Country Mouse
When I find hidden gems, I destroy them giles wood
Three people may keep a secret if two of them are dead, said Benjamin Franklin. The sickening truth about travel writers is that they reveal secret locations in exchange for a free trip. It’s a Faustian pact and I must admit I bear some guilt in this respect. I once wrote about self-rewilding Covehithe near Southwold, our fastesteroding piece of coastline, painted by John Sell Cotman and England’s answer to the Namibian Skeleton Coast. The ghostly emptiness was its main charm, but the piece triggered such a stampede that the emptiness itself was also eroded. Gerald Durrell let the cat out of the bag about the delights of Corfu. Peter Mayle ruined Provence. But I forgive South Tyneside Council, who briefly turned the area into Catherine Cookson Country, encouraging group travel in the spirit of pilgrimage to climax in a visit to her eponymous museum, since the region was never on my bucket list of 100 things to see before I die. The National Trust Book of Long Walks (1981) by Adam Nicolson included classic hikes such as the Ridgeway, the Pilgrims’ Way and Offa’s Dyke Path, to name the more familiar. Hardly secret knowledge, but it was hard-won knowledge in those days before Google Earth and Wikipedia. On hearing about the book our American friend Lesley, a caffeine addict, exclaimed, ‘Oh no. Why has he written a book about long walks? Now creeps will go on long walks!’ The wife and I have been pondering Lesley’s definition of creeps ever since. Perhaps by creeps she meant those who don’t follow the Countryside Code and believe, for example, that their dogs have rights to run off the lead, rounding up sheep. Or did she just mean the ‘wrong’ sort of people from an elitist point of view?
Walking or rambling in this country is meant to be a classless activity. But when I asked an aristocrat on a fishing holiday in Scotland if he wanted to go outside to ‘look at the crescent moon’ at two in the morning, he chortled, ‘What on earth for? The only reason I would step outside at this hour is to be sick.’ It was funny at the time. The working classes are very good at mass trespassing – such as the infamous Kinder Scout protest of 1932– but on the whole they are too busy actually working in the countryside to have time to go for walks. No – walking is, in the main, a middle-class occupation, like so-called wild swimming. Ever since Roger Deakin wrote Waterlog, the middle classes have developed an aversion to swimming pools in general and chlorine in particular. My daughter suffers from this affliction. So there I was in Anglesey to visit her grandmother and to satisfy her desire for sea bathing, which involved
‘You’re popping up on everyone’s contact-tracing list’
an ambitious plan to explore several remote locations and ‘secret’ coves, in order to hand down knowledge to the next generation. At the risk of sounding elitist myself, I had timed the visit so as not to coincide with school summer holidays in an attempt to reduce the chances of finding the hidden lay-bys (where I park my car) full to bursting with other solitude-seekers. One of the abiding themes that helps Mary and me to buck the trend towards silver-splitting is a shared sense of humour and an abiding love of Mike Leigh’s comedy classic TV play Nuts in May (1976). Our favourite scene is when eco-bore Keith lets himself down after being tormented by Finger and Honky, a motorcycling couple from Birmingham determined to have a good time, regardless of by-laws at the same campsite. Keith shouts, ‘Get back to your tenements.’ The line still shocks after all these years. It gets to the heart of the access-to-the-countryside debate. Ignorance of Arthur Ransome and unfamiliarity with poohsticks should not be a hindrance to anyone’s accessing our countryside. We cannot gloss over that minority of thrill-seekers who deliberately start wildfires on heath and moor and 4x4 drivers who turn bridleways into rutted quagmires. Creeps indeed. Moreover, progressive landowners are fighting moves to extend England’s right-to-roam laws. In Wiltshire, I’ve noticed landowners pulling up their drawbridges, as unfamiliar folk surge into the countryside for recreation and respite and inadvertently sabotage stewardship schemes. In the grot shops of gentrifying Beaumaris on Anglesey, we wondered why folk would pay a king’s ransom for a puffin cushion in the shape of a heart, or a painted driftwood herring gull. But what truly shocked me was the Wild Guide to Wales, an ‘off-the-beaten track’ compendium. Here were all my secret places in one book. A quick glance at the book’s Slow Food section revealed the target audience: ‘Pick up the freshest oysters and mussels along with a bottle of champagne direct from the Menai Farm HQ.’ Not a book for those who aren’t well-heeled, haven’t read Robert Macfarlane, or can’t distinguish a porpoise from a dolphin. I could hear Keith’s voice ringing in my ears. ‘Go back to your luxury tenements.’ The Oldie August 2021 31
