I’m sitting in another field overlooking Castle Cary. I overhear the conversations of a group of local teenagers. They must be about 14. They sit on metal tubes. They look like large underground drain ducts that have been dumped in a meadow. The grass has grown over the top so they’re becoming part of the landscape.
‘F&*k, I hate it here. It’s so boring. Look how nothing is out there…Give me your phone.’ The speaker is skinny, pale, with bleached blonde hair and holds the attention of his female buddies.
‘Nothing is out there’.
What was he referring to? The universe? Life? An existential fear suddenly realised. Or was he looking at the view North beyond Castle Cary?
There is something filmic about that scene. It’s a scene that asks to be displayed. Green coloured hollows and dips curve down and around where I sit. In the middle distance a rough dark green line flecked with the brown of roofs runs across the page. Castle Cary. Within the roundness of the green trees, the odd spire reaches up heavenwards, catching the sun in the warm gold of its stone. The buildings seem to grow out of the greenery like the town is half submerged in the land.
Beyond that the land stretches north east towards Glastonbury and Wells near where I started the day before. It’s flat and expansive. There’s a heavy, low ceiling of cloud. Grey and white contours fold into each other. And a stray crepuscular escapes every now and again. Its shaft lights up the rough squares behind the town. Light green patches are broken up by the dark green mounds that are clumps of trees. There are pale green strips also that are newly harvested hay fields. The grass left in little clumps at regular intervals waiting to be bailed. I’ve passed a few of them now. Beyond this on the horizon stands the Tor. It can be seen from everywhere around here. It’s like a beacon or marker. A point from which I can always mark my position.
For a moment I feel like I’m in a dream. I’m wandering back over the miles in that scene trying to remember where I’ve covered. The ever changing line of the path. The changes in landscape: a meadow, an orchard, a hay field, a steep hill, an ancient track, a road. And so on and on. The miles covered and the sense of time spent in thought and lost in the oldness and strangeness of the land. I tilt my face towards the sun and smile.
After my trudge up Pennard Hill and the meeting with the hares I found it hard to shake off the melancholia cloak that can enshroud me sometimes. Maybe it was something to do with remembering grey days after Glastonbury Festival. Coming down.
I alway wear trainers for walking. I hate the heaviness and heat of walking boots in Summer. Yet there was a heavy dew this morning and quickly my feet are soaked. It doesn’t bother me. Stings, aches and wet feet are par for the course.
But I was starting to drag my feet. I had crossed another busy road and got on a waterlogged track with long nettles and brambles. It was one of those where you just have to feel the hot sting most steps for 100 metres. At the end I met a lane. I spent 2 minutes breathing deeply trying to change my thoughts.
To the right was a dead end. A sign could tell me ‘church only’.
Churches have always been a place of refuge. For those broken who need solace. For some it has provided a physical refuge. I think of those who hid in churches during wartime hoping to provide a physical and spiritual defence against the threat of attack.
I think of the church next to my parents’ house where my father would go to unlock and lock the church door at the beginning and end of every day. Once he found someone who’d been on the road sleeping in one of the pews. He slowly closed the door as he left. I myself camped a few years ago in the small churchyard at Hope Cove in Devon while walking the South West Coast Path. Although only a few hundred metres from the beach and a strong westerly Atlantic wind, my little tent was protected by the solid stone walls and tower and the grass was perfectly flat. That night the Lord offered me protection. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me sleeping next to his house.
I turned right. There is no village at Hornblotton. In the middle of nowhere and at the end of the track is the small church surrounded by fields and behind it a huge rectory. It looks more like a stately home. Like so many big houses I wander past it is empty. It must be only 7 in the morning. There is no sign of life.
The small side gate into the churchyard is freshly painted. Gleaming white against the grey of the wall and the backdrop of gravestones. The door is open. And inside everything is still. Everything slows down. This is one of those moments.
This little church – without a village – where the land stretches for miles around hides treasures. The church is 19th century. Inside the walls are decorated with sgraffito: rust and white coloured walls with figures and quotations from the bible. It is a style of wall decoration associated with the arts and crafts movement.
It feels more like Tuscany than Somerset. A bee buzzes loudly around the otherwise empty building. The sound is amplified by the room and the emptiness. There is a strong smell of wood polish. It reminds me of old houses. Someone has recently been here to clean and take care of it.
A saintly figure reading a book – the bible? – with huge feet holds my attention for several minutes. After the long trudge, the walking through wet grass, mud and nettles, I feel rested and my faith in the walk is restored. Churches engender peace and calm whether you believe in a god or not. I say a few words for dad at the front of the church. I sit in silence and remember him.
The journey is often long and hard and frustrating. It can often feel like there is ‘nothing out there’. And maybe that’s the truth of it. Yet there are always moments of incomparable beauty or joy. And that’s what keeps me going.
The Slow Walker 