Friday, 31 August 2007

Coastwalk , South West Coast Path

Chapman's Pool → Swanage

[The Globe at Durlston Country Park]

Distance: 9.60 miles
Ascent: 459 metres
Duration: 3 hours 48 minutes

Endure
« Kimmeridge Bay | Sandbanks »

"How's the Great Walk going?" was a question I heard more than once at Greenbelt this year. It's an odd term to hear. This Coastwalk is just what I do, not some special endurance test.

John may be feeling the same way about his M62 walk so as an act of solidarity on his first day we're using the post-Greenbelt weekend to pick up again in Dorset.

[Staircase to Emmetts Hill]

From Chapman's Pool the walk immediately climbs 120 metres to the cliff-top before plunging to near sea level and rising steeply again on a seemingly never-ending staircase to St Alban's Head. It's a tough warm-up (did someone deny endurance?) with the remainder of the day being a far easier stroll on grass-topped cliffs.

Highlights included the twelfth century chapel of St Adhelm on that first headland, its thick walls deftly separating the sound of the sea from the silence of the vaulted room.

Further one curious sight followed another: the tidal swimming pool cut by quarrymen at Dancing Ledge; the quarries turned Victorian tourist attraction at Tilly Whim Caves; the stone signs at Durlston Country Park banning "hunting dogs and guns" followed finally by a huge concrete globe dedicated to all of God's creation. All hundreds of years old. All endured.

Posted by pab at 20:18 | Comments will be back one day. Please email me instead!

Thursday, 30 August 2007

Personal

Things I overheard in Maidenhead (#1 in an occasional series)

So here's the scene: it's about five o'clock in Sainsbury's, and I'm by the fresh bread/patisserie shelves. A woman is beside me with her little boy; he must be about five or six. He's just run up to her holding a modest plastic carton of mini chocolate muffins.

Boy: Mummy, I want these. I like these ones.
Woman: No, not those.
Boy: But Mummy, I want these ones now!

[Woman ignores him]

Boy: Pleasemummypleasemummyplease!

[Boy starts jumping up and down, grizzling]

Woman: Come on, we'll have these instead.

And she leads him over to the other side of the cake area, and chooses absolutely huge muffins, slick with oil. A big pack. Cakes the size of your fist. Cakes that say, eat me and you'll eat nothing else all day, oversized in the same way that big spiders and moths are scary because somehow, their large size is just plain wrong.

And I blinked, twice, and carried on squeezing the bread.

Posted by em at 09:49 | Comments will be back one day. Please email me instead!

Greenbelt

The sound of silence

I went to my first ever Quaker meeting on Sunday. I've been curious about Quakers for a long time - my preference for styles of worship oscillates between the full drama of High Church, and the quiet simplicity of Iona - but I'd never actually been to a Quaker meeting.

There were a lot of first-timers like me at the meeting at Greenbelt, and we were given a brief explanation of what to expect by a member of the Cheltenham Quakers. It seemed straightforward enough in principle: Quakers wait in silence and stillness, allowing themselves to become open to an awareness of God's presence. If moved to speak (not the same as speaking 'in the Spirit') then they do so, but otherwise, there is no spoken liturgy.

Needless to say, it was a lot harder than that.

First off, there were obvious distractions - being in an unfamiliar room, amongst mostly unfamiliar people, under novel circumstances. Stomachs rumbled, people fidgeted, bizarrely, Mika's Big Girl (You are Beautiful) played on loop in my brain. Halfway though, a group of drummers began a loud sound check on the Arena stage; waiting for an awareness of God felt like straining to hear a voice on a bad phone line. I ended up simply praying, which was enough to turn my thoughts way from the other sounds and intrusions, and whilst I didn't feel that God imparted any specific words of ministry, it was enough to feel that I'd had time to be still - something that I often feel that I miss in 'normal' Church.

I came away feeling refreshed, and with the feeling that, for something as deceptively simple as shutting up for an hour, it took a lot of effort and I'd barely scratched the surface of the wealth of experience that it could offer. If I had to pick a denomination from scratch, then the Quakers certainly tick many of the boxes, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to give up the familiar comfort of the Anglican church that I'm so used to. Maybe that's the challenge to myself.

Posted by em at 08:12 | Comments will be back one day. Please email me instead!

Tuesday, 21 August 2007

Website

That's about right

Two months. A little longer than planned, but about right.

Two months ago we'd finally sold the cottage on Angel Lane. The plan was to stop writing for a week or two while we put a fresh coat of paint on this website, turn the thing to face a new direction with Angel Lane behind us.

Two months should have been about right. But as you can see, it's not turned out as we planned.

I'm told this website looks very bachelor. ("All ash furniture" was the precise comment.) Please bear with us - we promise a new look soon, but for now it's just time to get writing again.

There are a few posts to edit from the past two months. Keep an eye on June, July and August. There'll be more in just a day or two. Promise.

Posted by pab at 23:51 | Comments will be back one day. Please email me instead!

Monday, 20 August 2007

The Ridgeway

Whitehorse Hill → Sparsholt Firs

[Snail on the Ridgeway]

Distance: 2.64 miles
Ascent: 72 metres
Duration: 56 minutes

Slow
« Not walked | Not walked »

This section of the Ridgeway is a path that demands to be taken slowly. Another circular walk took us just a little further down the way. Public transport isn't an option when returning to the car here so we got to enjoy the path twice.

Posted by pab at 18:40 | Comments will be back one day. Please email me instead!

Friday, 17 August 2007

The Ridgeway

Ashbury → Whitehorse Hill

[Uffington White Horse]

Distance: 2.48 miles
Ascent: 262 metres
Duration: 57 minutes

To the White Horse
« Not walked | Not walked »

For two months the most common phrase in our house has been "we must go for a walk". Today we've finally taken the first tentative steps in that direction.

The distance recorded above hides the fact that the walk back to the car doubled the distance. But we were off again and that was the important thing.

Besides, Uffington deserves time. The White Horse is more spectacular close-up than viewed from afar, its impressionist shape taking on greater meaning when viewed from the top of the hill fort.

Posted by pab at 18:40 | Comments will be back one day. Please email me instead!

Monday, 13 August 2007

Greenbelt

The van

[The Van]

The van is a Greenbelt institution.
Here it is. Full and ready to go.
Tonight the London office moves to Cheltenham.
Greenbelt is just two weeks away.

Posted by pab at 21:40 | Comments will be back one day. Please email me instead!