UP ON THE ROOF

 

Beyond Wellingore’s Memorial Hall, there’s a field. Then, beyond the field and its hedge the view opens out to show the walker where she/he’s about to go along the semi-circular edge of Lincolnshire’s ‘Cliff’. My destination today is Coleby’s spire, on what appears to be the highest point, although if that’s not an illusion, it must be only by the odd metre or so - the ‘Cliff’ maintains a fairly even height. The ‘Jurassic Way’ long distance path from Banbury to Stamford was designed to celebrate the limestone ridge which runs roughly south-west to north-east through Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire. The ‘Cliff’ is the eventual continuation of that ridge, but never more beautifully displayed. The height above the valley is only about a hundred and fifty feet here, but any balcony walk carries a certain thrill and elation, simply because you can look down on things.  And what does that say about human nature – or maybe just my human nature? 

This is not what you would imagine Lincolnshire to be.  Although to be fair, twenty-five miles further north-east the summit of ‘Wolds Top’, near the village of Normanby, reaches 168 metres (551 feet) which is almost not-lowland. The Viking Way, my route for today, passes close to that too. I enjoy every moment of the walk into Navenby, despite a plague of June flies and the fact that this is one of those paths which has slipped six inches downhill, so that it’s now at an angle and would be ideal for walkers with a marked disparity in the length of their legs, which in my case happily not. Navenby is a proper little town. There are shops, including an antiques centre, a florist, the Old Reindeer Fish and Chips and Robin Rose Bakes and Books, where I have a tea and something that’s both gluten-free and nice. St. Peter’s has the capacity you’d expect from the church of a former market-town. Though now obscured by trees, it looks out over the valley, from the cusp of the slope. Even so, once inside I’m surprised by the rise to the altar. Over the years I’ve come to appreciate the value of having to ‘get up out of my seat’ (as once demanded by the evangelist Billy Graham) to receive communion.  It’s a relief from the overwhelming passivity of many services. There’s also something symbolically helpful in having to make a climb, however slight, to take bread and wine – an encouragement to keep the eyes up, towards heaven, away from the quotidian. The incumbent in this benefice was until recently the Rev. Michelle Godbold, which seems a magnificent name for a priest. How could she have felt drawn to do anything else with her life? I once had slight dealings with Inspector Bollard of the Northampton Constabulary’s traffic team.  One felt there was an element of pre-destination there too.

Grade II listed post box in Navenby with extra decoration

Ermine Street is very close by to the east. The original settlement of Navenby may have been a mansio ( a Roman inn) and its associated buildings beside the old road, the last stop on the way north to Lincoln. Then the village moved to the spring-line. Or maybe it was always there, around today’s church, and it was the Romans who chose to construct their own business and commercial centre a few hundred metres away from the hairy, unsocialised Britons. History has many frustrations. The written word doesn’t guarantee accurate understanding of what went on between individuals and communities in the past, but without anyone to record matters on a writing tablet or papyrus one would love to know how in fact over nearly four hundred years the Romans and Britons moved through enmity, to suspicion, to acceptance of difference, to some feelings of bereavement and regret when the Roman army slung its hook in 410.  These are stories and processes about which we can only speculate.

 

The Viking Way moves on to Boothby Graffoe, where I miss the church, because I’m not looking at the map and it’s hidden behind trees. A long lane takes me in front of the Hall which must have been a very daringly-designed house in Victorian times. Then, the best bit of the walk today, on an undulating stony path to Coleby with wonderful views over the valley to cooling towers and distant hills, with the occasional howl of jets passing overhead. RAF Waddington is a handful of miles away.

Doorway at Coleby church

And all the time, I’m musing over the new phrase I’ve learned today.  The US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken has in vain been undertaking shuttle diplomacy to persuade the sides in the Gaza conflict to give a little.  Whether his latest statement is contrived in its palpable irritation, it’s impossible to say, but he sounds convincing as he inveighs against Hamas (on this  occasion), for delaying their response to the American proposal, and then apparently reneging on matters previously agreed.  A commentator offers the view that the American proposal is an attempt to build ‘constructive ambiguity’ into an interim agreement i.e. that having achieved a cease-fire, both sides can see a possible way ahead to satisfying their own ‘red lines’. The phrase was coined by Henry Kissinger, who himself almost invented shuttle diplomacy. 

From the heady days of twenty-five years ago when ‘Third Ways’ were in vogue, we seem universally to have moved back towards radicalism and extremism, where nothing can be negotiated. The internet has played subtlely into this, complicating communications such that the disinformation we routinely deal with every day makes verification in any context so much harder.  It’s become safer to stick implacably to what you believe to be your own ‘red line’.  And this applies in church matters too, where the small print of belief has always had a disproportionate perceived value. This is strange because ecclesiastically a ‘my way or the highway’ approach denies human frailty and sin or any sense of the numinous mystery of God.  We badly need ‘constructive ambiguity’ as an ongoing quantity in the debates of the Church of England. Hey, here’s an idea: let’s call it ‘waiting on God’!  But as a coda we need to add the understanding that God’s timescale is necessarily not the same as ours. He deals in aeons rather than our puny lifetimes. 

I return to Wellingore by the same route.  In Navenby the peace is shattered by more rolling thunder. The Red Arrows pass directly overhead at a thousand feet or less, three by three, on their way to fly the flag in Gloucestershire, Bournemouth and the Channel Islands, according to their publicised roster for the day.  Every country has its display team, so we have to have one – which is a curious echo of the reading from 1 Samuel I mentioned in the last posting. I am both stirred by the sight, and proud of what it represents.  And somehow anxious and destabilised at the same time.

Wellingore – Navenby – Boothby Graffoe – Coleby – Boothby Graffoe – Navenby – Wellingore.

13.5 km. A leisurely five hours.  17 deg. C. max.  Variable cloud and breeze, Feeling cool one moment, warm and humid the next.

‘Up on the roof’ was a co-write by Gerry Goffin and the remarkable Carole King, before she ever had success as a solo artist, or met James Taylor. In England it was a big hit for the comedian Kenny Lynch, which almost gave it the feeling of a novelty song, whereas in America it was The Drifters who took it into the charts.  The lyric is set in a city, but the sentiment applies just as much to walking at a height of eighty metres along a ridgeway in Lincolnshire: 

Manhattan (photo by Annika Weis)

‘When this old world starts getting me down/ and people are just too much for me to face/ I climb way up to the top of the stairs/ and all my cares just drift right into space…”