oh my country

The first part of our journey we wanted to visit friends we haven’t seen for a long time.  So we (I use the pronoun in the regal sense, as Gayle does all the social legwork, keeping in touch via e-mail and Facebook) contacted friends and then, naturally, they asked when would we be arriving.  So before we knew it we were writing on a calendar names and places with a ‘final’ objective of catching the ferry from Denmark to the Faroe Islands at the end of May.

Ellen in Baddesley Ensor had written to ask when could we meet and invited us to stay with her on our way south.  So our exploratory ride south to parts of England we have never seen leads us through Cheshire and into Shropshire and then Warwickshire.  The days are cloudy but mild.  We ride through rolling farmland with big hedgerows full of startled pheasants.  We find water at churches and seek shelter from April showers under trees.  There are canals all over this part of the country with narrow boats pootling along at an even slower pace than us.   

We are feeling the hills.  The back country roads are fairly quiet but the hills are steep, if short, and our pace varies from almost stand-up stopping still to carefree screaming with joy freefall as we rollercoaster up and down, up and down.  The trouble is we have spent nearly a year in Viet Nam doing very little exercise because of the climate.  When people ask about how you prepare for a cycle journey like this we glibly respond by saying that you don't, you just get fitter day by day.  And day by day we are certainly geting some good training.

Maundy Thursday.  We stop at an old church in woods on a hill.  There’s no tap, but behind the church is a posh hotel with a connecting path.  It was once the manor house, and what a manor.  The hotel overlooks extensive walled gardens and rolling farmland.  As I crunch up the gravel driveway leading to a full carpark I see people walking around in white bathrobes and white slippers.  No-one is wearing anything else.  Is this a strange new-age sect?  Then I see the sign pointing to the spa.  Aha.   At reception I ask if I can get water and a member of staff takes our odd mix of plastic bottles into a staff room to fill up.  We both carry a one litre bottle and a one and a half litre and the woman is gone some time.  All around me are people milling about in white terylene bathrobes.  I'm in shorts and a bike helmet and feel conspicuously overdressed.

Good Friday.  In the centre of England is a national memorial arboretum for the rememberance of British killed in war.  We stop here at lunchtime and take a walk around the park grounds, which are extensive.  The memorial is fairly new and is, if you'll excuse the pun, growing.  Trees have been planted out and are still quite immature, and there are separate memorials for different parts and units of the armed forces.  Interestingly, there is also included an informative memorial for the Polish who escaped Poland and continued to fight.  I knew about the pilots who took part in the Battle of Britain, but I hadn't heard of the soldiers who were released from Russia's Siberian camps and who made their way to the Middle East to join the fight.  There is also a striking memorial for soldiers court martialled and shot for desertion during the Great War.  Most depressing of all is the central monument, a series of curved walls with the names of all those killed in service since the end of the Second World War.  Suddenly I realise how frequently our country has sent soldiers out to war.  Thoughtfully, there is plenty of space for the next few generations' names.

each post represents an executed soldier