I stopped at the corner of Watling Street and the Whitefriars shopping centre to adjust my shopping, and looked up. There was Dorothy, more properly Rosa Dorothy Perkins, climbing up to the sun through a foxglove tree, Paulownia Tomentosa.
Summer is here!
Watling Street runs from Dover to Holyhead in North Wales under different names in places, but it’s an old Roman Road. There was a Carmelite monastery where Whitefriars now stands. St John Stone was a friar here.
There’s a virus about, so maybe we don’t want to look at skulls or gravestones right now. But Henry Brown of this town (Fordwich near Canterbury) has some fine lettering above his plot as well as the two skulls. Whatever else was wrong in England in January 1720/1, there were skilled stonemasons about, and they needed no W.B. Yeats to urge them to cast a cold eye on death.
The date 1720/1 does not indicate that the mason did not know exactly when Henry Brown left his town. It just shows the confusion that prevailed between England and Continental Europe in the years between Pope Gregory XIII introducing the calendar that bears his name in 1582 and its adoption by Britain in 1752. Although the Gregorian was more accurate and sorted out most of the slippage between the earth’s year and the calendar year, the British were not going to accept this crazy, Catholic, continental innovation. Not in 1720/1 anyway.
Why was I in Fordwich? Despite the virus, I’m still allowed exercise and I was preparing the way for a L’Arche pilgrimage, and Fordwich to Canterbury is the last 5 km stage. No major hazards is the good news!
Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid,
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago; a church stands near,
By the road an ancient Cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase,
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
W.B. Yeats Under Ben Bulben.
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
I’m not sure why this posting has taken three months to get published!
A fine day, a trusty Brompton, an appointment in Ealing, a detraining at St Pancras: why not ride a London bike along London’s canal? The towpath goes almost all the way and will surely be in better nick than when last I rode it in 1980.
Yes, and no. At the very start of the ride, behind King’s Cross station, it was good to see a terrace stepping down to the water from street level and people enjoying the sun between trains (judging by the luggage they had put down). I, however, was on a pontoon floating on the water, as the path itself was a building site.
A little further West there were more residential moorings than I remember, two or three abreast where the canal was wide enough. If I hadn’t met Mrs T when I did, I might well have gone for that way of living in London. But she and Kent beckoned; I see more big ships in the Channel these days than narrow boats on the cut. The zoo – I’d forgotten that the bird house is cantilevered almost over the water – it has lasted well for such a delicate looking structure.
After Regents Park there was a stretch where I lost the canal, then miles of railway on one side and cemeteries or buildings across the water. Even the industrial buildings were not as I remembered them, but I got to my destination ready for an afternoon’s research,having lungs full of as fresh air as Central London has to offer. Maybe next time I could try another part of the Thames path I followed to Richmond at the beginning of September.
Yesterday was torn two ways. It had been raining on Tuesday before I photographed the sunset over the Downs. And real Noah’s weather yesterday when I was once more in Aylesham. Then the change: by the time I’d finished working the sun was out in all his glory: 40 minutes waiting for the train or take a bike ride? No contest!
Brompton folders with their small wheels are not designed for country life, but all was well until Bekesbourne. With the ground already saturated there was nowhere for the water to go – except the Bourne, and that could no longer hold it all. The standard advice to avoid driving (let alone cycling) through water was not really appropriate if I wanted to get home. The water was deeper than expected and my feet got wet!
Last winter’s floods were more than a minor inconvenience; let’s hope the water level goes down, and people’s homes stay dry.
This morning, a violet in bloom and a snowdrop impatient to join her, right by the front door.
Will Turnstone 