4:43am
(1) The alarm does its obscene ungodly hour trilling thing
(2) Howard springs cheerfully out of bed.
Only one of these statements is true.
At least it's not cold, in fact it's a disturbing 13 degrees
C .... at 04:43? .... on the 17th December?, so what we need is unlimited
fracking. Apparently.
The 740 turns up early; Vic (our chauffeur for this morning)
is legendary in his disregard of the niceties of the published timetable. After
tanking along for twenty minutes at the ragged edge of the speed limiting
device, we must be getting pretty close to the point at which the Doppler Effect
breaks down or the overpressure sucks the windows out. As the bus pulls out of
Gerrards Cross in the dark, the prospect of being slightly later to work seems
slightly subversive. Not going all the way to Stockley Park? I feel like Winston
Smith deliberately messing up the sock drawer of the Big Brother
house.
"You're getting off a bit early today aren't you?" says Colin
(Heathrow baggage control).
"He doesn't know where he's going" quips Alan (Heathrow
security).
I give them a smug "Hey I'm just a crazy guy" wave and leap
off into the Buckinghamshire darkness.
They're right. I have got off way too early, at least two
stops too early, and it feels like I've jumped into a swamp or the entrails of a
disembowelled diplodocus. The tangy whiff of dinosaur intestine is enough to get
me moving and I'm soon waving cheerily to the happy motorists on the M25 as they
speed off to their high impact board meetings and their intensive executive
lunches. They decide not to wave back in case I take it as a cue to leap off the
bridge and make a mess of the "Pearl Effect Daytona Grey" paintwork on their
brand new Audis.
The garage that used to be Boyz Toyz (or Carz 4 Twatz) seems
to have had an un-makeover and would now make a good scene for a low budget film
about 1980's football gangs (let's call it "The Firm"). It looks lonely and
deserted now apart from a strange scene being enacted by two shady characters
lurking in front of a battered minibus.
They shake hands.
Two inappropriately dressed ladies get out of the minibus and
wander dejectedly over to a Renault Clio. They look like they've just returned
from a heavy night on the town in Darlington .... or Minsk.
The Clio must have been used in the violent opening scene of
"The Firm" because the passenger door has definitely been on the receiving end of a
good sized lump of timber and neither Tracy/Olga nor Kylie/Devochkina can get it
open. They make do with the back seat. The minibus disappears in the direction
of the M40 and the Renault limps off in the direction of Beaconsfield. The bloke
in the minibus seems to be the happier with the deal, so maybe it isn't people
trafficking after all, but all a bit strange at this hour. To be fair it's
nearly 9am in Minsk and 1885 in Darlington.
My GPS tracker still isn't tracking, so these are free
unrecorded miles. Not sure where the satellites have got to. Maybe they've all
been worn out by having to beaming Major Tim Peake's unrelenting smile into
everyone's living room.
Not far past the Gerrards Cross fire station (it says fire
station, but they don't seem to have the equipment for tackling much more than a
piece of burnt toast or rescuing a cat from the top of a medium-sized bonsai);
the streetlights run out, so I can't see where I'm going. What was a pretty
decent pavement has turned into a fetid bog cut straight from Southern Comfort
or Deliverance. The sweet smelling Buckinghamshire air is replaced by something
not so sweet; a bit early for trenchfoot, but you never know. The bog gets
boggier and by the time I get to the bottom of the hill I could easily be
mistaken for a Sealed Knot Society splinter group doing a one-man Passchendaele
renactment.
This is the junction with the road to Watford where the HS2 Nimbys
have their main anti-marketing campaign.
The sign says "Bury HS2".
Seems unlikely. I've been to Gigg
Lane several times and you're lucky if you see a horse and cart let alone a
steam train.
The Shell garage on the corner has a large cut-out picture of
a policeman in the window. Not sure whether he's there as a deterrent for
criminals whose vision only works in two dimensions or if they are actively
touting for business from the law (free muffin and clock radio with twenty
litres of 4-star to anyone who can whistle the theme tune from Dixon Of Dock
Green).
As the M40 hoves into view, I catch sight of a man loitering
furtively by the side of the road. He's cradling a large canvas bag with the
tell-tale bulges of the greased-up parts of a disassembled Kalashnikov. The fact
that he's written "TOOLS" on the side using a black marker pen is fooling
nobody. However, before I can disarm him/wrestle him to the ground, he's whisked off by a small
unmarked van with Hungarian plates. The van seems to be chasing another vehicle,
a pick-up with "Nelson Dairies" emblazoned on the side. Disappointingly there's
no "England expects 2 pints and a small tub of double cream" or "Engage the
enemy more closely with gold top from Nelson's" slogans on the side, although
someone has drawn a crude picture of Lady Hamilton in a state of undress in the
dirt on the tailboard.
The Magyars move alongside, but intimidated by the
presence of Britain's greatest naval hero, they run their guns back in before
broadsides are traded and Nelson saves the nation again.
Perhaps this rear-admiral/milk retail occupational duality is
what Napoleon meant by England being a nation of shopkeepers. "You make it
Boney, we'll sell it".
Sadly, in the space of only two centuries we have become a
nation of clueless DIY superstore assistants.
"Yes Wayne, I can read the label
too, but what I asked is why it costs £10 more than the other one".
On the Oxford Road into Uxbridge I come across a sign that
lights up when people drive past too quickly. For me it changes from "Slow Down
30" to "Over The Hill 52".
I only work out that it means that I'm past it .... after
I've passed it. On the plus side, I'll be able to do this journey with a free
bus pass before long.
The sky is changing from Event Horizon Black to Sinking
Battleship Grey and even the soggy wreaths on the lampposts can't lift the
spirits of the ghost of Uxbridge Christmas present. Although it's still quite
early at The Good Yarn (ye locale 'spoons), the prospect of hanging around for
an 8:30 budget fry-up and a couple of pints of 7.2% Black Dragon cider seems
pretty tempting, but there's some serious Christmas window shopping to be done.
Superdrug is selling box sets of Lynx toiletries for a price that seems
ludicrous until you realise that they probably picked up ingredients for their
"Dark Temptation" range for nothing when President Assad had to hand over his
chemical weapons stockpile.
Just past Waterstone's and its Christmas Gruffalo mountain, a
man appears to be stealing olive trees from the front of a cafe, or maybe they
are just heading back to the Amalfi coast to be with the arboreal family tree
for the Yuletide festivities. This spot of forest-rustling aside, there's not
much else going on at 6:30 except a large delivery of "Artery Blocker Pasties"
to Greggs and an upmarket couple who wander into a mini-mart leaving their
Jersey island registered sports car running outside. I consider leaping in and
taking the motor for a spin around the town, but this is a charity walk after
all.
Hillingdon Road is a "game of two halves". On one side is the
"exciting" new St Andrews housing development, with its executive housing and
care home (you can live and die here). According to the marketing board it's also "steeped in military history"
which just is a disclaimer in case someone unearths some unstable WW2 munitions
and the whole development has to be evacuated. On the other side of the road is
Jack's Fish & Chips.
Someone has posted a helpful comment on Yelp. Explains why it's so windy.
Not sure why tripadvisor has a section on "Things to do near Jack's Fish And Chips", but perhaps Japanese tourists have travelled specifically to the UK for their mushy peas and would like to take photos of other local landmarks and historic monuments afterwards. One other thing you can do round here is marvel at the quality of the gardening. Many of the houses have installed "Urban
Rockeries", which is basically a skip full of avocado bathroom tiles
and builders rubble on the front lawn. Like Zen gardens of beautifully raked gravel nothing can
grow here apart from Japanese Knotweed, but this is more a statement about
aspiration rather than authenticity ..... said the man from Oldham who chose to
live in Swindon.
After a drive-by shouting from a man in a high-vis jacket on
a wobbly push iron, I turn off towards Brunel Uni and the hospital. It's bin
collection day and judging by the mountains of cardboard packaging by the side
of the road, Amazon will be dodging even more tax this year. Heaven knows what
mountains of electronic gadgets people will be giving their kids, but it won't
be the small Dickensian stocking we had. Back in the 70's you were lucky to have
electricity to cook your Butterball (became a big hit for Oasis two decades
later) turkey let alone any actual gifts. You might get an Action Man with
gripping hands and a "real" beard that made him look like the grumpy man from
next door who'd never give your ball back when you accidentally booted it over
his fence. Of course there would always be a boardgame from Waddingtons like
Buccaneer or Exploration or one of the million obscure titles they produced
before they went bust. It was rumoured that Bardsley's book shop on Y**kshire
Street had a rare copy of Grey Top (the game of milk delivery and ladies fashion
behind the Iron Curtain). The Christmas stocking ensemble would be completed by
a Terry's chocolate orange which could only be separated by hurling it against
the garage wall (tap and unwrap my arse). One year in ten you might get a bottom
of the range Raleigh that would actually have been lighter if it was constructed
entirely out of depleted uranium.
This wistful trip down Memory Lane is all very well, but I
actually need Kingston Lane, Pield Heath Road, Colham Green Road and a gentle amble through the golf course. I arrive ahead of
schedule at 7:30 with 7 miles on the clock. Just time for coffee, an end of year
1:1 and the last effort tracker of 2015 before heading back onto the road just
after 10.
I'm behind hand now, so it's a quick trot along Horton Road
where the Tesla showroom rubs shoulders with "Yes Marble Ltd". Not sure there's
a market for lifesize statues of Rick Wakeman, but you can never tell with Prog
Rock fans. Next to Yes Marble is a company called "Sel"; one letter at a time
presumably.
Onto the towpath at West Drayton which the recent monsoon
weather has turned into soup. Even with decent walking shoes it's like trying to
climb up the side of a glass building liberally spread with "I Can't Believe
That People Don't Think This Is Stork". Opposite the new waterside developments
is a massive Tesco who are apparently helping us to spend less (a bit like
George Osborne). Judging by the size of the people pushing shopping trolleys in
the car park, we're not spending less on biscuits.
Most of the narrow boats here don't look like they've moved
in the last 100 years and have set up washing lines and little gardens. Just to
prove the point, Gandalf's stunt double (that's stunt as in very short) pops out
of one and says "Arrrr". Maybe he thinks that's how all waterborne coves should
communicate, or maybe he's just been smoking too much weed already this
morning.
Further along is the good ship "Thorium 90". Moored up on the
far bank and given a wide berth by all the other boats, I'm disappointed not to
see blokes in full NBC gear with leadlined suitcases. Perhaps it had aspirations
to be a nuclear submarine, but failed the exams. A <insert collective
noun> of cherry pickers lie idle in a large compound. Not like the
wonderfully named King Lifting near Stockley Park who always seem to be busy.
Now that Juan Carlos has abdicated, you'd think they'd be quiet too, but perhaps
Felipe VI needs a regular hoisting.
It's a mixed bag on the pub front. The Water's Edge hasn't
turned back from holiday cottages into a pub, but the General Eliot has had a
lick of paint and there's a board showing the entertainment options out front.
Judging from the poster, this consists of three middle-aged ladies in
unflattering Bavarian folk costumes and a couple who seem to be spilling
Lambrusco over each other. Probably best not to ask. The Malt Shovel is much
more inviting, but it's not quite opening time, so I'm saved from an early
ale-related distraction and I push on to the centre of Uxbridge. Just time to
boo at Parexel and marvel at the plump of moorhens (no charm of finches here)
that are pecking around the beer garden of the Swan And Bottle. The avian
invasion is being overseen by a scraggy cormorant that looks like it lost a
fight with a garden waste shredder.
Just round the corner we're tempted by the Rucola restaurant
which advertises a Frank Sinatra tribute, an Elvis tribute and Robbie Williams.
Perhaps he should have swallowed his pride and carried on with the reformed Take
That. He could always become a Robbie Williams tribute if things get rough. If
the Rucola is too upmarket then there's always Burger Kebab Galaxy which is
either a very weird chocolate flavour or something akin to the Horsehead Nebula.
Maybe there's a Godfather somewhere who's woken up with a pile of meat-based
fast food in his bed.
Under the M40 and the back route towards Denham village I get
an idea of how the other half (or in Bucks, more than half) live. Nestled
amongst the 4x4's and the industrial sized patio heaters is a substation (even
posh families need electricity). On the gate at the front is the usual "Help
Prevent A Tragedy" sign. Someone has added "Sack David Moyes"
underneath.
The ostentatiousness (a real word apparently) meter reaches
11 with Denham Court Farm. On the sign outside there's a a picture of a
rectangular cow with a tiny head. Clearly livestock were kept aboard Thorium 90
while Noah was waiting for the winter floods to subside.
I arrive at the Green Man just as the sun climbs over the
yard arm, if the yard arm wasn't obscured by low clouds. With the Rebellion IPA
off, the beer options are limited to some Greene King nastiness and London
Pride, but the Pride turns out to be drinkable and the company is excellent. I
natter with work colleagues past and future about the impending holiday season,
family foibles and not working too hard. Consistent with my forthcoming
autobiography "Life Of Pie" I order the Steak and Guinness offering, but as
usual it fails to meet EU regulations by having heretical puff pastry which only
covers the top. I ring the pastry ombudsman OfPie and demand that the pub is
closed within the week.
The road up to Denham Golf Club is narrow and busy and I'm
passed three times by the same cyclist who is lost, weird or on the world's
shortest and least adventurous étape du tour.
The Denham Golf Club (the club,
not the station) has about 5 million churlish "Trespassers will be turned into
dog food" signs and a couple of "Please take care. Golfers crossing". No amount
of peevish tutting can correct this obvious inconsistency, but I give it a good
shot. This only attracts the attention of a gaggle of greenkeepers who are
burying a couple of trespassers in a shallow grave by the water hazard on the
tricky 8th. I would make a run for it, but my Walking With The Wounded hi-vis
has slipped off my rucksack and wrapped itself round my ankles. I have visions
of being beaten to death with bunker rakes, but they've had their fun for the
day and I stagger off unharmed.
Going under the M25 bridge feels like I'm
escaping from Mordor, but I'm only half way home and what it's got in its
pocketses is getting heavy. Slade Oak Lane becomes Denham Lane, but it's really
the same road that goes ever on and on and my little legs are starting to feel a
bit hobbity. The grey clouds that having being saying rain for the last hour
show they actually mean it. Adding a waterproof to the t-shirt, shirt, fleece
and hi-vis ensemble is like being a sweaty boil-in-the-bag meal, so I try to
strip down by the side of the road. Not the kind of show that would get me a job
as an "exotic dancer" in the White Horse on Oxford Road in Wycombe, but
desperate times, etc.
After retrieving sparkly leotard and feather boa from a
puddle I push on past the sign for Recycling Centre and Scout Camp. "Soylent
Green is cub scouts!". There's an incident outside the local school that
requires the intervention of two burly policepeople. The WPC wouldn't look out
of place in the defensive line of the Steelers, so I try not to make eye contact
in case I fall foul of the Police Act 1996 s 89 "looking at a police officer
funny in the course of doing her duty".
From here it's a gentle amble down into Chalfont St Poshname.
The rain gets harder.
Just before the local Leisure Centre there's a man trying not
to fall off a garage roof. He's getting very wet and very cross. The cable for
his Christmas decorations has got snagged on the downpipe of the guttering and
he's trying to get his wife to venture out from the shelter of the kitchen porch
to help. His patience and festive spirit run out; "Oi, do you want this f**king
reindeer up here or not".
I've reached the end of civilisation and the start of Welders
Lane. It's very narrow, very wet and now very dark, so it's on with the head
torch and the flashing rear bike light. For the next 40 minutes I'm playing an
alternative version of "why did the chicken cross the road?", called "how can
Howard stop himself from being flattened like a hedgehog by hanging on to a
barbed wire fence?"
The wider expanse of Longbottom Lane is a false dawn and it's
just an excuse for the drivers to go faster and with more lethal intent. I have
to make the difficult choice of death by road traffic accident or death by
drowning. Drowning wins, although I still get a call from
PARASITICAL-AMBULANCE-CHASING-LAWYERS-4-U.COM suggesting a no win no fee action.
First against the wall when the revolution comes (after Nigella and Trinny &
Susannah and anyone related to a Kardashian).
By the time I get to Beaconsfield, I've integrated another 4
kilos of mud into my walking gear and had a mayday message from Allan who I'm
supposed to meet in the Royal Standard at Forty Green. He's trapped in the car
park by a new tributary of the Zambezi. He leaves the car to its fate and we try
unsuccessfully to rendezvous near the Model Village. A Model tsunami carries
away the Model Adams Park leaving the Model Wycombe Wanderers to be rescued by
the Model lifeboat.
 |
| The brave model lads from the Bekonscot RNLI launch to save Gareth Ainsworth's model survivors |
The Royal Standard is completely empty, but all the tables
and even the bar stools are Reserved. It's nice to feel wanted. I try to make
myself look less grubby, but I'd need a car wash for that. Still, there's an
excellent pint of Windsor & Eton Mandarin on offer courtesy of my walking
cheerleader and eventually the bar staff take pity on us and shoo us onto a
corner table. After chatting for a goodly while, it's time to head off again.
Allan manages to steer his car through the flood and I yomp down a misty lane
towards Holtspur. Something seems to have gone wrong with my legs. Perhaps I
should phone Sam Winder (Osteopath) whose clinic in Iver Heath I'd noticed on a
previous stupid walk. A big intellectual leap from making taking hits for the
Broncos to advising people about how to deal with their back problems, but I'm
sure he'll know what's wrong.
H : My legs have stopped working and my feet
hurt
Sammy : The foot bone's connected to the ankle bone, the
ankle bone's chafing on the shin bone, the shin bone's grinding on the knee
bone, the knee bone's scraping on the thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to
the .... actually the thigh bone doesn't appear to be connected to anything at
all.
The rain has finally started to ease, but I feel like a
Highland Terrier that fell into a dishwasher. Or in this case a dishdirtyer.
Even though I'm back on track for time, the bright lights of
The Harvester can't tempt me in; there's only so much iceberg lettuce a man can
manage in a lifetime. I get a call from my son, who is risking a trip on an
Arriva bus (even the kids who cling to the outside of trains in the subcontinent
have been known to choose to walk instead) to meet me in Wooburn.
Half way down
the hill from Holtspur in the pitch dark I stumble across two lads who seem to
be reenacting the Darth Vader/Obi-Wan Kenobi light sabre duel with their mobile
phones. They look surprised to see anyone in the middle of nowhere on such a
wretched night, but give their best "your powers are weak old man" pitying
stares. How right they are. My stride pattern now resembles Spotty Dog from The
Woodentops (the puppet TV show not the band) and only the prospect of crisps,
beer and more crisps and more beer and crisps at the next boozer are keeping me
from seizing up altogether.
For some reason I expect red carpet treatment, keys to the
village, bunting and ticker tape, but I'm nearly taken out by a Volvo on
a zebra crossing instead. I assume he's black and white colourblind and give him
the benefit of the doubt because the lights of the The Queen & Albert are
twinkling in a "come hither" configuration. I get two pints of the Rebellion
Roasted Nuts and a catering sized collection of salty snacks and wait for Joe to
arrive. Some young city types are yapping in a loud self-important way, so I
complete the top row of my Bucks bingo card ("DERIVATIVES", "TOBY", "TAKEOVER")
before the first pint has settled.
Joe finally appears after his white-knuckle bus ride.
Arriva's tagline is "Transport Leader, Talented People,
Responsible Business", but
"We get there eventually, bring a sick bag and a long
novel" would be more appropriate. He tries not to look disappointed by the fact
that I've nearly finished his pint as well as mine, but cheers up when we find
time to squeeze in one more for the road.
Ah yes, the road. By now it feels like I'm pushing a
lawnmower up Snowdon with the handbrake on (a bad dose of Sisyphus perhaps), but
the barley-based anaesthetic is starting to kick in, so we make it to the
General Havelock without losing any personnel. Caroline and Elisabeth form the
welcoming committee and it's straight to the jugular with the Titanic Plum
Porter which tastes like a mixture of Slivovitz, gravy and hydraulic fluid. We
engage in what I'm sure is polite, witty and erudite conversation, but is
probably me shouting, pointing and dribbling. At some point they bundle me out
of a side entrance or the toilet window and we toddle home.
My Garmin says 29.9 miles. The Proclaimers say 500 miles. The
odometer on my left ankle has stopped functioning, but in the scheme of things
and relative to the wounded servicemen and women trying to rebuild their lives
after shattering injury it's nothing ..... really nothing.
