0909 Leave Edgeworth b and b. It felt a bit like stepping from an episode of ‘Upstairs Downstairs’, it only needed the landlady to bring in breakfast under a silver cover and the illusion would have been complete. She tells me that she plans to downsize and will put the property on the market the following week - ah well, there is another b and b of the old sort gone forever.
1022 Make my way through the back streets and parks of Malvern to the centre, conscious of the ever-present bulk of the hills to the West, and pick up some fruit, plenty of bottled water and a map of the trails at the Tourist Information. Organising myself on a bench outside, I notice a small plaque commemorating the fact that a repair to the bench in 2003 was the last job by a certain ‘Ray Marsh of Wells Joinery’. A nice gesture – I doubt if Global Crossing will do something similar for me when I retire!
Turning around, I am confronted by a life-size bronze statue of Malvern’s most famous resident, Edward Elgar, standing by ‘the Enigma Fountain’ so I go up to take a look. The notice says that the fountain is fed by springs from the Hills, though this year there is barely a dribble. Irritatingly, they have landscaped and planted foliage around the base of the fountain so you can’t get a proper look at all the sides, which are each dedicated to a ‘Variation’ character.
1030 Losing no more time I make my way to the start of the trail , The first pull up the north end of the Malverns nearly kills me and never was the descriptor ‘pushbike’ more aptly applied to my mode of transport as it involved a lot of that activity. To think that I used to be able to cycle up Tregony Hill at Mevagissey in my teens! However, the powers that look after the Hills recognise such difficulties and have provided contoured paths and plenty of benches.
1225 Whoo-hoo! Made it. I’m standing on top of the Worcestershire Beacon - the highest point. It’s very quiet up here: the click of crickets and hum of bees mimicking the distant rattle of a motorcycle and drone of far-off traffic on the M5. A toposcope (sort of circular map) on the summit is set in an octagonal granite plinth with an inscription ‘1897. The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof': Typically late-Victorian piety. Today I can certainly see a lot of the Earth anyway with the Brecons and Sugarloaf Mountain to the South-West and, to the South, can just make out though binoculars the thin strip of water that is the Bristol Channel and beyond to the Mendips which must be 60 miles...
1315 Panic. I have hared down from the Beacon at a rate of knots and look behind to find that my pannier (in reality a haversack lashed to the frame with two bungees) is no longer attached! With a sinking feeling in direct opposite proportion to the gradient I now have to climb up, I turn back to look for it, conscious that this could ruin my day...
1320 Hurrah! Found the haversack and one bungee only a short way along the track. Enigma!...I mean Eureka! I manage to fix the pack back on with the single bungee but there is no sign of the other one so if you are up the Malverns and come across a blue bungee it is mine.
1327 Continuing South through a wooded part of the Hills, grateful for the shade...
1400 I chance upon Elgar’s grave at St Wulstan’s in a small corner of the unassuming churchyard. A very simple memorial with a small flower bed attached.
1500 On impulse I decide to join a tour of the Morgan motor car factory. A strange place, but unique in it’s defiance of the faceless robot-assembly plants that are today’s car plants as the number of cars is measured in tens per month. Everything on a Morgan is hand built so that the tapping of hammers and spanners mixes with the sounds of carpentry and sewing of the leather interior trim. A British export success story, the whole place has an air of the quaint about it: from a pair of antlers above a door (what is that about?) to the dents on the paint-shop door where employees rolling half-built cars down the slope have miscalculated as they turn in.
1730 Left Malvern behind and on my way by train to the next port of call in Bridgwater, Somerset. The peculiarities of the rail timetable mean that I need to change three times so time to grab a pizza in Worcester.
2234 Relaxing in the bar at the Cottage Inn at Wembdon near Bridgwater listening to the chatter of a couple of Zummerzet locals sinking a pint. The conversation gets on to mobile phones, blackberries, texting and the like with comments like 'I don’t hold with this new fangled technology - and the last time I was on Facebook I said so!' uttered without a hint of irony.
2300 The room is great. Huge - with a 4-poster king-sized bed!
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