Quentin (who has only a cameo role so needs no more said) was another mate of Albert and had published details of the latter’s funeral, advising that it was ‘come as you are’ but admonishing against shorts and flipflops. The forecast was for steadily improving weather throughout the day so I took the opportunity for a wee bike ride. To start with the journey was a sack of potatoes road and there were services where it changed to clean pants road; by that stage I was ahead on time but then I – but hopefully not Albert – started going to hell in a handcart…
The dress of the day was ‘not funereal’ and as I eventually approached there were several men in uniform, off-white suits; they were, it transpired, the pall-bearers. One approached and told me that although I was late the rites had only just started so to creep in. Discretion being my watchword and middle name, as I parked I inadvertently blipped the throttle; so much for creeping in unnoticed. At least I wasn’t the last to arrive.
By strange, not the “C” word that I have forsworn, after the weekend in and around Castleton and Hathersage there were three people at the funeral who had been there with me on that previous walking trip – and I had not seen two of them for over twenty years (and the other only twice) … Despite two of the three being married I still think it was pretty long odds.
A more unfortunate circumstance was that three members of a small team – numbering in low double figures at its height – should have died within a fortnight. Strangely, at least two were committed in wickerwork coffins.
Having thrown caution to the wind and set out sans wetties I was thrice blessed, arriving back at base just as the first droplets of rain fell on my visor. And that was despite taking a clean pants return route.
Following the walking weekend I made my annual pilgrimage to Loftus Road on Tuesday evening and then joined TOO and Hugues for lunch on Thursday; my, I had been a social gadfly. With Hugues having only recently changed jobs discretion was the better part of valour and so he left the other two of us blethering on. TOO suggested that he thought I had slowed down even more – from my previous, far from greyhound-like rate of ascent. Coupling that with the niggling pains that I have been feeling intermittently since the attack of gout which I suffered whilst with The Andres in New York I hit on a cunning stratagem. Walk my way through the pain barrier!
The late Steve Ovett, an English middle-distance runner of the 1980’s, tried a similar thing and was then diagnosed with training induced asthma; my idea was more pedestrian. Which is why I set out on Saturday morning to walk the ten miles of towpath from the bottom end of the Grand Union Canal back to base. As weather forecasters now consider themselves to be nigh on infallible – and I consider them barely above politicians and estate agents in the Great League of Charlatans – I was barely surprised that the forecast thunder and lightning failed to materialise.
The Grand Union was originally cut to make a viable route from the River Thames and London to the (then) newly industrialised Midlands, hence the southern end joins the River Brent (at Brentford – there is a clue in the name) within yards of where it flows into The Thames. Whilst the canal is well signposted, the necessary side for the towpath is not!
Since British Waterways transmogrified into the Canal And River Trust it has started using volunteers and many a hardened river rat considers them akin to chocolate teapots; I am with the brigands. Of the three volunteers on the lock island not one could advise me. Having shown a photo of the starting post for the Pennine Way when only going for a local walk in Edale I shall show evidence of method:
Although Braunston is 93 miles my destination was much more prosaic distance – either the ten miles I had believed it to be or the thirteen boasted of by another blogger who had walked the same route some years previously. Whichever, I did not set out to break any records – and a combination of a hot afternoon, an eager crossword and avid solver, The Paddington Packet Boat within yards of the towpath. like a siren calling innocent young sailormen to their doom on the rocks – made sure of that.
Loyal readers may recall a bridge on the Erie Canal near Albany which I included as it reminded me of Brunel’a Three Bridges. Herewith evidence to support my claim:
The two locations have absolutely nothing in common beyond a three-layered bridge system but that is enough for me. As the Three Bridges lie directly beneath the Heathrow flight path it is not unusual (sorry Tom) to have a four modes of transport in a vertical line.
With a politician’s masterstroke Margaret Hilda introduced the horrendously mis-named “care in the community” and then threw people out of long-term mental institutions. The masterstroke was that, whilst thousands of beds were decommissioned only four hospitals were closed and so her government could deride campaigners protesting about all the hospital closures. One large institution to be so treated was St. Bernard’s; since Victorian days a psychiatric hospital, it was downgraded to one ward and the rest of the site made into an enormous general hospital. Now much of the land has been sold on for an upmarket housing development; I wonder how the new owners will feel about overlooking ‘asylum lock’ as it used to be known when supplies were delivered by boat.
One thing about life on the cut is the slightly off-centre things that one comes across. Just as I was taking this photo a passer-by looked at the subject. An interesting conversation ensued.
With the accessible entry system it was obviously to the owner’s advantage that his boat should be on the hard. I must wander past again in the not too distant future; my curiosity has been pricked.
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