HOLE IN MY SHOE

 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 directs me off the line indicated by the OS: maybe I then miss a subsequent waymarker. I’m obviously looking puzzled as I take my tee-break on a bench by the fifth, because a chap riding a gang-mower stops to tell me I’m confused and point out the correct route. I thank him, and walk ahead for a few metres, not realising he’s about to turn around me onto a slightly different track.  Thus I very nearly end up with a trip to Grantham A&E (if there is one): thankfully, he brakes sharply to avoid a collision, stopping a few inches from my right foot.  We’d have had an interesting discussion about where fault lay. 

Inkerman Row, Madras Terrace...sometimes walking progress is marked by the battles of British history.

At the far end of the golf course, I turn left onto the A607, or at least the path beside it. It’s quite a relief to tread tarmac again: the golf course was sodden. There’s not much meteorological relief in sight for the next fortnight either.  Sad person that I am, I’ve started logging the clickbait Daily Express headlines as they present on my laptop - for their humorous value e.g. ‘Gigantic snow bomb to blast Britain for next six days’.  This of course, as the narrator on ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide’ used to say, is ‘a load of dingo’s kidneys’, but the weather story for the past five months has largely been of rain, rain and more rain. There won’t be much room for the water companies to start banging on about hosepipe bans in July or August. But they will.

A silly rhyme about crime and weather in Lincolnshire

There was an old man lived high on a Wold.

(A fiddly-diddly-dee-oh)

It rained all winter: the summers were cold,

(A fiddly-diddly-dee-oh)

so his house was covered in black slimy mould.

(Keep going with the diddling)

The agent said it might never get sold.

(Yo diddlers - you’ve got this...)

 

The old man was angry: his life was on hold.

(Diddle on, dudes..)

He turned to crime; he was daring and bold…

(Crescendo those fiddle-dee-dees please!)

until he was caught, but then when paroled…

(dramatic pause…)

he was well-insulated by ill-gotten gold.

(Thank you.  Applause, applause, applause. Enough diddling already!)

 

Sue and I visited Belton House, now a National Trust property, on our way back from a trip to Lincoln eighteen months ago, and weren’t impressed. It was very wet that day too. We enjoyed the very pleasant Italian garden, but everything else seemed a bit unfocused.  Notwithstanding, business was extremely brisk. Unfortunately the cafés/restaurants weren’t coping so well.

The NT is in some ways a victim of its own success – it ticks the boxes for a lot of visiting families and seniors. There are some comparisons with the C. of E.. Both are struggling with historical questions of privilege, and ‘where the wealth came from’.  Both have to decide what to preserve and what to let go – but preservation and conservation is the whole point of the N.T. while merely incidental for the C. of E. (though not everyone seems to understand this). Church-visiting (as opposed to church-going) is a pastime for the few - usually those with some sense of the numinous, even if as with goths it’s expressed in unorthodox ways e.g. sitting on a tombstone smoking a joint. A strong sense of the secular often seems to pervade N.T. properties: they act as a commentary or museum for historical religion where it intersects with the places and lives they celebrate. We Christians struggle for membership and active participation in our faith.  The N.T. is almost overwhelmed, and has (slightly) better coffee.

Here at Belton the local church (St. Peter and St. Paul’s) overlaps with the National Trust. The gates into the churchyard from the village road are firmly locked: there’s no possibility of access. To get into the church, one has to go through the N.T. grounds, past a guarded entrance into the Italian Garden, through its length to a church gate which the nice volunteer lady back at the House is unsure may be open today (apparently it isn’t all the time, and generally not during the winter months).

St. Peter and St. Paul’s holds once-monthly ‘regular’ worship and so isn’t redundant.  I’ve visited more than five hundred churches in the last eight years, and never come across an arrangement quite like Belton’s. The implicit message to a casual visitor might be that the faith of this village community is entirely historical and feudal – that it’s an adjunct of the House.  And of course, this was once largely true – though it wouldn’t be appropriate in 2024.

Monument to John Cust: interior: St. Peter and St. Paul's Belton

If the aim is to prevent unwanted access to the house and grounds, it’s slightly weird that security today is very lax. Maybe they’re not quite ready for the new season yet but essentially I could have walked around the House’s grounds unchallenged all day. I hope that if I’d asked for access to the churchyard, say to look at an ancestor’s grave, I wouldn’t have been stung for the N.T.’s daily charge. The nice warden at Belton is aware of the problem, and tells me she’s due to talk with the Trust shortly about how access could be better handled.  She confirms that the village and church community is lively and independent.

It starts to rain heavily, something which was in no way forecast at 8.45 this morning. I shelter and drink coffee in Belton House’s gloomy stables. The lemon drizzle cake is stale. I eschew the scones about which there’s current adverse publicity. In an attempt to include vegans, it’s alleged they’ve been rendered inedible. My walk on to Syston and Barkston will have to wait. I retrace my steps rather mournfully to Great Gonerby reflecting that my experiences of Lincolnshire and its diocese thus far haven’t been very positive. Oh dear! Repeat after me, better together, better together, better together…

Great Gonerby – Belton – Great Gonerby

11 km. 3.5 hours. Damp, then wet, then tantalisingly sunny as I return to the car. 12 deg C..

‘Hole in my shoe’ was a hit for Steve Winwood’s band ‘Traffic’ at the height of flower power. The Beatles had been off to see the Maharishi, and all things Indian were in fashion. The electric sitar/guitar on HIMS was employed more successfully than on other songs of the time but IMO the intentionally psychedelic song didn’t seem to suit Steve Winwood’s precocious blue-eyed soul voice very well. His earlier work with the Spencer Davis group, and later eighties’ albums like ‘Back in the high life’ and ‘Roll with it’ show off his ‘chops’ much better. Friend Mark Williamson contributed the backing vocals to the latter, so I’ve a particular affection for that record. It also features spectacular drumming from American John Robinson. Mark and John went on to work together regularly in the years afterwards, notably on the band project ‘Bridge 2 Far’.  Nigel Planer later covered ‘Hole in my shoe’ without bringing anything new to the party, at a point where comedy and satire was beginning to slip into increasingly vulgar mockery.  Judgmental?  Moi?