| The Warwickshire Centenary Way | |
|
|
|
|
Home James ....
An Indian summer had arrived — one of those brief and slightly suspicious interludes in the British calendar when the country remembers, almost apologetically, how to do sunshine. Less than a week after being comprehensively soaked on Day 1, I found myself setting off for Day 2 in sunglasses and light clothing, as though the previous experience had been an administrative error by a careless weather god rather than a portent. Today's walk would be a solo affair, though not without logistical support. My colleague Jamie Vaughan had kindly agreed to act as chauffeur, and I met him at Hawkesbury Junction, beside the Greyhound Inn, which looked particularly agreeable in the early morning light — the hanging baskets, the polished brass, the general air of a pub that has made peace with its surroundings.
There was no time to linger. I was bundled into the car and dispatched toward Hartshill Hayes. while Jamie — local to the area and a former warden at the park — provided a running commentary on what lay ahead: fields containing overly enthusiastic horses, farmers of varying degrees of walker-tolerance, and other useful local intelligence.
It was, I'm sure, excellent advice. Unfortunately it was delivered at an hour when my brain had yet to assume full operational status, and by the time we arrived I had retained none of it.
Jamie pointed me toward the correct path, offered a cheerful wave, and departed, leaving me alone with a fine day and a vague sense of optimism.
Tech to the rescue ....
The last time I had been here was at the end of Day 1, when Dave and I had arrived wet, tired, and entirely uninterested in anything the park might have to offer beyond a car park and a toilet block. This time, with rested limbs and functioning cognition, I was able to take a more considered view.
The path led quickly out of the trees and onto a ridge, where the views
 |
|
Hartshill Hayes |
It was only later that I discovered an elderly gentleman had been sitting just out of sight behind a nearby shrub, quietly reading his newspaper and, one assumes, listening to me witter on at some length about the view. He gave no indication of this as I passed him moments later. I took it as a kindness.
The Centenary Way wasted little time in leaving the park behind, depositing me back onto Oldbury Lane and over the first stile into open countryside. It is worth noting — again — that the official guidebook is best regarded as a collection of helpful suggestions rather than a binding authority. Its directions have a tendency to become vague at precisely the moments one would prefer them not to, and the waymarkers, while present in spirit, are not always present in fact. The Centenary Way is not a well-known route; it is infrequently walked and, one suspects, infrequently maintained. Expecting it to signpost itself with any consistency is to misunderstand the nature of the relationship.
In a moment of foresight bordering on genuine competence, I had downloaded a GPS mapping app before setting out, with 1:25,000 OS Explorer maps installed and the Centenary Way clearly marked. As the route progressed this proved to be less an optional extra and more a form of navigational life insurance.
I was forced to use it almost immediately, finding myself in a grassy hollow confronted by multiple stiles and gates, none of them marked and all of them equally plausible. The guidebook, at this point, adopted a position of studied silence.
The GPS, by contrast, spoke clearly.
It would not be the last time I was grateful for that.
A step back in time ....
Beyond the initial navigational diplomacy, the route settled into a steady rhythm of fields — many freshly ploughed, which had the useful side-effect of erasing any visible trace of a footpath and requiring a certain amount of faith, supplemented by the occasional distant waymarker and a growing appreciation for technology.
I found myself considering the relative merits of walking in late September versus earlier in the year. Spring, for all its charm, brings hay fever, assertive livestock, and a general sense of an awakening nature making its presence felt rather forcefully. Autumn compensates with clearer air but introduces overgrown hedgerows, aggressive brambles, and fields that appear to have been recently rearranged by agricultural machinery of considerable ambition. It was, in the end, an inconclusive debate. I agreed to disagree with myself and pressed on.
The first village of the day, Ansley Common. arrived without ceremony.
 |
|
Approaching Ansley Common |
I passed through briefly, attracting the mild, incurious attention of people waiting at a bus stop on the high street before escaping once more into open country.
Beyond Bretts Wood I picked up a rich vein of Centenary Way markers and the landscape shifted into something altogether more agreeable: rolling fields of ripening wheat under a generous blue sky, hedgerows thick with hawthorn and blackthorn, and the occasional oak standing with quiet authority in a field corner. It was, undeniably, the sort of countryside that invites comparisons to Constable paintings and the slower movements of Elgar. A team of Shire horses dragging a plough across the middle distance would not have seemed remotely out of place.
This was, I reminded myself, a mere seven miles from my house in suburban Birmingham. A few miles of separation and yet a whole world of difference. It could easily have been 1935.
The illusion held for some time, until a pair of microlights buzzed overhead like particularly persistent insects, reminding me that modernity had not entirely surrendered the field. I attempted to film them and produced several seconds of entirely empty sky.
It was also around this point that the word *Porphyry* began to intrude on my thoughts with no explanation and no obvious invitation. I had no idea why. I pushed it aside and walked on.
Follow that local ....
I continued across fields before arriving at Galley Common, — similar to Ansley Common in age and original purpose, another former mining settlement that had reinvented itself as quietly as possible once the industry departed. It was again the briefest of visits: a side road, a sharp right turn, a stile, and a climb
 |
|
Wheatfields near Galley Common |
Cows occupied the summit, drowsing in the sunshine with the profound indifference of creatures entirely untroubled by human frailty. I threaded between them and descended to a railway crossing, and beyond it another ambiguous field where the guidebook once again became unhelpfully impressionistic.
A local man, accompanied by an enthusiastic Labrador, provided directions with great confidence. He insisted I should turn sharply right after a gap in the hedge. I mentioned that I was following the Centenary Way. This appeared to mean nothing to him, and he simply repeated, with added emphasis, that I needed to go sharp right after the gap in the hedge to join the road. This did not align with either the GPS or the general logic of the route. I thanked him warmly and we parted.
What followed was a brief but delicate exercise in ignoring advice while appearing to respect it. The difficulty was that he had not travelled quite as far ahead as I had anticipated, and I found myself trailing behind him at a discreet distance while he turned periodically to check whether I was complying.
I was not. I had managed to work out the right way forward and it lay in his direction.
"This path on your right — to the road!" he called, when he reached the turning, waving his arm for additional emphasis. I responded with a thumbs up
 |
|
Seeswood Pool |
*Porphyry*, meanwhile, continued its uninvited circuit of my thoughts. I had no idea what it was. I was not, at that moment, able to look it up. It would have to wait.
The Centenary Way skirted the edge of Robinsons End before diving back into horse paddocks, where shaggy little ponies eyed me up as a possible source of sugar lumps and found me wanting. From here I emerged onto the B4102 and walked past Seeswood Pool, — a thirteen-acre private fishing lake lying flat and still, reflecting the blue of the sky with serene accuracy. A little further on I skirted the edge of Stockingford. found a convenient log set into a field hedge, and ate lunch looking back toward the rooftops on the skyline.
Porphyry. What on earth was Porphyry?
After lunch I discovered, via GPS, that I had drifted slightly off route — just like my thought processes. A short retracing of steps corrected the error and led me to the drive of a farm, crossing the front of the house and on into woodland.
The other Bermuda ....
I soon reached a long stretch of cinder track (Harefield Lane) which the guide book informed me would lead to Bermuda Village, which turns out to have nothing whatsoever to do with mysterious disappearances, though it carries its name with a certain straight-faced improbability.
The village was founded in the late nineteenth century as a mining settlement, and takes its name from its then-landlord, a former governor of Bermuda
 |
|
Bermuda Village |
I was sufficiently intrigued by the place to wander off route, which led me, in fairly short order, to the edge of a large and very recently man-made lake that blocked my way. The GPS restored order. After leaving Bermuda I pressed on through a brief industrial stretch, enlivened by a car full of local lads cruising the concrete perimeter road with cans of Tennent's Super in every hand — a scene that provided a jarring contrast to the fields of ripening wheat I had been drifting through an hour earlier.
The narrow boat cemetery ....
A subway, some interesting graffiti, a stretch of woodland path, and then — the Coventry Canal. The towpath offered flat, easy walking and a return to something approaching tranquillity. Boats moved lazily along the water, their occupants unhurriedly friendly, and for a while the day settled into a calm and agreeable rhythm.
It was here that the guidebook attempted to send me in entirely the wrong direction. A brief disagreement between printed word and GPS was resolved, as usual, in favour of the latter, and I continued correctly, reflecting that without technological assistance I might have spent the afternoon exploring the wrong stretch of canal with considerable confidence and no useful outcome.
 |
|
On the Coventry Canal |
Steve Haywood, writing in Canal Boat Magazine in 1984, captured it well. “The dock, he wrote, “was more like a scrapyard than a boatyard — squalor with a history, run in those days by the legendary Joe Gilbert, a man not noted for his efficiency, and always full of people for whom he had promised to complete some job that he hadn't yet got round to. We loved it".
Four decades on, the spirit of the place appeared largely intact.
A mile further on, order reasserted itself in the form of neat canal-side bungalows with terraced gardens running right down to the water's edge — geraniums, petunias and lobelia tumbling in profusion from carefully tended borders, and small private benches positioned so that their owners could sit and watch the canal life pass. One property hosted an immense weeping willow, its fronds cascading into the water like the streamers of a huge green firework.
The approach to Hawkesbury ....
I reached Marston Junction, where the smaller Ashby-de-la-Zouch canal struck off to the east to continue along the Coventry Canal. It was late afternoon, the shadows had lengthened, my water supply had diminished, and my thoughts had narrowed to a single compelling objective: the bottle of Lucozade waiting in my car. That, and the still entirely unresolved question of what, precisely, Porphyry was.
A pair of men carrying a canoe along the towpath stopped for a chat — wanted to know where I'd come from and where I was headed. When I mentioned the Greyhound Inn at Hawkesbury they assured me it wasn't far. This was exactly what I wanted to hear and I chose, perhaps unwisely, to believe them.
 |
|
Hawkesbury Junction |
Bend after bend in the canal suggested imminent arrival. Bend after bend was lying. This, I recognised with weary familiarity, was a variation of the West Highland Way Effect — the well-documented phenomenon whereby distances expand subtly but persistently as one approaches the end of a long day's walk. Landmarks retreat. Optimism is quietly audited.
A woman at the tiller of a passing narrowboat confirmed that the Greyhound was, indeed *not far*. I thanked her and plodded on. Several more entirely unnecessary bends came and went.
Then, finally, moored boats began to accumulate, the junction opened up ahead, and the Greyhound Inn appeared — busy and sunlit, people enjoying drinks in the warmth of the late afternoon. More importantly, I could see my car. The Lucozade was consumed in three large gulps. It was, without question, one of the finest beverage I have ever encountered. I sat for a while and watched life at Hawkesbury Junction arrange itself agreeably around me — boats negotiating the junction, ducks pestering the people, dogs pestering the ducks, the Greyhound doing its reliable best in the background.
I drove home with a sunburnt head, a completed second stage, and an undiminished curiosity about Porphyry.
Conclusions ....
It turns out that porphyry is a variety of igneous rock consisting of large-grained crystals — feldspar or quartz, typically — dispersed in a fine-grained matrix. The larger crystals are called phenocrysts. In its traditional, non-geological use, the term refers specifically to a purple-red form of the stone, prized for its appearance and historically associated with imperial power.
Why this particular word chose to accompany me across twelve miles of Warwickshire, announcing itself at intervals with all the persistence of a half-remembered tune, remains entirely unclear. Some questions, perhaps, are not meant to be answered.
See Route on ......
|
|
|
|
|
Prev
Next
No comments:
Post a Comment