LEJOG Day 39: Whitchurch to Audlem

Weather: Partly cloudy with howling westerly

Distance covered today: 16.8km (10.4mi)

Last night's B&B: Sedgeford House (£40)

Cumulative distance: 756.3km (469.9mi)/ % Complete: 43.0%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 39 (click!)

Yesterday, I met my first LEJOGer, admittedly one of the more numerous and sensible variety who do the trip on two wheels. I was skulking in my room on my rest day, when I heard someone come to the door downstairs and ask to stay. There followed what seemed to be a very long and muffled conversation, which surprised me because my host, Dave, had told me that he was completely full for the night. Anyway, I was minding my own business, attending to my admin, until supper time, when I went downstairs and met Dave still talking to Vicki and Richard. Richard was introduced as the cyclist doing LEJOG.

It turned out that Richard is doing some prodigious distance on a daily basis and is camping as required. Vicki, though has taken some days off to support him and sensibly prefers to stay in a B&B, but none have been organised and Whitchurch was literally full. The conversation I didn’t overhear was poor Vicki finally bursting into tears at her inability to find somewhere to stay. She clearly melted Dave’s heart, who somehow managed to conjure a solution, so that when a tired Richard arrived, all was arranged. Richard, Vicki and I decided to go to the pub together for supper.

Vicki is a highly qualified nursing sister with a particular qualification in looking after neonatal and premature babies and associated midwifery. She is on an expert team that speeds to the site of a problem and can perform extraordinary feats, away from hospital. Richard is a policeman, but he has decided to take a year off work to do something different, of which his cycling LEJOG is the first of his projects. They both live in Yorkshire very close to the Pennine Way, and we have exchanged contact details so that I can meet them as I pass their home in the next couple of weeks.

I had an immensely enjoyable evening with both of them and found them to be a delightful young couple. We talked of many things including assisted suicide for terminally ill patients and I found their views pragmatic and refreshing. Like so many young people of their age, I sense that they are still trying to find their true identities and role in life.  They must have found it strange to be talking to a retired stranger over dinner who was at least double their age, but such is the nature of this adventure that it didn’t seem to matter. In the end though, I doubt that I endeared myself to Richard by instructing him to enjoy the rest of the year off and then to make an honest woman of Vicki! (I was just pleased that neither of my daughters was around for that exchange! After they had died of embarrassment, they would have happily murdered me, policeman or no policeman!)

Talking to Vicki and Richard with their clear Yorkshire accents made me think about the changes of accents I have heard over the length of the journey so far. I have always taken an interest in accents in England, and while I am no Professor Higgins, I have become reasonable at distinguishing the more marked variations. Strangely, I find this easier when confronted with an accent which is distinctly different to the prevailing accents where I happen to be.  But the point about this journey is that accents have changed by degrees as I have progressed. I find it fascinating, and of course obvious, that there is no distinct border where the accents change. There is just a gradual migration as I move along, until I realise that the change is complete. This subtly progressive change is in itself interesting, because it is of course difficult to place the people on the border of the change. And it follows naturally, that when I question them, they say, rather proudly, that people always struggle to identify where they come from!  It seems that it is a cultural asset not to be too specifically identified with a precise location, though I guess that this is not true of a regional identity. So people are proud to be, for instance, Cornish or Welsh, but less so if one is able to pin them down more specifically in the manner of Prof. Higgins. It is also interesting that the accent change over the Welsh border is indeed more sudden, though even here, I met locals who had a delightful blend of Welsh and English accents that would have been hard for outsiders to identify.

In fact, it seems that once upon a time, it was in England considered a matter of education that people couldn’t tell which County one came from; hence the public school focus on Received Pronunciation (RP). That has changed with a vengeance, especially in the BBC, where regional accents are now considered a distinct asset.  Even that is fascinating to me because I am now in the fifth TV region of my journey (BBC Spotlight [Cornwall and Devon], BBC Points West [Somerset, Bristol and Herefordshire], BBC Wales, BBC Midlands and BBC North West) and every time I listen to a local news and weather broadcast, I get a quick primer in the local accent.

As I now move northeast, I am again in a transitional location, with elements of Shropshire and Cheshire in the locals’ speech. Soon I expect to hear a distinct Mancunian accent emerging. All this will I hope continue to keep me interested, because the landscape will be less so.

Today’s leg was uneventful over fairly flat farmland, gradually migrating eastwards. I am not ecstatic about my route choices over the legs towards the Pennine Way. I did the selection when I was already walking LEJOG and therefore didn’t have to hand the OS maps that would have allowed the detailed planning I did for the South West. I was therefore reliant on dodgy internet connections and, when I could get it, Google Maps, to plot my course and find B&Bs. (I find that Google Maps won’t load on a 3G mobile dongle connection, which can be immensely frustrating).

The result is that the length and direction of some of these legs will be a bit random, but for me at least, and as with the accents, it adds a degree of mystery!

Vicki and Richard

The first shorn sheep of my season! She looks a bit forlorn!

England or Africa?

Definitely England!  All three of them were out tending to the garden, before going down to the pub for Sunday Lunch (and making me feel guilty about leaving all the gardening to Veronica!)

Also definitely England! A Maxda MX-5 Supporters Club out for a rally. There must have been 20 of them, all almost identical, in a long orderly file!

Eight locks in a row on the shropshire Union Canal. They drop the water height about 40m (131 ft) in a distance of less than 2km (1.2mi)

The attractive and traditional village of Audlem

Once upon a time, the village Constable would have lived here, as befitted his status. I guess Richard the policeman would approve!

And still today, there is a place for the Scouts and Guides (though I heard recently on the radio that more girls are applying to join the Scouts than the Guides. What is that all about?)