Great Ouse is one of Englands longer rivers. About 260 km from near Silverstone in Northants to Kings Lynn in Norfolk. In April 2008 i’d driven from Canterbury to Norwich to take youngest son to Cambridge and third son to University of East Anglia. They’re twins. Lunch in Trinity. Stayed at Kings Lynn Youth Hostel. Next day i took my monthly ten mile walk. Always like walking by water. Prefer a circuit, but didnt have an Ordnance Survey map. Keep it simple: walk five miles upriver and return. It’s not the same walk twice. Difficult to get lost.
River is above ground level between high banks. So the whole walk felt like walking in the air, with big Fenland sky above. Busy A47. Past construction site. Sluice at mouth of River Nar. Big flat fields. Past Wiggenhall St Peter, roofless church. Wiggenhall St Germans, intact church. Walked briskly for thirty minutes. Part of research project on effect of exercise on middleaged men. Three times a week walk as fast as possible for 30 minutes, two miles in my case. Tests by man at Christ Church University, Canterbury.
Saw men fishing, one other walker. Windy. Good walk. Main memory is of being high up above flat farmland, walking but making no progress. Like a treadmill.
Later listened on car radio to BBC play about Jet Morgan. Forgot i’d arrived in twilight with headlights on. Flattened battery. AA needed next morning. Kings Lynn has a statue of George Vancouver, several museums and churches, and a pub called Wenns. Fellow visitor at the hostel was touring places connected to poet John Clare.
Here in 2022 Canterbury i intended to lament damp dull days of November and December when it never gets properly light. In summer, at this latitude, twilight makes the days longer. In winter, shorter. Result: gloom. High air pressure brings different weather. Today is sunny and frosty, minus 3 degrees Celsius last night. A short pleasant walk to post presents to sister and second son. Result: euphoria.
Whatever the weather, walking is good.
NOTE on place names. Kings Lynn was Bishops Lynn before Henry VIII dissolved monasteries. Lynn Celtic for pool. Ouse: Celtic or preceltic for river. Wiggenhall: nook of land of man called Wicga.
References: AD Mills, Dictionary of English Place-names OUP (1998) J Ayto & Ian Crofton, Brewers Britain & Ireland (2005)
Rambling Brummie 