Walking on Sunshine

Friday 25th May at 10 am. Liz Ingram, Liz Mellor, Jenny Lee, Jean Wilson, Barbara Robson and Anne Thatcher meet at the Boat Inn Penkridge, accompanied by three husbands, who prefer to remain anonymous for reasons of national security.The men are dispatched to Brewood to leave cars there; meanwhile the ladies sit outside the Boat, discussing quantum physics and other similar weighty topics.  Thankfully alcohol is not being served this early.

Also in the party are two white dogs that do not end the walk anything like as clean as at the start.  The walk commences with a stroll through the village of Penkridge, crossing the river Penk before heading west.  As we do this a heron, standing beside the river, takes to the air and sails gracefully right over our heads.  No one has a camera at the ready!

Our route initially leads us over metalled road and then wide dirt tracks as we head for the wild countryside.  We’ve not even left these before we hit our first “where do you think we are?” moment.

With a consensus arrived at we continue on the track.  There are no clouds to be seen and it’s starting to become very warm.  Soon we come to a stile with fields beyond, where we take a short rest.  Alongside is a tree that’s seen a bit of pollarding over the years.

It’s just here that we very nearly leave Jenny’s new camera in the long grass … but luckily don’t.  A field with many nettles is next and we all give thanks for the fine weather and our consequential choice of shorts!  At the far side of the field, we’re back on a wide farm track.

From the other side of the dense hedge we can hear fruit pickers conversing in the local dialect of these parts – Polish.  A chat with them (in English) reveals that we passed their dormitory a short while ago.

With just one more wobble (we realise the book we are following was published about fifteen years ago) our presence on the Staffordshire Way is confirmed by fingerposts and we continue to the tiny village of Mitton.   There are no other people on our walk, but we do come across some interested livestock.

There’s nothing of note to photograph in Mitton, though somebody spots a stone mounting block with a very gentle ramp and decides it must have been constructed for a very unfit horseman.  We find the path south, out of the village, through fields and into some idyllic and very verdant countryside.  We stop for a “banana break” and make a determined attempt to leave Jenny’s walking pole in the long grass.  Luckily this also fails, but we fear the next thing may be that we mislay Jenny herself.

Now confused only by the fact that somebody has created a large lake since our book was printed and then threatened by a herd of cows, who take an unhealthy interest in the dogs, we enter the churchyard at Lapley from the fields, silently and unseen by the villagers.

The observant amongst you will have spotted it’s now ten past one, so we take our lunch sitting on the churchyard wall.  Fully refreshed, full of renewed enthusiasm, we stride off once more ……. in completely the wrong direction.  Does this faze us?  Not a bit.  We reset our gyroscopes, walk back past the Vaughn Arms (which is sadly boarded up) and find the correct path in the direction of the Shropshire Union Canal.  This we eventually reach, joining the towpath at bridge number seventeen.

The canal is very straight here and the towpath is broad … and very unusually, it’s quite dry.  We pass some narrowboats, moored alongside the bank.  A pair of white ducks stand beside one ~ they appear to be pets.  They foolishly mistake the dogs for friends and one narrowly escapes the jaws of death.  We come to a canal bridge over the A5, courtesy of Thomas Telford, and stop there for a group photo.

We’re just a mile from our destination now and one can almost smell the Jennings Lakeside beer, as carefully nurtured at the Bridge Inn.  For completeness, and purity of spirit, we have to walk past a set of steps where a notice invites us to the garden.  We pass under a bridge to finish the walk properly, climbing  an incline to the road.  But now the end is truly in our sights …. a place to sit, a place to remove one’s boots and a delightful pint of shandy!

Submitted by Joe