Yesterday I spent a day in the country.
As the walk organiser for Sunday I hadn't felt confident about a number of things - where to park cars and whether the lunch venue would be too posh for us among them.
Parking cars isn't an interesting subject in itself, but it's surprising how seeing the ground solves the problem. In any case I was happy just to be out and about, and the winter countryside had that misty moist look that makes the inside of a pub (or in this case riverside brasserie) seem very enticing.
The people at Haxted Mill could not have been nicer - they said just leave boots at the door and did we want roast beef. So hopefully everyone who has confirmed will actually turn out on Sunday. So now I've sent off the e-mails with copy maps attached and we'll see how it goes. the weather doesn't look too good for the weekend - rain forecast and cold. Walking's probably the best thing to be doing on days like that.
30th November 2008
It was worth doing the recce on Thursday - both parking places and the lunch worked out well.
Left home in the early morning in cold drizzly weather and got to the start point near Limpsfield with no improvement. Everyone turned up on time and at 9.30 off we sloshed up the road and onto the path. It was very muddy but the cold was less intense although my map and printed out instructions were getting soggy. We walked through Limpsfield Chart which suddenly looked familiar from earlier walks - we must have gone through on a cross track on the Greensand Way a few years ago.
Walking through drizzle tends to mean that landscape features are blurred as the eyes concentrate on missing the next puddle, but the views across the Weald from Limpsfield Chart are wonderful, even now that the leaves have fallen and the colours are definitely wintry. Although it is of English proportions, therefore spatially small compared with large views in bigger countries, the scope of the Weald seems huge from here and even on damp winter days the far horizon a long way off.
The grumpy conversation of the group reflected the conditions - there hasn't been an economic crisis like this in our experience, and the Government's attempts to help and to take the credit (for what?) are the issues. I feel unable to change anything about the problems themselves or the Government's handling of them, so I listen. Once I ask what would be the better policy, or path, or idea, for our leaders to follow. I don't think anyone knows, and it feels increasingly desperate. The pace is good in spite of the mud - everyone striding out - and I begin to think we might be early for lunch.
At that moment the description of the route on my bedraggled piece of paper ceases to correspond with anything in our surroundings. We are supposed to go over a stile into a small wood containing a pond. There are lots of things to be seen from where we mill around, but no stile, no wood, and no pond. This kind of milling around hoping we won't have to go too far back before we find the route again is seen by the others as a way of building in a small delay so that we arrive for lunch on time. This time it seems serious enough that we might actually be late for lunch. I need to check my emotions at this point. Why does it matter so much to me to be on time?
Some people don't seem to mind about time in this way without being seen as irresponsible, and in any case it's not usually seen as a sign of serious incompetence to arrive for lunch 15mins after the appointed time. In fact the restaurant people expect you to be late. For me it matters some visceral way.
Milling around continues but by tracing back along the map we realise a mistake we made just a few hundred yards back, so we get back on track. We are down in the valley of the River Eden, damp under foot but now the rain has stopped and a watery sun hovers in the sky. the last mile to Haxted Mill is along a road. I never enjoy this as windy country roads aren't safe for cars and walkers to share, and the tarmac jars my knees. We got to Haxted Mill at 1220.
Lunch was booked for 1230. By the time we'd got our boots off and look decent it's 1230.
Haxted Mill is not the sort of place where we normally stop for lunch on these walks. A village pub is upmarket enough. On this route there are not many and around here none at all without a 3 mile diversion. If we don't divert for the railway, it doesn't make sense to go far out of the way for lunch.
The group historians remind me that on the first walk (the Thames Path in 1997/8) the norm for lunch was already the pub - we were never picnickers - but we would order sandwiches, even if some of those pubs along the Thames were a little smarter than village pubs generally. Now the average order is past the peak it reached a year or two ago - where a main course and dessert plus coffee accompanies by a couple of pints of beer became the norm. We are largely down to one course each plus a pint and a half of bitter, and perhaps a coffee. We also think we have been to over 60 pubs in the course of our walks since 1997. Can't remember a bad one. Even if I can remember the good ones I would never be able to find them again.
Being the organiser means that you take a lot of notice of the detail. For most of the walks I have been a member, so apart from parking my car wherever asked, I often don't have much idea where the walk takes us.
With a proper restaurant it would have been sad not to enjoy what was on offer, so people had a great variety with only a couple of us going for the traditional beef roast, which was as tasty as they come. never mind - what I meant to say was that we drank 3 bottles of red wine between 6. Somehow the afternoon walk did proceed OK, but perhaps that was a lot. the people who ran the place had a quiet conversation about whether we were going to walk further after lunch. there was a choice as one of us had left a car at the restaurant so as to get to a family tea, but the 5 remaining decided to walk off the lunch.
The afternoon was where my exploring on Thursday again paid off. After a long and soggy climb out of the Eden valley up to Dry Hill Farm I knew there was only a mile or so to go, and we got to the car at 4pm - right on the dot, or so I let it be thought.
In no time we had driven back to the start, it was now full night and time for home.
There's a childhood feeling in this activity - is it the beginning of the second one? Walks after lunch on a Sunday? Isn't that the England of my childhood? When the doctor said I should know by now that a rest after lunch is important, didn't I think of matron? I know that Dr Popelyk, about whom I have youthful fantasies, has never hear of matron. I may be that in the Russia of her childhood there were matronly characters at party youth camps who made the young comrades have a lie down before strenuous physical exercise in the afternoon.
I decide this is not the onset of second childhood, and that it's the most likely thing to keep it at bay.
