It seemed simple enough: I would finish my walk to Stone, Jennie would pick me up, we would stay at a service station, then drive to our friend Sharon’s ‘Ordination as a Priest’ on the Sunday morning. In practice it wasn’t quite that simple. We stayed at Stafford South Services (which I had hoped to walk to, thinking that arriving at a motorway services on foot would give me a frisson of perversity, but there appears to be no way to do this.) Got up early and set off, aiming to reach Coventry Cathedral for 10. However, our exhaust pipe fell off just before the junction of the M6 and the M6 Toll Road and we had a new home for a while…
We waited there for an hour, finding little to amuse. The place seems to have a specific name (M6 B 209.4) and there was a carton of Malaysian fruit juice among the assorted dejecta of the verge.
We were towed away (cheers, Tony from Direct Recovery) and, by 11, found ourselves at Wolverhampton Kwik Fit rather than Koventry Kathedral. This was odd and unexpected, as we both used to work in eyeshot of the particular garage and it is territory I hope to cover on my walk. (On the way we drove past a crowd gathered to watch the demolition of the Goodyear Chimney, reminding me of the destruction of the iconic Shoreham Power Station chimney a few years ago.)
We got the train to Leamington, and managed to get to Sharon’s church where a nice lunch was served, some kosmic kids’ art was on the walls, and general grace abounded.
Will try and include Emscote in the route next year some time and until then, if I can, stay ‘in joy and simplicity of heart’ as was said in the (church) service.
