Pub Walks

 

Climb the footbridge at Berkswell and you get a pretty standard view of a railway station.  Tracks, a car park, gantries.  Turn to the left though and you can see the future.

One day this will be the Balsall Common Viaduct, a blade of white and grey concrete scything through the countryside and carrying HS2 trains to Birmingham.  The high-speed railway project continues, quietly, avoiding controversy, avoiding attention, a massive construction project that is cutting a diagonal across England.  When it's finished, we'll all be convinced it was always a great idea and we were actually always for it and complaining it doesn't go to more places.  Right now, it's a series of cranes and exposed earthworks that point to a brave new world.

Berkswell is actually closer to the village of Balsall Common, something which clearly irritates the local who wrote the Wikipedia page ("Even though the station is situated in the far larger community of Balsall Common, there are currently no plans to revert its name back to the more accurate ‘Berkswell & Balsall Common’).  British railway station names are a special magic, dear, and actually telling you where they are is probably about eighth on their list of priorities.

They did have a point, mind, because stepping out of the station brought me immediately into Balsall Common.  A long road of executive houses, two stories, each one subtly different enough to its neighbour to make it exclusive.  Wide stretches of driveway and carefully tended lawns, some of them with the must have 21st century addition, automatic gates with a video keypad.

It brought me to a pleasingly dense village centre.  My main beef with country living can be summarised as where do you get a pint of milk?  You're making a cup of tea, you've run out of milk; can you get somewhere in ten minutes to buy a replacement carton?  Usually the answer is a village store where the prices are hiked and the opening hours are erratic, which is why I prefer city living, but Balsall Common had a Tesco Express, as well as a Costa and a Domino's.  There were local businesses too, a pharmacy, an estate agent, a smattering of restaurants and takeaways - yet it was still unmistakably a village.  This was perhaps the halfway house between town and country I'd been looking for.

I followed the A452 north for a while.  Somewhere, behind the trees and the houses, construction work for HS2 continued, but I couldn't see any sign of it, and the traffic noise drowned out any digging.  I ducked down a side street lined with Victorian villas and thick hedges that overhung the pavement until the houses gave up completely and I was striding down the centre of a country lane.

There were two possible routes from Berkswell to my next station, Hampton-in-Arden: one to the east of the railway line and one to the west.  The one to the east had more appeal for me at first.  It was the one that would shadow the HS2 works, and would have avoided Balsall Heath entirely for a completely rural walk.  However, looking at the maps, I became anxious that footpaths and back roads would be severed by the construction.  I didn't fancy walking three miles to find myself in a dead end and having to turn back.

The western route wasn't quite so exciting but I swiftly fell for it.  Walking across fields and through trees, totally alone, the only accompaniment the sound of birds and the rustle of leaves.  I fell into a gleeful stupor, lost to my thoughts, lost in the landscape.

It wasn't anything special.  There weren't mountains or epic water features.  It was quiet, gentle.  The land rose and fell without drama.  It was still, unmistakably, undeniably, beautiful, a swathe of spring that I was happily trekking through.

My reverie was interrupted by a police helicopter swinging overhead.  We were still close to Birmingham Airport, and the motorways, and the city; this wasn't anywhere near as isolated as my fantasies told me.  The helicopter swooped once, then back again, then back again, and I suddenly realised that I was a man all alone in a field and that might be exactly what they were looking for.  They were barking into their radios - we've found the pervert sarge - and I was blithely strolling.  I tried to make the top of my head look as innocent as possible and finally it vanished from sight.

I cut across the backs of farm houses, long lawns scattered with plastic children's toys, and then behind a row of holiday cottages.  Each had a glass conservatory on the back and a mean fence with barbed wire and gravel on the path to give away intruders; an unpleasantly cynical spot.  A couple of stiles, a walk through some stinging nettles that decided to scrape every inch of my naked shins, then I was approaching a golf club.

I had built up a small fantasy about this part of the walk.  My Ordnance Survey had shown a large lake on the edge of the golf club, with a public footpath running down one side.  I imagined the ruddy-faced golfers, furious at me wandering onto their hallowed patch, while I produced the map and shouted "right of way!" at them.  I pictured them impotently cursing - perhaps throwing their silly little golfing tam o'shanters on the floor in frustration - while I strolled alongside the lake, smug.

Virtually every part of this little playlet I'd concocted was incorrect.  The golf club didn't turn its back on walkers round the lake; in fact, it encouraged them.  There were fishing spots built into the banks and numerous signs encouraging people to use their facilities.  The gentle, lonely, waterside stroll, meanwhile?  Absolute nonsense.  I'd seen fewer pedestrians on the A452.  There were dog walkers, hikers, elderly couples out for an afternoon stroll.

And the fishermen! Every other spot was occupied by a single man with a vast array of very expensive looking equipment.  Rods in various shapes and lengths.  Nets and tents and wagons.  Mysterious electronic devices.  These weren't fishermen, they were fishermen, taking their sport incredibly seriously and spending accordingly.  It was a weekday afternoon and yet they'd all carved out time and energy to sit by a lake.  I didn't see a single fish, by the way.

I followed a young couple with a pitbull who were unashamedly smoking a joint until I found a spot I could overtake them and get out of their oversweet wake.  I crossed a small wooden bridge and emerged from the woods to see Hampton-in-Arden in the distance.  It wasn't quite the shining city on the hill, but it was much welcome.

By this point I was starting to flag.  It had been a long, active day, in roasting heat with very little cover.  I could feel my skin prickling and burning, and in the next few days it would turn a lovely shade of brown.  My knees were starting to complain - I may not be young - and I was down to my last bottle of water.  It didn't matter though, because there was a pub.  A little country pub.

I crossed a field of random horsey material - jumps, barrels, and a white plastic chair for the overseer to watch from - then walked down a narrow alleyway to the fringes of Hampton-in-Arden.  I was, it turned out, at the bottom of the hill, and the village was at the top.  With a sigh, I hauled my flagging carcass up the slope, pausing to rest on the odd wall, thinking about that pub.  That pub.

Hampton-in-Arden looked exactly how a village called Hampton-in-Arden should look.  Rustic weatherbeaten cottages.  Painted plaster exteriors.  A quiet church surrounded by trees and a silent graveyard.  A coffee shop, closed, but promising sweet treats and locally sourced produce.  It was English to an embarrassing degree.

I headed for the pub.

I will admit, I was slightly put off by the blackboard outside.  Next right - Ibiza-style garden.  That wasn't why I was here.  An Ibiza-style garden would wreck my English fantasia.  I didn't want to have teenagers "largin' it" and drinking fishbowl cocktails while pounding Eurobeats shook the foundations.  I consoled myself with the thought that I didn't want to sit outside anyway; I wanted to be inside with a nice cool pint.  I worked my way round the building to the entrance.

The Ibiza-style garden turned out to be some plastic grass with garden chairs on it; if that's what Ibiza's like I'm not sure why Pete Tong keeps going back.  There were a couple of ladies sat on the chairs, vaping, while indeterminate music played.  I tried the door.  It was locked.

"It don't open until five, love," one of the women called.

NO! screamed my brain.  NO NO NO!  That pub had kept me going,  I had two hours until my pre-booked train home.  I was going to spend it getting lightly toasted in a genteel English pub.  This ruined everything.  

I smiled at the woman.  "Oh really?  Thank you."  Inside my brain said burn in hell, harlot.

Hampton-in-Arden was dead to me after that.  It could be as charming and pretty as it liked; having one pub and not having it open in the day meant it was basically a cultural desert and deserved to be bombed into a crater.  

Oh look, a characterful war memorial on a picturesque village green surrounded by trees.  Go shove it up your hoop.

I grumpily stalked to the railway station.  Instead of loitering on the platform until my scheduled train I'd buy a ticket into Birmingham; at least I could find something to occupy me at New Street for a couple of hours.  (A pub, perhaps).  Fortunately, Hampton-in-Arden's station wasn't especially pretty.

I headed down to the platform and drank my bottle of water.  It tasted like ashes in my mouth.  It could've been a lovely beer and instead it was water.  I hated it.  I hated this village.

I may have a problem.