Joanne's long walks: Road to Home 2022 Day 8: Oxton Hill

19 km

He who is indeed of the brotherhood does not voyage in quest of the picturesque, but of certain jolly humours — of the hope and spirit with which the march begins at morning, and the peace and spiritual repletion of the evening’s rest. He cannot tell whether he puts his knapsack on, or takes it off, with more delight.

- Robert Louis Stevenson, Walking Tours (1876)

More fields of wheat, barley, rapeseed and root crops, dotted with charming little villages and country churches; more horses and sheep. I put another twenty kilometres between myself and my starting point and native town, Leeds.

Old House in Epperstone

Old paper mill outside Lowdham

I had no trouble finding the bridle path from the farm road at Oxton Hill down into Epperstone, where I rejoined the blue line representing my route on the gps tracker. A blue line that exists only in my imagination, and in that of Tony Maskill-Rogan, who first drew it seven years ago. I don't know whether anyone else has followed it since; if they have, they have not reported their experience on the Internet, though the British Long Distance Walkers association has published the track on their website, which is where I first encountered it. I am not following a well-defined route such as the Camino de Santiago or the Via Francigena that also exists in the minds of the people who live and work along the Way.

The route I'm following makes use of existing footpaths, bridleways (like footpaths but slightly wider, and dotted with "horse muck"), and cycling tracks (also nice but may be paved, and therefore harder on the feet). These are all waymarked, though the trail markers are sometimes hard to spot until you get close to them: they may have faded, or been swallowed up by a hedge. And sometimes the problem is that there are too many waymarks: Britain is criss-crossed with a vast network of these paths, and it is very easy to spot an arrow, thinking "ah, there's the path!" and then walk half a kilometre before realising you are on the wrong footpath! This happened to me a couple of times today, and walking up the wrong path and then back again, or messing about looking for the right way through a village or a field, is always twice as energy-consuming as striding confidently ahead on the right path.

Maybe this is why I am struggling to walk any further than twenty kilometres a day at the moment, or maybe it's because I walked too far on the second and third days, or maybe just because we all grow a year older between one walking season and the next!

In any case I am breaking down the thirty-kilometre stages into smaller bites and spending a lot of time researching accommodations that are not too far off the track. Today I had to stop after 19 kilometres as there are no more accommodations for another fifteen kilometres after the town of Bingham, and they weren't answering the phone at the only bed and breakfast there, so I couldn't risk going any further. Besides, Bingham looked like a cute, friendly market town that would offer my an opportunity to pick up some much-needed supplies, such as a pen (I must have left mine at Denise's place back in Ollerton) and a pocket knife (which I couldn't bring onto the plane and failed to find at the start of my trip in Leeds: the Decathlon didn't sell knives, which are a restricted item in England, and the other sporting goods store only had serious, and seriously heavy, hunting knives starting at 26 pounds!).

So I checked into the Bingham Townhouse Hotel, which is slightly more expensive than the other hotels I've been staying at but on a whole other level: the tea tray also includes hot chocolate and biscuits!

There is even a water cooler down the hall (as if water needed cooling, in tvis climate). And, best of all for the walker, there is not just a shower stall but a bathtub!!! After enjoying these amenities I explored the village and purchased the items I required, as well as a fresh supply of groceries from the co-op around the corner and a paperback book from the charity shop, as I foolishly assumed I would have some time to read after planning my next few day's accommodations, sorting out my photos and writing the blog entries for today and yesterday!