The patchwork quilt that is rural England unfolded before us. The vast swathes of yellow oilseed rape and huge expanses of potato blossom. Oceans of malting barley and wheat ebbed and flowed in the summer breeze as we travelled through West Suffolk and the Cambridgeshire fens. The route through the South Midlands is easy now but here we found the most obvious landmarks of a Britain given over to mass consumerism and convenience. Even the huge hangars at Cardington that house the blimps which hover our football stadia were dwarved by the gargantuan distribution centres that line the route through Bedford and Milton Keynes. Vast unsightly angled structures adorned in laudable attempts to make them blend into the horizon. Blue sky thinking or thinking out of the box? Try again, guys.
Between Bedford and Milton Keynes the capped landfills have yet to completely return to the wild but those methane-belching pipes will eventually slip below the cover of foliage.
Through 'roundabout-land' (or should Milton Keynes be called 'Tellytubby Land'?) and into red kite country beyond Buckingham. We had lost count by now of the roadkill badgers, muntjacs and roe deer splattered along the highways since leaving home. We, ourselves, had almost wiped out a scavenging buzzard that lingered too long at the foetid meat on the tarmac but it swept to safety just in time. Tis' no wonder the red kite thrives around the Midland arterial highways and motorways. Fresh meat aplenty for a raptor that rarely kills for itself.
And talking of buzzards? Not rare now in the East but still enough to draw a breath when seen, out here in the West we watched them now soaring above nearly every valley and tree-topped hill. And all along the way kestrels hovered and rooks laboured and jackdaws jinked around a thousand church spires.
Out along the A40 and through Oxfordshire to Gloucestershire snaking through a verdant, lush landscape that brings to mind Blake and Parry and 'Jerusalem'. My fathers favourite hymn and the one that bade him farewell as his curtains closed. A detour through the slendour that is Cheltenham to remind us that architecture once was 'grand'.
Down the West bank of the Severn, we took lunch at Newham, looking over the shallow river. Below us, on the mudflats, clear prints. Otter sign. We turned back up into the hills, through the Forest of Dean to drop down under The Kymin and over the bridge into Monmouth. Some twenty years since I walked, with friends, from Chepstow to Hay along the Offas Dyke Way and lurched wearily down that huge hill that is The Kymin to our first nights rest. Today, just as back then, a fly fisher stood waist deep in the Wye casting his line.
Down through Llantrissent to Newport. A town which I remember as a boy being the epitome of those 'dark, satanic mills' in the hymn. A steel town, chimneys belching filth and pollution and the mouth of the Usk running with poison. Now, as I crept into Cardiff by the back door (lest someone spot me) I was pleasantly surprised at the suburban countenance. It was just a short visit and soon I was brought my chariot of fire. It was a relief, though, to see that all was well in Englands pleasant pastures. So too, in what I saw of Wales!
