Warks Centenary Way Day 8

The Warwickshire Centenary Way

By Mark Walford Day Eight Route: Whatcote to Upper Quinton Distance: 12.6m (20km) Elevation: 197ft (60m) to 495ft (151m) Climbing (ascent and descent): 748ft (228m) and 814ft (248m) Prev      Next

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Silly hat season ....

In August, when I first set out on this walk, getting up at half past six was a straightforward enough proposition — daylight already through the windows, the morning warm and full of summer promise, even if the summer in question had spent most of its time raining. This morning was a different matter entirely. The radio did its best to ease me into consciousness and I dragged myself out of a warm bed into a dark bedroom that received me with a slap of cold air. I stumbled about in the dark, puckered with goosebumps, reaching for the neat pile of clothes I had left at the foot of the bed, which seemed to have relocated itself overnight.
Colin had stayed over in order to make the early journey south, and we assembled downstairs in the manner of men who have not yet fully committed to being awake: rucksacks packed, cold muttered about, bagels eaten, hot coffee administered directly to the bloodstream. Then we de-iced the cars and pulled away, leaving the neighbours — and quite possibly the rest of Birmingham — still asleep in their beds, as any sensible person would be in early December.
The compensation for this was the M40 at that hour: almost empty, and to the east a sunrise of quite unreasonable beauty, the sky layered in molten gold from horizon to cloud-base. It was the kind of morning that makes an early start feel like a private arrangement with the world, and it promised a fine day ahead, which was exactly what we had been hoping for.
We parked outside the Royal Oak at Whatcote and made our preparations. Given the temperature, which had a minus bias, we both put on our silly hats. Colin restored his faithful World's Worst Ninja headgear to its rightful position. I opted for my Inbred Lumberjack cap, ear flaps deployed. Hiking may make you a fitter person. It will never, under any circumstances, make you a more stylish one.

My silly hat

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Every mile is two in winter ....

We set off through the still-sleeping village — past the Royal Oak, past the row of cottages, and into the grounds of the church of St. Peter which in the low light of a December morning looked exactly as a twelfth-century church in a frost-rimmed Warwickshire field ought to look: Poetically beautiful. The gravestones stood in uneven rows, their inscriptions mostly surrendered to centuries of ice and wind and rain — the names beneath them worn back to the stone itself, anonymous now in a way their bearers presumably never intended. Old stories, lost to the march of time. We filmed, admired, and then took a wrong turn leaving the churchyard, which was quite a feat given that the correct path was not difficult to identify. We found it eventually and left Whatcote behind.

Old stories

The frozen mud was a gift. What would have been ankle-deep on a warmer day had set overnight into something firm and navigable, and we crunched across field edges with gratitude. The air was sharp and still, and the winter light — that particular low, pale light of December — gave everything a quality of definition that summer never quite manages. Every detail was present: the bare branches of distant trees against the sky, the geometry of frozen puddles, the way frost clung to the north-facing slopes of hedgerows while the south-facing sides had already begun to release it.
A curious wooden structure stood at the edge of the first woodland we passed — a ramshackle construction resembling a tennis umpire's chair assembled from whatever timber had come to hand, purpose entirely unclear. The path took us away before we could investigate. Half a mile later, on the far side of a wide field, I spotted its twin fixed to the trunk of a substantial oak, some way above the ground. I have no theory. I remain curious.
We walked along a high saddle of ground where the land fell away on either side, the views pouring out across the winter patchwork of south Warwickshire — fields and hedgerows, a church spire in the middle distance, farms with their thin threads of smoke. The December air sharpened everything to a clarity that summer never delivers; every tree on every distant ridge stood in precise silhouette against the pale sky. It was the best of what winter walking offers, and we both became totally enveloped in it.

Wintry field

We stopped at a point where the Cotswold escarpment made itself properly visible — sweeping south-westward, the hills stepping down into increasing haze until they dissolved altogether somewhere in the direction of Bath. I promised myself, not for the first time, that one day I would walk the Cotswold Way, We lost height gradually and arrived at a country lane near a small village where the guidebook and the GPS presented us with conflicting opinions for the first time in several miles. Nothing so useful as a waymarker appeared to settle the matter. After some frowning and pointing we accepted that it came down to a binary choice — left or right — and I went with the GPS.
Left took us to a rickety bridge over the River Stour, where the rooftops of Shipston-on-Stour were visible in the middle distance and an old house perched directly on the riverbank, its foundations massive slabs of stone laid against centuries of floodwater, its upper brickwork rather less confidently positioned above the flood line.
The river was a busy but modest watercourse today; the mud gouged from its banks told a different story about what it had been capable of recently.

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For once it’s not the guide book ....

I opened the guidebook on the bridge to check our position, and as I did so the bookmark slipped free and spiralled down into the water. It was only an old till receipt from a Tesco garage — a makeshift thing I had torn off months ago at Hartshill Hayes, some seventy miles north — but it had faithfully held my page through the entire walk, and watching it turn in the current and disappear around a bend produced a pang of loss that was, I was aware, entirely illogical and entirely genuine.
We pressed on into Shipston, following the guidebook's directions through the town centre. It was a pleasant enough twenty minutes — some good Georgian architecture, a creditable number of pubs, and several plaques on buildings commemorating the Great Flood of 2007. Banners across the main street advertised something called *The Victorian Experience*, which raised the question of which particular Victorian experience was on offer. Getting drunk on cheap gin? Pushing a child up a chimney? Developing rickets? We did not investigate.
It was only when we began to see signs for an entirely different long distance path that the sinking feeling set in. Something was wrong. The GPS confirmed it. The guidebook, for once, had been perfectly correct: had we turned right at the country lane rather than left, we would have visited the pretty village of Honington and all the book's directions would have made complete sense. We should not have been in Shipston at all. We retraced twenty minutes of steps with the quiet dignity of men who have done this sort of thing before, and said nothing at all about it until we were back on route, at which point we said the bare minimum about it and moved on.

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Four miles, two villages, one way-mark ....

The correct route put us on the shoulder of the A429 for a stretch of perhaps two miles. Traffic swished past in a steady rhythm and we fell into the companionable silence that long acquaintance makes possible — the kind where nothing needs saying and the walking does the work. A field full of emus provided a brief interruption to the general theme of English rurality.
Tredington appeared on the right and drew us in, towards the village centre, far enough for my Wrong Turn Radar — a faculty that has developed through extensive practical application on many a walk — to register a warning. Obviously this radar doesn’t always activate at the right moment (and often not at all) but it does, on occasion, kick into life and save a few unnecessary miles. The GPS confirmed we had overshot. We backtracked, found the correct turning, striking out along Blackwell Lane with no waymarkers to confirm or deny our position. Whether the barren stretches happen because local parish councils have differing views on what the Centenary Way deserves in terms of maintenance, or simply because the signage has been quietly absorbed back into the hedgerows, is difficult to say. We walked on faith and the GPS and arrived in the village of Blackwell neither entirely certain nor entirely lost, but entirely in need of lunch.

Leaving Blackwell

Blackwell was the right sort of place for it. A small grassy square at its centre, surrounded by houses of several different centuries, and a bench. We sat, unwrapped sandwiches, and enjoyed a peace so complete that rustling a crisp packet felt like an act of provocation. An elderly woman passed with four Borzoi hounds who regarded us down the length of their extraordinary noses with the measured condescension of dogs who have heard better things about walkers and are not yet convinced by the evidence before them.
We shouldered our packs and left along an exit road as straight as a Roman causeway, pointing directly at the rising forms of the northernmost Cotswold Hills. Colin announced that he required a comfort break and was in the process of making arrangements when the first other walkers we had seen all day appeared on the path behind us. He abandoned the plan with a furrowed expression and we walked on until a more private arrangement presented itself half a mile later, at a gate into a field — and, alongside it, the first Centenary Way waymarker since before Tredington.
With undisguised relief Colin disappeared in search of a tree and I walked ahead into the last leg of the day.
The mud had returned. The morning's frost was gone and the ploughed fields had reverted to their natural December state — heavy, sticky, and possessing strong views about the soles of boots. Two of the next five fields were ploughed, and we resumed the ritual established on Day Seven: cross the field, find a patch of wet grass, scrape the boots through it, continue for fifty yards, repeat. The final field before Ilmington was ploughed and large and hilly, its path climbing straight over the summit according to the map. We arrived at the top a little breathless, and from there the village revealed itself below — limestone rooftops cascading down the sides of several hills to meet at a church that raised a finger skyward with some authority.
In a paddock below us a horse had been watching our progress up the hill with flicking ears and a speculative expression. As we began the descent he shook his head and looked away, apparently having reached a conclusion.
We shouldn't have descended at that point either, and found ourselves in a small square of lock-up garages before the GPS rounded us back onto the correct street and we entered Ilmington properly.
It is, in my estimation, a contender for the prettiest village on the entire Centenary Way. The limestone glowed warm in the winter sun, the thatched cottages were everything thatched cottages aspire to be, and the old smithy and Norman church gave the whole arrangement a settled, unhurried quality — as though the village had decided long ago exactly what it wanted to be and had simply got on with it ever since. The fact that, according to the historical record, St. Matthew's Day gatherings here in the seventeenth century were described by a disapproving rector as set up by *mobbish people for wrestling and other masculine exercises* only adds to its appeal. Ilmington, it seems, has always known how to have a good time.
Colin stopped to photograph some of the limestone cottages, and I filmed a particularly lovely row called the The Bevingtons.
He reappeared at my elbow.
"Is this place Tredington?" he asked.
"Ilmington," I said.
"Immington?"
"*Il*-mington."
He tapped at his phone carefully, lips moving. "Il-min-g-ton."
The video faded to black.

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The end is nigh ....

We made a minor navigational error leaving Ilmington — beginning up a steep lane before the Wrong Turn Radar registered and the GPS confirmed that a small track to the right, back down the hill, was where we should have gone. It was well hidden, this track: a narrow footpath climbing via old stone steps under the cover of trees and hedgerow, through a secret little valley of coppiced willow, and out onto higher ground where the views opened again and a large friendly dog appeared from nowhere and began capering around us with the uninhibited enthusiasm of a creature that has decided, on no particular evidence, that we are all best friends. His owner, who held a somewhat different view of the situation, called him to heel and we continued across fields to Admington Lane. Colin spoke, apparently out of nowhere.
"You really should get another dog, you know."
I had recently lost my old greyhound Tom, and had told myself I needed a break from dog ownership — the first such break in many years. I asked him what had prompted the thought.
"Just the way you look at other people's dogs," he said. "And the way you talk to the ones that come up to you. You obviously miss having one around."
He was right. I had noticed it myself — the way my attention went to every dog we had encountered on the walk, the conversations I had found reasons to have with their owners. It was still too soon, I thought, to make a commitment.
Or so I told myself at the time.
A bleak field of rough grass and fly-tipped rubble followed, then one final ploughed field. We sat at its edge and cleaned the worst of the mud from our boots in the companionable way of people who have spent enough days together to have turned boot-scraping into a shared ritual. Across a few more paddocks — blessedly firm underfoot — the rooftops of Upper Quinton appeared.
We went through a gate onto a lane and found ourselves looking at Colin's car.
Colin set about changing his footwear while I walked on into the wide green space at the centre of Upper Quinton, looking for the official end of the Warwickshire Centenary Way.

Journey's end

I found it without difficulty, to the left — a bench, set in the lee of an old hedgerow, bearing a small plaque. The plaque informed whoever happened to be sitting there that this seat marked the end of the Warwickshire Centenary Way. After a hundred miles, I thought, the provision of a bench was a rather thoughtful gesture — kinder, certainly, than the elaborate stone plinths and optimistic sheets of plywood I have encountered at the ends of other long routes.
I sat down. I recorded a final video. I said something about achievement, and about pride, and about the particular satisfaction of finishing a thing you started, and I meant all of it, though the cold air and the shortness of my commentary probably kept it from being too elaborate. Colin arrived and offered his congratulations, and we stood there for a moment in the winter quiet before turning back toward Whatcote and the Royal Oak.
The landlord was behind the bar. He looked up as we came in and drew two pints without being asked.
"Got your keys this time then," he said.
We asked how things were going, and he answered pleasantly enough, though with a certain reticence that suggested we had caught him on a day when the question had a more complicated answer than he was inclined to share. We took our pints to the fireside — a proper crackling log fire, the best possible thing at the end of a December day — and sat in its warmth while the cold receded and the walk settled into the past tense.
We made plans. The spring. The Heart Of England Way. May, perhaps, when the days would be long again and the mud would have dried out and the whole business of getting up before dawn and pointing oneself at the horizon would feel straightforward and inviting rather than like an act of mild defiance against the season.
It was something to look forward to. Which, on a grey December evening in a warm pub at the end of a long road, is about as much as anyone can reasonably ask for.

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