A Farewell to Herts.....

To every thing there is a season.....

A time to get, and a time to lose; 

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

We are about to move on.  After seventeen and a half years in a cul de sac in Harpenden, we are about to be uprooted and transported to a village in Norfolk.

Retirement from local education establishments, the eventual death of my mother in a care home near St Albans, the slow descent of my wife, Amanda, into the disorientation of dementia, and the independence of our two daughters - all of this warp and weft of life has led to a realisation of impermanence and the decision to move on.

Of course the options were endless.  If I were solo, I might have followed my ancestry and moved to Western Ireland, seeking Irish citizenship and a breath of Atlantic air.  Or I could have retraced my steps to Italy, to end my days in sunshine and vineyards.....

Or I could have stayed put.

But this man is not an island, and I have, at least for the moment, some residual responsibilities for others, and so the intention was to find a home with space for assistance for Amanda, and a stimulating environment for all.

Although I grew up in Berkhamsted, I'm not actually a Hertfordshire boy; my birth took place quite quietly in Southsea, Hampshire, a stone's throw from the boating lake, and I spent the first five or so years of life in Portsmouth, inhaling sea air and exhaust fumes from her majesty's (and others') navies.  

In fact, not one of my immediate family was born in Hertfordshire, though between us we must have lived here for a cumulative couple of centuries, at least..... 

Dad's father started it. After the First World War he was a schoolmaster and in around 1925 he moved to Northchurch, now almost absorbed by Berkhamsted, where he took up the post of Headmaster of the local school (as well as choirmaster and organist at St Mary's). In the mists of my misspent youth, my elder brother and I used to drink in the Red Lion, across the A41 from the school and church, and the locals would regale us with tales of our grandad, such as the time he lined the entire school up in the playground and whacked the lot.... What larks!  No intervention from erstwhile Fireplace Salesmen posing as government ministers then!

Dad attended local school, went to Uni, then to War. After which, following a period in Portsmouth, where I happened, he returned to live out his life in Berkhamsted, as master at the School and then as secretary of the Old Boys' Association.

When he retired, I tried to persuade him to move away, to start anew, but he would have none of it, and his ashes rest in Kingshill Cemetery, where mum has now joined him.

All this, and this scattering of local photographs, is why I am feeling apprehensive.  Hertfordshire, or at least a slice of it from Berkhamsted to Harpenden, spilling over the Chiltern scarp and down the dip, encompassing villages and farms, pubs and chalk streams, is a part of me and I am a part of it.

In the past year, for instance, Amanda and I have walked some thousand miles of footpaths in the area.  Sometimes glorious in their flowers and hedgerow blossoms, sometimes Somme-like in the sludge and slurry.

In the past sixty years and more I have walked, and cycled, most every lane and bridleway across this part of the Shire, and stopped to rest or take refreshment in villages that until recently showed little change since the Domesday Book.

  

In the early seventies, my elder bro lived in Stevenage, and I was then temporarily back home with my parents in Berkhamsted, living in the house where Graham Greene had himself grown up (and to which I, oddly, refused him entry, but that is another story....)

On a number of occasions I walked between the two towns, a 28 mile road hike (passing through Harpenden), taking a footsore seven hours, but never thinking of the traffic. I  wouldn't risk it now......

There are wonderful stretches of land here, whether in broody summer:

Or in moody winter:

There are great houses, with beautiful grounds, like Ashridge, where Amanda posed so youthfully just a few years ago....

My grandparents lived and then died near here.  An aunt and uncle and their three children were Harpendenians (?). 

And our dear girls grew tall and came of age round here - this was taken on Sarah's 18th birthday above Tom's Hill, Aldbury....  Happy days!

Amanda and I were married in Hemel Hempstead, and to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary - some good few years ago now - we returned with the girls to commemorate the day....

But, there are times to weep, and times to laugh; times to mourn, and times to dance...

In 2003 we settled in Harpenden, where there is the old:

And there is the new:

The town is famous for its science:

But also for some of its famous residents.  Eric Morecambe, for example, is still fondly remembered by many, while Owen Farrell, George Ford and Maro Itoje, all attended St George's School.  Maro, in fact was one of my most delightful English pupils, and a model boarder:

Owen shook my hand one parents' evening when he was chaperoning his sister, effortlessly crushing my fingers while he smiled, charmingly .....

There were good days.....

And now it is time to turn, turn, turn....

To fly to pastures new, and to open a new chapter.....

Moving on will be hard.  There's never a good time.  We came here in a heat wave.  The first night we opened all the windows, and I couldn't sleep a wink for all the trains hurtling past the foot of my bed.

Now it is wet, and wintry, and we are getting old.  We will lose all familiarity, and have to carve out new habits.....

But there's no going back.  However much you turn, turn, turn, you cannot go back....

And so we leave. Thank you to all who have travelled with us thus far, and who have been friends and supporters through thick and thin. And, though our ways must part, I sincerely hope this is not, in any sense of the word, the end of the road.....

Ciao!

Walking back to Happiness

For Alzheimer's Society woopah oh yeah yeah 

Walking back to happiness, woopah oh yeah yeah 

Said goodbye to loneliness, woopah oh yeah yeah 

I never knew I'd miss you 

Now I know what I must do 

Walking back to happiness 

I shared with you 

(Yay, yay, yay, yay ba dum be do)

Helen Shapiro spent three weeks at number one with this song (and nineteen weeks in the charts) in 1961.  It was released on September 29th, the day after her fifteen birthday.  It has a catchy tune, and I can still hear it in my head.  When I set off from Stonehenge early on the 7th September this year it will be my theme tune.

On this day I will be attempting to walk from the megaliths of Stonehenge to the monoliths of Avebury, a distance of 26 miles across Salisbury plain. The purpose of this is to raise money for Alzheimer's Society, which is the leading support and research charity for people with dementia, their families and carers.  There are 800,000 people with dementia in the UK, with numbers set to rise to one million by 2021; and one of these is my mother.

To be honest, however, I am also doing this walk to prove I still can, and because I have always loved walking.  I don't very clearly remember my first steps (is this a sign of dementia?) but I do remember walking up to the Farlington Redoubt (demolished in 1961), one of Lord Palmerston's ring of forts built to defend against a French invasion.  We (my parents, my brother and I) used to walk up there on summer Sundays, picking cornflowers and chasing small copper and common blue butterflies.  The sense of freedom and space, with the views down across Portsmouth and out to sea, sticks with me, even though I was only three or four at the time.

So one of the glories of these British Isles that I will never tire of is the coast, and long coastal paths are great ways to lose the urban blues, or to refresh the work-dulled spirit.  Whether it is the rocky promontories and inlets of the South West Coast Path National Trail, 

or the gentler shores of the Norfolk Coast Path, 

or the blowy dunes of St Oswald's Way in Northumberland, 

it is hard to better the variety of scenery, the wildlife and the fresh air that is there for free.

The Lake District is also wonderful for walking.  It is not a vast area, but the juxtaposition of crag and lake, of fell and pass, gives it a mysterious and luminous variety, which despite its popularity and the fact that you can queue to get into it, allows for an infinite range of ways to lose yourself.  I lived close to the Lakes for four years, and have also visited Cumbria on other occasions with family and without, and, whatever the weather, always feel a thrill in getting off the beaten tracks.

But there are so many different opportunities. It does not have to be a designated national trail, nor a long distance path. A visit to the Peak District makes you desperate to get out of the car.

Essex will have you slithering about in tidal estuaries, birdwatching and breathing quietly.

The Wye valley, with Tintern Abbey, is somewhere the Romantics put on the map, and where you can now walk comfortably along the railway bed that used to bring poets here.

Whatever the season, the Yorkshire Dales have hidden vales and watercourses. Again, there may be crowds, but you don't need to be Henry the Navigator to follow a footpath sign and lose the mob.

And in so many parts of the country, it is possible to combine a decent walk with a decent pub.  In some respects this is not as easy as it was, as pubs are dying at an alarming rate, but it does sometimes mean that with a little research you can focus a walk on a really fine old pub, which will cater for food and drink, and even perhaps provide a room for the night.  This one below is tucked away in the Cotswolds, but I am not going to reveal its whereabouts for fear of not getting a seat next time I visit!

Walking is not only exercise for the body but also a way of detoxing the mind.  With the rhythmic fall of your footsteps the imagination begins to rove through possible ways of seeing, and different ways of interpreting. The ordinary becomes extraordinary, and colours that from a car may be dull become vivid and fresh.

The waysides, heaths and woods you pass through become an intimate part of your sensory world, rather than a backdrop to some other activity. Heathers may be humming with bees, or perhaps may shelter a snake.

And it is not only in the summer months that plants are at their best. Frosty days in Autumn or Spring can surprise you with delights you may not have expected.

And the larger views of the landscape sometimes delight even in the depths of winter, when being at home indoors you would miss the silhouettes of trees against an early sunset.

When I was young, an old old man (Uncle Frank, my cousins' dear grandfather) used to tell me how he walked from our town (Berkhamsted) to another (Harpenden), some fifteen miles away. I was struck by the achievement but determined to better it one day. And so I did, eventually, walking on a number of occasions to and from a town (Stevenage) some twice the distance away where my brother was living. I have since done The Ridgeway, some eighty miles, but over five days. Most recently I have walked the old man's route from town to town, to visit my ailing father before his death, and to stalk some deer in Ashridge on the way.

However I am older and never was much of a one for fitness regimes. On long walks, like the Ridgeway, I have suffered from sodden feet which then became awfully stiff and sore, as well as from heat exhaustion and aching tiredness.

I am going to endeavour to prepare for this, but am scared by facebook entries from others taking the challenge, who are already doing five or ten miles a day, and planning twenty milers as part of the warmup.

I will be all right. It is not a race, and September is not the cruellest month. My determination to honour those who sponsor me, and to raise the cash for this worthy cause, will spur me on.

And the chance to walk through some of the training zones on Salisbury Plain will make it interesting too. No stopping places, no distracting pubs, just miles and miles of unexploded ordnance to keep me on my toes!

Another aspect of long walks is that they touch on ancient ways, where our ancestors routinely drove their livestock, or walked to markets or to shrines. The Ridgeway, which begins at Ivinghoe Beacon and ends at Avebury, passes right by this burial chamber, known as Wayland's Smithy.

And further on it touches the slopes of prehistoric fortresses, whose ridges still will not melt away.  There is a timeless quality about these landscapes, and there is something in the genetic memory of our species, perhaps not totally erased by age and dementia, which raises an empathy as you pass.

But ultimately, we will all dissolve into forgetfulness and oblivion, or ascend into the cloudless sky to achieve foreverness. And our footfalls will be as past as past can be. In the meantime, however, in order to preserve some quality of life, Alzheimer's Society is doing what it can for sufferers, and I will be walking to try and bring a little happiness back into my mother's life.

Spread the news I'm on my way, woopah oh yeah yeah

All my blues have blown away, woopah oh yeah yeah 

I'm bringing you love so true 

Cuz that's what I owe to you 

Walking back to happiness I shared with you 

(Yay, yay, yay, yay ba dum be do)

(Helen Shapiro lives in Kent)

Please see:

http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/

And 

http://www.justgiving.com/RichardPGibbs

And give a little; live a little