Walk with John Clare

This year is the 200th anniversary of poet John Clare's first publication. On the 20th July 1841, he left the asylum in Epping and walked 80 miles to Northborough. I intended to follow in his footsteps and undertake this walk; now140 miles as it traverses motorways and circumvents private land. This is the story of my walk in prose and poetry including one published in 'The Meeting'.

Out of Epping

Epping Forest as ‘common land’ is highly accessible and

can be approached from any compass direction.

An exemplar of ‘being unenclosed,’ without walls or fences;

No convoluted journey to search for pedestrian gate or stile.

Enter from the Twittens of Loughton, Ivy Chimneys of Theydon

Or the footpaths converging on the Copt Hall cerviduct.

Chime over Bell Common, or jump over Chingford

Find your own route and walk in your own gait or style.

Make time to visit every feature, greet every tree,

Relax up Pole Hill - or from the resident artist- buy a CD;

singing of past antecedents, until one day, you may find yourself

at Lippitt’s Hill staring at the plaque ‘John Clare lived here’,

here in this asylum, until he broke free.

Then it will be your desire to find a route ‘Out of Epping’,

far more difficult to navigate, crossing reservoirs and smoking business parks

motorways, Roman roads, pathless roads and pathless paths:

March the Prime Meridian; lope the Lea Valley; Greet the Great Ouse; Inspire along Icknield Way.

At first, a lack of seriousness prevails, as hotels are closed.

Requiring a return to source each night, cuts down the time to march.

The body desirous only of selfies and landscape photographs;

Tempting to play with found items with friends, like a riding crop in Bury wood.

Or divert to red forts at Rye House; globes at Great Amwell; or

Google the bewildering concept of a village at Enfield.

But with each leg more distant from London’s comforts,

Great Anglia rail and Thameslink become my helpmeets.

A compass essential and water quite precious

Limited signage and no shops along Ermine street.

As time gathers time - rivals, you may find

No time to photograph those relics of the industrial past

and palaces built to pump water

along the New River cut, that vast canal.

Only just time to pick and pocket

an acorn from an oak in Hertford.

Plucked from a corrugated, caravan park of a modern industrial estate

Not a broad-bodied, breath-leaved wood.

The damp Clothall road came at me in the nick of time,

It was eerily dark when I met old Pesthouse lane.

Metaphorical tumbleweeds loomed cheerlessly.

Relieved me indeed, as we always did have this need of you, Baldock.

But the next day, there was no time to see if Natter’s bats

were returned to Ashwell’s Gothic church,

Only time to remember their finder, my late friend

Who always wore black, smoked (a lot) liked cars and cats.

No time to sit by the ford at Sutton

Or read about the Packhorse bridge

No time to fill my pipe at Potton

As John Clare required (as I don’t have one).

No time to watch linnets flick about sun-dried wheat ears

But I gave 3 cheers, to hear they were there.

No time to pay regard to ancient artefacts

Exposed in fresh turned farmland soil.

No time to taste the roadside apples of Sutton or

Marvel at their size in Awalton.

But I would have preferred to never have gone

Through the dark abyss that is Huntingdon.

Totally buried under the A14 or is it the A41

In daytime you find the streetlights left on

No wonder pilgrims trespass, * farmland footpaths are almost gone, gone, gone.

Although, Huntingdon, I won’t step on your toe

regarding the beauteous water meadows.

Nationally revered by the long-expired Daniel Defoe

Who was altogether our hero’s hero.

At St. Neots I thought it a good time to eat ‘but grass’

In memory of our poet who had ‘nought to eat’.

But not at Paxton pits where:

2 people and a dog go- walking;

2 people and a dog go- walking.

Oh Stilton, gateway to paradise

Bell Inn provider of breakfast delights

Do not doubt,

I will return to roll your cheese.

Stilton, where I lay a-bed in Fen Lane all night wondering….

If the Mill Lane of Awalton connected to Mill Lane at Milton

if it’s severed by the Nene I would be undone.

Have a functional bridge please, please.

Stilton, gateway to five villages, where small things delight:

The pop, whistle crack of starlings perched over a stream;

A beetle ravaged cow pat and deer crossing paths, crossing paths;

A simple exchange with the keeper of the village bench,

And the prescience to rub in sun cream.

Stilton, you may have bought me time, but that was insufficient

to attempt to understand why the Hurn road is disappearing

under a puzzling juxtaposition of freight and passenger main line

Jeopardising the view of the A15, where are inscribed John Clare’s beautiful lines

‘I love to walk these fields, they are to me

A legacy no evil can destroy

They, like a spell, set every rapture free’.

So, at least to Maxey cut where we used to play

The only homage I could pay, was to sit on your bridge

and eat sandwiches

No time to feel epic, near the end of my pilgrimage.

As from John’s Northboro’ cottage, I now need to rush

There was only just time - courtesy of the Delaine bus

to visit Mum in Walton (the first since March)

when began all this damned Covid fuss.

John Clare rested on stone heaps

But we sat in the garden on director’s chairs

to a symphony of geraniums and bizzy lizzies

Mum and her yellow cone flowers, sparkling like Perseids.

*The Trespass was written after being found trespassing at H. Hall gateway to the Greensand Ridge.

The Trespass

I think it a bit rude, to come all this way

If you don’t mind me staying.

Just to rest my poor feet upon your good seat

By getting in without paying.

I will turn my cheek, when I see that squirrels on heat

Have been caught in the Ginn on the fencepost.

The Fenn traps on the golf course, are totally your business

Just contrary to ethics and the terms of your lease.

Of course, animals get in the way, when farmers make hay

And the results in the field can be carnage.

Leverets, partridge and skylark, easily, ousted by a dog’s bark

flailed in the tines so bloody and savage.

A friend made her first soil, in an old farmhouse at Theydon,

when there were no electronic gates at the end of the lane.

For a birthday present, I took photos of her homestead,

while the Little Gregory’s were away.

Despite a battle hard won, for land at Norbiton Common,

Enclosure is not a one - time process.

When our neighbourhood paths gone and Gated estates en plan,

Every time I leave home, I will trespass.

Three Days
Our forest network of downy threads
Are compacted by your feet.
Ouch, we are constricted by
the weight of your heavy clouds.

Fungus gnats scatter as you approach
and save us from the hole-makers.
As stillness returns, they lay eggs
and larvae consume us into doilies

Adult gnats exit after three days

Food for Autumn’s night-sniffing bats.

Sun rise and we are deliquescing

you linger on stone-heaps, between homes.

By Our selves on Vimeo

see Toby Jones as John Clare in Epping Forest in this film tribute by Andrew Kotting

Comments

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