The Wild Rover_ A Blistering Journey Along Britain_s Footpaths - Mike Parker [129]
Chapter 10
LARK RISE TO CAMERON
An ancient holloway in the Olchon valley, Herefordshire
It was the overpowering whiff of gin that hit first, especially as it was not long after eight in the morning. The source of the smell, a proper Borth grande dame wrapped in a shabby kimono, gazed blearily at Mary and me. ‘Ah, good morning,’ she slurred. ‘You have company today, I see. And good morning to you too.’ She nodded to the film crew standing behind us, as if this kind of thing happened every day. We all stayed frozen in our positions for a good ten minutes, as Mary and the kimono lady chatted animatedly, even though her pickled logic made no discernible sense. I was fascinated by the movement of her dressing gown, which kept slipping down to reveal acres of leathery embonpoint, before she’d haul it back into place with a rattle of her many bangles and a throaty cough. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Emyr flick the switch on the camera; the ramblings of a drunken madam, while potentially worthy of the Christmas out-takes tape, were not going to make the final cut.
As we walked away, I asked Mary why she made such an effort with someone who’d been practically incoherent and had most likely already forgotten that we’d called. ‘I’m probably the only person she’ll see all day, you know,’ she replied. ‘It’s really important to have just that little bit of human contact.’ Mary is the postwoman in Borth, an old mid-Wales fishing village strung out between the sea on one side and a peat bog on the other. Her round, of nearly 500 addresses, is the village’s one long street, ruler straight, permanently windswept, and about a mile and half long. I’d wanted to paint a picture of proudly eccentric Borth, and thought that tracking the postie, on what must be one the most difficult rounds anywhere, would be a good way to do it, for none of the houses, their now separated annexes or the little cottages filling tiny courtyards and salty alleys behind, has a number. Everyone’s address is Name of House, High Street, Borth.
It was her job as a postwoman that inspired many of the observations of Flora Thompson, author of the Lark Rise to Candleford series. The Oxfordshire footpaths were her research ground, for it was there that she saw all life parading by, picking up titbits of gossip as she went. The same paths that echoed to the sound of men crashing and laughing their way to work took on a whole new character in the evening, or at the weekend, when lovers ‘would link up, arm in arm, and saunter along field-paths between the ripening corn or stand at stiles, whispering and kissing and making love until the dusk deepened’.
I think of that morning with Mary often, as I walk the dog along some of our old postman’s paths. Some days, the real postie passes me on the way, the blur of a wave through the wind-screen as he hurtles around the lanes in his Vauxhall Combo. The paths, with their still too-new fingerposts, spider out along the valley, from door to door (or ex-door in the case of the many roofless shells in the forestry). It’s this that upsets one farmer in particular. He remembers the postman walking along them, bringing not just the mail but news, views and red-hot scandal. Now he keeps finding startled ramblers edging nervously past his kitchen window, and