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A WALK ON THE WOLD SIDE

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  Waiting for the rain to clear, I sit in Grantham’s Costa and look across the square at Isaac Newton.   The shopping centre itself is named after him, and so is a pub and a primary school. Quite right too.   He was a pupil at the King’s School before he went up to Trinity Cambridge. His home was at Woolsthorpe Manor, not so very far away. Woolsthorpe is now a National Trust property, complete with an apple tree which may or may not have inspired the notion of ‘gravity’. There’s a contemporary-sounding twist to Newton’s experience. He returned to Woolsthorpe in 1665, interrupting his Cambridge studies. It was the plague year, so one can imagine he was entering a kind of self-imposed lockdown, away from coffee houses and the communal life. I suppose each Christian, perhaps each person , could be placed on some kind of x-y grid in terms of their beliefs about the relationship between religion and science. Do the two fields of activity occupy the same space for us? Or in an age of extre
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HOLE IN MY SHOE

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  I’ve worn the same winter boots ever since I started the first of my long pilgrimage walks in 2016, but now they’re showing the first signs of falling apart. If I had to ford a stream of more than two inches in depth, I’d be shipping water.   This is a worrying moment: it could conceivably be a great boon to have the extra grip a new pair of Berghaus would give me, but equally well, there’s no telling whether blisters will start appearing where there weren’t any before. And then there’s the expense, of course… I park in Great Gonerby’s Long Lane, and at its end take the downward-trending path beside horsey fields to cross some stiles and emerge on Belton Lane. This road is busy, and a bridge across the main railway line is narrow and hump-backed, requiring exceptional care since there’s no verge. It’s been an untidy morning under cloudy skies, and now there’s drizzle in the air. My spirits are low.   The onward path takes me across the fairways of a golf course, and at one point
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DAZED AND CONFUSED

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  The Gorilla.  Where the Grantham canal meets its nemesis - the A1! The gradient of the lane away from the canal towards Barrowby appears slight, but is illusional. As you begin to breast the wold, what looked insignificant now makes the walker blow, or at least this walker.   To be fair the guy in singlet and shorts who was running it ahead of me seemed not to slacken his pace at all.   Inside the village limits a man is picking litter.   As I pass I say thank you, because even if Barrowby has been a three-time winner of ‘best-kept village’, it’s a horrible, unrelenting, painting-the-Forth-bridge sort of a job.   He doesn’t reply, not even a grunt. Well, he may have been deaf, or thought me sarcastic or condescending. Or I wonder, maybe he’s doing a different kind of ‘community service’, and really doesn’t want to be there at all, except it’s preferable to a few days in chokey or a large fine. All Saints’ church is locked, and as I sit on the bench to catch glimpses of the Vale o
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CRAZY, CRAZY NIGHTS

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  On a crisp and sparkling morning, I cross the canal bridge where Woolsthorpe’s wharf would have been. As soon as I hit the towpath, there are John and Dave, both uber-cheerful and by their accents, neither of them from round here. John twits me about the compass dangling conspicuously from my neck.  ‘You won’t be needing that’, he says. ‘Well, I might, if I go ‘ off piste ’,  I counter. ‘Not much chance of snow today,’ says he.  And so on.   They’re volunteers for the Grantham canal, the restoration of which is an ongoing project. You can walk its length, pretty much, but it’s closed off at the West Bridgford (Nottingham) end, and also as it arrives near Grantham, because the big gorilla of the A1 blocks the way. Today the only barges working it are for pleasure, courtesy of the Grantham Canal Society. They provide income to support the restoration, and the 2024 season begins this Sunday at Woolsthorpe’s ‘Dirty Duck’ , so get yourselves down there, folks!  The canal was constructed i
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EVE OF DESTRUCTION

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  Anxiety.   It’s everywhere.   The invasion of Ukraine: the threat posed by China to Taiwan and the South China Seas:   the rise of new brands of nationalism: the apparently spiralling conflict in the Middle East as a result of the October 7 th atrocity: ‘where will Putin will go next?’: World War 3: ‘conscription’: the ‘Doomsday Clock’ currently set at ninety seconds to midnight. Intelligent parents and children having the sort of discussion we had with our mums and dads in 1962. Single seniors, listening to the radio, watching the telly, reading the papers.   Worry, worry, worry… and that’s before you look at your bills. My own mum, struggling with the cancer which was to kill her at a young middle-age, used to sing the old chorus: ‘ Why worry, when you can pray/Trust Jesus: he’ll find a way/Don’t be a doubting Thomas/rest surely on his promise/Why worry, worry, worry, worry, when you can pray’. Walking is good for the blood pressure.   I park up in Harston’s Main Street, and r
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