The most impressive vista of the journey so far has to be this view from Cross Dyke looking out over the Longmynd in Shropshire (Longmynd is ‘Long Mountain’ in Welsh).

 

 

 

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Continuing my weekly dispatch in The Times, week 6 was taken at the Royal Show, Stoneleigh.

Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, July 3rd 2008

Participants take part in a Wellie Wanging contest at the 159th Royal Show in Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire. The contest was organised to help raise funds for the Farm Crisis Network charity. Wellie Wanging is believed to originated in Yorkshire and competitors are required to hurl a Wellington boot as far as possible within boundary lines.

 

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Where exactly is the middle of England? Many guess the answer is Meriden, near Coventry, where an ancient monument marks the “traditional centre of England”. In fact, the geographic centre of England is in a paddock at Lindley Hall Farm, outside the village of Fenny Drayton, owned by Margaret Farmer (aged 86). We paid a brief visit to the farm this week.

 

The nation’s chief mapping agency, the Ordnance Survey, has calculated the exact centre of England at grid reference SP 35373.66 96143.05 (a point just a couple of hundred metres from Mrs Farmer’s house).

When the BBC visited Mr and Mrs Farmer in 2002 (Mr Farmer has since deceased) the couple said they were “surprised” to learn their farm was special. Mrs Farmer said: “We like it here because it is nice and peaceful and it is good land.” The farm has been in the family for 41 years. It was formerly a dairy farm, but all its animals were destroyed following the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. It is now being farmed for sheep, cattle, wheat, oats and barley.

Commenting on the suggestion they should build tearooms and possibly American tourists would come out, Mrs Farmer said “I think we are a bit old for all that”. How refreshing!

However, citizens of Coventry are obviously proud of their status as being the closest city to the centre of England. As proved by this music fan I came across at this weekend’s Godiva Festival, which read: “Coventry- North of London, South of Manchester, Heart of England.”

 

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Today sees one of the finest events in the annual English sporting calendar taking place. And no it’s not the semi-finals at Wimbledon, the Henley Regatta or the practice run of the British Grand Prix at Silverston, but rather the highly competitive, highly sophisticated Oxted Pram Race. Having been a regular at the pram race in my teens, I’m extremely disappointed not to be able to document it for this project but our tight schedule demands that we are here in Coventry.

The annual Oxted Pram Race takes place on the Friday evening before the Oxted Carnival. Participating in the event is quite simple: pay an entry fee and ask family and friends to sponsor you to run the two thirds of a mile from Oxted train station to The Bell in Old Oxted High Street.  The only catch is that you have to push the pram wearing fancy dress and stop at each of the seven licensed premises on the way, where you have to down a drink as fast as you can.  There are prizes as well as penalties for how well you do.

Eric and Elsie Hallson started the pram race in 1977 after visiting friends in Clacton and attending a pram race there.  Eric quickly realized that the proximity of the pubs in Oxted this would be well suited to this type of event.

I’d be interested in any information on the origins of Pram Racing. A quick trawl of the internet provides very few clues, although it does bring up several other pram race listings around the country.

I did recently come across a picture of the Clutton village pram race from 1978 in the Looking Back pages of the Somerset Guardian.

 

This photograph was captioned ‘Rock-A-Bye-Baby: Contestants in the Clutton Pram Race get into the spirit’ and was dated May 5, 1978. Here is an extract from the accompanying article:

“On a grey, drizzly day, the colourful spectacle as almost 30 prams with runners and occupants lined up at the start, brought quite a few smiles to the faces of the holiday drivers held up in traffic queues on the A37. Landlady Molly Robinson, of the Warwick Arms, had hardly blown the whistle when the teams, complete with decorated prams, had their first massive pile-up just yards from the starting line. Best dressed on the day was the Clutton Methodist Sunday School with its flying doctor outfits.”

 

Mad Maldon Mud Race, Maldon, Essex, December 31st 2007

These mildly eccentric English pastimes seem to be enjoying a revival in recent years.  It could also be noted that pubs and the consumption of alcohol play a prominent role in them.  Is this in itself peculiarly English?  In fact, the Mad Maldon mud race, which I photographed in December, began as a result of a drunken conversation in the local pub, where one man challenged another to run across the mud flats and has since metamorphosised over the years into an annual race where a couple of hundred people get down and dirty squelching across the mud before celebrating in the pub afterwards.

 

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After a brief pit-stop in Northampton, we’re roadworthy again. Thanks to the mechanics at Marquis Motorhomes for fixing our leak in super quick time.

 

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This post comes to you from a lay-by in Bedford, where we are free camping for the night, near the Priory Marina which is also conveniently placed next to one of the town’s recycling stations. Glamorous this journey is not! As I write, I can hear the sounds of a violent disagreement between a couple who are sitting in a neighbouring car, they are swearing fulsomely and sound close to fisticuffs.

It’s surprising how few spots we’ve found where it is actually quiet.  Often the noise is obvious: boy racers burning up and down the esplanade in Ryde, police sirens in Margate, the machinations of a scrap metal plant in Oxford (cunningly hidden behind a small coppice) and the planes on the flight path into East Midlands airport from our otherwise tranquil spot on a corner of a farmers field. There’s also the two am sound of drunken voices of revelers on their way home, but most persistent of all is the constant hum of distant traffic.  It seems omnipresent, even in small villages which exude the appearance of rustic tranquility.  This strikes me not just as a terrible shame, but also as a sign of the way modern life, with its reliance on technology and convenience, continues to erode even the possibility of a calmer, more natural mode of existence.

 

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