A very different triduum

The Ridgeway is very muddy and wet, full of signposts for hikers whose maps get damp, and prone to fog and silence. This year it is the first time in about 15 years that I have not been working Holy Week and Easter, but resonances remain and maybe it was time to do it differently, and to go with what happens.

On Maundy Thursday early evening I found myself in a church porch for two hours waiting for a pub to open as there was nowhere else to stay or camp. I had walked in light rain up high on the ancient route and still I have not learned enough that waterproof trousers are a very very good thing. So I was wet and cold and the church was not open, and the porch was cold dark stone and there was nowhere else to go. It kept raining on and off. I sang, I jogged on the spot, I did star jumps, I read the notice board over and over again, I paced. My hands were too numb to write. I have never been more grateful for a fire in a pub grate than I was that evening. 

The next day turned into the long Good Friday. I ascended out of Liddington and coming off Charlbury hill were three women. One was playing a mandolin, another was waving two blue flags with the words 'Lord Jesus Christ' on then, and all three were singing. They stopped and asked if they could pray for me. Those who know me will know this is not a thing with which I am comfortable, but out there on the hill what they offered with generosity and integrity I received graciously. And I felt a few tears. They couldn't persuade me to come down the hill again for breakfast - I had walking to do - but as they went off singing I felt a little more connected to those countless people I have shared these days with in many places. 

I stopped later on at a Neolithic long barrow called Wayland's Smithy. It's a long tomb with a huge entrance framed by tall stones - reminiscent of the day. It had by now started to rain. I turned on my phone to take some pictures and a voicemail came through from the next campsite to say they were flooded and wouldn't be opening. I could have had a meltdown but I felt quite calm about it. When there's no one about to reflect with and to, sometimes the only choice is to keep on going. So I did. A few walkers were about, but fewer and fewer as the afternoon wore on and the rain got heavier. At 3pm I stopped by a silent field, my church for that moment, under a heavy sky, the trees drooping with the weight of the rain, the soil brown with a sweeping pattern of dead stalks, the path empty. I sang 'Were you there', because no one was, and remembered the widows and the grieving mothers, the conflict makers and the drama givers, the singers and the silent, the lonely people and the desperate, the powerful and the powerless ... all those I knew in different places observing this same moment. 

I remembered a bunkhouse above Letcombe Regis that I knew was fully booked but could take campers in their garden. I found it, and went inside. The people running it were lovely and helpful and friendly and said no. I stood there dripping wet, cold, asking for their help and they couldn't give it. I mean, I understand that the inside was fully booked with a Pentecostal church group, and I couldn't use the facilities but I sort of couldn't understand that at 4 in the afternoon they would send me away when I said I'd just put up the tent and keep quiet - however nice they were. They suggested walking down to 

Wantage (5 miles off route), but I decided to push on and find a camping spot. My reluctance to wild camp was not fear - I've done it enough now. It was more weather, the difference in land laws (in Scotland you can basically camp anywhere which isn't at all the case in England), the fact that it wasn't really that remote, unlike a high moor, the abundance of 'private land' signs beside the path, and, well, the weather again. I walked another two hours, looking for places in trees and dithering and then found a perfect spot right beside the path. It's not that wise to not hide away, but I made the judgement that no one in their right mind would come up there now. And I was right. I dived in the tent as the rain hammered down and put on dry clothes and got into the slightly damp sleeping bag. I managed to contain the very wet stuff in a corner. And this is why I carry whisky. 

I was awoken at 3am by the absolute silence. The rain had stopped. It didn't last, but it was a long wait for the light of dawn. The sound of a bird scared close by at first light made me nervous and I packed up quickly and walked into the thick silent fog. The rain lightened and the fog thickened and I met a farmer in his 4x4 buggy up high on the wide track. He had lost two ewes and three lambs in the night. The fragile threshold of new life and the lingering presence of death divided by such a thin line. They hadn't a chance in that weather. 

Over the next three hours the fog lifted and the rain stopped and arriving in Streatley I peeled off my waterproofs in a bus shelter and my coffee radar took me to a very busy cafe just over the river in Goring. The noise of people was a bit of a shock, and I felt quite dishevelled. A group on table next to me were having lunch. The chap sitting directly next to me started chatting. He asked me why I was walking. I mean, a lot of people ask me why, but I got the sense he was really asking me why. I gave him an honest if not very open answer, and he said that he had also had an interesting couple of years, and had decided to take time out to do a PhD in film and television history. He said he had a feeling about what answer I might give. He said transitional souls always seek out other transitional souls. And then they left. 

I had time to kill before the hostel opened at 5 - I booked for two nights to have a rest day. I visited Goring church where three ladies were preparing flowers for Easter Day. They were hard at work and very skilled and very humble about their labours. They told me their vicar had recently died. I think he was young. In Streatley church (the same benefice) the lights were off and there was a sense of expectation mixed with the all too painful presence of mourning. And between these two the Thames is almost full to bursting and fast flowing. 

Today is Easter Sunday. I went to church, for the first time in a month. St Mary's Streatley was welcoming and lovely. A committed congregation and a small, good choir. I sang loudly, in spite of my lingering cold, and shared good coffee afterwards. The church warden made sure I was looked after and gave me some cards of the church to remember them by. And I am grateful. 

This afternoon I met a young woman, Lutzi, from Germany, who arrived at the hostel with a big rucksack and looking weathered. She is also walking to Scotland. I couldn't believe it. She started at the Ridgeway and will take the train between long distance paths but honestly, she's a long way from home and this is the first time she has done anything like this and it is so very heartening to know that there are others like me. And she is sharing my dorm in the hostel. I made her tea and gave her a creme egg while she waited for reception to open. Because I know how it feels to emerge from the mud of the Ridgeway with a backpack full of wet things. 

Tomorrow onwards, with a good friend who has come to walk with me for a couple of days. The weather is due to be very wet. He has brought more whisky.