The day began about ten days before. It came about due to my daughter being invited to attend a meeting at Pinewood Studios. I told her that I was considering offering to drive her there, guessing that I could probably find some interesting place in which to occupy myself until it was time to collect her: Hampton Court Palace, Kew Gardens, Cliveden and the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley were some of the many places I considered but then rejected on the grounds of expensive entrance fees that I was unwilling to afford. Examining the map closely, I saw that an area named Chorleywood Common was not too far away, and as though some distant echo, I recalled that I had been taken there as an infant. Moreover, a quick online search revealed a walking route along the Chess Valley, and I was feeling ready for a walk. The weather forecast looked promising, so I resolved to go. My resolve wobbled a little when the meeting venue was changed to Shepperton Studios, some twenty five miles from Chorleywood, hardly close by. However, recognising that I felt disappointment at the prospect of not undertaking the trip, I recommitted myself to the adventure.
I do not use a satellite navigation system. Whilst I have in fact done so on several occasions, it has only ever been with mixed success, and I have on each occasion found myself disputing, or even arguing with, its robotic instructions, and become extremely fed up with being exhorted repeatedly to make an immediate U-turn. I prefer to use maps with which to plan my route, from which I write detailed lists of abbreviated instructions and observations. Several features make my lists superior to those of the Google Maps route planner: I include visual way-points (turn right at the traffic lights with a BP petrol station on the corner); I carefully detail how to handle particularly confusing junctions; I insert means of realising when something has gone wrong, and I devise instructions for getting myself back on track. My care stems partly from the frequency with which road signs in built-up areas do not show the road number, and partly from the fact that street name signs are too often obscured, located in places not visible to a passing car driver, or simply absent. I do use Google Maps street view to examine road signs and lane markings. Preparation of my in-car instruction sheets effectively rehearses sections of the journey which means that, as I drive along a road for the first time, I am recognising various features as though I had driven that way before.
Car parking is important: parking somewhere safe is paramount; parking somewhere for free is better than having to pay; parking somewhere convenient is helpful. Searching online I found several car parks listed for Chorleywood. I noted, however, that the railway station car park charges a substantial fee; a free shoppers' car park has a two hour limit; but a somewhat less-convenient shoppers' car park offers four hours parking without charge. I decided that four hours of parking would be sufficient, so used Google Maps street view to see how I would recognise the car park entrance, which was not especially obvious. While using Google Maps satellite view, I noticed that there is also a car park not listed on the web, eating into the southern edge of Chorleywood Common. The satellite photograph revealed a less formal looking shape, as though there would be no charge, and showed the car park full with parked cars. Provided there were space on the day, this car park would be most convenient.
As I intended to be walking in the countryside for three or four hours, and driving in the car for several hours either side of that, I would need a toilet before setting off on my walk. I am not a fan of attending to my bodily functions en pleine nature, public conveniences are seldom adequately clean, and I prefer not to have to ask to use a toilet in a pub when I have no intention of buying a drink. On the other hand, superstores usually have toilets, and it is possible to check online the availability of this facility. The Sainsbury's superstore closest to my route from Shepperton to Chorleywood would be at Staines.
My sister and her partner live in Maidenhead, over a hundred miles from the village in which I live, so we do not get to meet very often. The trip to Shepperton would take us within twenty five miles of Maidenhead, so the occasion seemed like too good an opportunity to miss a visit.
On ruled paper I wrote myself detailed lists of directions from home to Shepperton Studios, from Shepperton Studios to the Sainbury's superstore in Staines, from Staines to the car park on the edge of Chorleywood Common, from that car park (if full) to the shoppers' car park in Chorleywood, from Chorleywood back to Shepperton (avoiding Staines), and from Shepperton Studios to Maidenhead. Using Google Maps route planner I was able estimate how long each leg of the journey would take, and thereby calculate the required start time for each leg. The two fixed times were the start and the end of the meeting at Shepperton studios. Anyone who knows the M25 will be aware that, despite an American number of lanes along stretches that are often congested, during 'rush' hour, the traffic can slow to a standstill: a journey typically taking 35 minutes can be expected to take twice as long, and can in practice take much longer, depending on traffic density. Arriving on time when using the M25 requires planning and a following wind.
Over the days between my decision to go and the day itself, the weather forecast deteriorated until it became set to drizzle for most of the day. In a knapsack I packed some waterproof trousers and an umbrella, along with a heavy duty plastic carrier bag on which to sit. I charged my digital camera, and ensured that its memory card was empty. Never before having visited the area, at least not as an adult, I have no Ordnance Survey map of the area. I feel more comfortable when out walking if I can follow the route on a map, so I downloaded a pdf brochure of the Chess Valley Walk that I found online. Of particular significance was that it gave instructions about how best to join the Walk from Chorleywood Common. I printed the relevant page of the brochure and popped it into a punched plastic pocket. With optimism comparable to that of a compulsive gambler, I included with my gear for the day a small towel, just in case I got the opportunity to paddle in the River Chess. For once I remembered to pack a hair brush: I guessed that, come late afternoon, having being out walking for several hours, I would probably look like a wild man of the woods. I topped up the car engine with oil and checked the tyres. Late on Thursday evening I set up the bread-making machine so that I could make and take fresh sandwiches. First thing on Friday morning I prepared a flask of a herbal infusion.
Friday morning did not dawn well. Not only was it raining hard, but I had slept, when I had slept at all, remarkably badly. I felt thick-headed with a mild but intrusive migraine headache that subsequently lasted for several days. As usual in such circumstances my tinnitus was also quite pronounced. However, we managed to leave precisely on time, which is unusual. Traffic on both the M20 and M26 was busy but moving fast. Traffic on the M25 was busier, but there were remarkably few queues. By the time we left the M25 I was feeling too travel sick to be able to read my list of directions, so I had to have them read to me, but having researched the route thoroughly, I was able to recognise most of the route as we arrived at each way-point or junction. We arrived forty five minutes before the meeting start time (which I am informed was valuable).
The journey into the centre of Staines was more confusing than I had envisaged, and would have been more comfortable had I researched it better. The toilets in Sainsbury's were adequate but nothing more, and despite a quick look round several departments of the shop, I was unable to find anything I wanted to buy. Entry onto the M25 was via a highly complex road junction, and the northbound traffic was heavier than before. I had no choice but to read for myself my written directions.
An arrow flies straight from the bow to the target. Okay, it travels in a gravity-induced parabola, and in the open air its flight may be influenced by the wind. What an arrow does not do is swing round objects, hug contours, or travel in the wrong direction in order to find a faster path to the target. I have often felt fascinated with the concept of travelling from one point in space and arriving at another. Journeys rarely involve a single straight line, and a journey in a city often requires one to zig-zag this way and that, like a sailing boat tacking in order to travel upwind. Longer, more complex journeys may even demand, unintuitively, that one travels south when the destination is north, and west when the destination is east. Sometimes the two places are already well known to us, and like the sequential memory involved in reciting a poem or singing a song, what happens next on the journey comes into view as we approach it. However, when the destination is unfamiliar, the journey inevitably involves performing a precisely-designated sequence of unconnected actions, like when following the instructions for performing a complex operation on a computer: miss out or change a step and one ends up somewhere completely different, such as Watford, St. Albans or Luton. Sometimes the journey involves trusting to an intuitive sense of direction, and whilst this has worked spectacularly well for me on foot on many occasions, it has also led to some spectacular failures when driving (such as trying for an hour to free myself from the ring of hell that is the one-way system in Milan, Italy). Junction 17 on the M25, it turns out, is signposted to Chorleywood. On seeing this, I immediately wondered whether I had been mistaken in writing J18 on my list. I knew from the map that Chorleywood is only a very small town, and it seemed unlikely that it would warrant the attention of two junctions of the M25. Had I exited the motorway at Junction 17, I should have found that the sequence of right and left turns recorded on my sheet of paper had failed to bring me to the car park on the edge of Chorleywood Common, and I could have been driving around for a quite while trying to work out how best to rectify my error (which is what happened to me in Rhayader, Powys; in Hannover, Germany; and at Olomouc, Czech Republic). It is on those occasions when one is confronted by the fact that roads signs, for all that they look like they are pointing the way, are more reliably an aide-memoire. One of the reasons why I include way-points in my route list instructions is to bolster my confidence that I am still on the correct route. Doubt comes easily to me. All that is required to throw me off course at a road junction is ask whether I ought be heading in a different direction. I very nearly left the motorway at Junction 17 because what was written on the road sign was the name of the place to which I was travelling. Although very much in two minds, I chose to adhere to my instructions and drove on to exit the motorway at Junction 18. Once off the M25 and back onto better-rehearsed smaller roads, I found my way without hesitation. I arrived at the car park I had identified on the edge of Chorleywood Common where it seemed that a single vacant parking space was waiting for me. Somewhat frazzled and distinctly thick-headed, I had arrived.
The car park looked as though it was and ought to be free of charge, and the cars parked either side of mine were unadorned with parking ticket machine tickets. No parking ticket machine was visible. Ever wary, I walked over to read a small but official-looking notice that, from its appearance could just as easily have been making explicit some by-laws about the use of the Common, such as restrictions on the public use of alcohol, and that all dogs should be kept on a lead. In a sentiment reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, the notice in fact indicated that between 11.00 am and 3.00 pm (what is wrong with using the twenty four hour clock?) parking in the car park was free provided that one displays a parking ticket machine ticket, and that failing to display a ticket would be considered a contravention for which punishment would be meted out. A parking ticket machine remaining stubbornly elusive, I walked towards the other end of the car park and accosted a dog owner who was just returning to her car. She pointed to a hitherto hidden machine, but then added that it wasn't working. Not entirely reassured, I went to investigate and found it perfectly operational. Clutching my ticket (no charge), I returned to the woman and her dog who were on the point of driving away. She observed that as she had arrived well before 11:00, maybe the machine had simply refused to issue her with a ticket. Lewis Carroll or Franz Kafka?
Boots laced, knapsack strapped, and clutching my plastic-pocketed map, as soon as I set off walking across Chorleywood Common two things became evident: one, that although I have no specific memory of the place, it felt so natural to be there, that I was certain that I had visited long ago. It is precisely the sort of place that a young couple would take their two young sons for a day out from the grime of poor city suburbs. Acre upon acre of grass on which to run like the wind; stands of tall trees hundreds of years old amongst which to hide. Surely that is where we learned to play 'hide and seek'. Second, the entire Common was speckled with polite-looking women walking polite-looking dogs. Frequently in pairs, their dogs mostly on the lead, the women were out for their morning walk to encounter and talk with their friends. I wonder if their stockbroker husbands take their turn to walk the dog in the evening and at weekends. (I apologise for stereotyping.) I encountered a group of women who had found a quiet corner in which to do some dog training together - reminding me of the many ways in which New Yorkers use Central Park in Manhattan. Elsewhere a woman was training her dog alone. It was only down beside the River Chess that I began encountering men with their dogs, and couples with their dogs, as well as more women with their dogs. There are plenty of dogs where I live in eastern Kent, but Chorleywood appears to take dog ownership to an entirely new level.
The descent off the Common was through beech woods. Despite a gentle drizzle, it was a delightful place to be walking. In order to try to avoid arriving back at Shepperton late, I calculated that I needed to be driving away from the car park no later than 15:00. I had set off at 11:40, giving me three hours and twenty minutes, or an hour and a half outbound, plus twenty minutes to eat my sandwiches. I knew that I could not hang around, although it would have been lovely to have lingered.
On reaching the valley floor I arrived at the signposted Chess Valley Walk. Although I had printed the documentation I found online, it would appear that the font size had been chosen by Lilliputians. Consequently I was unable to make out clearly that the Chess Valley Walk crosses the river in a number of places. A footpath spurred off to a just-visible footbridge. Tempting though it felt to cross that bridge, I decided to press on, following signposted footpaths running along the west side of the valley. Initially close to the banks of the river, but getting gradually further away, the footpaths crossed soggy fields, ran through woods, and at one point skirted a substantial marsh or bog. What I had missed was the sign to cross the river on that footbridge and to follow the Chess Valley Walk along lanes to the east of the river. It was this latter route that I adopted on the return leg. I describe elsewhere the delights of the Chess Valley because tonally it was an experience very different from the logistics associated with the day.
Ever anxious to remain on time, and mindful that my return drive along the M25 could coincide with an early exodus for the weekend from London's shops, offices and factories, I strode along the valley floor at a pace that would have a Chihuahua trotting, and might even have had a Dachshund a little out of breath. Certainly I was dizzily gasping for breath as I climbed up out of the valley through the beech woods back onto the Common. It took an age to cross the A404: it would appear that Hertfordshire car drivers may be a little less courteous than those in the corner of eastern Kent where I live. The car was in the place where I had left it, which is always a relief, but not, in my experience, always to be relied on. I had time to drink some herbal infusion from my flask before setting off exactly on schedule. The drive back to Shepperton, by-passing Staines, was mercifully uncongested (the stationary traffic queue on the M25 began from the junction at which I exited) and uneventful, but did require that I navigate a nightmare traffic junction. Although I had encountered the junction some hours earlier that day, traffic bound for Staines used a left-hand filter lane, so I did not have to take too much notice. No such luck this time. The issue is that whilst traffic turning sharp left is predictably required to be in the left-hand lane; traffic merely bearing left is required to use the three right hand lanes; whereas traffic bearing right (along with traffic turning right towards Staines) is required to use either of the two left-hand lanes. At root is the idea that left-turners and right-bearers / turners should use the junction as though it is a roundabout, but those bearing left should drive straight across roundabout's island. It would be reasonable to propose that this arrangement lacks intuitiveness for the uninitiated, and although it has a rationale that makes intellectual sense, it sent my quick-to-doubt driving-self into a tail-spin. I wonder how many other motorists quail the first time they encounter this road junction from the west. I wonder how many road traffic accidents have resulted. Maybe this road layout was devised to reduce the number of accidents. My gut sense is that a flyover would eliminate the complication, confusion and congestion. (Of the six so-called 'magic roundabouts' in the UK, I am unhappily familiar with that in Hemel Hempstead.)
I arrived at Shepperton Studios half an hour early, and my daughter was 37 minutes late from her meeting. Looking for all the world like an industrial estate, which is effectively what the place is, the Studios was not an inspiring place to wait for over an hour. There was little to see but industrial units, no sets at which to marvel, no actors to accost for their autographs, no sense that this is a village in which dreams and illusions are created. The only minor note of interest was seeing a youngish man using a so-called hoverboard (in reality a cross between a skateboard and a Segway Personal Transporter) to travel from one building to another. I wished that I had been able to spend the time walking further along the Chess Valley.
The trip to Maidenhead delivered me back to the nightmare road junction near Staines, but approaching from the east was somewhat easier. Traffic on the M25 was now at a constipated standstill so I immediately filtered off to the left onto Plan B. However, towards Windsor the congestion became so bad that many motorists were turning round to find another route. Although tempted to follow suit, I was unwilling to return to the motorway, and therefore we had little choice but to wait patiently. The sun having set while I was waiting, at Shepperton, the world was all bright headlights and yellow streetlights. We were all in need of a nice hot drink, and we were running late. Once the traffic got moving we were disgorged onto a roundabout for which I was unprepared. I ought to have identified this as a junction at which we might stray from our route. Suddenly we were on a fast dual carriageway heading in the wrong direction. "At the next junction, make a u-turn." I knew enough to feel confident that we would soon reach the M4, on which I could travel west to Maidenhead, after which the remainder of the journey was uneventful.
It was lovely to see my sister, her partner and their dog, Crosby. The Friday being sandwiched between Guy Fawkes Night and Diwali, firework detonations were frequent. Crosby was seriously alarmed by each explosion, at which he would bark loudly, and constant attention was necessary to keep him calm. It quickly became obvious that Crosby was incapable of becoming inured to the sound. However, if offered a dog treat as soon as he barked, he would immediately forget about the firework. A cynic might have imagined that he was simply 'onto a good thing', but the degree of his distress at every explosion was evident. My sister and I talked about family-tree matters while my daughter ate chocolate cake. All too soon it was time to leave and begin the long drive home.
Being nearly 22:00 when we arrived back, it was too late to be cooking and eating a full evening meal. Instead, I chopped the fresh watercress I had bought beside the River Chess, and prepared easily the best watercress soup I have ever made. In both a somatic and symbolic way it felt as though I had internalised an authentic aspect of the Chess Valley: a fitting end to a long, intense and meaningful day.
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