NEC to Kings Lynn, Tuesday 22nd

Centre of England III, and a centre for hats
Suitably fortified with yet another Full English, I set off from the Ramada nice and early for the urban warfare that is the Birmingham motorway network.  It's not that they're out to kill you - which is what wise motorcyclists usually anticipate - it's that they are all too comatose (or too busy on the phone) to even notice if they do.  So with the eyes in the back of my head wide open - another routine precaution the wise motorcyclist takes - I made my way to the A5 heading East.

Having seen two traditional centres of England yesterday, I wanted to take a squint at the Ordnance Survey's take on the matter.  With scientific rigour, they have pinpointed the exact point that is furthest from the sea in all England.  It's not a million miles from Meriden...

But hang on.  What's this signpost?  'Atherstone - Ancient centre of the hat trade.'  I'm a bit of a hat person myself - I have a small collection of thirty or so titfas - so I couldn't pass this by.  Sadly, an information board told me that "logistics was now the town's main employer." The enterprising Jill ('enterprising in that she opened her pub at 8.30 as a coffee shop) confirmed that that little did in fact remain of the town's former hatting glory.  A derelict building could be found beside the canal if one knew what to look for, but you'd need a local guide.

However, I did come across Mike - or, this being the Midlands, Moik - selling hats in the market.  I asked if they were locally produced, but he just laughed.








I proceeded to locate the true centre of England.  As far as I could make out from my dodgy map-reading skills, it was a field North of the A5.  As fields go, it's probably a very fine field, but there is no plaque, no ancient stone cross, no specially planted oak tree.

Unless you are really into fields, there's not a lot to see at the official geographic centre of England.

I went on a couple of miles to where the road crosses the Ashby canal, which is much more picturesque.









While contemplating the scene, I received a phone call from a journalist at the Eastern Daily Press.  Ma had told them about my journey and he quized me about it with a view to an article for the paper.  We agreed a time I would arrive in Kings Lynn so he could call round with a photographer.  I pointed out that he was as newsworthy to me as I was to him, so I'd take his photo for this blog, too.

At this point, a hen wandered past, giving me a beady look that seemed to say; "gosh, that was an astute observation, Mr S."










A small county and its county town
The plan from this point had been to head towards Coalville, near Leicester, where this is a shop that specialises in bikers' leather and has, according to it's website, a good selection of James Deany jackets at not too silly prices.  But with a deadline to meet now, I thought this would be a good idea to skip that trip.  It saves agonizing over spending yet more money on clothes for my already over-stuffed wardrobe.

So instead, I picked another item on my must-go-there-some-time list: Oakham, the county town of the country's smallest county of Rutland.  At first, I struggled to find anything particularly noteworthy about the town apart from its county town status, but then I discovered that it is twinned with Dodgeville in the USA.  Not a lot of people - outside of Oakham and Dodgeville - know that.

Oakham; little county town, big reach.


















Crossing the flatlands
After a quick bite of one of Oakham's finest bacon sarnies, it was time to crack on.  Perhaps after the US connection in Oakham I should have gone via Boston and make up some quip or other for this blog.  But time was pressing so I went more directly towards Kings Lynn across the Fens.  This is an area that tends to get a bad press, I always feel.  "Flat," people will say, as thought that were some kind of failing.  "Boring," they add.  Now there I do take objection.  It may not be interesting to you if you are looking for a bit of hill walking to liven up your weekend, but the whole area is teeming with life and general human enterprise.  From horizon to horizon - which is a heck of a long way around here - is bursting with produce, all tended by mechancial leviathans of all descriptions, and finally trucked out to the supermarkets of the world by a nose-to-tail convoy of artics.  What particularly fascinates me is the way tiny settlements - maybe just a single farm or the dog-end of a village - can be seen clinging on to slight rises in landscape; what were once islands in a marsh.

Very flat, Norfolk.  Yeah, and?











A typical and possibly alarming feature of the Fens is that major rivers tend to be higher than the surrounding land, held in by earth banks built a couple of hundred years ago.  The A17 goes up and over the River Nene at Sutton Bridge, crossing on a swing bridge that is a clunky great piece of Victorian ironwork.  A plaque (I'm becoming quite the plaque-spotter, aren't I?) reads "made and erected by A Handyside & Co Ltd, Derby and London, 1897.  Hydraulic machinery by Sir W C Armstong, Whitworth & Co Ltd.  Steel for girders made by the Staffordshire Steel Co, Bilston."

Handyside's erection.











Pulling in to Daseley Close, gesturing to Ma to put the kettle on, the journalist and photographer from the EDP turn up.  So does the rain.  They have me pose in the road on my bike for a few shots until the photographer is thoroughly soaked and fed up.  With a promise to call tomorrow roughly when I expect to end up in Lowestoft, they dash off for their next assignment.

Soggy journalists.