Pilgrimage

I had planned to blip the amazing "Doom Painting" at Chaldon Church today, but after catching two trains and walking a couple of miles to reach it, the door was locked. The church website had promised otherwise, and I wasnt the only disappointed visitor. We 'phoned the vicar but got no reply, so after a mosey round the churchyard, I walked back across the fields down to the gloriously named Happy Valley and along the chalk uplands of Farthing Downs, from where the City of London (owners of this land) could be seen in the far distance. 

Farthing Downs was the only countryside I ever walked in through my suburban teenage years. It was only on a school choir trip to sing in the Eisteddfod at Llangollen when I was 17, that i saw proper hills for the first time. Since the age of 12 I had happily wandered around London alone, but really, my horizons were quite limited. Even Farthing Down wasn't a place for walking - it was special for me because of its ancient history. Once I left school, all that changed. 

Leaving behind  the locked door, I went down into Coulsdon, where I lived from the age of 10 to 18. Some very formative years. So much had changed, but our old house looked just the same and standing outside it made me feel dizzy with a sense of dislocation and very vivid memories. The same happened when I realised that although the Red Lion (where I drank Irish coffees in the late 70s) had been knocked down to make room for an Aldi, the library was still standing. In my blip is the childrens' section, still in the same room though a lot more colourful. I could almost feel the excitement I felt reading "The Children of Green Knowe" in there almost 50 years ago. Flat Earth me had loved that place.

A pilgrimage is more than the journey's end  of course - it's the journey itself, and today I've enjoyed every step of the way.