Column: Stuart Maconie
Some of your 1000 miles are likely not to be in the ‘country’. But as far as we’re concerned, that’s absolutely fine…
Walking finds beauty anywhere.
THE GREAT WALL of China is the only manmade structure you can see from orbit. One blow of a swan’s wing can break a man’s arm (or indeed a woman’s, one supposes). Bob Holness played the saxophone on Gerry Rafferty’s 70s hit Baker Street. We hold these truths from the man in the pub to be self-evident, even if I know for certain – since I invented it – that at least one of them isn’t true. Furthermore, I have heard reports that there are any number of man-made objects visible from orbit – oil rigs, airports etc – and happily I am in no position to vouch for the close-combat skills of the swan.
But Birmingham does have more canals than Venice. Over a hundred miles of them, pipping La Serenissima herself. From Norton Canes to Selly Oak, from Dudley to Erdington, the second city is criss-crossed by waterways that are a legacy of Brum and Britain’s social and industrial history. Having just walked along a few miles of them, I want to celebrate these treasures of our urban and rural life.
This brings me to my next point. If you have been lured to the newsstand for the first time by this issue, perhaps by the launch of this year’s #walk1000miles challenge, I should say a few introductory words. Firstly, ‘Hi! Great choice of mag. I promise you won’t regret joining us here at Country Walking.’
Which brings me to my next point. Are we just about the ‘country’? Well, I don’t make the rules. That’s left to the top brass. But I like to think that by ‘country’, we are celebrating the outdoors of all this country. And certainly if you’re been inspired and galvanised to walk 1000 miles in a year, then there will be days and weeks when, unless you’re very lucky, you won’t be able to get those miles done along lofty ridges or winding streams. Sometimes, your ‘country walking’ will have to be in town or city.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and that step can be anywhere. For the days when the hills are a long way away, I can recommend Britain’s humble inland waterways and navigations.
I just walked into Birmingham’s city centre along the New Main Line of the Birmingham Canal, which runs from the sleepy cuttings of Tipton in the Black Country straight as a die for eight and half miles to the heart of new Brum’s entertainment district. This was the motorway of its day, one of the few stretches of canal where you can reach the 4mph speed limit, and designed, like so much else around here, by the great Thomas Telford. It’s a grand way into the town, even if some of the stretches are less than idyllic and the tunnels a bit gloomy, but there is history steeped and etched in every tunnel, cutting and bridge.
At the end of the line, at the magnificent Old Turn junction, you can only wonder what Tom the engineer would have made of Brindley Place, with its artisan coffee shops, vintage diners, sports arenas, hi-tech exhibition spaces and concert halls. Maybe he would have soaked it all in over a pint of Banks’ bitter – ‘unspoilt by progress’ as their motto has it – while taking in the fruits of just that: progress.
If you’re in Manchester, you could try the Bridgewater or the Rochdale. In London, try the Regent’s Canal from Little Venice to Camden, which the Canal & River Trust charmingly describes as “a city walk through the backdoor, catching London in private, with its slippers on”. My friend the former Canal Laureate Jo Bell, herself a boat dweller, puts it brilliantly when she calls them “so vernacular, so man-made, so common”. But for all that, they are still so calming and sweetly liquid, a tongue of countryside that has sweetly insinuated itself into the mouth of the city, like a kiss.