It hadn't been a good night. Although the field behind the "Black Swan" in Homersfield had lovely soft grass, the lack of a camping mattress for insulation, and the relatively cold July night had resulted in a restless and uncomfortable nights sleep. Still, things looked up when I was stood outside my tiny tent stretching, and another camper came over for a chat. Although he was initially interested in my tiny bivouac tent (which incidentally i'd discovered was so small and cocoon shaped that it was impossible to put on a pair of trousers inside), we quickly got chatting about more interesting subjects.
My fellow camper was a family man from nearby Ipswich, away for a weeks summer camping trip with his two young sons (who loitered in that bored, disinterested way that kids do when their dad is talking to another grown up). After exchanging pleasantries, and our mutual appreciation for the countryside hereabouts, we got to talking about access to the countryside. My fellow camper related how, the previous afternoon, he and his sons had taken their canoe onto the nearby River Waveney for a paddle. After an hour or so of enjoyable paddling upstream, they were hailed by a man on the river bank who told them to get off his river. Unaware they had paddled onto private property, they dutifully obeyed and headed back downstream, but on reflection the encounter clearly rankled my new friend.
I expressed my disapproval of such a wonderful natural resource being set aside for the enjoyment of the few over the many (what would Thoreau think about the idea that something as alive and changeable as a river could be considered private property I wondered). As it turns out, the conversation was timely. I only discovered later that earlier in July, Griff Rhys Jones had set out to spark a national debate on the subject of river ownership in England & Wales. Whilst shooting his TV series "Rivers", he had discovered just how many of the rivers in England & Wales are privately owned, particularly by angling clubs. You can read his arguments for shared use of the rivers here http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/outdoors/article6681018.ece .
I consider the network of public footpaths and bridleways across the UK to be an incredibly valuable national resource, many of which are shared between walkers, cyclists and horse-riders. And yet rivers, amongst the most ancient of byways, are bought and sold, set aside for the sole pleasure of anglers in many cases. I'm sure if there are any anglers out there reading this I will be flamed in the comments (just as Griff Rhys Jones received much criticism in the national press), but surely there is a way for anglers, canoeists, swimmers and others to share our rivers ?
2.If you're wondering why i'm rambling on about these matters at such length, it's because the walking on the second day of my adventure was not at all interesting. The small fields, hedgerows, woodland and wildlife of 'Constable Country' i'd enjoyed on day one had been replaced by industrial scale fields - massive expanses of bare dirt or wheat reaching almost to the horizon. There were occasional pockets of woodland, but either too far off or too over-powered by the factory farming vista to be enjoyed. The only bird I encountered all morning it seemed, was a dead crow strung up in a tree by a farmer as a deterrent to others.
Despite my small pack and the flat terrain, my legs were aching and I had at least one nasty blister on the way. Having eaten my emergency snickers bar for breakfast I opted to leave the Angles Way and head into the small market town of Bungay for a break. It was Sunday, and as I limped into the market square I realised with dismay that almost everything was closed. By chance I wandered down a side street and discovered a classic English greasy spoon cafe tucked away behind the square - it was open and doing a roaring trade. This place was old school, everything was fried (probably in lard). The all day breakfast came with black pudding and a fried slice, so I ordered one. Standing at the counter, I was amazed to see a coffee machine. This was the kind of cafe where coffee usually comes out of a catering sized tin of Nescafe instant, so I was impressed to discover that the double espresso was really pretty good.
The afternoon's walking proceeded much as before. Although the path occasionally rejoined the river, I was really too tired to enjoy it. The low point of the afternoon came when I rushed a navigation decision at a footpath junction and headed off into a farmers field instead of the half concealed footpath entrance to the right. Realising my mistake after a kilometre or so, and lacking a compass, I headed on a rightward course through open fields, jumping over fences and crawling through hedgerows in an attempt to regain the path until I eventually came out at a junction. It took me ten seconds or so to realise that i'd been here before !
3.
I hobbled into Beccles late in the afternoon. Beccles, another Suffolk market town, was historically a river port, and the town now seemed to be somewhat dominated by the leisure boats moored up on the River Waveney below. The next stretch of the Angles Way involved 7 miles of riverbank walking through the featureless Beccles Marshes. With Beccles itself offering nothing in the way of camping amenities, and no prospect of any towns or villages before dark, I decided to stop for dinner at a pub on the town square, before heading off into the marshes to find a bivouac.
At dusk, I left the Beccles boat club and the numerous pleasure craft moored at the Beccles quayside behind as I wandered down the river bank looking for a bivy. The River Waveney was larger now, and the path ran alongside on a raised bank before the ground dropped away again into the extensive marshes. At first I was worried that the marshes might be too water-logged for an overnight camp, but after a short walk I came up on a deciduous wood just off the path. It was private land, but after leaping an irrigation ditch and scrambling through some brambles I was inside and the woodland floor was relatively clear. It wasn't long before my bivy tent was up and I was inside in my sleeping bag.
As I lay there I reflected on the days events, the conversation with the man from Ipswich and my own current transgression sleeping in some landowner's private wood. Despite the British governments repeated efforts to categorise trespass as a criminal offence, it remains a civil offence or, as I would say, a fundamentally civilised offence. My fleeting visit to the wood would leave no trace nor cause any damage, and surely it is better for something as special as a green wood to be appreciated by someone than to be fenced off and abandoned by all ? Further to this, don't we all have a responsibility to rail against the forces which would carve up and fence off the countryside ? After all, our wonderful network of public rights of way, and our right to roam (in the form of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 in England & Wales, and the Land Reform Act 2003 in Scotland) are not historical legacies from a more civilised past, but rather hard won victories through the efforts of the Ramblers Association, those involved in the Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932, and many others. In this context, Griff Rhys Jones call for shared use of our rivers, harks back to a grand British tradition of civil disobedience, and we can only hope that in time the English Countryside and Rights of Way Act will be modified to increase access to England's waterways (just as Scotland's Land Reform Act already has done over the border).
Flicking through Thoreau by torch-light, I discovered this gem which sums up my thoughts much better than I ever could hope to. Thoreau lived on a frontier but even he could guess that "...possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only - when fences shall be multiplied...and walking over the surface of God's earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman's grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it."
I eventually drifted off to sleep with the sound of summer rain filtering through the leaves and falling onto my tent.
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