By Nigel Heath
We did a giant leapfrog when we returned to complete the very rural Staffordshire Way.
My lifelong walking companion and poet Peter Gibbs and I had walked our first three days on this long-distance trail from its Mow Cop hill top starting point across country to Uttoxeter in appalling April weather with sections of the path so muddy it was almost impossible to stay on our feet.
But when we pulled out the relevant Landranger ordnance survey maps to plan our next outing, we quickly realised that we had already covered much of the middle section on earlier walks.
So, we decided to regain the trail by overnighting in the small town of Penkridge which, incidentally, we had last visited the previous year while walking the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal.
Now I think it is worth saying that this walk across open country taking in many a ploughed field edge and very often overgrown paths is not for the faint hearted because as we discovered the trail signs are few and far between and as far as we know there is no published official guide book to follow.
So, if one chanced out without the relevant OS maps to give one a most valuable overview it would be so easy to get lost or start going around in circles!
However, having said that we have always found that diverting to one’s own route to get from A to B when necessary is all part of the fun and our first day out from Penkridge enroute for the small and picturesque town of Brewood was very much a case in point.
For having navigated ourselves to the hamlet of Mitten the way led up a vast and recently cropped field of stubble to a ridge and then over and down through knee and waist-high grasses to a brook now almost completely overgrown by the highly invasive plant Himalayan Balsom.
Here instead of turning left for Lapley, we turned right by mistake and ended up following a series of paths to eventually emerge onto a lane not far from the neighbouring village of Wheaton Aston on the Shropshire Union Canal and right next to The Hartley Arms.
A quick study of the map told us that after a refreshing pint we could now follow this quiet waterway for some three miles all the way to journey’s end in Brewood and had we not done so, we would never have had the great pleasure of meeting former nursery nurse Daisy Yardley.
She had decided to sell her house, buy a narrowboat, and sail off and enjoy a roving life on Britain’s amazing network of waterways.
“I was working all hours and all my income was going on living and paying my mortgage so in the end I decided to downsize and try a more enjoyable way of life,” she told me.
But Daisy aged 32 from Dudley has grown up with a love of the waterways because her parents have their own boat and her dad had formerly worked for the old British Waterways Board.
We reached Brewood around 5pm and called in at The Bridge Inn for a welcome pint before walking on and into the square of this historic little market town which really is quite an architectural gem with some lovely old buildings including the imposing Lion Hotel which was to be our overnight stop.
That is so much part of the pleasure of following cross country trails because one never knows who one might meet and what sights one might see just around the next corner.
Our official route now took us once again out across open country to the small rural village of Seisdon some ten miles further ahead, but again studying the map we saw that we could simply return to the Shropshire Union Canal and continue along it for another four miles to the village of Codsall and then rejoin the official route from there.
Incidentally if we had done this some ten years earlier, we might well have met ourselves coming the other way enroute from Birmingham to Chester and if we had not chosen the canal route, we would never have met nineteen-year-old gap year student David Gean.
He travelled to Denmark, picked up a bike, rode down to Spain to meet up with friends before boarding a ferry in Bilbao to Portsmouth and was now on his way back home to Dunblane in Scotland prior to going off to Edinburgh University to study music.
We would also never have met The Rambling Ramblers pictured right to left Karl Noon, Mick Simmons, David Scarlet, Art Sulley and David Rhodes.
They are a retired group of local gents who led us on an alternative route from a very overgrown section of the canal towpath, through delightful neighbouring parkland and on towards Codsall.
From there the way leads out across flat open crop country to our next overnight stop in the small village of Seisdon where enroute and while picnicking in a field we spotted a lonesome hare.
Here we stayed with Rob and Jackie at their homely White Cottage and ordered an Indian takeaway which we enjoyed out in their lovely garden while being serenaded by a frog in a nearby pond.
The following morning dawned clear and we popped into the village store to buy Black Country pork pies for our picnic lunch before setting out on our final eleven miles to journey’s end in Kinver.
But instead of spending another day tramping across open country, we decided upon an hour’s walk through the lanes to join our old friend The Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal at the Bratch Lock.
Here we came across friendly local artist Julia Peacock working away on a small oil painting of a sunlit view of the waterway ahead.
Julia, whose husband Richard is a former GP, also spent her life working in various branches of the medical profession before retiring and taking up painting six years ago.
Not long afterwards we came upon a narrowboat at the next lock and cheekily requested a cruise to give our legs a short rest.
Once onboard we of course got chatting only to discover that the skipper’s brother-in-law lived just around the corner from Peter in the Victorian North Somerset seaside town of Clevedon so here is his Staffordshire Way poem.
Down dusty track ‘tween hedgerows
Past fields of ripening grain
And then to cross dry stubble
To reach a distant lane
Butterflies and damsel flies
Fill the summer air
Revelling in the sunshine
An August hour to share
Tracing route from skyline
To where a bridge-crossed stream
Is overgrown with balsam
That masks the water’s gleam
Ahead the Shropshire Union
Canal of Telford’s pride
With aqueduct his legacy
On A5 sat astride.
Through locks and under bridges
The narrow boats glide slow
Roof gardens filled with flowers
Bright painted jugs on show
Bindweed rims the towpath
Glorious pink and white
Exuberant in its wildness
Pure nature’s sheer delight
Reflections on the water
From sunlight through to shade
Overhanging green-clothed trees
Their finery here displayed.
