The Weekly Dispatch Number 6
In Which We Learn The Secrets of Walking In English Cities And On Public Footpaths,
But, Alas, Do Not Learn Morris Dancing

In England, as most everyone knows, cars are equipped with steering wheels on the right and are driven on the left side of the road. Following the same kind of logic, I guess, it is the left hand brake on a bicycle, rather than the right as it is in the States, which operates the rear brake (something it’s good to know before you’re careening down a hill). And the left hand door in a double door is the IN door—again, the opposite of what you find in the U.S.. Given these examples, it seems only reasonable to presume that when you are walking down the street people will observe the same set of navigation rules and pass on the left.

Presume again, mate.

From the day we arrived in Canterbury and headed into the city centre, we have tried to figure out how to get around people on the sidewalks. We tried the “American way” and stayed right, and it didn’t work, so we stayed left, and that didn’t work, either. We always ended up doing a little dance—kind of a bob-and-weave, feint here and step there—that got us past the other pedestrians but did little to assure us that we could use the same move the next time and achieve the same result. So we watched and learned and discovered the secret to successfully maneuvering one’s way on foot through a British cityscape: no apparent eye contact.

At first, we thought that people would not look at us when we met them on a sidewalk because of the famous “British Reserve.” We were sure that a big old American smile and cheery “Good Morning!” were a cultural affront. In fact, on one occasion when a woman did happen to glance at Beth and was greeted warmly, her expression turned to one of mouth-agape abject terror, and she flew past us so quickly that by the time I turned to watch her go, she was already gone.

But what we learned from our experiences and our observations is that people don’t make eye contact—or appear not to make eye contact—because if they don’t acknowledge you, then they can ignore the fact that you’re on the sidewalk heading in their direction and can effectively force you to move out of their way. This works especially well when they are in pairs and taking up an entire and often very narrow sidewalk. In the double-walker scenario, not only will neither person look in your direction—or appear not to look—they also will appear to be so deeply engaged in conversation that the rest of the world seems to have fallen away. This works for both serious “You have a good point there, but I disagree…” kind of dialogue and moon-eyed “I don’t care. What do you want to do?” kind of lovers’ babble.

The key to this technique, as I’ve suggested, is the appearance of no eye contact. The British have clearly developed a more evolved variety of peripheral vision than the rest of us possesses, one that involves no sneaky twitching of the eyes or sidelong glances. They can walk for miles and seem to be staring at the ground—or at their walking partner—and never, ever need to check out the path ahead.

Despite our knowing that we are inferior to our Anglo counterparts, Beth and I still attempted to replicate the technique but, as you might expect, with very little success. Whether genetic or societal, cordiality is a hard habit to break, and there were times when we were sure that we were deeply engrossed enough in a meaningless conversation to hold our ground, but then one of us would momentarily lose concentration, chirp “Hi! Nice day!” to someone who was not looking at us, as we had mistakenly thought, but was staring purposefully over our shoulder and, just like that, we had stepped off the curb and let the person pass.

Another variation of this skill is practiced on High Street, where the person bearing down on you suddenly sees something of interest in a store window, looks at it with such interest that, again, you have ceased to exist and must jump clear. I tried this myself last Friday, which is market day and extremely crowded, and did manage to cause a fairly large man to get out of my way. I was feeling pretty full of myself, but then, to my great dismay—and ultimately to my horror and humiliation—two tiny and frail elderly women, who had been hidden in the man’s shadow, suddenly appeared right in front of me, and I plowed into both of them. Luckily, one caromed off into a vendor’s table and kept her feet. The other one I grabbed by the coat collar and managed to hold upright until she regained her balance. Once I saw that they were all right, I said, “Pardon c'est la vie,” in what I hoped sounded like a French accent and ducked into the crowd.

Walking, in addition to being utilitarian, has also become a recreational activity for us. We have, as I reported earlier, struck out on our own for afternoon tramps through the countryside which, invariably, ended up with us being somewhere other than where we thought we would be. We did the same thing on bicycles, but we’ve learned that walking is a much safer way to get lost. There’s something rather terrifying in pedaling along a narrow country lane and have someone come barreling around the corner not expecting to see someone on a bicycle because there hadn’t been someone on a bicycle there yesterday. We haven’t had any real near-misses yet, but we are being more and more careful about the roads we travel on two wheels.

But it was more curiosity than safety that prompted us to take yet another hike on Saturday. This time, though, we would be looked after by members of the Canterbury Ramblers, a local walking club. They were sponsoring the walk, entitled “Public Footpaths and Rights of Way” as part of the Canterbury Festival, a two-week-long celebration that includes everything from musical and theatrical performances to art exhibits and lectures to workshops and walks like the one we signed up for. According to the brochure, this would be a five-mile walk, which was something we have done a few times already, but the start of the hike was at the University of Kent, so, by the time the other hikers had arrived by car and started to tuck trousers into heavy socks, pull on their boots and grab their telescoping walking sticks, we had already covered two miles, most of it uphill, and were peeling off a layer of clothing.

The two co-leaders of the walk, Jenny and Kath, introduced themselves to us and then moved off to talk with the rest of the group. Both Beth and I, at this point, began to wonder if we had made a mistake. Some of the people knew each other, and everyone else had come with a friend or two, but there was not much mingling. A lot of “no apparent eye contact” again, which made us think this was going to be a very long and quiet three hours. Luckily, before we returned to the campus, all 28 of us had gotten through the initial discomfort and had a great time talking about subjects ranging from recommendations for local restaurants to species of birds. One of the walkers, it turned out, lives just two doors from us and another works at Christ Church University. As we walked back down the hill after the walk was ended, we agreed that it had been one of the most enjoyable experiences of our stay so far.

The walk itself took us close to one we had taken ourselves a couple of weeks ago—near the radfall (see Dispatch # 3) and into Broad Oak Valley. This time, though, we did not get lost. Our guides, we learned later, had hiked the route a couple of days earlier to make sure we stayed on course and on time. We also learned a great deal about public footpaths and public rights of way, as the title of the walk stated. One of the first facts we learned was that there are 4000 miles of public rights of way—which includes footpaths, bridleways and byways open to all traffic (other than “ordinary” roads)—in Kent County alone. Most of these rights of way, especially the footpaths, are ancient, having served as routes for parish members on their way to church or farmers on their way to market and quite often cross private property. To make access possible, many of the landowners erect stiles for crossing fences and mow the grass—or, in some instances, their crops—to give people a clearly defined path. Not everyone, as you can imagine, is as agreeable to the notion of having people walking through their fields or across their yards, but it’s been done for a thousand years and is part of English heritage. Those who don’t like the practice—like one of the farmers whose field we walked on Saturday—simply refuses to cut a path, while others, like Madonna (who owns an estate somewhere in Great Britain) try to fight the right of way in court. Most of those who take the legal route, lose, however, and the footpaths are saved.

We also learned along the way that Tyler Hill, which is a village we passed through early on the trip, got its name, naturally enough, from the tile industry that thrived there for hundreds of years. Many of the tiles in Canterbury Cathedral were made there as were many of the roofs in the city. We were shown a couple of deep pits in the forest which had been dug to get at the clay needed for manufacturing the tiles. A little farther on, we stopped to take a look at Allcroft Grange, a Tudor style home built on a hill overlooking Broad Oak Valley. It had been the home of Thomas Sidney Cooper, a local painter—one of Queen Victoria’s favorites—whose work often contains cattle or sheep in the foreground. We saw some of his paintings in the public library and thought, at the time, that it was odd to be looking at a landscape dominated by a giant cow while, way off in the distance, Cooper included the Cathedral almost as an after-thought. Now that we know of his affinity for the bovine and the ovine, we’ll go back and look at them again with a new appreciation.

In all, the walk took about three hours, 30 minutes of which we spent fortifying ourselves at The Old Stone House pub in Broad Oak with a half-pint of Whitsun Better Bitters and a bag of Cheese Moments. On the way back to the university, I stayed at the back of the pack and talked with the other stragglers. There is, I’ve come to realize, a sense of camaraderie among those of us who dawdle. We tend to get distracted a lot more and don’t seem to mind—though we are appropriately chagrined—having to apologize to the rest of the group, who have to stop periodically to make sure we haven’t wandered off and will never be found. Luckily, this was a walk and not a forced march, and no one scolded us for being pokey.

As I said earlier, Beth and I both felt that this was one of the best experiences we’ve had, and that, in large measure, was due to the people we met. There are Ramblers Clubs throughout Great Britain, clubs like the one that hosted Saturday’s walk, and they are passionate about preserving the country’s footpaths. And they don’t simply pay lip service—or a few pounds—to see that this important part of their heritage remains; they are out, at least once a week, walking the paths and leading groups and educating people like us about the history of these pathways. They have a website—www.ramblers.org.uk—that provides more information about walking in Britain—and we are hoping that we might be able to hike in a different part of the country—maybe Scotland or Wales—when and if we get to one of those places.

Getting to one of those places has not been a major priority of ours so far. While our students and our counterparts from the other American colleges have been going off to Amsterdam or Paris or Stockholm or Rome, we have been content to investigate Kent County. It was, in fact, one of the reasons we thought this kind of an extended stay would be so enjoyable; we could settle in and feel like we, in some small way, belonged. So far, it has worked out that way, but as winter starts to loom—this past weekend was cold, and the central heating in our house did not come on—we decided we should try to take a couple of overnight trips. Our first will be to Edinburgh, Scotland, by train this weekend. In another week or so, when friends from St. Charles visit, we will go to Newmarket, which is the home of horse racing, for a couple of days, and maybe Paris, and then, in December, we hope to take the train either to the Cotswalds or to Wales.

Hosting family and friends who have been able to take time off from work to visit has also be a treat. This week, our friend, Tina, from the Netherlands is here. She and Beth were faculty exchange partners in 2002, and we have been friends since that time. Other than the fact that her train arrived an hour early and she had to stand in the cold and wait for us because she wasn’t able to call us and didn’t know our street address (both flaws in the system we will fix for future guests), it has been a great visit. We all attended a Sunday morning service at the Cathedral and then took Tina on our version of a guided tour, explaining most of the highlights accurately and making up the rest (“And then, when the knights had finished hacking him to death with their swords, Thomas Becket’s body rose up from the stone floor on a beam of white light…”).

The Cathedral trip precluded an adventure I had hoped to undertake Sunday morning: a workshop on Morris Dancing. After the 10-mile walk on Saturday—which had been preceded on Friday by a riding lesson (my first in six weeks) and an extended bicycle ride—I didn’t think my legs would be up to the kind of rhythmic hopping I’d be required to do. Then, after reading about the dance, I decided it was just as well. Besides dressing oddly in matching vests and hats, one red sock and one green sock, and draped in bells, dancers also swing things above their heads—handkerchiefs, sticks, sausages—and leapfrog over each other.

Perhaps this is one of those things best left to the natives.

Bits and Pieces

I had thought that this week’s Dispatch would be made up entirely of “bits and pieces,” but then walking seemed like a good subject, and I was off on that tangent. Maybe some other week when it’s too cold and/or rainy to get out to do much, I’ll patch together a bunch of the little observations I’ve been storing up.

Next week’s Dispatch might be a day or two late. If we do get to go to Edinburgh, we won’t return until Monday evening, which means I won’t get to write this until the next day and then, I hope, post it on Wednesday. We will also be visiting Dickens World this coming Friday, which is a kind of literary Disneyworld. I'm excited.

Thanks for reading.