UK Camino Ingles: Day 5 The English Way - 12 miles

Day 5 did not disappoint but it dawned rainy again and came with a compliment of showers and imposing storm clouds that thundered in the distance pretty much the whole time we walked. It also came with our first experience of the River Itchen and the flooded trails that we had been warned about before we started out in Reading and by river path walkers this day. We actually rerouted around the river as hikers, wet up to the top of their Wellingtons, kindly suggested we turn back. We made it to Winchester, however late it was, and spent the evening hours enjoying a rain-free walk around this beautiful Medieval town. 

Another wet start

Alresford did not want to let us leave as we found an interesting churchyard, an historic railroad, and met chatty neighbors out early the shops for fresh fish and produce. It was early in the misty rain but even so the town was bustling. The Camino Ingles joined the Pilgrims Way (Winchester to Canterbury), the Itchen Way, and St. Swithun's Way through the morning which gave the path a bustling feel as well. By this point in our walk I had lost all track of what day it was so I am guessing it was market day or a weekend? Anyway, it was very people-y. 

The Pilgrims Way joins the Camino Ingles

Alresford Station - The Watercress Line - and conductor Sue 

Watercress cultivation, water meadows, River Itchen

When we left the town and began to follow the River Itchen, along its banks and through its ancient water meadows, our pilgrimage truly took on its riverine/watery theme as we navigated stream fordings, flooded paths, and pop-up storms. Now I really got sucked into my newfound love for chalk streams. Trout were everywhere on their clear water gravel beds. Watercress and submerged aquatic grasses swayed with the strong current. Sometimes we swayed, too, as we balanced on narrow paths with water rising inches from our feet on either side. One slip or stumble and one of us could have easily ended up in the river. I became preoccupied with my cousin's safety and began to catastrophize with any number of doom and gloom scenarios in my head!  

One of several crossings today

A beautiful chalk stream, River Itchen

In any case, we did not go for a swim today but the river and the water meadows did their magic on me helping to wash away my distracting thoughts and reminding me how sacred the watery landscape would have been to our ancestors.  Rivers were integral to pre-Christian Celtic worship and when overlapped with Christian belief and traditions, streams of all sizes, springs, fens, and marshes became holy places, givers of life, worthy of deep reverence. St. Swithun figured highly today - he's one of Molly's favorite saints - and while we were walking in the same landscapes that he once lived in, keeping him in mind today made our spiritual connections to this beautiful river even more powerful.  River Itchen had me under its spell. 

Narrow, flooded path

We had to backtrack off the river at one exceptionally flooded section thanks to the warnings of a few walkers and one gentleman in particular who loved the idea of pilgrims walking through his favorite trail system but not mud-up-to-our-knees pilgrims. He was kind and concerned and gave us an alternative route on the road-bound St. Swithuns Way to reconnect with the river further downstream in Itchen Abbas, where we ducked into the church of St. John the Baptist just in time for the skies to open in downpour. 

Detour off the river

Over the hill 

We passed through wildflower fields and ancient woods, strolled along wet hedges and misty alleyways. We stopped at a pub and had delicious homemade pizza to warm us and revive our soggy spirits and to get our newest stamp to add to our pilgrim's passport. Medieval pilgrims would not have had these fun little cards to stamp along the way but they would have purchased little pilgrim badges stamped in tin or made with lead molds with the names of local churches and holy sites stamped into them. Some pilgrims collected the badges and wore them like our grandmothers and moms would have worn a charm bracelet. Some pilgrims, finding sacred waters on the way, would place their badges into rivers and bogs as offerings for safe journey. These are still found today in marshes and bogs all over the UK and France by metal detectorists and archeologists.

St. Swithun's Church, Martyr Worthy

Saxon-Norman-Medieval beauty

With the rain coming down again we stepped into the church of St. Swithun and delighted in its beautiful interior, found another stamp, and sat a few minutes to gather our thoughts. St. Swithun, a beloved Anglo-Saxon bishop of the church in Winchester (d. 863) was credited with many miracles during and after life, but his feast day of July 2 is best known as a weather-marker date in the cycle of seasons in south England, a kind of meteorological haunting. I love these little saint's tales and this one in particular for where we happened to be and what the weather was doing.  Tucked inside the 1,000 year-old church drying off and warm as the rain poured down outside, we felt like part of the good saint's story.

Entrance to Winchester from the Windall Moors

We entered the city along the River Itchen and found our lodgings in a faux-prison-themed hotel just on the outskirts of the city walls. It was a fun place! I loved my room and wanted nothing more than to take an extra long hot shower then pull on my sweat pants and hoodie to sink into the most comfortable bed under a most comforting comforter. But we wanted to see Winchester so badly that we gave ourselves a short break to freshen up then I went knocking on my cousin's door for our next adventure - to walk Winchester at night. What a beautiful twilight walk it was, full of bustle as the day had been, despite the rain. 

Truly one of my favorite cathedrals - finally in-person! 

The Bishop's House 

Defensive walls of Winchester (Roman/Saxon/Norse) at Kingsgate

The High Street

Alfred the Great!

Walk back along the river to our hotel

We reconnoitered the old city and made plans to come back for a day after we'd finished our walk in Southampton. I'm really glad we previewed the city and so we had a good feel for its layout and access that when we returned we knew exactly where we needed to go. A very lovely city surrounded by rivers, water meadows, forest, and chalk downs. 

Notes:

BBC dispels the St Swithun Day forecast. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/48991574

Water meadow conservation includes keeping them operational as they may have been in the Middle Ages. I fell in love with the whole water meadow ecosystem that is part historical and part natural. I'm thinking the gentleman we met walking the flooded Itchen Way path may have been a local water meadow manager. He was so knowledgeable and a real conservationist. https://vitacress-conservation.org/stoke-mill-water-meadows/

We would walk River Itchen's Eastleigh Water Meadows further on, but this paper gives a good idea of the archeology, operations, and surviving uses of these fascinating places which on this day, Day 5, I really started to love despite being ankle deep in their workings.

https://www.hantsfieldclub.org.uk/publications/hampshirestudies/digital/2010s/Vol_66/Cook&Young.pdf

Thank you Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust for all the work they do. We walked through so many preserves I lost count! https://www.hiwwt.org.uk/

The Black Hole B&B - a quirky but comfy prison-themed hotel

UK Camino Ingles: Day 4 - The English Way 15 miles

Day 4 of our Camino Ingles in southern England began and ended with SUN! Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! With another another long walk ahead of us, we met Jane at the Wheatsheaf Inn early so she could shuttle us around all the messy highways and dangerous backroads back to our end point yesterday in the little thatch-roof village of Dummer.  We took a little stroll around the village to admire the thatcher's good work, including their signature whimseys atop a few of the homes - ducks, geese, rooster, hound, and cat.  The old church of All Saints was closed (it was early!) but we loved checking out the different periods of architecture that combined over the centuries to create the present day structure. A part of it dates to the 12th century and while we guessed at the other building styles and periods, I loved how it was both old and new(er) all in one look. 

All Saints, Dummer village

Thatcher's whimseys atop the top

I haven't talked much about the reasons for our pilgrimage, and why we chose this route. I certainly don't want to assume I knew why my elder cousin had made such a long journey to walk seventy miles in England. I had my ideas but never came right out and asked. But my intentions were two-part. I was walking to participate again in the ancient practice of pilgrimage, this time as a sojourner and companion to another pilgrim. I was also walking to honor the idea of revival. Feeling revived by a fill day of sunshine, this was a good time to think about my intentions.

A very birdy estate lane 

So much mud, despite the blue skies

The recovery of religious pilgrimage to the English landscape has been nothing short of remarkable, especially to me coming from a country which has very little of its own pilgrimage tradition. Pilgrimage as a practice dates back thousands of years to include people walking with intention to sacred sites during the Iron Age through the Middle ages. Pilgrimage has been an important shaper of the British landscape from Celtic-pagan times through the Middle Ages. Many of the Christian traditions, holy sites, and shrines to saints are simply layered over pre-Christian  sites with "revised" meanings and Christian symbolism but in many cases the older pagan belief system shines right on through. It was great fun to find these multilayered pilgrimage sites.

St. Mary the Virgin (1190) 

Medieval floor tiles

When King Henry VIII ordered the Dissolution of the Abbeys and Catholic pilgrimage ritual in 1530s, the banishment of the sacred walk or sojourn was very hard for worshippers to let go of. Pilgrims protested in York by participating in the Pilgrimage of Grace, a mass defiance against Henry's order. Other regions revolted as well, including the mass demonstration of the Lincolnshire Rising. The king's response came hard and heavy. Pilgrims, priests, nuns, bishops, and monks were murdered during violent suppressions.  For a country as pedestrian as England, the banning of pilgrimage and the dissolution of the abbeys was a very bitter chapter of Britain's walking history. 

Interior of St. Mary the Virgin

Celtic crosses of St. Mary the Virgin churchyard

Since 2017 the Church of England has lifted restrictions on Christian pilgrimage and with it has come a flood of interest in recovering lost routes and restoring ancient sites. The British Pilgrimage Trust is one major organization leading this rival through historical research, support for route-reopening, and marketing of pilgrim services along the many paths that have been re-created or restored.. Their landmark book Britain's Pilgrim Places by Nick Mayhew-Smith and Guy Howard (2020) is jammed-packed with routes to choose from and places to visit and, at over 500 pages of site descriptions, maps, and 2000 years of history, it would take a lifetime to walk just what is featured here. (The St. James Way is featured on pg. 16) The Church of England, too, is encouraging the return of pilgrimage as devotional walking and remembrance travel. Revived interest in ancient histories and walking traditions has brought new interest to old sites like Hadrian's Wall (Roman) and those featured by English Heritage. 

Pilgrim's Tea at Candover Valley Community Store

A community's labor of love 

I love this history of revival and I love the landscapes that are being revived because of it. By Day 4 we had passed through so many nature reserves and conservation areas that are accessible by footpath. Folks we met enjoying their daily walks (mostly with dogs), birding, or riding, were excited to share with us news of a fish species returning, the restoration of bird species like the Red Kite or Crane, or their latest sightings of the Water Vole ( the top favorite). To walk from village to village, across a city, or cross-country on this restored route, immersed us in both the human and natural history and gave us ample opportunity to meet people and talk about what we were seeing and the changes they were experiencing on the land. The good folks at the Candover Valley Community Store chatted us up for some time! We not only received a pilgrim stamp which they were so excited to provide for us, but they served us a proper tea for our mid-day rest. 

We visited three churches along the Way of St. James on Day 4 - all of them special in their own unique way and history. The "old" St. Mary the Virgin was a tiny but ancient church built by Saxons originally. It was changed over time to include - then lose - its bell tower (bellcote) and long transepts so that now it is just a little hut of a chancel. We spent a good while in this old place, trying to decipher the wall paintings and architectural features important to Saxon stone masons. We next visited the "new" St. Mary the Virgin almost across the road in Preston Candover with its 19th century modern atmosphere - a soaring and colorful vault ceiling stenciled with floral designs. Our last church visit, the Church of St. James, was also a delight and we spent a lot of time here admiring the woven wheat corn dollies, a delightful connection to Celtic pagan traditions for end-of-harvest season. 

Cross harvested wheat fields

Down beautiful Beech-lined lanes

Church of St. James

The flower arrangements here were astounding

I have to admit that this day introduced to me a new hobby for when visiting England - to search for stone-scratched sundials on very old churches. We found three today and of course I took way too many pictures of them. Dating to to Anglo-Saxon times, these sundials were incised into the priest's door of Saxon churches. They served to tell the priest when mass times were by inserting a wheat straw into the center hole - the "hand" of the sundial - to cast a shadow on the prescribed lines of hours of mass. It became an obsession to go look for them. When I saw a large collection of them at the British Museum later on the following week (which I found in a book on Anglo-Saxon sundials) it was good to know I wasn't the only one who couldn't get enough of them. I did not buy the book. It was heavy. The author took way more pictures than I did. 

Pew-end wheat corn dollies were amazingly intricate

Pagan and Christian together

Sundials for mass times

Somehow we missed a turn and wound up walking a few extra miles until we strolled into New Alresford, a charming market town in the dark (!!) lit by streetlamps and the warm lights of interior rooms of shops and pubs. Though our official route map stated that the day would end in town at 11.5 miles, we noted that it was probably because of our good mood on this sun-splashed day that we didn't even notice we'd walk a few extra steps - errmmm - miles.  Anyway, our room at The Swan Inn in Alresford was a delight and the dinner so delicious. 

Notes:

The British Pilgrimage Trust works to re-establish pilgrimage routes and provide modern pilgrims with resources on lodgings and accommodations, places to eat, etc. while promoting local and cross-country pilgrimage as making good economic sense (as it was in the past!) for local villages and towns. This organization combines both pedestrian travel, bridleways, and biking networks in their routes

The ancient Celtic tradition of weaving wheat corn dollies was alive and well at the church of St. James! All of the corn dollies (corn being another term for grain) were so beautiful!  https://motherhylde.com/the-corn-dolly-origins-and-how-to/ and Eleanor Pritchard's wonderful https://www.eleanorpritchard.com/journal/2020/7/21/a10on8zvkgzvoavwsfwlw70bjz8ojt 

See also this Artistic Horizons blog piece on the incredible wheat straw weaver Fred Mizen (1893 - 1961) https://httpartistichorizons.org/2021/04/28/fred-mizen-1993-1961/

We came across several ancient churches under the care of The Churches Conservation Trust - my hands down favorite being Old St. Mary the Virgin in Preston Candover on Day 4. 

UK Camino Ingles: Day 3 - The English Way, 11.5 miles

With a long day ahead, Molly and I left our cozy Chapel B&B in Little London early in the morning in the mist, drizzle, breeze, and rain to continue our journey on the Camino Ingles. It was fun to look for all the medallions and yellow arrows placed along the way and they were much needed as our path intersected with many public footpaths, bridle paths, and trails that wayfinding was a challenge. All in all, however, the day was a fine one especially with an afternoon of sun to take in the views and the warmth.

 

Onward - in the rain

Benedictine Priory at Pamber

Our historic church stop for this section was a visit to the Benedictine Priory Church in Pamber, Monk Sherborne, which unfortunately was not open. Instead its imposing Norman exterior kept us gawking through the raindrops for a good while. Built around 1100, this heavy block of Norman stonework includes the tower, chancel, and turret stairs and is all that remains from the fortified "alien" French-speaking cell of the Abbey of St. Vigor in Normandy. Strategically located between the former capital of England in Winchester and the military headquarters in Windsor, this great priory was endowed by Henry du Port and his son, Henry I. The prior hosted many royal families and bishops who traveled between the ports onward to Winchester and Windsor. It survived the great suppression of alien houses in 1414, but suffered steady decline mostly due to lack of house sponsors, bad regional economics, and mismanagement of its farm estates. The Dissolution of the Abbeys did it in for good, sending the monks away back to France and dismantling the stone buildings for repurposing elsewhere. Local parishes kept some form of worship running here through the 1600s with community tithing for a single priest. 

From Grant (2000) "The Alien Benedictine Priory of Monk Sherbourne" (See Notes)

The rain weakened into a pattering drizzle and a brisk breeze began to blow in, pushing the shelf of clouds that had been hanging over us for three days to the east. Little patches of blue sky began to show as a break between storms appeared. We continued on, following the blue and yellow medallions across the countryside, through a farm, and on to a golf course where we were entertained by numerous groups of men braving the weather for rounds of golf. We sat huddled on a friendship bench above the ninth hole and were greeted by smiling golfers as they teased and laughed with their mates for our entertainment. We swallowed some Ibuprofen and snacked a little but soon were cold again so time to keep moving.  

Follow the scallop shell

Holloway 

Keeping to the farm road instead

Familiar yellow arrow in the roughest rough

Snack break, Vitamin I, and entertainment

This morning's walk was one to endure rather than completely enjoy that is until we came upon a kebab van/ food truck along a busy highway. Then, with hot food in our tums and warm tea (for Molly) and a Diet Coke (for me) we were energized for the afternoon. As we maneuvered carefully along muddy field edges the sun began to shine and our moods were lifted! Hello, sun! 

Kebab van and a lovely hot meal on the curb

Our first hour of sun!

Sun dappled holloway

In bright sun we passed near the town of Basingstoke and across the bridge over the railroad where we got an engineer of a double diesel shunter to give us a two-toned horn as he passed beneath us. We dedicated our first trainspotting and tone salute to our favorite trainspotter Francis Bourgeois (of social media fame) and shouted out "Brilliant!" in his honor. 

Through lovely Basingstoke

Trainspotting and a tone!

Before long we had passed along the edge of town and out into a residential suburb of Basingstoke that featured our longest trail section of the day for several miles on a restored Roman road. It now serves as a hike and bike path and was busy with walkers taking advantage of the sun. Like all Roman roads, it was straight as an arrow and knifed alongside the busy town until we reached the charming little thatched roof village of Dummer. Here we had to wait for our ride to take us across a crazy busy section of highway and busy (dangerous) backroads to our lodging for the night at the Wheatsheaf Inn. Thanks to Jane and Peter of Walking Holiday (see Notes) who shuttled us when we needed rides to distant lodging and transferred our luggage (not our backpacks) between stays. Their help on this trip was invaluable. 

The Roman Road

End point for the day to wait for ...

...Jane and the company new ride!

This is my opportunity to give the new Camino Ingles guide and transfer company Walking Holiday a huge shout out. Our trip was planned and supported by Peter and Jane, two of the local folks whose knowledge of the Camino Ingles was of such great help to us. I normally do not use guide and transfer services when I hike preferring instead to do my own trip planning while I try to live out of a single backpack, but for this trip we decided with our lack of knowledge about this new route and having to take extra clothing, boots, raingear, and warm clothes to cover two seasons along with the route's current lack of on-trail lodging options, we'd better consult with Peter. Best decision! Thank you Peter and Jane for the support and excellent service. Highly recommend. 

Fish and chips at the Wheatsheaf Inn was heavenly (Molly had lamb pie)

Notes:

Moira Grant (2000) "The Alien Benedictine Priory at Monk Sherbourne, Hampshire from the Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries." Hampshire Field Club Archaeology #55. 

https://www.hantsfieldclub.org.uk/publications/hampshirestudies/digital/2000s/vol55/Grant.pdf

This BBC article brought so much attention to the newly re-established Camino Ingles in southern England that everyone we talked to referred to it, especially Peter and Jane and the guys at The Plough Inn who worked with the author, Jessica Vincent, to provide background on the many villages and landscapes it traverses, its churches, and hopes for a boost to local economies. 

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230611-st-james-way-the-return-of-the-uks-medieval-highway

Here's to Francis the Trainspotter and our first horn tone - brilliant! We had fun watching his videos snug in our beds at night, learned a lot about Britain's love of trains, and how to wave appreciatively for a happy honk.