The Wild Rover_ A Blistering Journey Along Britain_s Footpaths - Mike Parker [41]
So close is the Ridgeway to London that you can more or less take the Tube to it. Chesham, the last outpost of the Metropolitan Line, lies less than ten miles south of Ivinghoe Beacon, but no buses connect the two, and it would take for ever, and cost a small fortune, getting out from London early enough to tube it to Chesham and then taxi it from there. Until 1961, Metroland had pushed deep into the Chilterns, with Tube trains going as far as Aylesbury, Princes Risborough and rustic Quainton Road. Buses would connect from Aylesbury, but the shortest and easiest route was a train from Euston to Tring, and then a cab to the Beacon and the beginning of the adventure, my first attempt at completing a long-distance path since 1982.
‘You walking the Ridgeway then?’ said the Turkish cab driver as I swung my rucksack on to the cream leatherette back seat of his Merc. Resisting sarcasm (who else is going to be wearing a ruck-sack, leaping into a cab at 8 a.m. in Tring station, and demanding to be taken to Ivinghoe Beacon?), I admitted that, yes, I was. ‘How long you taking to do it, then?’ asked the driver, staring at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘Eight days,’ I replied. ‘Pfffft,’ he retorted, letting his eyes roll theatrically in the rear-view mirror. ‘Some people do it in five. Where you staying tonight?’ ‘Wendover,’ I replied. Another eye roll. ‘Most people make it to Princes Risborough on the first night.’ Just over an hour and a half later, I saw him again, as the path had its first humiliation in store by leading me straight back to Tring station. He waved, looked at his watch and shouted, ‘Hey! Two hours! That’s too long, my friend.’ He was licensed, I noticed, by the Dacorum Council: the local authority hereabouts, and clearly not, as its soundalike namesake might suggest, the national arbiter of politeness.
That first day, on an admittedly easy little woodland canter into Wendover, I learned two new things. First, some people in the Chilterns so hate the metric system, and I would surmise virtually everything else European (save perhaps for the wine), that they are quite prepared systematically to scratch the paint out of the grooved figures showing distances in kilometres on almost every Ridgeway wooden fingerpost (both miles and kilometres were given). Take that, Johnny Eurocrat! Second, I learned that trying to walk any distance while desperately needing a crap is no fun whatsoever, and will mean that you are rendered utterly incapable of enjoying the lovely views, the budding leaves or the birdsong. At least, there were no sewage-filled farm yards to go through, reminding me of what I was needing most. Throughout the whole first day, the path brushed past only one farm that smelled even slightly agricultural. The rest just reeked of money.
Within an hour of clearing Tring station for the second time, I’d succumbed to the pull of The Trail. It is amazing how quickly you tumble into this, the feeling that your feet are grooved into the earth, that only the next mile, the next village, the next junction matters. All else quietly melts away. After an hour or so of swishing through beech woods, suddenly coming across a road or a car park was a shock, the cars looking even more brutal than before. There was always time to prepare, though: an imminent road crossing or beauty-spot car park invariably announced itself, as the take-away wrappers, empty cans of Stella and Tesco bags grew in number until it swung into view.
Being so used to the lackadaisical signposting of footpaths in Wales, the ruthless efficiency of the Ridgeway’s waymarking staggered me. Aside from the scratched-out kilometre figures, nothing was left to chance