Continuing my journey from Southport (in the North West) to Brighton (on the South coast), I walked from Stafford station to Wolverhampton – the town where I lived between 1986 and 1999. On the way I saw a sinister picture of a dog-like creature, sunk beneath the River Sow; had an Alice-like glimpse of the M54 from the other side of the fence; and found some beat-generation-style graffiti.
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Thinking
As the train approached Stafford, a recorded voice advised ‘Please make sure you take everything with you.’ I couldn’t obey as I didn’t have everything – just some things. (Even so, my daysack was heavy – probably heavier than some people carry for a camping trip .) Carrying all possible things around could be handy- think how useful MP3 players are – we would never need to struggle to describe something, just whip out the actual object. But then, maybe we do have everything – if the present moment is all there is, then it contains everything, or at least as much as we’re going to get. Each of us is a kind of mobile everything. I stepped off the train.
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Actually walking
I set off along the river. I always seem to be leaving and entering places alongside water. It’s like sneaking out of a place, through the ‘ripped backsides’…
These bits of Stafford seemed lush and overgrown – with something of the science fiction ruin about them.
I had planned to walk over Cannock Chase and end up in Penkridge. However, just outside Stafford I decided to change tack and head for Wolverhampton, which I calculated would be about 16 miles away (in practice it was 20).The rationale was that heading south on a route interwoven with the M6 was truer to the purpose of the journey, walking a journey usually made in cars and trains. I left the Sow and joined the Staffs and Worcester Canal for many miles of waterside walking in an increasingly hot day. (Had a brief stop at Penkridge, for a rather chilly pint of Banks’s – a beer last sampled on a February leg of this walk.)
Under the M6
Digressing
Staffordshire have provided some good signs explaining the wildlife of the Radford Meadows. These have their own poetics, for instance inscribing the idea of a ‘Winter Wonderland’ on the baking landscape. Helpful though this is, I’m thinking I should get myself into some real wilderness soon, where the viewpoints remain unwritten.
I left the canal to walk a few hundred yards along the A5 (the famous Roman road Watling Street and an earlier Celtic trackway) to Gailey Island. My sole motivation was to visit a shop, often seen from the car, which is festooned a vast profusion of signs.
If I expected a phantasmagoric emporium, a shop selling everything, I was disappointed. But it was a nice shop selling many things, from vintage brandy to logs.
From there I walked a few miles on the A449, a dual carriageway helpfully supplied with pavement. However I doubted that pavement was supplied to cross the M54, so rejoined the canal (thus adding miles to the journey.) More miles, more canalside architecture, eventually approaching Wolverhampton via a spectacular avenue of poplars. (At this point a boat went past, piloted by a skinny guy sporting a magnificent tattoo of Conan the Barbarian, based if I wasn’t mistaken on a John Buscema drawing from the 1970s.)
Weary and aching, I was glad to reach a bridge with a name I recognised. I left the canal at Hordern Road, and let the autopilot take me to the Newhampton
I must have been here hundreds of times and always admired its happy mixture of clientele – bikers, bowlers, CAMRA members, locals, students – I’ve seen bishops, prostitutes, and artists in here through a real-ale fug. A pub as a place with everything. From my brief visit on an blazing afternoon I couldn’t tell if it is still like that, but I can vouch for the quality of the beer based on a pint of Landlord.
I crossed the ring road – home of the much-mourned ‘ring road tramp‘ and, once, resting place of the remains of a murdered woman, undiscovered for some weeks. Back in the present, a young woman came at me and asked for ‘something…anything’ while I was taking a picture. In the heat of the moment, defensive, I gave her nothing – not my finest moment.
I walked through the city to the station. The route was lousy with memories, too many – everywhere I looked was somewhere I had lived, worked, played, laughed, cried or got married. All the good stuff – my personal everything – has come with me up to the North West, so there’s no point reminiscing. Next time, I will try to revisit this town with fresh eyes, as a visitor – maybe make some new memories.
Leaving
One thing I did enjoy seeing was the regenerated Low Level Station. When I lived in Wolves it was an empty shell, and the route to the Great Western Pub was through picturesque desolation. It seems to be on an up, vast schemes unfolding. A mashup of the station building with a new Premier Inn seems to be the first step.
What an extraordinary MySpace page the NewH has! However, the bowling green is still looking fine.
Liz is right. It is an extraordinary dog’s breakfast of a site.
Unlike your own, Mister_Roy, which is as fragrant and lovely as your own good self.
Well that’s MySpace for you – every page I’ve seen looks like that. They don’t seem to have tailored it to the bowling green audience, just insane people with reverse kaleidsocope vision. Maybe it gets coherent after a few pints…
Not one of the most glamorous parts of the trip, whatever memories it brings to the surface
glam is a sham and meta is beta
& btw that skew-wise pic gave me a headache!
Perhaps I’ll hook up with Black Country glam rockers Slade for the next bit. And invest in a tripod.
As you suggest lush & overgrown Stafford has something of the science fiction about it. Seeing the plants overflowing from the balcony and the bird against the grey sky, also the tunnel below
the M6, it all seems like one of J G Ballard’s scenes of suburban rot, maybe something from High Rise or America, that sense of decay and so on (the world returning to a preter-human or more feral state). When you have time to take in the everyday, i.e when yr walking and not hurrying, the uncanny in the commonplace really emerges.
Very nice Roy. Will return to read more (and finish watching Redtown….too many peculiar mixed-up memories for only one sitting). Lovely photos, and your Google map reminds me of the opening credits of Dads Army!
Takes me back. I lived three-quarters of my life in Wolverhampton (Fallings Park and Heath Town) so I particularly enjoyed this part of your journey.
It looks like our paths are crossing!
Simon: thanks! Looking at your route, Wolves was/is where our paths will cross as I will be east of yours from now on. There’s a chance I’ll head SW from around the High Wycombe area, in which case we might coincide again after Bournemouth…
Amazing. Now I hear your on Latitude too! I don’t have iPhone so it will show my home address unless I switch on GPS (which I do when out and about). simon@sjharvey.org.uk if you’re curious.
[…] into Shropshire (a county I now see as somewhat uncanny) I wandered through Staffordshire and into the Black Country. Revisiting places I have lived is part of the plan, hence stops in Wolves, Dudley and […]
[…] personal waypoints have included places I’ve lived (Wolverhampton, Stourbridge, Dudley) or that have some meaning to me, such as Mentmore, former home of […]
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