There were a few desultory sandbags heaped at convenient points around Hinxton when we arrived, for, after a week or so of heavy rain, the River Granta was slobbering over its banks and leaking into the water meadows.

Hinxton is our first stop in England. It's the home of David Barrett, with whom we stay while we await news of a starting date for the archaeological excavation on which I'm supposed to be employed.

It's a village about 10 miles from Cambridge, the site of the Human Genome campus, where teams of gene crunchers work in shifts, 24 hours a day, to decipher the code that differentiates us from chimpanzees.

David lives in a small, terraced house, once part of the Hinxton Estate that lorded over the area. There's a single High Street, some splendid timber-framed houses, one or two of which are thatched, a venerable but unremarkable church and an unfriendly pub, which we didn't visit, David preferring the Lion at Ickleton, a muddy mile away. Otherwise the village is without amenities, apart from an always-late bus service.

You can wander down to the Granta along a "Permissive Footpath", which is open only to residents and their bona fide guests. The river was gushing enthusiastically through a couple of sluices just above Hinxton mill, now preserved.

May — we return

Because the dig has been delayed, we return to Hinxton and to waiting...a frustrating time. The weather finally improves in early May. Every day we walk a mile to Ickleton to buy The Guardian, or a chocolate bar, through meadows that are gradually filling with tall grass and wild flowers. Cuckoos do their stuff nearby.

The Granta has now assumed a more modest size, and is running clear, an English river, with clumps of bright green weed waving in the current, shoals of tiny fish darting into shadows, and trout sheltering beneath overhanging foliage. However there is sadly plenty of the usual shit-brown algal sludge caused by fertiliser run-off from adjacent fields...

We also tramp to nearby Duxford, location of the Imperial War Museum's aircraft collection and the source of all the spitfires and other veteran planes that roar overhead, loop the loop and otherwise disturb the peace, Whittlesford, Great Chesterford and Sawston, and buy our groceries in Saffron Walden. On the road to Duxford there is, not surprisingly perhaps, a ford!

But this is cycling country, not walking, and there aren't all that many footpaths.

Ralph At Large in Great Britain

Ickleton, Cambridgeshire

Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire

Newcastle, Northumberland

Leeds, Yorkshire

 

Public transport — a rant

What lies behind the net curtains of England?

 

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