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By Root 374 0

Shown a picture of villages such as Castor or Barnack, many would guess that they were looking at Something-on-the-Wold or Somewhere-on-the-Water. They share the same geological bedrock of mellow limestone, the same fleshy productivity and easy nature, and are full of similar honey-coloured Georgian piles that set the property sections of the weekend papers ablaze with desire. Yet there are no tourist coach parks here, no flocks of Japanese snappers, no antique emporia, no artisan patisseries flogging cupcakes at two quid a bite. There are barely any places to stay, and none at all in Helpston itself. As I wanted a night in the village, I kipped in the back of my van parked on the verge of what I thought would be a quiet country lane, but which instead proved to be a major route for tractors, muck-spreaders, haybalers and even a few enthusiastic members of the local dogging fraternity. John Clare would be proud, on all counts.

As with most poets, Clare’s popularity has waxed and waned according to changing fashion and prevailing moods. Because of the acute sense of loss that permeates his poetry, he seems to swim back into view whenever times get rough, which may partly account for his growing popularity these days. Writers, composers and artists seem eternally fascinated by him: Edward Thomas, Iain Sinclair, R. S. Thomas, Benjamin Britten, John McKenna, Geoffrey Grigson, Adam Foulds and Edward Bond have all produced major Clare-inspired works, and there have been paintings and exhibitions, radio plays, TV documentaries, dramas and readings galore. One event in Clare’s life seems to capture the artistic imagination far more than any other, and that is the longest walk that he ever undertook, 80 miles in July 1841.

This was no loving, leisurely nature ramble. Clare was escaping an asylum, at High Beach in Epping Forest, to which he had been committed four years earlier. Over four days, with no money or food, and in already ruined shoes, he hobbled from Epping Forest back to Helpston, sticking mostly to the route of the Great North Road, what we now know as the A1. Clare’s journey has enthralled us ever since, and many have felt moved to follow in his fevered footsteps. In the visitors’ book of Helpston parish church, numerous modern-day pilgrims record that they have walked there from Epping, and when recent fundraising efforts were going on to help convert Clare’s birthplace cottage into a museum, the central event was a sponsored walk from High Beach to Helpston, albeit not clinging quite so closely to the thundering Great North Road as had Clare nearly 170 considerably quieter years earlier.

A few days walking his landscape, with a book of his poetry in my satchel, was an absolute pleasure of the purest kind (save for a field of frisky bullocks), but I was starting to feel quite bonkers by the end of it. On some of the walks, I found that I was reheating arguments in my head as I was pushing along paths chemically scythed through fields of corn or stamped through woods. The realisation dawned that this was not a unique occurrence, either. I thought back to my daily walks at home. Many of them inspire me and help produce and foment ideas, but all too many get used to rehearse barbs that I’ll never actually have the guts to use, or to chew over long-flavourless gobbets of ancient grievances. Walking with Clare brought a stark understanding that down that road does lie an unnecessary madness, a raging fury and unspecific, unfillable sense of loss, and it brought me up sharp.

One way to quieten such nonsense is to physically stop walking, and focus instead on something very small and specific: a bud, a hedgerow flower, a leaf, an insect, a fern, the bark of a tree, the play of light on water or of water on rock (this is one of the reasons that picking blackberries, bilberries or mushrooms is so therapeutic). Mentally note down every detail of it and be prepared to wonder at its perfect design. Spend as much time as you dare in the pursuit. The eye and the brain are refocused, and you can continue in a far humbler frame