Traveling across and thinking about English counties

Just finished breakfast and am still sitting at the table because it’s a good typing height.  There’s a piece of furniture in my room that’s a good height for stand up typing, which I will try to mix in.  I start with this topic, because I was thinking over my Pennine walk yesterday afternoon, and I think the way I felt at the end of the day was driven more by the posture I had to adopt while typing and route plotting than by how long or rigorous the walking was.  I’m striving to be an ergonomic crank for the rest of my time over here, and see whether that doesn’t keep the swing in my stride.

 

The trip down here was surprisingly easy.  I did have one quick change of trains in Birmingham’s downtown station.  I’m fairly heavily packed since I knew I might get either winter or summer weather.  It was an adventure hauling everything, and of course my long distance train came in at platform 12 and the local train I needed out to the airport was on platform 1.  I saw more out of service escalators on my trip yesterday than you would see on an ordinary day riding DC’s metro.

 

I picked up the car and drove down on midsized roads to get a sense of what was near by and what it would be like to drive to it.  England suddenly became very small again, after stretching out into immensity while I was on foot. 

 

The only long stop I made was in Bourton on the Water, a very famous tourist spot in the Cotswolds.  Based on my sample, I would say the Cotswolds are everything people write about them. 

 

People write that the Cotswolds are full of beauty.  Bourton was lovely.  The architecture is appealing.  I can’t describe it properly, but most of the American macmansions that aren’t trying to look like French chateaus are trying to look like giant Cotswolds cottages.  Also, in BBC costume dramas, the good deserving working folk live in Cotswolds cottages.  They really are lovely, and the way they get knocked off shouldn’t be held against them.  A nice little river runs through town and is spanned by many bridges.  On the strength of this, some people write that Bourton is the Venice of England.  (I think Venice has merely been explained to such people, and in less detail than it has been explained to me.)

 

People also write that the Cotswolds have been developed for tourism for so long and to such an extent that they seem like theme park copies of themselves even though they are in fact the things themselves.  Other places I drove by or stopped at didn’t give me this sense, but this dart was quivering in the center of the board when it came to Bourton.  There’s hardly a business there that isn’t some use to a traveler.  The number of china ornaments available would fill all the décor space in one of those macmansions I mentioned earlier, and this isn’t a large place.  Bourton was crawling with people, though I noticed when I parked that the lot wasn’t even a third full.  Most of the people there between 10 and 70 years old, self included, drifted through with puzzled expressions, as though trying to work out exactly what we were doing there.  I was glad I’d stopped, but the minimum you can feed the meter for there is two hours, and I’m guessing the average stay or someone like me motoring by is under half an hour.  I think that says something.

 

I made it the rest of the way to Ashen Copse Farm where I am now staying.  If you look at a map, I’m in Oxfordshire, but the place has a Wiltshire address.  I don’t understand the whole county system here.  Administrative districts aside, it’s a pretty farm a mile or so from the village of Coleshill and close to lots of other places that should have good walking.  I’m also quite close to the city of Swindon where I feel there must be an internet café of some sort.  This has been one real surprise to me of the trip.  I can’t remember the last time I’ve gone 3 weeks without seeing a Starbucks.  Pat Hodinott, who runs the farm and the B&B here, says she’s sure I’d find one in Oxford, which is nearly as close as Swindon, but I’m guessing Swindon will be more convenient if it can take care of me.  It’s more of a working city, less of a tourist draw.

 

Most nights, I’ll probably have dinner at the pub in Coleshill, which is a short walk away, permitting incautious quantities of ale should the mood take me.  Last night, though, they were closed.  I wound up at a pub called The Trout in the nearby town of Lechlade.  I got there before they started serving dinner, and Pat had given me a tourist map of the town, so I pieced together about a 3 mile walk around.  I found it to be a real beauty spot without the veneer of artificiality I picked up in Bourton.  I did walk by a few newer developments (housing estates in British).  Even they had artificial Cotswolds architecture, but with the models just down the block, they did a better job of it and they didn’t look out of place. 

 

Lechlade straddles Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, and Gloustershire.  Again, I’m not sure what practical effect this has, but the town makes a lot of noise about it, and it meant they had signs up at each county boundary crossing.  Along the Pennine Way, I had to look at the addresses on leaflets for places where I was to figure out where I’d gotten.  The only reason I think about this at all is that some of them make so little sense.  Small towns or villages are usually associated with and have in their address the name of some nearby city.  However, it isn’t necessarily the nearest city.  I think some of this has to do with how property was carved up in the middle ages.  That is, the noble in charge of some city 30 miles off might have won the village from the noble in charge of the closest city in some kind of card game, joust, or battle 700 years ago.  The mailing addresses in this village still have Richmond (or pick another city name) in them, even though other villages that are much closer to Richmond have some other place name. 

 

I only go on about this, because it has gotten me completely confused about where I actually was.  While doing the Pennine walking, I had fabulous maps of the local area, but never had a good idea of where I was in relation to the rest of the country. 

 

At any event, I had a nice walk around Lechlade then had a pizza for supper by the Thames in a beautiful evening.  I was again surrounded by boat people of the English variety.  Lechlade is the highest navigable water on the Thames.  Vacationers with narrowboats tie up here much the way I saw them tied up off the canal in East Marton.  Then they walk up to the pub and get in line in front of me. 

 

Part of my walk last night used a bit of the Thames path which looked like it would be a very congenial stroll all the way to London.  Looking at the pace of the current flow, I think the water I watched go by at dinner last night will be rolling under Tower Bridge sometime tomorrow afternoon.  I don’t think I actually will walk back to London in the end – I’m just fed up with the different lodging every night game – but I probably will walk it to Oxford one day. 

 

Oh, I need to crow to someone about this.  As I was walking along, I picked up a candy wrapper, because it seemed a pity to have litter in such a nice spot.  Before long I came upon an abandoned shopping bag and proceeded to fill it with litter during the rest of my walk.  I felt I was giving a little something back.

 

Garmin facts:  The fact is, I didn’t even bring it along when I was walking, but I was going a good clip over easy, level ground.  Couldn’t have averaged less than 3 miles an hour and walked for just over an hour, so let’s say 3 miles.  Also, a mile poking around Bourton, but that was so slow, I don’t even think it counts.

 

Pat has been back through.  She’s loaned me a road atlas of Swindon and looked up for me where there are a couple of internet cafes.  One of them is right next to a theater, so I’ll also look into whether there are any shows to see.  I think since I’m already headed in that direction that I’ll probably carry on to a place called Pewsey and walk along the Kennet and Avon Canal.  I’m curious to see just how far I can get on the flat.