Month: April 2020

Day 29 of the End to End was also spent walking along the Severn Way beside the River Severn. By lunchtime I’d reached Sharpness and we had a picnic. There are many advantages of a long well signed route. It’s much less trouble than the ins and outs of lots of smaller joined up footpaths. You can find your way more easily, although sometimes you do get diverted.

So what was I thinking about on LEJOG? I can’t give you minute by minute accuracy on that but I can tell you about some broad themes. The blogs do of course point to some of them but others are hidden between the steps.

Much of the time my mind would wander over some well worn stuff that continued to confound me. The way the natural world leapt up in front of my eyes was good for getting me out of my head into the real world again. That the same themes would return is not surprising: the human mind is like this. It is particularly true when we are dealing with any kind of loss and by the beginning of our 7th decade most of us are doing so to some extent.

We know that dealing with loss moves in many circles. We find ourselves back at a similar point, looking at the same events or feelings only a little further away, like the ripples on a pond. Each new circuit gives us a chance to think again, revisit, repackage and then step out again. I was familiar with this and there’s no doubt that the walk gave me a chance to do this kind of work alongside the business of getting from A to B each day.

I was dealing with several different losses, some larger than others, some smaller. The main one that came back again and again was the sense of loss of connection to the church as I had known it for fifty years or so. This loss had come about a few years earlier (and had set in train my current plans, retirement and so forth) when the Yorkshire Synod decided not to further the Chaplaincy at Silcoates. The process that accompanied this decision had been a jagged one and despite the best efforts of a few very dear and close people I had been significantly hurt and further damaged by the whole thing. I’d limped on for a couple of years but now I was stepping out on a route of my own.

A year after that walk I’m still walking, but slightly differently. I have completed the LEJOG, much to my amazement. I took my own route. This route taking has informed a lot of my subsequent thinking and doing. I am still walking a route of my own. After a telephone conversation with my best friend Jane, I downloaded Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘A room of one’s own’ where I found that she had first put her thoughts about the subject together whilst sitting by a river.

A river is a good place to make discoveries, whether of a room or route of one’s own. It continues to slip by and can take all sorts of stuff with it. I am now outside of the institutional church. I consider myself to be ‘nondenominational’ having grown from Reformed roots. I am part of the invisible church; one of those who calls herself Christian in life and worship but no longer attends church in the formal sense. I still pray as often as I can and remember the bible everyday. I hang out at times with a bunch of Benedictines and some others. I continue to weigh my life by the basics of the gospel. It has been a route of my own and I’m still travelling.

From the remembered bible
Be still and know God.
This is one of the prayers from the LEJOG that others have liked to pray too.

Prayer for a walk

Let faith be my raincoat
And joy be my map
To explore every path,
Be backed up with an app.
And let me set free
With my pen in this age,
Words of encouragement
From every blank page.

JAL: 30.04.2020 in Longdendale.

Day 28 of the End to End in 2019 was the first of several spent on the Severn Way. This long distance path goes all the way from the source of the Severn in Wales to the sea at Avonmouth. Over 200 miles long, I did not walk the whole length as you will see but I was walking it for quite a few days. Personally, I liked the route. It’s lovely to be in sight of the water and the scenery is diverse as the river changes. There are also many interesting places along the route. I would like to go back and complete the walk to the source of the river sometime in the future.

You can find out more about the Severn Way here:
https://www.ldwa.org.uk/ldp/members/show_path.php?path_name=Severn+Way

Walking beside the Severn there was plenty of historical sites, like the villages of Old and New Passage which had been the crossing points before the Severn Bridge was built. Each has its own historical trail. There was also my first motorway services, the Severn Bridge Services. There would be no more walk-ins to motorway services until Cumbria on the M6. There was also Oldbury on Severn Nuclear Power Station, the first of several nuclear plants I would see on the LEJOG. No longer providing electricity to the National Grid this massive building dominated the river front and was like the ones Bob used to work in some years ago. Wild flowers and butterflies were numerous but only one herd of cattle took any notice of me (they decided to take the opposite direction).

I finished my walk that day at St Mary’s Church, Shepperdine. A small tin chapel (again, there would be several more of these on the whole LEJOG), it was erected in 1914 and regular services are still held there. It was lovely, it was open and there’s no better way to finish a day’s walk than to reflect on the remembered bible in a well loved spot.

From the remembered gospel
Seeing the infant Jesus for the first time, two elderly people, Simeon and Anna, were quite excited. Simeon said ‘Now let your servant go in peace’. Anna said ‘Look, there he is!’

I use this version of Anna’s song, based on Luke 2: 36-38, for evening prayer at the Mobile Chapel of St Scholastica

Anna’s Song

Look there he is,
See where I am pointing:
The one to liberate us all,
To set the world free to spin
And wheel across the universe.
Don’t miss this, see there:
Just look where I am pointing.
Glorious is the Creator,
Glorious is the Companion,
Glorious in the Spirit:
Holy Three, Holy One, now and forever.
Amen, Amen, Amen.

JAL: 29.04.2020 in Longdendale

On Day 27 of the end to End I could see Bristol from the bridge over the M5. I had set myself a month for this goal but I’d done it in 27 days so I was really pleased with that. There were few cities on my LEJOG route. As I’ve said before, there’s no set route so you take in as few or as many as you like. I avoided Birmingham and Manchester for example. But I had included Truro back in week 1 and so Bristol was my second city, although I went round on the Severn Way rather than through the middle.

After weeks of mostly open country and rural life it was quite a change to see terraces of houses, frequent buses and busy roads. I expect Bristol looks quite different today.

This was also the day I got onto the Severn Way, one of the long distance walking routes I used for LEJOG. Although Hannah didn’t always have good reports of it in 2012, it was quite well signed and mostly flat, all of which commended it to me. I’d be following it for at least 13 days.

By the end of Day 27, I was at Severn Beach, a small place that had welcomed day trippers from the city in the 19th and 20th centuries. Shirley’s Cafe, opened in the 1940s, was still there. I hope it is after 2020.

Today is also remembered as Worker’s Memorial Day. It started in Canada in 1985 and has spread, never more so than this year. There are some resources here if you’d like to use them:
https://bobjanet.org.uk/worship/WMD_prayers.pdf

From the remembered gospel
Jesus looked at the city and wept: ‘Oh how I wish I could gather you up, like a hen gathers up her chicks’.

Gathering God, bring us together
as we remember those who have died working in a time of Pandemic.
As the virus spreads around us, may love spread amongst us.
May we be ready to care and to serve, remembering all who do.
Be in our dying and our living; may we all share your new life.

JAL: 28.04.2020 WMD in Longdendale.

The End to End is, I’m sure you have realised, a very weather dependant activity. By Day 26 we had encountered most of the types of spring weather for which Britain is familiar. I had adapted to these to some extent. I’d taken off wet clothes in car parks, I’d got wet through to my knickers, I’d been nearly knocked off my feet by wind and so on. There was quite a lot more to come of course.

Weather has always been a subject of conversation in our household and not just because we’re British. I never knew so much about weather until I married Bob. This morning I managed to notice for the first time the barometer that he’d put up on the wall about five days ago. It’s the same one we’ve had in each house we’ve lived in together and probably still has the same dust on it. Weather forecasts are a bit of a ritual with us. Folks should be silent during weather forecasts, more silent than in church even. I always enjoy a good weather forecast. There’s an art to it, a technique, a performance: more so than even a sermon because anyone can fall asleep during a sermon.

Day 26 of the End to End was notable for being windy, which is arguably the worst weather for LEJOG as it makes the going hard. Today, one year later, there’s rumours of rain in our little valley but none has actually fallen yet. It is generally a wet part of the country, which is why it is home to a chain of reservoirs. However, at the moment it is very dry and a moorland fire a few miles away has been giving the firefighting services a hard time for several days.

We might like to think of weather as being outside of our control but more and more evidence for the human influence on our climate makes that view unsustainable. Look to the weather and you look to the world.

From the remembered gospel
In the midst of the storm, Jesus said ‘Peace, be still’.

Storm stiller, as the clouds gather I see the world change,
light and dark patches run across the landscape.
In these days, across the blue sky, fewer aircraft leave their trails.
The main road is quieter and the birds are easily heard.
This changing world needs to hear your encouraging voice:
‘Peace be still’.
Quiet us, calm us, sustain us,
but most of all may we hope that it is possible to live simply that all may simply live.

JAL: 26.04.2020 in Longdendale

I make up a lot of Kennings, those cheeky Anglo-Saxon word pairs that still pepper our thoughts and conversations. Not all of my nearest and dearest are in favour of this habit. Today we had a family zoom conversation with different bits of our global family brought together on the internet. Dad, the Oldie Zoomer, can now get onto zoom unaided, and many others of his generation have been learning such things. Hannah has been teaching on line while drinking chocolate milk (if this sounds like a music hall trick I am unable to comment not having seen it myself).

Meanwhile I continue my virtual End to End and we’ve reached Day 25, another on the Strawberry Line in Somerset. It was a damp day and all the greenery lining the cutting through which the path passed was verdant and bright. One year on in Derbyshire, it’s rather dry and there was a fire on the adjacent moorland a few days ago. Small seedling still shoot up and dandelions cling to precarious perches around the Longdendale reservoirs.

Everyone has been spotting unusual wildlife: a sparrow hawk or mutjac deer in the back garden for example as well as plants and flowers springing up in places usually mowed down by now. Perhaps we can learn some new ways of getting on with wildlife, side by side, and allow the fragile things to flourish.

Spotting wild stuff was a big part of the End to End for me. I’d keep a record on my phone, especially of butterflies but also of orchids when the time came. It was a joy to see new species  I’d not seen before. It was also good to end the day at a welcoming cafe that had tasty scones. So that’s Memory Maker and Scone Eater signing off for now, until tomorrow.

From the remembered gospel:
Jesus said ‘Come and have something to eat’.

Meal Maker, we yearn to enjoy each other’s company again.
Help us to keep in touch while at a distance,
our memories making important connections.
For those who feel alone, be there in the simple things of everyday:
may something unexpected turn up and turn the day around.
May joy come with the morning.

JAL: 26.04.2020 in Longdendale.

 

On day 24 of the End to End I was still on the edge of the Somerset levels but gradually climbing up towards Bristol. There were paths and quiet roads, large churches and strange happenings. Probably the strangest was being asked, at Weare, if we were looking for Frankie Howard’s grave whilst we ate our 11’s. We weren’t.

But then with a walk like LEJOG you never know what’s round the next corner. A notice saying Diversion Ends on the old railway path, the Strawberry Line, before it even appeared to have begun, probably referred to a small fallen tree in front of the tunnel entrance. I had no lights but I went through the tunnel anyway. It’s about plodding on.

Which is fine advice when your adventure is a slight incline on an old railway path. Not so fine when you’re in ICU on a long shift or lock down in a care home with vulnerable residents, or driving a bus without protection, or… [fill in your own stories].

Or until you remember that on the other side of the world it’s ANZAC Day, remembering the assault on a small beach on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey by the Australian and New Zealand Forces in 1915. We stood on that beach on a visit in 2015 to mark the centenary, and we looked up at the cliffs. It’s unbelievable that anyone could have made it ashore here under fire from up there. As on the Western Front, the CWGC cemeteries are beautifully kept, each one an oasis for remembrance.

(photo above is of ANZAC Cove, Gallipoli)

At the end of day 24 of LEJOG I visited the church at Rodney Stoke. It is a Thankful Village: one that gave thanks for the return of all the villagers that served in WW1. Maybe we will have Thankful Care Homes or other Thankful Places that remained untouched by COVID19. I pray that it may be possible.

From the remembered gospel
There was someone waiting for them on the beach, making breakfast.

Waiting One, your endless waiting amazes me.
I can hardly sit still for a few minutes but you wait in the most surprising places:
on a beach, under fire,
in a care home, under lock down,
at a bus stop, by a well.
May we who itch with waiting, gain something from your presence,
as we breathe in the day, remember and pray that all may be well.

JAL: 25.04.2020 in Longdendale.

I’ve been to Gold Corner, on the Somerset Levels, twice in my life, each time on an End to End walk (once with Hannah in 2012 and then in 2019). Being in the middle of the levels it’s quite flat and the roads are small and quiet. There are also options for quiet paths alongside the drains that criss-cross the area. The biggest feature of Gold Corner is a pumping station, helping to maintain the drainage that is essential if the land is to be used for agriculture and as an important internationally recognised wetland.

 

It was constructed in 1942 and the Environment Agency describes it as the largest and most complex in South West England. You can read much more about it here: http://www.environmentdata.org/archive/ealit:950/OBJ/20000998.pdf

On the 23rd Day of the End to End it was pretty wet and visibility was significantly reduced. There’s a very small rectangular notice on the wall by the door of the pumping station. I’d seen it before. It denotes the high water level at spring tide. It’s way above my head. I kept walking.

It’s easy to see how the area came to be associated with myths and mystery. The name Avalon was from the apple trees in the area but the mist could hide anything. I eventually met Bob and dried off in the car. Later a couple of cyclists in their 70s told me they were riding the End to End. I believed them.

The whole walk was made up of simple moments like this: a walk through knee high wet grass followed by a warm pasty, an uplifting conversation swapping adventurous tales with other Lejoggers. One year on, I’m in no doubt that we made the right decision to go End to End in 2019.

From the remembered bible:
Peter said to the man at the door of the temple ‘I don’t have any Gold or Silver to give you. I can only give you this….’

Glory in mist and mystery: the Creator’s works are all around me.
Glory in rain and relationships: Christ is waiting on every corner.
Glory in plans and patience: the Spirit fills me with hope even in despair.
Just as the waters find their level again,
so do I find myself filled with the love of the Holy Three.

JAL: 24.04.2020 in Longdendale.

On day 22 of the End to End in 2019 I emerged from the Quantock Hills onto the Somerset Levels. The scenery changed from narrow winding wooded undulating lanes to the flatter paths that I would follow for the next few days. The other thing that changed was the roads as I crossed backwards and forward over the M5 on a variety of footbridges. It was therefore much noisier at times. The tow path of the Bridgewater and Taunton Canal was the first of many I used on the whole walk, and a diversion due to roadworks at Bridgewater  was a bit confusing.

We passed the campsite where we had stayed on Hannah’s walk in 2012. I walked along the King’s Sedgemoor Drain and finished at Bawdrip. A friend from Twitter regularly posts walks from this area in 2020. It was all change.

Meanwhile in 2020, it’s certainly all change too, not just locally. There’s no way we could have imagined that one year later that the cities of the world would be in lock down, the countryside empty and motorways quiet. As for being prepared for the medical needs of our country; what would that take?

I’m currently reading a book about the Women’s Hospital in Paris in WW1 (there’s a review of it here https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/17/endell-street-by-wendy-moore-review-the-suffragette-surgeons)

It seems that the British government of the time initially made a decision not to provide motorised ambulances for the BEF on the grounds of cost. Horse drawn ambulances were cheaper, they thought. They were also less reliable and it also took much longer to evacuate casualties. It wasn’t until much later in the war that the hospital trains were developed. Many private citizens volunteering to help with ambulance work actually donated their own motor vehicles for the task. That is, as they say, history.

The idea that women could run a military hospital was scorned in 1914. Women just wouldn’t be up to it  for so many reasons, such was the prejudice against women doctor’s at the time. Much like some sections of our current society have their prejudices against the participation of members of the the BAME community in the NHS today. And now they are putting their lives on the line.

Just before her execution in Brussels, in 1915 as a spy, Edith Cavell, a British Nurse and daughter of a Norfolk Vicar made this statement: ‘Patriotism is not enough: I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone’. No one can claim to love their country and not love her fellow humans, those who live and die for it (her statue stands in Charing Cross, London).

(photo: Wikimedia Commons)

From the remembered gospel
Jesus said to Philip: ‘Here, touch the wounds for yourself’

Wounded One, we struggle to believe so many things.
How often, our own prejudices hold us back from fully accepting our fellow humans.
You, who see all sides of the struggle, stand with all rejected ones.
Help us to cross the line, to move towards your inclusive kindom,
where justice and mercy are the hall marks we all bear.

JAL: 23.04.2020 in Longdendale.

 

 

Day 20 of the End to End was Easter Sunday and it was somewhat strange to be walking along on a warm sunny day in Somerset rather than the usual churchy things associated with Easter Day. But did I miss those things? Not really.

Yesterday a friend reminded me of the words of a hymn published by the Iona Community: God who is everywhere present on earth. It is one of the cornerstones of my own faith. This I believe and this I will proclaim. So how did we get stuck in these dwindling inward looking holy huddles?  Long story….

I love to visit the places associated with the history of the faith. I am a gyrovague (see the Prologue to the Rule of St Benedict to discover why this lot are a bad thing!), moving around, sampling the faith like some kind of errant bee. I sniff and sup and then I’m on my way again, taking the images and reflections with me.

But I also visit many other places where God is present: the well tuned fish and chip shop, the industrious farm shop selling local goodies, a wide open common, a village pub, the local heritage steam railway…. I could go on.

Well I could go on a steam railway if one was open. As it was there was an engine in the station at Bishop’s Lydeard when we stopped for some ice cream on this day in 2019. This was the prayer I wrote a year ago and it stills seems relevant this year:

In the heat of the day,
When the sun burns its way across the sky,
And news comes in of more inhuman acts
And suffering beyond enduring,
It’s hard to credit the notion
That a rock rolling God
Can move heaven and earth
To make all things new,
But Christ makes all ordinary things extraordinary today.
A bun, a breath, a life:
Hot and Holy.

Meanwhile, on line many well meaning folks are debating the future of the church. Some ask ‘Will we do church differently after this?’ I hate to spoil it for you, but some of us having been doing church differently a lot longer than a few months, and getting all sorts of persecutions and abuse for it.  I’m not sure what version of church history you were reading that meant you hadn’t realised that the argument about how to do church is as old as the church itself, with the most powerful ones dictating to the rest, too often not just in arrogance but with violence, that proper church is done their way. My ancestors where 1662 dissenters, basically saying we retain the right to do church differently more than 350 years ago. Not being open to doing church differently, and too many seem not to be, is another sure sign the church is dying.

I do church differently. I count myself part of the one holy catholic and apostolic church, visible and invisible, by baptism. I make the promises of a Lay Benedictine linking me to the church militant on earth. I pray, in a small 33 year old camper van (and hope to once again take it on the road in true gyrovague fashion) and anywhere else where I am breathing in words borrowed from many different faith traditions and inspired in me by the Holy Spirit. I consider the things I eat and drink in memory of Jesus to be holy enough with his command alone to make that possible. On line or round the corner: God is everywhere present on earth.

From the remembered gospel

Jesus said ‘Go everywhere, tell everyone…’

And we’re off…

Risen Jesus, many things hold us back.

May your life affirming presence be the power

that gets us going everywhere to everyone,

today and forever.

JAL 21.04.2020 in Longdendale

Note: Gyrovague is defined as an itinerant or wandering monastic without fixed address or leadership …..