| The Warwickshire Centenary Way | |
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Shaggy dog stories ....
Today's walk almost didn’t happen as Lenscap Dave (who was to be my companion for the section) was stricken by the Tenby Plague and had to cancel. Chauffeur Jamie stepped up to the plate at the eleventh hour, for which I am very grateful, and I met him bright and early at Coombe Abbey Country Park. He ferried me back to Hawkesbury Junction, swapping dog-owner stories with me as he drove along. I own a greyhound and he owns a German Shepherd but we found common ground through my previous dog, Bryn, who was 50% greyhound, 50% German Shepherd, and as a result, 100% schizophrenic.
Up the junction ....
He left me at Hawkesbury Junction, which at this time of the morning was sleepy and deserted. Hawkesbury today is a far cry from the noisy, polluted place it must have been two centuries ago, when it facilitated the passage of coal barges bound for London and when its local pub - the Greyhound Inn – would have been an edgy place on a Saturday night with frequent and sometimes violent confrontations between barge crews. Today the Greyhound is far more welcoming, bedecked with hanging baskets and polished brass, vying with the best of country pubs in the charm stakes.
It was another gorgeous day and everything looked crisp and fresh in the early morning air; it inspired me to record some commentary to camera which took five attempts to get right. I had an audience of assorted water fowl but they lost interest in my performance once they realised I wasn't carrying any stale bread.
The topology of Hawkesbury Junction gave me a moment of confusion before I sorted it out via my GPS. It is here that the Coventry Canal meets the northern limit of the Oxford Canal and all sorts of shenanigans
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Hawkesbury Junction |
A large brick structure dominates Hawkesbury Junction originally housing a powerful steam engine installed to pump water from local mines to add to the canals. The engine, originally in use in the Welsh coalfields, became known as Lady Godiva and is now in the Dartmouth Museum, way down in Devon.
Having established that I’d arrived via the Coventry Canal and would be leaving via the Oxford Canal I shouldered my rucksack and set off.
The Oxford Canal is 78 miles long and links Oxford with Coventry via Banbury and Rugby. Commissioned in 1769, it was almost twenty years in the making and became one of the most lucrative canals in the network, returning profits right up to the advent of the second world war. Like most canals in the UK it suffered a post-war decline and came very close to being closed down and filled in. Once a vital part of the UK’s industrial powerhouse, it now services the leisure industry and is considered to be one of the most scenic canals in England.
Itching on the cutting ....
I started off down the canal, where a long line of narrowboats were moored up, waiting to cruise into Hawkesbury Junction. Enticing aromas wafted out from each one of them; bacon, coffee, toast - by the time I had left them behind I was salivating and craving a full English breakfast. Narrowboat folk are a friendly bunch; everyone had a ‘good morning’ or ‘nice day’ to offer me as I ambled by. I suppose that when you live your life at the unhurried pace of a canal journey, surrounded by peace and beauty, and with bacon sandwiches for breakfast, it has to make you a nicer person.
I rounded the first bend of the canal and passed by the less-than-lovely profile of an electricity sub-station on the opposite bank, walking underneath a steel pylon that sizzled like the bacon rashers in the galleys of the narrowboats.
My guide book told me I had around five miles of canal walking ahead of me, which appealed on many levels. The tow-path was nice and flat,
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The Oxford Canal |
I noticed that the canal's original bridge numbering had undergone some adjustment over the centuries. Bridge 6 was followed by Bridge 9 so obviously two bridges had disappeared completely, whereas as Bridge 13 was followed by an inserted Bridge 13A, carrying the M6 over the canal. I wondered what I’d do if I discovered that Bridge 16 had also disappeared. Unlikely I know, but the Centenary Way applies a haphazard approach to way-marking so nothing was certain.
To the lonely path ....
I reached the edge of the village of Ansty, where a row of pretty terraced cottages looked out onto the canal, whitewashed in pastel colours and vibrant with summer flowers in carefully tended plots. It must have been an idyllic place to live before the motorway arrived, but now the dull roar of traffic is ever-present. Ansty village has been around since the Domesday Book and its name is derived from the old English ‘one path’ or ‘lonely path’. It shares this name with four other villages across England. The name has the unfortunate property of looking like a typo of the word ‘nasty’ but seen from the canal tow-path on such a nice morning as this Ansty was the very opposite of nasty - it was lovely.
About a mile beyond Ansty I met the first pedestrians I had seen on the tow-path all morning. A middle aged couple dressed in immaculate and neatly pressed clothing, the man with an expensive suede jacket hung across his shoulders. They were a bit of a mystery considering that there wasn’t much of anything from the direction they came from, just several miles of canal. They may have been from Ansty, out for a canal-side stroll, but they were hardly dressed for such activity. They greeted me as I approached.
“Guten morgen.”
Germans – the mystery deepened!
Ansty golf course passed by, flanking both sides of the canal, and I could hear the intermittent swish and thwack of club meeting ball. I wondered if any sliced shots found their way into the canal - there were a couple of shouts of ‘fore!’ but I didn’t need to dive for cover. After the golf course the canal ran parallel to an intercity railway line and sleek silver express trains flashed by at regular intervals. Not wishing to overshoot my exit point from the canal I stopped to get my bearings through my phone app just as a canal barge glided past me. The man at the tiller had been watching me.
“No mobile phones please!” he said half-seriously, obviously believing that use of technology in such a place was sacrilege.
“It’s a GPS.” I replied.
“Ahh yes - hahaha!” he cackled, nodding his head as he puttered away down the cut. Narrow-boat folk; friendly but sometimes a little odd.
Bovinophobia ....
Bridge 16 was still in place when I finally reached it. It was a high steel bridge spanning the canal and this is where the guide book told me I should leave the towpath. I wittered into the camera for a few moments and then I climbed the short track from the tow-path up to the bridge and stood looking down along the canal from a height of perhaps fifty feet. The bridge was part of the drive to Mobbs Wood farm and spanned both the canal and the railway running alongside it. The sides of the bridge had been modified at the point where it passed over the railway, with additional sections added to increase the height and
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A view from the bridge |
After the bridge, the drive to Mobbs Wood Farm became a wide concrete track that ran for a mile or more across open fields and up to the farm complex. Sweeping views were all about me and away to the right the M6 snaked its way across the landscape, busy with traffic made tiny by distance, throwing out a faint sound like a distant seashore. I left the track before reaching the farm and climbed into a paddock to be greeted by a herd of cows.
Of all the livestock one might meet when walking I distrust cows most of all. Horses are usually curious but are used to being handled, pigs are usually aggressive and best avoided, but cows are an enigma. I have learnt that cows fall into certain categories of behaviour when hikers enter their fields.
1. Lying down, facing away and not in the least bit bothered
2. Standing up but at a distance, regarding you with mild interest
3. Standing up close by, heading towards you with intent to hassle
4. Rucksack Rage
I’ve had experience of Category 3 a few times (and on one occasion a Category 4) and I didn’t enjoy it very much. Cows are curious, stupid, occasionally aggressive, and above all clumsy. Cows kill people and I have no desire to be added to the statistics. ‘Crushed by half a ton of boisterous beef burger’ is not the end I have in mind, so therefore I am naturally cautious when I have to cross a field full of heifers. On this occasion I encountered category 2 cows that soon lost interest in me, which suited me just fine.
I left the field and then followed a grassy track which skirted the edge of woodland - presumably Mobbs Wood. The wood was dominated by tall conifers, lending it a slightly sombre atmosphere, and the track was gloomy under their shadow. I came out from the twilight into a hayfield under brilliant sunshine, where I was inspired to commit more narrative to audio, and which in turn led to a bridge over the thundering M6. I stopped here to take photographs of the traffic hurtling towards me. I became one of those people you see standing on remote motorway bridges as you drive along, leading you to wonder how they got up there and why.
Beyond the bridge there was a long field hedgerow to follow, which divided arable land from cattle meadows. I was happy to be on the arable side of this divide as the herds of brown shaggy beasts over the hedge capered about when they saw me in a distinctly Category 3 fashion. On my right the wide fields of wheat stubble fell gently away to reveal, on the horizon, the skyline of Coventry city centre, the twin spires of the ruinous old cathedral clearly visible. The hedge finally ended at a farm gate which in turn led to a small farm drive and a brick-built railway bridge.
All roads lead to ....
My stomach started suggesting that it was lunchtime as I crossed the bridge to a lane with the picturesque Colehurst Farm on my right, and I decided to take a break by heading over a tiny bridge to re-join the Oxford Canal at Bridge 26 – ten bridges further on from where I had left it at the high steel bridge. I spent a happy thirty minutes seated by the tow-path, occasionally swinging my legs out of the way of passing cyclists, discovering that some orange pips sink and some don’t. I would have been contented enough to sit in the warm sun all afternoon, watching narrow-boats chug by with names like
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Lunchtime view |
Eventually I left the road-walking behind and picked up the long cinder driveway of Hillfields Farm, where the asymmetrical skyline of the Rolls Royce Aero centre poked rudely up above the fields. The drive performed an S-bend through the farm complex giving me a close up view of the recently burnt-out barn; the smoke and the heat had gone but the acrid stink of burnt building still hung about the ruin (Google Maps still show this building as intact). An accident? Arson? I would never know, but expensive to the farmer either way. I hoped he was insured.
.... Coombe Abbey
The track meandered out of the farmyard and climbed gently, enclosed by tall hedgerows, to reach a second farm where I diverted left across a ploughed field towards the tree fringed boundary of Coombe Abbey Country Park.
Coombe Abbey was founded as a monastery in the 12th century. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century it became royal property (or in other words was stolen). Elizabeth of Bohemia, the daughter of King James I, was educated there in the early 17th century. Had the Gunpowder Plot succeeded she was to have been abducted from Coombe Abbey and proclaimed as Queen Elizabeth II, several centuries too early for the postage stamps and the Christmas Day TV speeches. In 1682, the West Wing was added by architect Captain William Winde, who also designed Buckingham Palace. In 1771, Lancelot 'Capability' Brown redesigned the gardens, incorporating the Coombe Pool lake. For successive generations Coombe Abbey was owned by the Earls of Craven, in whose possession the estate remained until 1923. In November 1964 Coventry City Council bought Coombe Abbey. The park was opened to the public in 1966. What occurred between 1923 and 1964 is not recorded.
I stepped across a small wooden bridge, under the cool canopy of mature oaks, and picked up a bark path that wound on into the park itself. Coombe Park contains a lot of acres - 500 of them in fact – made up of woodland, formal gardens, an arboretum, open grasslands and a lake. It’s a haven for dog walking, family days out, and leisure activities, and is extremely popular with the people of Nuneaton and Coventry - and therefore busy.
Having seen hardly a soul for almost ten miles it was a bit of a jolt to suddenly find myself surrounded by people enjoying the fine weather. As soon as I stepped into the park I started dodging cyclists, and yapping dogs, and whooping children. I’m not at all bothered by crowds normally,
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Coombe Abbey Park |
I sat in the back of the Land Rover, swigging cold Lucozade Sport, and reflected on the days walk. Easy to follow (mostly) picturesque (mostly) and enjoyable (completely). From my study of the route, the next section would provide the most industrial aspect of the Centenary Way , passing the Peugeot car plant at Ryton-on-Dunsmore and offering scenery that would be interesting rather than pretty. However the section would also provide an important land mark as I would reach the halfway point of the Centenary Way at Stoneleigh.
All I had to do now was arrange transport and order decent weather…
See Route on ......
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