century Royal Hotel, which probably served as the local drinking hole for the family.
I went on to check the Dalry Cemetery, not really expecting much, but finding a number of relatives.
Kilwinning was less charming than Dalry, and the family locations were more spread out and less defined. My first visit was largely sterile and brief. I went back to Glasgow and spent the afternoon exploring the back streets of Garnethill, just because.
With an image of the ground, I spent a while reading Census forms in the Library in Glasgow. Thus armed, I went back to Kilwinning for a second look. I took in the graveyard, of course, replete with family names, some actually related, and looked through the still-attractive ruins of Kilwinning Abbey. Later I walked north on Dalry Road (the A737) to where Woodend Farm was signposted on a private road. However, I was unable to certainly identify my ancestors in the 1841 census.
After checking out the area, I walked on along the A737 to Dalry. The two towns are only about 5 km apart. I took another look along Garnock Street, noting some very solid old stone walls where I though the family home had been — they could have supported a massive multistory tenement.
Tomorrow I move on again, and I still don’t know where. The plan called for Loch Lomond, but if Glasgow is anything to go by, the bonny bonny banks are probably dripping with rain. I’m sick of rain. Sick, sick, sick of it, you hear! I want warmth! I want sun! But it seems such a shame to come this far and see nothing except the lowlands.
When leaving Glasgow I wasn’t sure where I was headed, I just wanted to escape the rain. So it was with some surprise that I watched myself buy a ticket to Edinburgh. But when I got to Edinburgh and checked into the Castle Rock Hostel after squelching through rain-wet streets, I immediately realised that Edinburgh was a mistake — I should’ve gone to Stirling!
I walked up to see the Castle, but the £12 entry fee put me off, so I ended up walking around the town centre. The Netherbow Wellhead — and an inn. “Love God above all and your neighbour.” Nearby, a tunnel announced WORLD’S END CLOSE. Well, it may be but I didn't think it was that close. The nearby World’s End pub had the answer. Seems that in 1513, a wall was erected here. “As far as the inhabitants were concerned this was the End of the World.” Rather parochial of them.
Defying the weather, I climbed a nearby knoll (Holyrood Park). I'd be on Hadrian's Wall in a few days; I needed the exercise. From the top, I looked down on a massive shelf of rock that curved out and up to meet the sky — now there was a candidate for the end of the world! At the top of the knoll (Arthur’s Seat) I met a couple of nice Scottish girls and a massive circular plaque giving directions and distances to the things you could see from the edge. I descended via a steep track. Younger, fitter people were climbing it.
Edinburgh tries hard, but there’s something false about it, like the guy who laughs too loud because he doesn’t quite get the joke. Glasgow doesn’t laugh, it raises its fist and asks if ye wan’ i’ te thoomp ye. But Stirling is the real deal. Edinburgh and Glasgow posture and pretend, but I think Scotland really begins at Stirling. That’s why the important battlefields are all there.
From Edinburgh, I made a day trip to Stirling.
I went first to Bannockburn, of course. As you do. Robert the Bruce was there, astride a huge armoured charger near where he planted his banner, scowling out towards the east. What happened to the nimble, scrubby little beast he is actually supposed to have ridden and which allegedly saved his life by skipping aside when he was attacked by a heavily armoured English knight? (Ironically, the statue was unveiled by an English queen.)
1306–1329. The span of time in Britain is dizzying. In my schooldays, Robert the Bruce was treated as almost a recent king, but in fact he is over 700 years old. In his day there was still a Roman emperor in Constantinople, and the English kingdom that exists today was already 230 years old. Many countries existing today are as old or older, but few can claim such continuity of government (Japan can; Russia, China and India cannot).
Bannockburn was wide and green, with long slopes. And then it rained on me, so I took a bus through town to the next station of the cross.
I went to Stirling Castle, of course. As you do. Something of a tourist trap, but I was impressed by the grotesque decorations on the walls and roofs. The restored Great Hall was magnificent with its hammer-beam roof and oddly sized doors, except for the perpetual mob of tourists around the high table and the thrones who blocked clear sight of these desirable objects. The kitchen was a highlight, especially the comedic tableau of the spilt milk, with cat. I also enjoyed the royal portraiture. Princess Mary (married William of Orange) was something of a plain Jane, but in a 1684 portrait, her sister, 19-year-old Princess (later Queen) Anne looked a bit of a hottie. Out in the courtyard, two teenaged girls in short green silk dresses and leafy diadems, with droopy translucent fairy wings were looking into a fountain and posing by signposts.
From the walls I could look over to something ... interesting ... on a nearby hill.
And then it rained on me, and then it cleared, so off I went for a walk through Stirling while the sunshine lasted, then out the other side. Across Stirling Bridge, where I found a small penis-shaped clocktower.
I went out to the Wallace Memorial, of course. As you do. Windblown, but an insolent and amusing piece of cheek. What country but Scotland would build a huge spiky penis, complete with scrotum, to commemorate the local boy who royally screwed the English army!
The top of the Monument stuck up into a gale that wasn’t even perceptible at ground level. I doubted they ever had to work hard to tidy the Monument’s viewing platform at day’s end — the wind would blow everything off the top as fast as it was dropped. Of course, cleaning the wind-tossed trash out of the bushes down below could take a bit more effort. The rain was still in abeyance, and the views were grand.
Down inside the tower, I saw the man's sword, and purchased a miniature silver replica. Walls were festooned with other Scottish eminences — Livingstone, Burns, Adam Smith. Stained glass windows portayed Wallace himself, who looked nothing like Mel Gibson — He had a full beard, for starters – and the Bruce, and two random soldiers.
And then it rained on me. No, funnily enough, my photos taken on the bus back show blue skies and sunshine. Too late!
These parts of blighty may enjoy long Summer days, but they came with rain, freezing winds and barely made 20°, if that, on the best days. It had rained every single doggoned day that I was there. So I went back to Edinburgh, where, to my surprise, it rained on me. I gave up the family search for now, and headed south the next day in search of the sun. In the rain.
NewcastleAt Newcastle I made the mistake of trying to find reasonably priced accomodation. I should’ve pushed right on through to Hadrian’s Wall. Understand, there is NOTHING in Newcastle worth the visit. It’s a big, bland, boring place. Yet every hostel and hotel prices like it’s the centre of the universe. Absurd!
Every Saturday night the country towns empty their bored youth into Newcastle, and the new generation elbows its way into every “cheap” room in town before going ’clubbing. Then after staggering back to their hostel or hotel at 2 AM and throwing up in the bathroom, they all pack up and go home on Sunday, leaving all those overpriced rooms empty. They cheerfully pay whatever price is asked — after all, it’s one night a week at most — and leave the travellers to pick up the tab every other night as the hoteliers jack up their prices in an attempt to survive this unsustainable binge-and-famine regimen.
Hadrian’s WallI took a bus to Once Brewed, despite the usual lowering clouds. Hadrian’s Wall at last! I’d wanted to see this for all my life — and now I was on my way to do it.
Around 122 AD, my favourite Roman Emperor decided that it was too easy for the rambunctious tribes north of Rome’s border to come south and cause trouble. The existing forts and watchtowers were obviously inadequate, so he built an 80 Roman Mile long tollgate across the narrowest neck of the land he did control. The wall was not a defense in the manner of a city wall, but was only intended to allow the Romans to regulate (and tax) traffic across the border. In times of trouble the Romans would loose the Legions, not hide behind the Wall.
After about 410 AD, Roman Britain basically just fell apart and the Wall ceased to operate. It soon found a new role in the lives of the locals — as an above-ground mine. It was easy to drive an empty cart uphill to a convenient stretch of wall, break a load of stones loose using hammers and crowbars, and haul the looted masonry downhill to whatever edifice needed it. By the time anyone realised what was happening, most of the wall was gone — or at least those parts of it that rose higher than the floor of a cart.
At first the locals were so lazy that they usually didn’t bother lifting rocks into the cart. If a section of wall was too low to drop the stones in, they drove along the wall till they found a taller stretch. But as the need for stone continued while the supply diminished, eventually even the low sections resumed their shrinkage, some down to ground level.
When a new cross-country highway was needed, the Wall site provided a pre-levelled foundation and much of the new road was laid where the wall had once run.
One pioneer in the conservation of the wall was a lawyer by the name of Clayton. He began to buy up the land around the best remaining sections of wall, and even partially rebuilt some sections. The original wall was mortared, but Clayton’s version was laid dry — literally a Clayton’s Wall, the Hadrian’s Wall you have when you don’t actually have the original Wall any more. It’s largely thanks to his efforts that the Wall is still such an impressive sight today, snaking across the high ground and clifftops. Even though his miniature empire was gradually sold off after his death to pay the gambling debts of his heirs, the pilfering of stones never regained its momentum.
I originally planned to walk the whole length of the Wall, taking over a week, but the weather — have I mentioned that it had rained on me almost every day and sometimes several times in a day — changed my mind. I settled for a two-day romp along the the best preserved section, upgraded to three days by adding a rest day in the middle when I realised how much fun I was having — even though it had, of course, rained on me every day.
I booked into the Twice Brewed Inn, then bused back to Chesters Fort to start my adventure.
Chesters, known as Cilurnum to the Romans, was a well-preserved Roman fort that would serve me well as an example of what I was looking at when I got to less well-preserved parts of the Wall. It sat astride the Wall, with a civilian settlement to its south to provide goods and aemenities for the inner man, and a bath to its east to cleanse the outer man. East of the Baths, Chesters Bridge crossed the the North Tyne River, a weak point in the Wall.
I worked through the site systematically, west to east, ending at the river, then looped back around to the south, taking in the gates. It all took me just 40 minutes. Skipping the tearooms — Lucullus Larder — I then hit the Museum. From there, passing an impressive modern gateway flanked by hungry-looking lions, I started west to find the Wall proper about 13:00, passing some impressive old stone farmhouses that had probably profited by using the Wall as a quarry, which here was now fragmentary.
I found a style, signposted Black Carts 1½ miles, then crossed the Vallum. I soon started seeing chunks of stone that marked the line of the Wall. Half a mile from Black Carts I crossed a stone wall too puny to be Hadrian’s, then saw the real wall climbing a hill ahead of me. A few minutes later I reached Milecastle 29, totally ruinous and grass-grown. A little further on, enough was left of Black Carts Turret 29A to make sense of how this turret penetrated and strengthened the Wall, which here was 2 metres thick rather than the planned 3 metres.
I found a sign, Public Footpath, Brocolitia Fort 1½ miles. Milecastle 30 was even more ruined than 29. At Limestone Corner, the rocky ground foiled the ditch diggers who were supposed to dig a ditch on the north side of the wall. They did their best. Nearing Brocolitia, I briefly left the Wall and took a detour across the road to see the well-preserved Carrawburgh Temple of Mithras. Then I had to walk back to Brocolitias to pick up my route
Sewingshields 3 miles. Half an hour later, Turret 33B was reduced to a stub. A few minutes later at Milecastle 34, Grindon, there was a ruin little more recognisable than 29 had been. The path, which had been grass and beaten earth, was now paved with stone slabs as far as Grindon Milecastle 34, which was basically a flat and tree-grown field with a low stone wall around it.
Sewingshields Woods were mostly open ground, with a few dripping trees and the odd well-preserved short section of wall. Perhaps getting carts in here to steal the stone had been tricky even back then.
Nearing the top of the crags. Sewingshields Milecastle 35, well laid out, recognisable as a ruined fort, and comprehensible in plan. Turret 35A, a few minutes short of the trig point that crowned the crag.
17:10, the trig point. The haze lifted and the sun broke through, shining down on Broomlee Lough. Stupendous views!
At 17:44 I climbed astride the Wall itself to get a shot of Houseteads Fort topping the hill on the far side of a valley ahead of me. I naughtily started to walk on atop the Wall, enjoying its flat solidity — it was like a raised path. A minute later I had to get down at a roadblock. Knag Burn Gateway, built 200 years later than the Wall to reduce some inconvenience to the locals.
At Housteads Fort, Vercovicium, I was able to legally walk atop the Wall a short distance. Vercovicium was not nearly as well-preserved as Cilurnum, but was comprehensible. It was also closed, so I just walked around the outside and continued.
Milecastle 37 was infested by a tour group. It had a nice broken-arched north gate opening on nothing, and was relatively well-preserved. The modern Pennine Way intersects the Wall nearby.
At 19:00 I stopped atop the crag as the sun once again banished the haze, but 5 minutes later I was 1½ miles on from Houseteads and still 1½ miles from Steel Rigg. They did like their half miles!
At 19:24 I was looking up Sycamore Gap. I walked up to Milecastle 39 — “Castle Nick”. From there I looked down on Once Brewed and Twice Brewed — the end of the day was in sight. I pressed downhill.
At a pedestrian gate, I reached the road. CAUTION. TRAFFIC. By 19:48 I was walking up the Twice Brewed driveway, done for the day.
20:52 Pie dinner courtesy of a very nice family who had leftovers — and me without a camera battery fit to use! HUGE serving of beef pie, with potato! But I am equal to the task.
Arthur C Clarke “A Walk in the Dark” moment as I walked down from the last crag.
Change of plan — on Sunday I was so sore and tired I decided to go to Vindolanda as a rest day. Vindolanda was a superb pre-Wall Roman fort and settlement that was somehow still one of England’s best-kept sightseeing secrets despite appearing prominently in all the glossy “What To See” leaflets! When it rained on me that day I just wandered around in the on-site Museum until the rain went away again.
I had a pub meal and tried more local beers. Feeling like it was unfinished business, I went back and picked up the part of the Walk that I slid by last night. I would have gone all the way back till I found where I slipped from the Wall to the Military Path, but rain intervened at Sycamore Gap and “dampened” my enthusiasm. I did take a selfie standing beneath the sycamore in the gap. All in all, a successful day.
Walked Once Brewed to Greenhead to Gilsland (Milecastle 48) and took a bus back.
Ran into a Kiwi, David, near Walltown Quarry. At Twice Brewed they stuck him in the same room with me, probably collecting the antipodeans together. He was doing the Pennine Way (15 days so far) but had now decided to stick around here and see the local sights, go on to Scotland, then come back to finish the Pennine Way later.
I had walked just over 20 Roman Miles of Wall, from Turrent 27A (Cilurnum) to Milecastle 48, although I missed a mile at the start and had to detour south of it for several miles at the end. Time to move on.
YorkI skedaddled — in the rain, of course — to York. York was lovely but rather too obsessed with its “amazingly well-preserved walled town” image. The achitecturally well-preserved Shambles, for example, was packed solid with tourist shops, a victim of its own success. The quaint penny-ante businesses that used to operate there couldn’t afford the new rents. Inevitably, the life went out of it as the tourists came in.
The Keep that was all that remained of the castle perched primly atop a grassy mound and provided an odd optical illusion. When viewed from the parking lot that surrounded the mound, the walls seemed to lean outwards, as if the Keep was wider at the top than the base.
The only pay-to-enter site I visited was Jorvik. This was basically a ride that took visitors through a semi-realistic reincarnation — smells and all — of Danish York. The attention to detail was impressive, although in the case of the guy perpetually and loudly and stinkily in the middle of an ecstatic performance on the public toilet, perhaps that was not entirely a good thing.
I spent pretty much a lost afternoon there, as I found that walking the Wall had run my energy reserves down. I got tired too quickly walking with my pack, and had nothing left to sightsee with. Not that I let that stop me, but when went out in the evening to catch up on the sights I missed, I found that my earlier wanderings had led me close to all of them, only in each to turn aside. For example, I went into a M&S at one door and exited by another. If I had not gone into the M&S, The Shambles was twenty metres further on. At another point I turned right down one street: if I’d turned left I would have found the Tower and the Castle Museum. Normal serendipity would have delivered me to all these places: obviously it wasn’t working today.
Now I had to decide. Spend tomorrow morning in York and catch an afternoon train to Oxford, or move on after breakfast? York deserved more time, there was no doubt of that. I decided to let the morning bury its own dead.
I saw a knicknack comprising a pair of plaster budgies in a shop window in Shambles. Except that he was a little too yellow and she was too small and affectionate, they were the spitting image of a pair of Budgies I once owned. If the shop had been open I might have bought it. But how would I get it back to Oz intact? It’d get pulverised in the pack!
I spent an uncomfortable night, marred by traffic, people reluctant to turn out the light or go to the lounge to have their conversations, and by early morning returnees. I was also not happy with security, as people left the dorm door unlocked or even propped it open for their own convenience, regardless of the risk to everyone else’s property. The bed linen was fresh but the mattress and pillow very definitely were not.
There was a wall mural dated 1996, restored 2002, and that seemed about the latest date any maintenance was done. Or perhaps I was just feeling grumpy that morning. At any rate, the choice was made. After a brief walk in the morning, I moved on.
OxfordIn Oxford, the “"Dreaming Spires” took second place to my ancestory. The ancestors of my fourth maternal grandparent came from Oxfordshire — and before that, it turned out, from Berkshire.
Thanks to previous researchers I arrived with a known line of ancestors stretching back to Ewelme in 1699, at which point, amazingly, they stopped looking, dismissing the flare-lit clue that the earliest known ancestor was “from Brightwell” because “there is no evidence to link these [Brightwell] with the family in Ewelme, other than the marriage in 1699”!
Nothing, that is, except a clear and easy-to-reconstruct family history waiting for anyone who bothered to crack the Brightwell, St Agatha Parish Registers. I soon moved my earliest dated ancestor from the marriage in 1699 to a birth in 1599, with a known parent who had to be born around 1570, and also discovered two gents who died in 1551 and 1559 that were likely to be relatives. Not bad for three days work, considering I was probably a far slower worker than a professional researcher would be.
I did spend my first day exploring Oxford, which was as promised, very picturesque.
Two days in the Library. The various books had been gathered together, which made for convenient research and exciting genealogical discoveries, but a dull day for a trip report.
After all this library research in Oxford, I finally felt ready for one pleasant day of “field research”, rambling through the historical towns (and pubs) of Ewelme and Brightwell cum Sotwell.
Brightwell especially was thick with 400-year-old buildings that were not maintained in as-new condition to be tourist “attractions”, but because their owners still lived & worked in them and took pride in their homes. I was, by all sight, the only tourist in Brightwell that day. In nearby Ewelme, which claimed to have been home to Chaucer’s granddaughter, I ran into just three other tourists (a group on bicycles). Oh yes, and I got rained on.
Brightwell was a very pretty and historic town about 15 miles SE of Oxford and 4 miles west of Ewelme. In the Churchyard of St Agatha’s I found a few people with the ancestral name, but no ancestors, and none really old. But there were many old stones that were so defaced by moss and lichen or so eroded that they could not be read. I found recent ancestral names in the newer cemetery. From Brightwell it was a mile or so to Sotwell’s Churchyard, where I found nothing.
Mackney, the family hotspot, was a locality about half a mile south of Brightwell. Mackney Lane struck south from “Brightwell Street” (on the Brightwell side) and “Sotwell Street” (on the Sotwell side) then turned west and eventually dead ended. It was probably then much as it is now, just a few houses scattered along a farm lane. There was a friendly 400-year-old pub, the Red Lion, at the intersection. My farm labouring ancestors would certainly have used such a convenient watering hole!
Chances were my ancestors clustered around Mackney and southern Brightwell and Sotwell because those locations were convenient to farms that required farm labourers and the like. Unfortunately I had no precise addresses. Niceties such as Land Tax Assessments and Censuses were still centuries away.
Ewelme was also pretty. I had no luck finding family graves there, but then, I didn’t find the grave of Chaucer’s grand-daughter either. Once again the older graves were marked by overgrown and eroded stones.
I’d like to go back someday armed with soapy water and a stiff brush. Some of the slabs were illegible mainly because of the camouflaging mottle of lichens. Scrub those away and who knows what could spring to view?
All in all, I had an exciting and very satisfactory few days in Oxford, and I did do some sightseeing. Some. The only omission I really regret is the Ashmolean Museum. I can scarcely believe I didn’t find time for that!
Maidstone RepriseThe noise and aggravation of the Oxford dormitories finally wore down my patience. I bundled up my familial findings and decamped. To Maidstone — where it was still raining, just like it was in May!
I returned to Maidstone because when I left I felt that I was on the edge of solving several riddles that would niggle at me forever if I didn’t come back and have a bash at them. I had settled the big issues around my great-great grandfather Robert Golding Hills, but this simply threw the questions about his own father and grandfather and great-grandfather into higher relief. All three seemed to fade in and out of the picture. This wasn’t Ireland, where huge piles of records got burned up in catastrophic fires. The answers had to be there: I just needed to find them!
Genetically I share all four of my grandparents equally, but the Maidstone branch is special because it gave me two of my three names. It was worth going the extra genealogical mile to sort out this line. I’d learned quite a bit about wringing information out of old registers in the last month and I wanted to fix up some of the gaps and omissions in my original research. Having established that I descended from bargemen, I also wanted to dig up more background information on the family barging business and see if I could find more graves.
Arriving was almost a replay of last time, trudging through showers and ending up at Aylesbury House. But they were fully booked tomorrow night so in the morning, instead of merrily skipping off to the Library or the Archives as planned, first I’d have to find new digs. Sigh. Still, after four nights of street noise and other peoples BO, farts and dirty socks in a backpacker dormitory in Oxford, it was wonderful to have a private room again!
Odd. Whenever I took my shoes off in the backpacker joint the pong would knock my nose off, but when I took them off here, they didn’t smell (so much). Is there something about backpacker hostels that magnifies bad odours?
Three days of research in the library and then a last circuit of the town, laying bouquets on graves. my 2nd great grandmother's gravestone had not survived, but I had identified the spot and a tree growing nearby sufficed.
Research in the library, just wrapping up. I spent my last hours in a largely futile visit to All Saints Churchyard.
Dover to Le QesnoyMy time poking into ancient microfiches in Britain was done. Time to poke into France instead. I took a train down to Dover, where the white cliffs loomed over the ferry terminal.
“Do you know you look like Bill Bryson?” said one grinning staffer. I grinned back and replied, “I wish I made his money!”
My ferry pulled out at 13:50 (UTC+1), and docked at Calais about 16:00 (UTC+2), just over an hour later. Calais was an attractive old town that managed its heavy traffic well. In front of the Town Hall I saw Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, another copy of which I'd seen at the Rodin Museum in Paris several years earlier. I stopped in at Bar Les Pirates, a nice atmospehric joint to kill time waiting for a train.
By 18:45 I was in Hazebrouck, a town mainly familiar to me for a humourous scene in Anzacs. It was an attractive town, and Hotel Gambrinus welcomed me in.
In the morning I trained through Lille to Ieper, where I was thinking of spending several days prowling the Ypres battlefields. The day was not as successful as I’d hoped. I visited Passchendaele, where my youthful grandfather copped a lung and a bit’s worth of mustard gas on 13 October 1917. Fortunately he survived. But the signs of the battle had been erased, except near Tyne Cot where part of an old railway cutting that marked the furthest advance of the Australians on 12 October has been excavated. The New Zealanders attacked further west, and their sector — where Grandad would have been — was too far away for me to walk to in the time available to me. The area was very spread out and there was no “hop on, hop off” transport to key sites as I’d found elsewhere.
I had to be satisfied with visiting Tyne Cot Cemetery and a new Museum in the town of Zonnebeke, apart of course from the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ieper. The whole area around Ieper was oriented towards tour groups and catered very poorly to independent tourists without their own transport. Groups of 20 or more got discounts of up to 35%, with the result that the Museums were invaded by huge tour groups whose noise and sheer numbers spoiled the experience for solo visitors and smaller groups.
It all took its toll on me. After finding one B&B that only took groups, and another that didn’t have a doorbell (or at least not one I felt confident to ring) I stashed my pack in a locker at the Railway Station for the day, and ultimately stayed that night in Lille instead of Ieper. Rather than the €200 I might easily have spent in Ieper on food, fees and accommodation if it had seemed worth staying a night or two, all Ieper got out of me was €3 for the locker, €14 from the Museum entries and €4 in bus fares. Multiply that by some number of independent travellers similarly turned off by their experience of Ieper. And they probably didn’t even realise they were doing so much less well out of us than they could have been.
Lille was just a bed to me. In the morning, I moved on to Le Quesnoy.
Sometimes you have to stand at the graveside to feel the pointless madness of war.
Charles Francis Robert Golding Hills, rifleman in the 2nd Battalion, 3rd NZ Rifle Brigade, son of Charles and Rose, born 1897 in Gisborne and killed in action at Le Quesnoy, 4th November 1918, aged 21. A few months short of 90 years ago, but my eyes stung as I stood before my uncle’s grave.
The 4th stone in the row in front of him was for 10/135 Major H. E. McKinnon, MC & Bar, NZ Wellington Regt, son of John and Isabella, born 1888 in Darfield, Canterbury and killed in action at Le Quesnoy, 4th November 1918, aged 29. What were the chances of losing two uncles, born on different islands, completely unrelated to each other, in the same battle on the same day and same place so utterly distant from their land of birth? But it happened.
I had also lucked out. This weekend, Le Quesnoy was full of Revolutionary fervour — and men and women in Napoleonic attire — and I witnessed a battle!
I’m not sure who won, but they all cheered “Vive le France” at the end so I guess it was either the French or the Revolutionaries. I’m not sure who the enemy was either, but one squad marched through the town to the battle chanting “left, right, left” — and at least one of the squad was wearing a kilt.
There was courage and cowardice on both sides. One black-jacketed squad of the enemy attempted a bayonette charge, only to turn tail ignominously and run away. They redeemed themselves later with a second charge, in which they died to the last man.
The French cannon fire was a little erratic, sometimes merely a sharp snapping sound, other times a gut-shaking boom, but occasionally it produced beautiful smoke rings that sailed across the battlefield. The enemy cannon was more consistent in its booms, but from where I sat was often obscured from view by a tree.
A feminine touch was added by camp followers who accompanied their soldiers onto the battlefield to attend to their wounds. Either they were good at their jobs or scarily bad, for more than one dying casualty got up after treatment to rush back to the fight! The casualties could be identified by the mud on their knees and pants seats. The battlefield was a touch muddy.
Couldn’t have been done in Oz or NZ. The participants weren’t professional actors or stunt men, just local people. They were carrying real muskets fitted with real bayonets and real charges of gunpowder, often sending out tremendous muzzle flashes. Health and safety issues would’ve closed the whole thing down in an instant, even assuming the organisers somehow got it past the insurers.
But nobody was injured (for real). The amateur soldiers had a fine time hamming it up and the audience — made up of parents and of siblings still too young to take part — cheered lustily at the best bits, and it all ended to hearty applause.
Le Quesnoy pushed all the “quaint” buttons, without being fake about it. It was very picturesque. The town centre was set within tremendous star fortifications. Road traffic was routed around the town, outside the walls. The buildings were old but offered modern facilities.
D-Day Beaches and Mont St MichelBastille Day in Caen, a medium-sized city of about 114,000 people. The long train journey, albeit broken up by the interposition of Paris, put me back in travel mode. On the leg out of Paris I got lost in my head, a fugue of memory sparked by the scenery.
There was a field of ripening grain that flashed brilliant shades of russet, green, purple and brown. Because the tones varied along the head of each stalk the motion of the train past the field gave the colours a vibrant three-dimensional effect. That reminded me of the blue colour I could see when young but cannot see now. The eye may lose its sensitivity to the short wavelengths, but appreciation of the longer wavelengths is enhanced — as if, when the eye is restricted to a shortened spectrum, the mind compensates by finding greater richness in the colours that remain.
Quaint farmhouses, their beams exposed and painted white, but not like English Tudor.
§
By 19:30 I was on the third “pint” of a mini-bender. Not that the pints went as far here as they in Britain; they were really only half litres. Also, the lagers preferred by the French were not quite hitting the mark. But I had just found a place that knocked down Guinness at €4.50 — only a little more than in Britain, and the same price as the touristy parts of Dublin. Drinking it indoors, where the ambience and aircon reminded me of Dublin — except that the place did not quite capture Dublin’s ambience. Still, after days during which my acquaintance with French had advanced by leaps and bounds, it was refreshing to twang out “pint’er Guinness” and not only be understood, but to get a glass of the black elixer.
Back in my room, I opened the window to get a breeze into the room and although it was well after midnight, the night was still alive with fireworks.
Quite a different affair to Waitangi Day or Australia Day.
The fireworks, for one thing. People walking down the street would suddenly throw down a string of crackers. Mostly teens, but some older — and younger. I was irresistably reminded of Guy Fawks Days from my own youth. The joy of sticking a double-happy or a Tom Thumb down an ant hole to see how big a crater I could make!
Caen didn’t really do the parade thang, but everyone turned out at the race course for the fireworks display. More youthful memories! People lined the track letting off their private supply of gunpowder products. Even when the main display kicked off, some people kept doing their own thing.
I can only describe the night in negatives. My bag was NOT searched — there was nobody there to search it. No Police cordon, no flashing lights, no men with dogs. I don’t even remember seeing a policeman, though I’m sure the gendarmery was there. There were no drunken yobbos smashing empties against walls, no sideshows, no soundstages, no speeches. They came, they set off their bangers and rockets, and they watched the main display. And when it was over … They went home quietly.
It was hard to put my finger on exactly what was different apart from these overt, obvious things, but I think I figured it out. The French OWN their national day. It’s not a trinket given to them by the powers that be, it’s something they’re entitled to and woe betide he who tries to take it away from them. The firework display is not a spectacle staged by the authorities to entertain and distract them, it is a reminder of a time when these people rose up and claimed their country. It’s a warning to the people running France — we kicked out the King, you can be kicked out, too! But because it’s their night, they don’t stuff it up.
There are exceptions, of course, but they are relatively few. Compared to this, the national days of NZ and Australia (especially Australia) are a joke!
From Le Quesnoy I went to Normandy and the D-Day beaches. No known family connection here, it’s just something I always wanted to do.
It also tied in with my visit to the Battle of Hastings site in Britain. Now I had tracked William the Conqueror back to his first and also his final lair. Somehow the history lessons at school left me with the impression that, having conquered Engand, William naturally stayed there. But it seems that after a few years, exasperated over the stubbornness of his reluctant English subjects, he went back to Normandy. Eventually he died there. However, he did not find much rest, being turned out of his sarcophagus twice by marauding invaders. All that’s left of him now is a thighbone.
The Bayeux Tapestry was worth seeing, although the people running it cunningly gave out free taped audioguides that ran visitors through the sequence of events just a little too fast. You were in a long line of people filing past the Tapestry, each listening to their own guide. Even if you wanted to pause and look at some section a bit longer, you were pushed on by the audioguide-driven pressure behind you. The only way to break the sequence was to step back from the thing and let the queue pass. Somehow most people just shuffled through to the end before stopping to take stock.
I was interested by the little group of figures right near the end who were carrying away a wounded but not dead comrade — with an arrow in his eye.
The D-Day beaches today were peaceful places, invaded only by sunseekers and tourists. Most of the British sector sightseeing action happened at Arromanches — which, as it happens, was not one of the invasion beaches. It was the site of the “Mulberry B” invasion port (also known as “Port Winston”) that the Allies brought across with them to tide them over till they could capture some French port towns. Most of the early materiel for the invasion was brought ashore at Winston. The other portable port, “Mulberry A”, was set up off Omaha Beach and was destroyed by a storm just two weeks after D-Day. The history boards at Omaha manage to gloss over this inconvenient fact (and Port Winston) and give the impression that Omaha was the main invasion port.
Gold Beach, the nearest British invasion beach, started 3 km east of Arromanches and continued that way for several kilometres more. Since it was mostly not backed by any significant beachside resorts, it got very little press. I wanted to walk right along it, but events conspired. At Arromanches I dallied a bit long wth the sea view. Meanwhile two huge tour buses pulled up outside the Museum. By the time I turned around, a tide of flab was flowing from the buses towards the Museum and the front wave was already breaking turgidly against the entrance. I had no desire to share the Museum with this mob, so I started my walk immediately, then turned at the western end of Gold Beach and came back to the Museum when it was quieter.
I caught the bus to Juno Beach, next along, which was largely a Canadian affair. I wanted to end the day at Sword Beach, near Ouistreham, so I found a couple of bus stops conveniently close to an eatery and settled in to kill time. But while I was sipping a beer and casually looking at the bus timetable I noticed that neither stop was on the timetable. A quick flip of the timetable showed me that these stops were only used by buses headed the other way!
I immediately skulled my beer and bolted, but not knowing where the buses ran otherwise, I had to head back towards the stop I’d used on arriving in town rather than trying to cut across and meet the bus further down. It was just too far. I was still a couple of minutes away when the bus zoomed across my path and vanished up a side street. Argh! The buses along the coast ran several hours apart. There was a later bus, but it would arrive in Ouistreham just in time (maybe) for me to catch the last service from Ouistreham to Caen. I would have no time for sightseeing. So I cut my losses and caught another, earlier service direct back to Caen.
Next day I went out to Omaha, the nearer of the two American beaches. I got out at Point du Hoc, location of a dramatic assault and battle and which had been left in its original cratered, concrete-strewn condition. This was as close as we could get today to seeing what the whole invasion area must have looked like in the wake of the landings. There were now neat gravel paths everywhere, but nobody stopped you from leaving the paths to poke around in the ruins of the blockhouses and gun emplacements. It was an atmospheric and unforgettable place to visit. I spent a couple of hours there and could gladly have spent more.
From there I walked on down to Grandcamp-Maisy before bussing back to Omaha Beach at Vierville-sur-Mer and walking along the esplanade towards Colleville-sur-Mer. Omaha Beach was actually three beaches that ran into each other and today it showed almost no sign of the invasions — a few tank obstacles tucked in odd corners, a blockhouse or two, no more. It was a long stretch of sand overlooked by sandhills. The hills gave the defenders a huge initial advantage and the attackers took huge losses, but once the grassy summits were captured the beach was a sheltered place where later waves of invaders could land relatively safely, out of sight of enemy artillery.
After the road left the beach I followed it inland a while, then stopped at a convenient bus stop when my time ran short. The signposts pointed towards the American Cemetery and I was tempted to walk to it, but the signs didn’t say how far it was. Rather than risk missing the bus, I (wisely as it turns out) decided to give it a miss. It was actually several kilometres away and I would not even have reached the next bus stop in time.
If I go back to see the D-Day beaches again I’ll stay in Bayeux, which makes a better base if you don’t have a car, as the coastal buses leave from there. I was commuting from Caen each day, paying over €10 in train fares. I could have saved money by buying my bus pass in Caen and using that to get to Bayeux, but the timetables didn’t mesh as well as they should, considering it was the same bus company. Bayeux was more expensive and less interesting than Caen, but not €10 worth, and anyway, now I’d seen Caen.
At Caen I looked around the obvious sites. It was an attractive city with quite a lot to see and do. Being there for Bastille day, it gave quite a different view of things than if I’d given in to temptation and stayed in Paris instead.
Mont St-Michel and the finale, though not quite the end, of the trip. Paris would be no anticlimax, but in the context of this trip it was just an epilog, a necessary step but not integral with any other itinerary.
The Abbey visit was interesting — it was an interesting old building — and over too soon. Visits, guided or not, followed a set one-way route that covered the majr rooms but didn’t poke into the recesses. There was actually less to the Abbey than it seemed from below, because of the solid rock that it had been wrapped around. Some features were little more than sculptured façades for buttresses and stairways. But it was still impressively large.
The biggest buzz was watching the Mount as the bus approached. It was such an unusual object that it seemed unreal from any distance, floating in myth. Up close it was substantial enough.
Hmmph. I wanted a 750ml bottle of wine with my lunch — and I’ve just noticed they only brought a 375ml bottle. Barely enough alcohol to feel it! But the food and wine here is expensive, so I suppose I should be thankful they’ve saved me some money. But I’ll make sure they only charge me for the bottle they brought, not the one I ordered!
(Later) Sitting on a mud-bank a kilometre or so from the Mont. I can’t be sure, but JRR Tolkien might well have used this place as the seed for his city of Minas Tirith. The swift advance of the tides across the flats can be seen as an inspiration for the ride of the Rohirrim across the Pelennor Fields, But mostly it’s this wonderful image of a battlemented city (embattled city — surely that should mean one wrapped in battle?) with a road that winds around it, passing through gates, until it reaches the palace — for Mont St-Michel, that’s the Abbey — that rises above the peak of the hill.
At this little distance, the tawdry souvenir shops and swarming tourists are invisible, the busy comings and goings on the causeway negligible. The towers and walls rise serenely from their rocky toeholds. Only the shrieks and dominance displays of the seagulls on the mud flats nearby detract from the picture — but the gulls are always with us: a part of every shoreland scene.
A family has decided to take a walk on the banks nearby; the shrieks of the children cannot be ignored. The reverie shatters like a mirror, and as the bells in the fortress ring 1 PM it’s time to think about walking back to the maestrom.
Mont St-Michel, lived up to my every expectation. It was an otherworldly place from a distance, all too worldly once you got close up. After the Abbey I squeezed my way downhill to an eatery and had a nice salad in the back of a place that had a window overlooking the parking lot. Then I walked out along the mud dunes and found a good spot to sit and digest my meal and let my mind wander. When that palled I still had time to walk around the Mont — the tide was out — and even to rinse the mud off my shoes before the bus arrived to take me back to nearby Pontorson, where I was staying in the Youth Hostel. All in all, a completely satisfying day out!
Paris and OutFrom Pontorson the next day, I headed for Paris. I had a choice. I could pay €110 and go via Rennes to catch a TGV, or pay €45 and go via Caen. Since the cheaper fare actually got me to Paris two hours earlier in the day and took no longer in transit, you can guess what my choice was. Yes, that’s right, the “Train of great speed” would have been no faster (effectively) than a normal railcar, was less conveniently timed, and cost more than twice as much. There was a lesson here. Even though I had been careful to address him in French, the jovial bloke at the Pontorson train station initially only gave me a choice between two TGV services: he didn’t mention the cheaper Caen option until I specifically asked after it. Fortunately I knew it existed, as prior investigation (playing with the ticket machines in Caen) had shown me that the single fare to Paris from Caen plus the single fare to Pontorson from Caen came to only about €50 and that there were through services (changing trains at Liseuix) from St Malo to Paris via Caen. A fair price for a through service from Pontorson to Paris had to be less than €50!
It would have been even cheaper if I could have booked it a couple of weeks in advance — the fare discounting system in Europe offered huge reductions to people who booked in advance, on the internet, and so on — but on this trip I rarely knew where I was going to be more than a few days ahead. On a couple of occasions I only decided my destination for the day when I was actually aproaching the ticket window.
“Le Carroussel” at Place des Pyramides on Rue de Rivoli — just across from the Louvre. Time for an overpriced beer and salad to go with my overpriced room! But here I am in Paris, four years on and from the look of it, little has changed.
I had three nights and two days to fill — I didn’t count saturday afternoon, which was free time, or Tuesday morning, which would be swallowed up by airport hubber-gubber. There were more things I wanted to do than time available to do them, so I could pick and choose.
Four years on, coffee at “George V” in the Champs Elysée to watch the passing parade. I was wrong earlier — things HAVE changed. The Jardins Tuileries have been extensively revamped. New statues among the old, ramps and stairs — and a gravel surface that throws back the glare of the sun and offers a fine grip for the wind that inevitably scours across broad open spaces. In spots the dust cloud is dense enough to obscure those walking through it. The trees sit in boxes above the ground, a modern Birnam Wood.
If you sit long enough on the Champs Elysée you will see members of every race and creed on Earth walk by. How long is that? Don’t ask silly questions. Sweeping statements respond only to sweeping answers. Let’s just say that at these prices, even nursing every coffee for all it is worth, I doubt I could afford the necessary downpayments for long enough. Time to move on.
Paris was the same theme park I remembered from previous visits — a beautiful antique core surrounded by an ugly modern city. Once I found a hotel with room for me, I declared the afternoon to be a holiday and just … walked. When I got tired, I stopped and bought a coffee. When I got hungry, I stopped and ate. Central Paris was one of the best places in the world for aimless drifting. When moving you got to see the scenery: when not moving you got to people-watch. Both pursuits were amply rewarding.
They say that the best cure for sea-sickness is to go sit under a tree. I passed a barge in the Seine that carried a full-grown tree on its fore-deck. I suspected there was something missing from the seasickness prescription — this tree would probably not help cure it — but thinking about it gave me a good laugh.
On Sunday I picked up some sights I’d missed on previous trips — the Orangerie (Monet’s Water Lilies set was grossly overrated), the Museum of Erotic Art (the first four floors were good; after that they had three floors of Japanese stuff that was mostly blood and bondage, that left me cold), and the Cemetery of Pere Lachaise (found the graves of Edith Piaf and Heloise and Abelard among others).
Monday, my last full day, I spent in the Louvre, walking the endless halls until my feet declared “enough”. This was my third visit and I was still finding new things there. This time it was the medieval Louvre in the basement. As usual, I tried to get a good look at the Mona Lisa and as usual, I was frustrated — I got into the front rank of the crowd but it was still too far away to see properly, too dim to photograph properly (not helped by the dark protective glass in front off it). So I bought a nice big print of it as a souvenir and consolation prize. I decided to not even bother trying next time, if there was a next time.
Home AgainAnd so home again. 24 dreary hours in the air or kicking around airports (CDG and KL). The spice had long ago gone out of air travel for me. It was now just an ordeal that had to be got through for the privilege of visiting strange places. The return journey was always worse because it meant the end of the excitement. There was a certain pleasure in looking forward to being back in my own space, but I’d found that all in all I preferred being on the road.
I landed in Melbourne just after 19:30. It was 7°C. By 21:30 I had arrived home to a cold, dark flat. An hour later the bedroom, at least, was warmer, the water was hot, I’d been to the store to buy some essential groceries, and in general the bleak flat was starting to come to life and feel like home again.
Sitting in bed with my laptop, I wrote an email and started planning my next trip.
This time I don’t even know when — or if — I’ll be off again. I need to find a job before I run through my ANZ payout and before the recession bites me, but I’m finding it hard to get motivated. The sun doesn’t get up until almost 07:30 and it sets around 17:30, and it’s COLD! I’ve been spoilt by those two months in the European summer. The days are getting longer here now, but it’s a long way to summer. It’ll be another month before the sun gets up when I do, and it goes down far too soon.
Maybe I need to find a way to make time pass. Say, by going to NZ for a few weeks, specifically to chase down my ancestors. The last time I was in Gisborne was, hmmm, 1985. Back then, I was just passing through. I wasn’t interested in family history: I didn’t even look up my relatives. And at this time of year, the cross-Tasman fares are cheap.
This was the last thing of any note that I did for over a week. In that time I merely slept, ate, and read a couple of books per day. I didn’t even finish unpacking. Total apathy. But at least it took gentle care of my jet lag. Then, as I had done months before, I picked up the dropped threads of wistful research and knitted them into serious planning.
But that is another story ... or two.
