HIGHWAY WRONGS

 I was walking into the grounds of Colchester General Hospital the other day and I came across a sign at the entrance from the main road that read, ‘No highway rights exist or shall accrue beyond this point.’ (I take a great interest in signs that forbid or limit pedestrianism.) 

 

Being in a Philistine frame of mind I started thinking about Deep Purple’s ‘Highway Star,’ AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ and a great many other songs that tend to refer to the highway as a place for truckers and demon drivers as opposed to pedestrians, which left me wondering what ‘highway rights’ are.

 

A little research on various plausible-seeming websites tells me that, ‘Highway rights mean that the public has a right to “pass and repass” over the land.’  Got that? Not just pass but pass and REPASS.

 

What then is a highway?  ‘A Highway is an area of land which the public at large have the absolute right to use to “Pass and Repass” without let or hindrance.’ OK then, but it’s worth noting, ‘Though the term highway is popularly used to refer to roads, its legal definition covers any public road, track or path. Historically, a highway, which was also referred to as ‘the King’s highway’, was defined as a public passage for the use of the sovereign and all his or her subjects.  The Highway Act 1835 defines highways as ‘all Roads, Bridges (not being County Bridges), Carriageways, Cartways, Horseways, Bridleways, Footways, Causeways, Churchways and Pavements’.

 

The ancient King's Highway was a trade route from Egypt to Mesopotamia, from Heliopolis (where the obelisks abound) across the Sinai peninsula and by a circuitous route to Resafa, now in Syria.  It’s a long walk in anybody’s book, and not one our present monarch is likely to be undertaking.

 

In England, of course, we have ‘The Highway Code,’ a handy little book that you acquire and read when you’re learning drive then never think about again once you’ve passed your driving test. 

We tend to think of it as a guide for drivers but in fact rules 1 to 36 apply specifically to pedestrians.  Most are straightforward and common sense but one or two are slightly baroque.

Rule 15: Reversing vehicles. Never cross behind a vehicle which is reversing, showing white reversing lights or sounding a warning.

Rule 16: Moving vehicles. You MUST NOT get onto or hold onto a moving vehicle.

Good advice there.

 

Above is an illustration from the Highway Code website. You and I might think that walking across that road wouldn’t be too much of a challenge, but if Death Race 2000 has taught us anything it’s that you can never be sure what’s coming round the bend.  Bonus points for killing pedestrians.

 

GEORGE AND SAM - FEEL THE POWER

 

I assume your Facebook feed is much like mine, dredging up all kinds of nonsense about psych rock, tree surgeons, orthopedic shoes, organic food hampers, and so on, but just once in a while it brings something vaguely interesting such as this from ‘Remembering George 1943-2001,’ as in George Harrison.  

It’s an aerial photograph of what was his country house, Friar Park in Henley on Thames, and it comeswith a caption/quotation from George, ‘My Garden you can stroll around it in ten minutes if you’re power walking.  Which is what I do these days.  If you saunter it could take half an hour.  If you swagger maybe 45 minutes.’

 

I’m not sure that a swagger is slower than a saunter but here’s an image byPaul Sandby titled A Man Swaggering, one of twelve London Cries drawn from life and published in 1760.  It certainly looks like it might take him a while to get anywhere, even around a garden.

This is Friar Park as seen on Google maps.  

 

As far as I know there are 36 acres of garden at the house, and I’m not sure where those 36 acres begin and end, but it looks like a lot of ground to walk around, even power walk around in ten minutes, though a lot may depend on what you mean by ‘around.’ 

I was reminded of a Samuel Pepys diary entry, Saturday 18 May 1667 ‘Up, and all the morning at the office, and then to dinner, and after dinner to the office to dictate some letters, and then with my wife to Sir W. Turners's  to visit The., (Theophila Turner) but she being abroad we back again home, and then I to the office, finished my letters, and then to walk an hour in the garden talking with my wife, whose growth in musique do begin to please me mightily, and by and by home.’

That sounds like a full day with a lot of back and forth, but fortunately the Pepyses lived in a house in the Navy Office buildings on Seething Lane, so they lived above (or even in) the shop.  Below is the best historic image I’ve found of the Navy Office. It looks as though you’d have to do quite a lot of back and forth to occupy a whole hour.

Today there is the Seething Lane Garden, commemorating Pepys, which you can walk around in about five minutes.

 

This is George Harrison in his garden, not swaggering nor power walking, but on his feet, having his picture taken and not looking especially comfortable about it.

WALKING WITHOUT MOSQUITOS

 Possibly you’ve been hearing about Colin Bell, the 102-year-old former World War Two fighter pilot (he flew Mosquitos) who abseiled 280 feet down the Royal London Hospital last week.  He did it for charity of course, raising money for the Royal College of Nursing, the RAF Benevolent Fund and the London Air Ambulance.  Here he is walking on the roof prior to descent.

Here he is descending, in tandem.

 

         Colin Bell is also a walker (again for charity), and in a BBC radio interview he talked, slightly vaguely, about a walk he did from Churchill College in Cambridge to the American Cemetery in Madingley Road (2.2 miles), and Downham Market where he was stationed during the war, to Bexwell Church (2 miles).  I’m not sure that he walked from the American Cemetery to Downham Market, since that would be about 35 miles, and in any case, according to the Guardian ‘Precise distances were not recorded,’ and one of Colin’s helpers was reported as saying ‘when you’re 102, two miles can feel like 22.’  I don’t expect to live long enough to check the accuracy of that statement, but it sounds reasonable.

If only more walkers would wear ties.

In that radio interview Colin Bell didn’t specifically mention walking as the secret of his longevity he put it down to good genes and ‘A combination of alcohol, exercise, and the love of good women, with the odd bad one thrown in.’ I suppose the ‘exercise’ may have been walking, but given the good and bad women, other forms of exercise may have been involved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CELEBRITY WALKING

Celebrities aren’t like you and me, they do things differently, even walking. And no celebrity is quite like the sainted Davina McCall.

There she was in the Times magazine recently, in an article with the shout line ‘I didn’t need drugs.  But I had a hole in my heart that and they filled that,’ which I translate as ‘I didn’t need drugs I just liked them.’

 

Is she a walker?  Hell yes. She ‘ran into’ Matthew Robertson, then presenter of Pet Rescue while out walking her dog.  Reader, she married him in 2000, and separated in 2017 – that’s many, many decades in celebrity marriage years.  And she kept on walking.

 

A little research reveals that in 2021 she did something nasty to her foot after tripping on a tree root while out walking her dog.  This, of course, she shared on Instagram – and issued a ‘trigger warning’ for the image.  I think we’ve all seen worse.

 But about a week later she shared another picture and the foot was looking much better.  Whew!  Drama! Relief! Bathos!

 

Here’s another picture of Davina walking: not a tree root in sight.

A POOR MAN IN RICHMOND

Last weekend I played the part of a walking author, leading a guided walk around Richmond for Books on the Rise bookshop.

 

Photo: Caroline Gannon

I was a little worried about this since I know next to nothing about Richmond and despite a couple of reccies (one of them op cit) I hadn’t come up with a grand idea, but then, as inspiration often comes out of desperation, I suddenly thought and announced to the ten or so people who’d turned up for the walk, that since I was so ignorant of local conditions, they should guide me.  They seemed to fall for it, at least nobody demanded their money back (not that I was getting any of their money).

 

I wasn’t entirely inert.  This was going to be my walk rather than theirs, and one of the things I do as a walker, is look at a map and if I find a street with an unusual or engaging name, I go there.  And so my/our walk started in a street called The Vineyard, which led eventually to a street named Mount Ararat Road. 

 

Off we went.  There was no actual vineyard visible in the Vineyard, though there was The Vineyard Community Centre, and there were vines growing up several of the houses, and there was no sign of the flood in Mount Ararat Road, though there was a dentist’s surgery called the Ark,

 and in the front gardens there were a surprising number of olive trees.

 

We wandered for 90 minutes or so, not quite aimlessly, and eventually we ended up in Paradise Road at the house where Virginia and Leonard Woolf set up the Hogarth Press, with a blue plaque framed by a lot of wisteria.  There was wisteria everywhere in Richmond.

 

Of course we saw things we hadn’t expected to see; a phone box that had a dial tone and so may even have been functional, 

 

Photo: Jen Pedler

an almost armillary sphere,

 

the occasional liminal space, 

 

and the biggest rosemary hedge I think I’ve ever seen.

 

I think the walk worked, to the extent that a couple of the walkers did say to me, ‘Oh, I walk around here all the time but you’ve made me see things I’ve never seen before.’  That, obviously pleased me, though in my modesty I’d say I hadn’t made anybody do anything, but I’d created the conditions that allowed people see for themselves. Hey, it’s what I do.

Photo: Caroline Gannon