Left To Centre

My existential wail from the other week came because I couldn't get to Warwick.  I don't think anyone's missed out on Warwick before and wondered if life is worth living; perhaps Charles I during the Civil War, but that's about it.  It was actually the second time I'd tried to visit the town and failed.  I'd booked a trip a couple of years ago and then, for reasons I can't remember - probably brain related - I'd not gone in the end.  But here I was, at Warwick Parkway, finally!

 

Totally worth it, I'm sure you'll agree.

Actually, I'm being unfair.  Warwick Parkway has a multi-storey car park, and I have, in recent years, become radicalised when it comes to multi-storey car parks.  I've become radicalised about quite a lot of things to do with urban planning, mainly since I wandered around the suburbs of Amsterdam and Stockholm.  It really underlined to me that things could actually be better.  Now I'm violently pro segregated cycle lanes (segregated with concrete barriers so they're a route all of their own, not a piddly bit of paint that everyone ignores), I'm vociferously for increased density and constructing apartment blocks and residences above retail premises, and I'm a strong advocate for multi-storey car parks.  If you must have hundreds of parking spaces somewhere - and you do actually need them in a lot of places - then why are we allowing acres and acres of good land to be taken up with concrete spaces, only half of which will get used most of the time?  More multi-storeys, that's the answer.  Less land, more parking, and actually more secure too because there's only one or two ways in or out so they can be better monitored.  In 2025, there is no excuse for Tesco to build a superstore surrounded by tarmac.  

Having said all that, Warwick Parkway wasn't actually built with decks of parking.  As you ride into the station from Birmingham you can see all the open air spaces it was originally given, spread either side of the road and now looking distinctly overgrown.  They still exist as overflow but now the mult-storey's there, right next to the station, nobody bothers with them.

It's not a looker, but it gets the job done, helping to spread the load from the tiny main Warwick station.  It also has a distinctive station totem which I'm afraid I'm going to file under "style over substance".  It's an interesting shape, but look how tiny the writing is for the station name; surely you could've spread it over two lines so it was more prominent?

I walked under the railway bridge, past the entrance to the unattractively named Stanks Farm, and to the edge of the village of Hampton Magna.  Those of us who've watched a lot of low-brow 1970s sitcoms will know that Hampton is Cockney rhyming slang (Hampton Wick = dick), and Hampton Magna sounds like a Latin teacher trying to boast about his attributes to the games mistress without letting on to the kids.

I'd had a choice of two ways into Warwick proper from Parkway station.  Heading north would've taken me to the Grand Union Canal, skirting the top of the town centre, while the southern route was across the fields and directly into Warwick.  I'd chosen the latter.  There's been enough towpath walks on this blog, to be frank, and it had been a while since I'd been for a proper walk in the country.  I fancied a hike across open land, taking in the sights and sounds.

I scaled a stile and followed a well-worn dog walker track between the agricultural land and the rear of the village houses.  The owners of the homes had split their back vistas into one of two categories.  Some enthusiastically enjoyed the wide open views of the fields, with low fences and balconies and terraces.  One had various road signs over the side fences, really embracing the "outdoor room" concept.  The other category were the security conscious, or perhaps, paranoid, who looked at that footpath as an easy way for burglars to get into their home to steal their Faberge eggs and bone china.  These people erected high fences, some with makeshift anti-intruder spikes on the top, and had thickets of thorny bushes between me and their back lawns.

The morning rain hadn't muddied the ground too much, enough to soften my walk a little, though there was also thick tough grass holding the path together.  At a division between acres, the path sank down.  One of the trees had fallen in a storm, covering the stile to the next field with a canopy of branches, creating a tiny nest.

I love these hollows in woods and forests, tucked away spaces you can hide in.  Aged eleven or twelve, my friends Sanjay and Neil and I would go to the fields near our house to our "base", a gap in the trees you slid down a slope to reach.  Thinking about it as an adult, it was clearly a generational space, subtly passed on from one group of adventuring children to the next, each of them thinking it was their secret.  We would hide out in there after school, doing nothing, talking, making "traps" that never worked, reveling in our tiny separate universe.  

One day we went there and found torn up pages from a porno magazine scattered across it - Actual Hedge Porn.  Dumped there by teenagers who probably moved in when we went to watch Neighbours and eat our dinner, it felt like a violation; our base wasn't the protected home we thought it was.  We cleared away the Hedge Porn (loudly expressing absolute disgust throughout; two of the three of us unsurprisingly turned out to be homosexuals) and tried to get on with things but it was never the same again.  Our sanctuary was ruined.  

(A few years later, we'd return to the same base as older teens with some cider and playing cards and spoiled it for whatever eleven year old was using it at that point.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose).

Warwick is bypassed by the busy A46, a dual carriageway that runs from the M40 to the M6 via Coventry.  It's unsurprisingly a busy through route and I wondered how my footpath would cross it.  The Ordnance Survey map had been vague about it, not showing a footbridge, so I assumed it would be an underpass.  I hoped it wasn't full of rubbish, or waterlogged.  I didn't fancy wading through inches of water.

I was in luck.  There wasn't an underpass.  There wasn't anything, in fact.

To get to the other side I was going to have to chuck myself across four lanes of traffic traveling at seventy miles an hour.  Memories of Frogger, and particularly, Frogger being squished under the wheels of an HGV, bounced around inside my head.  I hovered at the edge and then, spotting a break in the traffic, I made it across to the central reservation.  There wasn't a gap for pedestrians, so after an inelegant scramble (legs going higher than they have since my days in the can-can chorus line) I was on the other side and readying myself for another dash.  I mistimed this one, with one car going faster than I thought, and I practically jumped into the bushes on the far side.  A small yellow arrow on a post pointed the way forward, almost sarcastically I thought, a sort of and after all that effort, this is all you have to look forward to.

These were grazing areas, a metal feeding trough empty in the centre, the ground rough and untended.  The animals were presumably still in the sheds at this time of year, ready to be sent out with their newly-born young once the worst weather was behind them.

My main reason for picking this route over the canal path was this way took me over the racecourse.  The footpath carries you straight over the track, into the central island, and then back over the track again at the far side.  I liked the small, proletariat rebellion of walking on this privatised space, usually reserved for money.  It's like when I take a route across a golf course and enjoy the irritated looks from men in bad polo shirts for violating their links.

I'm not really sure how I feel about horse racing as a sport.  The Grand National is this week and Liverpool is in its usual excited state about the event.  I'm pretty sure one in every five items purchased on Merseyside in the next few days will be worn on Ladies' Day.  Watching a race, and placing a small bet, is exciting, and can be a fun afternoon out.

On the other hand, horses die in these races, and I'm not sure any animal should die for the amusement of humans.  Betting is a terrible scourge that has ruined lives, and having been on the train back from Chester during the Races, I can safely say that most of the people who attend do so mainly for the bar and not so much the thrill of the game.  It's tricky for me.  In my usual woolly way I have compromised by not betting on the Grand National or watching it but also not actively opposing it in any way.

The centre of the racecourse - the Lammas Field - was popular with joggers and dog walkers.  One man entered with an excitable spaniel who immediately ran off into the distance.  "Tiger!" yelled his owner.  "Tiger!  Tiger!  Tiger!".  There was no sign of the dog, who'd vanished into a copse, so he broke out a whistle and blew on it a few times.  Still no sign of the spaniel.  Finally, entirely of its own accord, he broke cover and ran back to his owner, who gave him a treat for eventually coming to heel.  I'm not sure anything was learnt that day.

Netting surrounded the very middle of the space, and signs told me this was to protect ground-nesting birds.  Apparently the Lammas Field was a popular spot for skylarks and zoning an area for them resulted in a significant rise in their numbers.  I have to admit I take a certain Darwinist perspective on this.  You're a skylark; you can literally fly.  Why on earth are you putting your precious young on the ground where there are thousands of predators?  Loads of other birds have managed to build their nests in trees and high spaces.  If you're so thick that you put your eggs in the way of foxes and cats and snakes then frankly, maybe you deserve to go extinct.  Still, judging by the noises emanating from behind the fencing, the plan was working.  The air was filled with the squeaks and squawks of hungry baby birds.

At the far side, three Asian tourists were excitedly watching a robot water the racetrack.  I ducked under the barriers and left, finally reaching the town itself.  Warwick is an extremely historic town, occupied continuously since Saxon times, so obviously I was excited to see an ancient relic preserved for everyone to enjoy.

Look at that gorgeous font!  It could do with a wipe down with some antibac, mind, but still, what a lovely little moment.  I walked up the hill to the West Gate, the traditional entry point to the town crowned with a chapel above.

 

 

The walkway is surprisingly deep, mainly because the chapel above, and really making you feel as though you are crossing into another era.  The 21st century is left behind; beyond is the past.

 

 

It's not as far back in time as you'd expect, however.  There was a fire in the town in 1694 which obliterated most of the buildings, and as a result, Warwick is far more early Georgian in its architecture than anything.  Wide symmetrically-fronted houses line the streets with sash windows and pillared entrances.

 

I headed for the Market Square, where a busker was plucking out Cavatina on his guitar.  Nice old ladies stood around having chats with baskets of shopping; expensive sports cars in discreet greys and blacks slid round the corner.  There were hairdressers and beauty salons, and I passed both the Masonic Lodge and the Conservative Club.  Anthony Eden was the Member of Parliament here for thirty years, and Warwick was Conservative throughout; tight, polite, moneyed.  A little repressed.

 

 

At the far end of the square the Shire Hall had been extended with a delightful 1960s frontage that I have no doubt is despised by the residents for being far too modern looking.  Like the Courage off-licence sign, I thought it was great, and I realised I was getting into that slightly chippy state of mind I get in historic places where I celebrate the new and ignore all the lovely ancient stuff.

 

I carried on, past a statue to the boxer Randolph Turpin, who I'd never heard of but who apparently had the nickname "Licker".  Do with that what you will.  The plaque on the statue recorded that he was Middleweight Champion of the World, 1951, and yes, that is a very short reign.  He got the title by beating Sugar Ray Robinson, but their contract specified that Robinson could have a return match if he lost, which he did two months later.  Turpin promptly lost.  

 

There's something very British about putting up a statue to someone whose notable sporting achievement was basically one match.  It's like lauding Scott of the Antarctic or the orchestra playing on the Titanic as it went down; victory isn't necessarily what we celebrate.  We cling to our heroes where we can get them.  (Incidentally Turpin's post-boxing life is quite depressing so I'd really recommend not reading up on it if you want to stay jolly).

 

 

I skirted the impressive St Mary's Church and its war memorial, past a plethora of expensive lifestyle shops (one called itself the little shop of lovely things), and I got my first sighting of Warwick's most famous landmark, the Castle.

 

Although it's medieval in origin, Warwick Castle's been a country house since the 17th century, and not much use as a defensive bulwark since then.  It looks properly Olde Worlde, though, which is why it was bought by the Tussauds group in the Seventies and is now run as a sort of Alton Towers With Dungeons.  The castle has falconry displays, reenactments, historic tours and a large working trebuchet.  It's Ye Grand Day Out For All Ye Family.

 

I didn't go in.  It's £39 admission on the day, reduced to £22 in advance (after my last couple of aborted trips I wasn't going to risk an advance ticket), and I am extremely cheap.  It also seems to be very much angled towards entertaining the kids, and I'm always afraid that if I go into that kind of place as a single man I'll be branded a paedophile and asked to leave by a uniformed security guard. 

 

Instead I looped back to the High Street, and from there to the Market Square again.  The busker was in the process of being moved on by a Police Community Support Officer.  He objected loudly in a strong Eastern European accent: "but what harm am I doing?  I am just making music!  People like it!"

The plastic policeman was unmoved.  "Busking is not allowed here," he repeated, over and over, nudging the man to wrap up his belongings faster.  Tory, I thought.  I headed indoors for a break.

For a while I sat and drank my lager, while a man at the next table went through the Only Fools and Horses box set he'd just bought from a charity shop, running through the contents to a silent wife ("There's no disc K!  No, wait, there it is.")  I felt like I'd seen enough of Warwick.  It was nice enough but hadn't captured me.  I was glad I'd visited, but didn't feel the urge to return.

 

 

I headed for the station through the dark trees of Priory Park.  A few spots of rain began to drop as I skirted its edges, passing under the railway and along a row of neat council houses.

 

The station itself was in the middle of an upgrade.  Lifts were being introduced between the platforms, meaning that the subway underneath was closed; it meant I ended up walking in an almost complete circle to try and get to the main building.  I dodged a lorry full of equipment and headed to the platform.

 

Warwick station does have an Attractive Local Feature board, of sorts.  I have to say it's probably the most pathetic one I've seen for a long time.  Would this make you leap off the train, filled with excitement at the prospect of visiting the Castle?

 

It's another reminder that I really don't like Chiltern Railways, once again for inverted snobbery reasons.  It's funny how quickly I turn into Citizen Smith when I'm among the moneyed set.  I was glad to be getting a train back to the People's Republic of Merseyside, where I belonged.  Not one of the common bits, mind.  I have standards.

 

Wet, Not Wild

There are times when collecting stations is an epic affair, a voyage of discovery through fascinating landscapes and intriguing vistas.  When you excitedly cross off stations with interesting names or histories.  When you discover new places.

Then sometimes, you travel for hours to tick off two obscure country halts just because they're on the far side of the map.

Bearley station (I was disappointed to hear it pronounced Beerly, because Barely would have been a more apt description) is a single platform on the Stratford-upon-Avon to Leamington Spa line.  It gets five trains in each direction from Chiltern Railways, plus a single West Midlands Railway service in the peaks.  There is a shelter and an information board, but no ticket machine or office.  It is... there.

I was, unsurprisingly, the only person to get off the train, dropping down the high step onto the platform.  I think the guard was surprised to see me alight.  I walked down the ramp to the road, past the station cottages which, in the grand tradition of station cottages everywhere, had gone all out on the railway memorabilia.  There was a particularly cute name board with a metal steam train on the top that I wanted to tuck in my backpack.

At the roadside was the sign.  Despite being barely touched by WMR services, they're actually responsible for running it, and had weirdly sent out their sign people to make sure it reflected the current corporate look.  There are stations in Birmingham with thousands of passengers a year making do with the colour scheme from two franchises ago but apparently it was really important to update this one.

The week before I set out, I went to the Ordnance Survey website to plan a route.  (Incidentally, I can highly recommend it - £23.99 a year for unlimited access to OS maps across the UK).  I came up with a course that took me through a couple of villages, crossing the countryside via footpaths and back roads.  It was interesting and meant I got to see a bit of the area.

Then the rain came.  When I got up, six hours before, it had been raining.  It was still raining now.  Endless, relentless, strong rain, breaking up the soil, turning it into mud.  I'd worn hiking boots and waterproof trousers, but I knew that wouldn't be enough.  This was Wellington boot weather.  Disappointed, I turned away from Bearley village, with its vineyard and church and adjoining RAF base, and instead headed out towards a back country lane, marked by a closed down pub and a care home.  Langley Road was a lot less scenic, but at least I couldn't sink into tarmac.

February was at its worst that day.  It should have been dying out, the first tendrils of spring starting to break through, the promise of a new year.  Instead the month had gripped hold of the landscape and made it cold.  The only green was the rough grass, battered after the winter, still afraid to grow.  The only flowers were daffodils with their blooms resolutely closed.  They stayed as tight yellow buds, as though they were afraid of shining against the relentless grey.  Everywhere was brown and black.

I've said many times how much I hate walking on the road.  It's dangerous and a little scary, particularly here, where the traffic was hefty SUVs and 4x4s burning through at speeds beyond the limit.  Sometimes you just have to though.  The wet weather had left huge puddles in the gutters while the verges were sodden.  I dodged from one side of the road to the other, trying to keep away from blind bends, stepping up onto the grass when I had to.  Where there was a particularly huge expanse of water, I waited until the coast was clear, then ran past; I'd seen the glee those fast drivers had taken in splashing through them and I didn't want to end up soaked.

A little further along there was a foot crossing for the railway, accompanied, as all these access points are, by a sign with the number for the Samaritans.  You'd have to time your suicide attempt well on this stretch of track; miss your opportunity and you're lying on the rails for an hour, getting a chill from the cold metal under your neck.

I filled my mind with busy thoughts, watching for cars, wandering.  Getting back in the swing of things.  I always enjoy the walks between stations, even if it is relentlessly grey.  It's the activity, the breaking out of the routine.  It's the walk with a purpose.  There wasn't much here that I couldn't have seen anywhere in England but it was still new lands to conquer.

I passed a small business park, with a curiosity in the grass outside; a single champagne cork.  Clearly this was a cut above the country employment parks I was used to seeing, a couple of craft-type businesses and maybe an accountant.  But then again, this was Warwickshire, not Lancashire, and so there was a thicker stockbroker belt here.  As I trudged on there was the honk of a horn and the Stratford-Birmingham train appeared in the distance, seemingly floating on the hedgerows as it slid by at speed.

The rain had stopped by now, though I was still speckled with drips from the trees, and the puddles stayed as large as ever.  A ditch by the side of the road burbled with overflow.  You'd hear the noise of running water, and expect a cheery country stream, only to be confronted by a heavy rivulet of muck.  Thick brown water gurgled past, churning, bringing up a stench of decay.

As I passed a gate, two sheep spotted me, and wandered over in the hope that I was a wandering shepherd going around providing extra meals to livestock.  I thought about giving them a stroke through the bars but the lack of food would've only disappointed them so I trekked onwards.

Up ahead there was a sign: Mud on road.  "I mean, obviously", I thought, because there had been mud all over the place throughout my walk.  I didn't understand why this spot was special.  (Also, that sign makes me think of this Viz cartoon every single time).  I turned the corner and saw why.

The road dropped down beneath the railway and in the dip the run off water had gathered in a deep pond.  Thick streams of mud were smeared across the tarmac and, as I watched, a Range Rover barrelled through and splashed water against the bridge walls.  I paused, listening for traffic, then when I thought it was quiet, I ran through and out the other side, straight down the middle.  I kept going to try and dodge the worst of the muck before finally dropping back onto the verge.

A sign for Langley village told me I was halfway to the next station.  It was accompanied by a warning that number plate recognition was in use.  Elsewhere, a farm shouted that there were dogs on the loose - a sign that I think was meant to scare you, but as this sign was right next to it, I don't think the burglars will be quaking in fear.

I realised that I'd not really been taking in the landscape, instead focusing on the road ahead.  To be fair, it wasn't especially inspiring - a few hills and grasslands beneath dull skies.  It was midday but you couldn't tell.  As I paused a black Porsche roared past, engine growling, the canvas roof shut tight.

As I approached a crossroads a swarm of birds ducked and dived through the skies.  They seemed weirdly obsessed with this one spot, flocking to it, vanishing then reappearing.  I thought of the magic of crossroads, the folklore around them; centuries of lore and mystery tied up in them.  Was this a mystical spot?  Were the birds perhaps drawn by voodoo or spirits?

It turned out there was an animal sanctuary there, and the flock of birds were probably stealing food off the livestock there.  Still, for a moment I felt all Iain Sinclair, only not really annoying, so it wasn't all bad.  I turned left.

Saddlebow Lane was delightfully named, but it was even darker and narrower than the road I'd just turned off.  There were at least strips of grass there; here the trees hugged the road tightly, bending over my head, while the runoff from the fields poured down the gutters in brown rivers.  The hefty drains were overwhelmed.  I was walking downhill, so I knew there would be a bottom at some point, and soon I encountered it.  The road was covered with debris where the floodwaters had overwhelmed it.  I was glad they had receded.

Back up again, silently begging each vehicle that passed not to go hard through the water and soak me, then I reached the top and the sign that every station collector treasures:

As with Bearley, Claverdon station was some distance from the village itself.  If I'd followed my original, OS-lead route, I'd have come out in the village itself, a manor first recorded in the Domesday Book, but as it was I encountered the station first.  I walked down to the single platform - the other one having been mothballed when the second track was removed in the Sixties - and discovered that I was way, way ahead of schedule.  There was an hour and a half until the next train.

Normally in these circumstances I'd find a nice pub, but the nearest one was a half a mile away up a steep hill.  I had a flask of water and a sandwich, so I settled into the bare shelter and waited.  Two stations collected at the bottom of the West Midlands Railway map.  Now it was time to begin the hundred mile, three train journey home.

This is a very odd hobby.