The Cockley Cley marathon

Since the first time I came to England I've been lured by tiny signposts pointing off the pavement into fields and wooded tree tunnels. These narrow footpaths crisscross the countryside and on this trip I finally had the chance to heed their beckoning call. These "Public footpaths" surround Swaffham, and nearly every town in England. Our first day here we walked Kodi (an enormous and goofy golden (white haired)retriever) along narrow paths between fields and on converted railroad beds now overgrown with brambles, nettle, beech trees and pines. The brambles are especially nice, loaded with blackberries that Kodi and I hogged down as we walked. On my second walk I ate fewer and by my third day I didn't even want to look at the damn berries.


For some reason Bob was inspired to complete a pub-to-pub walk along these paths, so he planned a lunch with the family at a pub in the neighboring (neighbouring) town of Cockley Cley. All five of us crammed in Larry and Val's tiny rental car and drove three miles to the Twenty Church Wardens pub in Cockley Cley. The eponymous Twenty Church Wardens are, according to Bob, smoking pipes which are on display in the pub. No photo, sorry. I thought he was joking.

Bob orders beverages at the bar (Strongbow cider for me).

I ordered a vegetable omelet but the cook glared at me and said, "order from the menu". That was my cue this pub didn't cater to special orders. "Mushroom," I told her quickly.

Check out the "jacket and veg" served with the omelet. Jacket is especially good. I looked on the British Potato Variety Database to determine the variety of this particular jacket. That proved too complicated, so I asked Win instead. Her seed catalog produced photos and we decided by random guess this jacket potato is an "Estima". Smooth, buttery, sweet, rich. At the end of the meal, not a speck of food remained in sight.

Lunch and drinks for five people came to 40 pounds (about $65). Worth every penny, especially since I didn't have to pay. Rain was threatening so we donned raincoats and set off on the footpath with an excellent map scaled two inches to the mile.

Sadly, non of the footpaths followed a route directly to Swaffham, and we zigged and zagged for about an hour before we stopped for a snack at the local sugar beet pile.

At mile five, the windmills of Swaffham helped guide us home. Trusty Guide Bob used dead reckoing to second-guess the obvious. In this photo above, on the right is a recently harvested potato field. The green field on the left is parsnips! A drought has stunted the crops this year and these parsnips barely had roots forming. I predict rising prices in the parsnip market this Christmas.



Around the corner from the parsnips we caught a potato crop headed for market.


Fields here are loaded with flint. Houses and churches are built with it. You can't throw a stone without smacking a hunk of flint. This photo shows a field littered with flint (must be tough on the harvesting machinery) with my artistic arrangement of flint. The arrangement was Bob's idea. Don't ask me why, but we'd been walking for two hours at this point and we may have been weak with hunger and thirst.

I'm learning a great deal here. Sadly I have forgotten nearly all of it. One random tidbit worth mentioning, thanks to Win, is that wattle and daub describes an old way of plastering the interior of houses. The wattle are thin sticks and branches that are covered with plaster made of clay, mud and maybe some animal dung. Betcha didn't know that!

Stay tuned for my next lesson.