Monday 2nd May 2016
17 miles – Grand Union Canal
Sunny, a late rain shower, warming up max 17C
I’m due to meet today’s companions at Tring Station: Marina, founder of The Forgiveness Project (TFP); her husband Danny; their long-time friend Sue; and Sue’s young cocker spaniel Louie. I’ve met Marina briefly once before, the others never. While waiting, I recall my only other visit to Tring. It was less than a year ago when my then 11-year-old daughter Lily and I waited here at the station for another Dad-and-daughter pair attending a camping trip for Year 6 Leavers from Lily’s school in London. The highlight of that weekend last July turned out to be a walk by eager Dads and reluctant daughters (and a few impartial sons) up the nearby 233-metre Ivinghoe beacon which marks the end of The Ridgeway, an 87-mile National Trail from Avebury in Wiltshire that is known as Britain’s “oldest route”. I reflect now that among the most exhilarating times of my life are simple occasions like this, sharing an outdoor pleasure such as walking, cycling, or camping with one or both of my children and noticing how their occasional lack of enthusiasm at the outset quickly gives way to enjoyment and a desire for more. At least I tell myself it does, sometimes.
Once today’s party assembles we’re off to a quick start. Tring station is a mile and a half from the town but it’s just a couple of minutes walk to the Grand Union. Danny, who’s recently run the Brighton Marathon to raise funds for TFP, sets off at a pace that’s challenging, especially for Louie who’s sniffing around fairly aimlessly back and forth along the towpath. I’ve learned in the first few days of my walk that it’s alright to be a bit like Louie at times so I suggest to Danny we go a little slower, at canal speed if you like. I feel for him because I know how difficult it can be to walk at a reduced pace: taking awkward mini-strides; stopping every few minutes to wait around for stragglers; and even deliberately zig-zagging left and right to avoid gaining too much ground on your companions. Equally I know it’s no fun to be constantly racing to keep up with the leaders, nor to feel you’re spoiling others’ enjoyment by slowing them down. But today we all soon adjust our subconscious strides to find an harmonious pace, almost as if we’re getting to know and accommodate one another through the act of walking.
We’re in the Chilterns, those hills rising where Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire collide. And we’re at the southern summit of the Grand Union Canal, a three-mile stretch that’s 121m above sea level, towards which I’ve been gently climbing (via 56 locks) since Brentford last Wednesday. Not surprisingly – if you’ve got even a smattering of knowledge about canal engineering – we soon see four reservoirs to our left just after Bulbourne Junction where the short disused Wendover Arm spurs off westwards. These reservoirs were constructed along with the canal in the early 1800s to ensure a supply of water to the navigation. They are now a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and one of the best places for bird-watching in southern England. They border a particularly open section of canal that affords tremendous views all around. Today the whole area is busy with people enjoying the Bank Holiday sunshine while picnicking, fishing, cycling, twitching or just walking and talking like us.
We’re so deep in talk in fact that we don’t pay as much attention to the surroundings as I’m wont to do and so after a flight of 7 locks (downhill of course) we nearly take a wrong turn at the forked Marsworth Junction where the Aylesbury Arm looks briefly like a good pretender for the main line ahead.
Marina tells me about the origins of TFP. At the time of the Iraq war, Marina was “stirred up and spurred on” by two events. The first was a newspaper image of a terrified and traumatised boy of 12, Ali Abba, who became for her as for many a symbol of the futility of war, having lost both his arms and most of his family in a US missile attack on Baghdad in 2003. The second was a news item about a father in London whose three-year-old daughter had accidentally been killed by a hospital doctor after he administered the wrong drugs. In the coroner’s court the father, on hearing the verdict, had simply crossed the floor, hugged the doctor and told him: “I forgive you”. Setting this against the backdrop of the cycle of war and violence in the Middle East at that time (much as now), Marina became determined to collect the personal stories of “people whose response to being harmed was not a call for revenge but rather a quest for restoration and healing”. She set about this with a photographer colleague Brian Moody (Marina was a journalist at the time) and they were then able, with the sponsorship of the late Anita Roddick (founder of the Body Shop and human rights campaigner), to create in 2004 an exhibition of the images and stories they’d gathered from all over the world. This exhibition, entitled “The F Word”, was an astonishing success and later that year Marina went on to found TFP as a charity. In case you are wondering, Marina is no evangelist nor someone who wears the air of an expert. As we talk I’m reminded of a striking statement of hers which I recently read in her book: “I chose this subject of forgiveness because gentle people attract me more than resolute ones, vulnerability more than strength”. To find out more about all this and what the charity is doing today to help people chose peace over violence, you might like to watch Marina in this brief recent TEDx Talk
The walking takes us through quiet open countryside, the peace being disturbed only occasionally by the mad rush of a Virgin train on the West Coast mainline tracking us away to our left now, having crossed over our path back near the village of Marsworth. Sue and a tired Louie leave us after 6 or 7 miles to catch a train from the nearby village of Cheddington which to my surprise has a station (according to eCanalMapp) and a train arriving very shortly (according to TrainLine). I’ve enjoyed talking with Sue today, especially discussing the decisions she’s made: to get out of a dissatisfying job and an unsuitable relationship; to live more simply; and to get a dog after a lifetime of not being a dog person at all. I found Sue’s decisions and the evident benefits they’ve brought her both inspiring and reassuring and I sense that’s exactly why she’s shared her story with me.
Danny and I discuss all sorts of things including growing up in North London on opposite sides of the Arsenal/Tottenham divide (you know where I stand on that one already). I try to share with Marina and Danny, as best I can, my story about why I’m doing this walk and why I’m raising money for TFP. Four years ago, following a marital breakdown I was very unhappy and disorientated. My sister Eilis suggested I might need to think about forgiveness – she meant forgiveness of self as well as others, rightly sensing that I felt at that time a confused mix of: guilt for my part in harming loved ones; pain caused by the hurt done to me and others as I saw it; and exasperation at the perpetuation of petty conflict. Eilis even sent me a book, “Finding Forgiveness” by Jim McManus and Stephanie Thornton. I devoured it. I remember being surprised that, while being brought up a Catholic, I’d never really thought much about forgiveness before. So I was learning for the first time that forgiveness can be thought of as more of a selfish act than an altruistic one. I also learned that it is different to “excusing”, different to “forgetting” (which I don’t think I will ever do except in dotage) and different from “reconciliation” which I now think of as restoring a relationship to its former state of trust, which might or might not be a desirable or feasible outcome at all in situations where something is to be forgiven. I recall now being especially struck by the force of a particular quote in the book, a Chinese proverb in fact: “if you seek revenge, first dig two graves“. So, I then researched forgiveness – I mean I Googled it. I quickly came across TFP and Marina’s work. I was amazed. I took great solace from it even though my own experiences had been so much less dramatic than those of the perpetrators and victims whose narratives are collected there. In fact one of the most inspiring things was my realisation that while some people cling on to remorse or to resentment or want revenge in response to what seem to be relatively trivial hurts – while perpetuating harm in the process – others are clearly capable of forgiving (or accepting forgiveness for) enormous damage done that might appear “unforgivable” to others, while at the same time creating something significantly positive out of the experience. I’d like to say that this awakening changed my life from that point on, but it didn’t. Life carried on much as before, sometimes up and often down, though all the while I kept these new insights somewhere safe and within easy reach so I could consult them from time to time. And I’ve gained a lot from doing that even if life didn’t suddenly become a bed of roses.
We have to leave all that for now at Leighton Buzzard, as Marina and Danny opt for a train back to Tring, where their car is parked, and thence the drive to London. We’ve only just about finished our goodbyes, when a torrential downpour immediately forces me to take shelter in a canal-side Tesco superstore before I push on alone for a few more miles in gentle rain, then renewed sunshine, towards the nicely maintained Soulbury Three Locks near the village of Stoke Hammond.
It’s been a great day. I’ve made three new gentle friends whom I hope to meet again soon. We’ve walked and talked through idyllic parts of three counties. I’m enjoying an ale beside a flight of three handsome locks. And I’ve got a basic room for the night at The Three Horsehoes pub in the nearby village of Drayton Parslow where for the third time on this walk I’m later told I’m a dead ringer for Rick Stein, the piscine celebrity chef and (rare this, in his chosen field) a good humble bloke; but that’s another story.
The news today is that Leicester City are Premier League Champions, Tottenham Hotspur having failed to keep the contest alive, only drawing with Chelsea. And I’ve now walked 92 miles of my route.
Best wishes,
Michael
forgivenesswalk 