I’ve been feeling a rant coming on. It’s been boiling, on the verge of burning, like my morning porridge when I think I can “quickly do something else” while it’s cooking, only to find I forgot about it. Yet another pan ruined.
You see, you can’t just leave something unattended and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to be positive. I’ve tried to be positive about this strange place that’s so culturally different to where I come from it feels like a different country but something’s not right. Something’s been festering and it’s high time to dig it up and dispose of it, albeit in a fairly tame blog-writing fashion.
Escape, is exactly what I tried to do today, so I took myself to Hollingworth Lake, just outside Rochdale, for a run. I got here at about 3pm. I’ve been before at this time and it was relatively quiet, as in, I could park quite near to the car park entrance.
Well, turns it doesn’t need to be sunny in the North of England for people to flock to whatever miniscule piece of countryside they can find. I say countryside but really I mean something that once resembled countryside and now has a concrete path and at the very least, a burger van, a chip van, some toilets, an ice cream van and a coffee shop slabbed down upon it, like something out of one of those theme-park-building videogames. If I add more salt to the chips, they’ll want a drink too…
To say it was busy today would be like describing World War 2 as a minor skirmish. It was horrendous. Literally, hundreds of people had flocked to the place. They were cramming the eateries (a queue of cars had genuinely got stuck in one of the pub car parks) and strangling the concrete path that encircles the lake. At first, I assumed some big event was happening here today. Nope. Well then, there’s obviously a big walking group or tourist bus here. Doesn’t appear so. It’s a grey day, it’s not sunny but…wait…it isn’t freezing cold and there’s no heavy rain for maybe the first weekend this year. Oh shit, seriously? This is what it’s going to be like?
It might be worth pointing out at this stage that I have a slight fear of crowds. Not a literal fear. I just mean, when I go to the countryside to “escape”, it’s an escape from the cities I work in, where I can enjoy some space and a break from the bulging British population. It’s been a busy two weeks, punctuated by a cold so I needed some space. If anything, they should fear me. Perhaps they did but we’ll get to that…
Hardening myself, I parked my car at the one remaining space, changed into my (very optimistic) trail shoes and got on with it.
To my delight, when I started along the road, I noticed a public footpath sign and, waiting for the irritatingly loud motorbike to pass, dodged through the crowds and skipped over a small bridge to find myself running alongside actual fields, headed upwards into the surrounding hills.
I’ve noticed that people around here like the idea of the countryside but not the countryside itself. They like to look at it from nearby, like some sort of voyeuristic fantasy, but haven’t yet built up the courage to really get to know it. My observation seemed astute as, for all the hundreds of people just a short distance away, not a single person shared the footpath with me the whole way around. Not one.
Let’s take a quick break for a lesson about the countryside.
There are a lot of public footpaths in Devon and Cornwall. These the things you often see when you’re eating your fish and chips in the car park that don’t look much like paths and are not visibly very public but, in actual fact, indicate a public right of way through….wait for it…the COUNTRYSIDE! I mean the actual countryside where there’s disgusting things like dirt and grass and possibly cows, horses and/or sheep. I know what you’ve been thinking and yes, they do all want to eat you.
Soft Southerners? Really? What is it about this landscape that terrifies you so? I’ve run up tors. I’ve played football on worse than this.
Anyway, back to my run. So I follow the footpath up a steep-ish hill (did I mention I come from Devon?) and am eventually signed towards something that definitely doesn’t look like a path and clearly isn’t because it led me to a private farmhouse where a dog spots me and instantly starts barking like it wants to rip my throat out. The farmer, evidently untrusting of the first lunatic to use the public footpath in forty years, then encourages psycho-dog to chase me (some elements of this story have been exaggerated for dramatic effect) away from his property.
Fortunately, there was a fence between us (end of exaggeration but is this a metaphor for something?). Miffed but not deterred (“Once bitten…” – I was literally once bitten by a dog whilst running) I backtrack and find another route through some trees where a sign tries to convince me this is a Woodland Trust area. I don’t know if eight trees can count as a woodland but if this was a woodland, it’s certainly in need of some protection.
I emerge to find myself surrounded by some rather attractive stone cottages. In fact, I seemed to be in the garden of one of the cottages but there’s nowhere else to go so I shrug and run guiltily along some evenly-spaced stone slabs that look designed to lead me quickly out again. Perhaps others have come here after all? Perhaps they’re still here?
There’s some sort of a road where two men are having a conversation. I smile and say “hello” as I would in Devon and they both glance at me sceptically like a man wearing running gear is as out of place here as a matador on a formula one track. (https://www.motorsport.com/f1/photo/main-gallery/el-matador-vitantonio-2/ damn, bad metaphor).
Finally free again, I follow a path that snakes back down until an extra-muddy gateway slows my progress and I’m forced to walk, picking my spots to avoid sinking into the sludge. There’s a more maintained path just beyond the gate and I’ve already caught sight of two couples leisurely walking towards a fenced pen where a couple of small ponies and a few chickens roam. As I walk from the gate, both couples slow to a halt, standing right up against the fence and staring at the pen like something out of The Body Snatchers. Weird.
The maintained (concrete) path leads me, disappointingly, right back to the rear of the car park where my car is already willing me to jump in and get the hell out of this freakshow attempt at the great outdoors.
People here keep asking me how I’m finding the North. Actually, the first question people usually ask me is (seriously), “What made you come up here then?” It’s a good question. When I say, “it is different” or “it has taken me a while to adjust” they look slightly disappointed, which always leads to the next question, “Do you think people are friendlier up here?” I’ve heard this before. We hear the same thing in the South, that people are friendlier in the North. I don’t claim to know many Northerners yet but my answer is…not really.
I find that people are people. Some are friendly, some aren’t. It’s a difficult thing to answer. People are more extroverted in the North. They will start conversations with you. I find that friendly. But I’ve been lucky enough to work with good people and good people are generally nice to you. I think in the South we can be more reserved but if you go for a walk in the South, people will acknowledge you when you pass them by. A pleasant smile and a “good morning”. There’s more of a sense of a shared respect between those of us who value the countryside. Sadly, this was largely retired couples. In the North, I find people in shops are more friendly than they are in the South but their versions of the countryside are so rammed with families that they ignore each other as much as people on the Underground in London.
Let’s just be honest about this. The Southwest of England is nicer than the Northwest of England. Otherwise, why would you all go to the Southwest on your holidays? I’m not here because I love the North. I hope I will grow to like things about it but I’m here because it’s cheap. I’m here to pursue a dream.
Follow my blog and I’ll let you know how it goes!
Rant over.
A.J. Austin
theinnerlands.com 