Yesterday (Tuesday, 10/18/2022) I continued my ramble southward toward London, journeying 12 1/4 miles from Staines-on-Thames to Hampton Court. I was feeling good by the time I arrived in Hampton, but the train station was so close to Hampton bridge I opted to stop my journey instead of traveling the 4 miles to Kingston. I’m kicking myself for this. Hampton is not the easiest town to get to by train, so I’ll be shelling out some extra pounds on my next leg to get back there. Fortunately, my next London leg will put me in areas that are easily covered by the London Underground, so travel to and from my start and stop locations should be much easier.
I don’t have a lot of great pictures to share of leg 8. For the first half of my ramble yesterday I was walking through banks of fog (note: anyone interested in the pictures of this leg my find them here). My ramble began in Staines-on-Thames and continued through Penton Hook, Laleham, Chertsey, Shepperton/Weybridge, Walton, and, finally Hampton, home of Henry VIII’s palace at Hampton Court. The fog let up around Walton, so the overall journey was one of contrasts–the somber moodiness of the morning gave way to bright sunlight, warmth, and the sounds of crew teams practicing their sport outside of Hampton.
As for interesting sites, I’ll share one unexpected encounter with a sporting site, the East Molesey Cricket Ground. Cricket has been played at this site since 1735. In 1795 something really extraordinary happened in a cricket match here, “the first recorded LBW dismissal in first class cricket” (note to friends: I am unfamiliar with the rules of cricket, so I need some help: what is an LBW dismissal?). These sorts of encounters are some of the best moments in this ramble. Walking through a small town in England, it’s not hard to run into fascinating monuments and homages to local history.
Over the last few days I’ve been thinking more carefully about what I have been hoping to gain from this ramble. My plan was initially spurred by the wanderlust I experienced ten years ago when hiking from Oxford to Abingdon on a whim. “What would it be like to hike the entire path?” I wondered. “What new sites are there to see? What adventures could happen on a 185 mile journey?” As I have gotten further into the actual ramble, my excitement has tempered into something more meditative and melancholy. Yes there are new sites to see, and I still closely review my guidebook before each leg of the journey so that I know what I am looking for. But between the encounters with the island temples devoted to English authors, the high-steepled churches at the center of the river towns, and the historical locks that control the level of the river there are a lot of miles that aren’t exciting. One sheep pasture begins to look like the next. From the river those steeples all start to look the same, and you don’t have enough time to enter into every single town to learn just how special each town is. In my Facebook photo albums I’ve begun labeling pictures of my ramble, if only because I fear that in the future those labels will be essential for me to locate pictures within the different moments of the ramble that I’ve experienced.
Yesterday I got emotional when I began thinking about the end of my ramble. I’ve been dreaming of this journey for ten years. By my count I’ve got about six legs left in this ramble. I don’t know how I will feel when it is all over. The end is much closer now than it was at the beginning of the semester. I am eager to finish the ramble, yes. But do I really want it to end? In these hours when I am rambling each week, I feel like I’m able to piece some things together for myself that I’ve been working through. I am thinking a lot these days about regrets that I have, about the kind of person that I want to be, and about the work I am most interested in pursuing when I return to my regular academic life in the Spring. Rambling is creating space for me to think about these things. In this respect, my ramble has become something more than an opportunity to explore sites I’ve never seen; it’s become weekly space for me to explore parts of myself too. I will miss this. It is hard to carve out time for this in my regular life.
Tomorrow (Thursday, 10/19/2022) I’ll be completing the longest planned leg of my journey, a remote 16.5 mile ramble from Newbridge to Lechlade-on-Thames. To get to Newbridge I’ll have a 2 mile hike from Kingston Bagpuize, so all told tomorrow’s ramble will cover over 18 miles, with additional time needed to negotiate the infrequent buses from Lechlade back to Oxford (or, if that fails, to Swindon, and then to Oxford). For those keeping track, after 8 legs I have covered around 107 of the 184 miles. I’m well on pace to complete the ramble before the semester ends!
Return home…
Vic, your penultimate paragraph is a great metaphor for life itself; you dream of going through it for years, and as you near the end of the “ramble,” you wonder what you might regret and what remains undone…
I will be quoting that paragraph this afternoon, at the conclusion of my Alpha Scholars Induction Ceremony Speech. 🙂
LBW stands for Leg Before Wicket. It means that the ball would have hit the Wicket (thus getting the batter out) but instead hit a part of the batters body (usually the leg) first and therefor they are out.