Journey Through Britain by John Hillaby 1968

Tags

Bill Bryson, Caithness, Cornwall, John Hillaby, Land's End to John o' Groats

British Travel Books Part 5

As far as I regard myself as a travel writer I owe a great deal to a lot of other writers but none more so than to John Hillaby. This is the man who brought travel writing within reach of the ordinary mortal. The man who showed that you didn’t have to be fluttering in exotic places and the man who finally struck the balance that has been adhered to by almost all who came after him. He is very much a part of his own story but not the star of it. He’s present but not obtrusively so. At any point the reader can swap places with him and imagine themself as being there. Something you can’t say of many. He provides the eyes and ears and we do the looking and listening. He disappears from the surroundings every bit as much as we do ourselves.

John Hillaby on the very first day of his walk on the Cornish coast. Careful planning can reduce the size of your rucksack.

The balance is between the journey, the traveller and the things we encounter along the way. Hillaby lets us experience the entire route, the changing faces, the rain and the shine, from Cornwall to Caithness. He is our expert, sharing knowledge to make us expert too. It’s the same technique that has made Bill Bryson so popular. No coincidence that Hillaby is one of very few travel writers Bryson references, and about the only one he does with esteem. The key is a tremendous amount of research. To become an expert before we even set off and to build on this expertise as we experience it all and then to put on a third layer of study once we come back. Hillaby was an almost permanent fixture in the London Library for weeks and months before he set off. Bryson does the same and it’s the model I’ve followed.

It was stunning, almost awe inspiring to be travelling through the pages with one who seems to know so much. It’s the journalist’s art. To become an expert in order to share that expertise. Lazy writers can rely on Wikipedia these days. But it shows. It is also entirely pointless. The acquisition of knowledge and understanding is why we travel. It has to be real if it is to serve any worthwhile purpose. There is no substitute for delving deeply into books, articles, papers. Both Hillaby and his more celebrated successor work the hard yards. Both are from a background of newspapers; rigorous newspapers; The Times, The Independent, The Manchester Guardian. Papers where facts matter more than prejudice; where the story takes precedence over the storyteller. (I’m talking about the pre-murdoch Times here though I have to admit that even under the steely gaze of its current proprietor it is probably still Britain’s best newspaper if you want to know what is going on (though you may have to filter it first).

Land’s End

We were blessed with great travel writers in the middle of the last century: Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris and Eric Newby to name but three. They were brilliant wordsmiths with the common touch. But they wrote about places you simply couldn’t visit unless you were very privileged. I’m not sure I’d claim that Hillaby was right up there with them in terms of literary merit (though the boy could write) but he was the first to bring this readable style, this researched expertise and his gentle personality to bear on The British Isles. When he set out to walk from Land’s End to John O’ Groats in 1968 he was by no means the first to do the walk. But he was the first to make it a truly shared experience.

Chun Quoit

“If…you decide…to walk across your own, your native land they tell you it’s been done  many times before. Men have set off on foot, on bicycles, on tricycles. Somebody even pushed a pram from Land’s End to John o’ Groats.” Journey Through Britain p10

What made John Hillaby’s walk different was that he was going to avoid all roads (he mostly succeeds) and he was going to turn the walk into a beautiful and inspiring book. He isn’t interested in whether it could be done. The beauty of the book is in its human size. An average human; someone very like the reader. We can be inspired by those whose talents, strengths and abilities dwarf our own. I’m more inspired by people who more resemble myself, in all my great mediocrity, achieving remarkable things. Hillaby is an almost perfect Everyman figure.

Tintern Abbey

“For me the question wasn’t whether it could be done, but whether I could do it. I’m fifty. I’m interested in biology and pre-history. They are, in fact, my business. For years I’ve had the notion of getting the feel of the whole country in one brisk walk: mountains and moorlands, downloads and dales. Thick as it is with history and scenic contrast, Britain is just small enough to be walked across in the springtime. It seemed an attractive idea. There was a challenge in the prospect.” (ibid)

He expected to be one of the last to do it. In fact he is probably responsible for thousands of us amateur writers and wanderers for setting our personal challenges. Challenges which, in this age of blogs and social media, can be professionally recorded and shared following the Hillaby model.

Hillaby looking across a loch at Beinn Eighe

By the time the book was planned I was 9 years old. I’d already clocked up several Lakeland peaks, sections of the newly created Cleveland Way and a day or two’s slog along the Pennine Way. My dad liked walking as a day out sort of activity and I liked walking along side him. He taught me how to use a map and compass and he took me to the sort of places where you need them. It instilled a life long passion for getting from A to B by the oldest method of all; that of putting one foot in front of the other. I imagine that John Hillaby came by his love of the hills and byways in the same manner. It is a love that shines through. This man likes walking in the same way that I do. The exercise, the way it allows you to get to places cars or bicycles can’t take you, the freedom, the aches and pains. And the country he walked through has changed remarkably in that time. 

Larach

Long distance paths are a new idea. In 1968 the path may have followed established rights of way but that didn’t mean that a right of way was provided. Landowners and farmers were yet to be shown the advantages of having walkers cross their land. I know of a farmer who still keeps a bull in a field to deter ramblers from a path where they are legally entitled to wander and which is clearly marked on the Ordnance Survey map. In 1968 there were fewer paths and more obstacles. This book played a part in increasing the former and eliminating many of the latter.

He crosses many counties. The intention of avoiding walking on roads and Bridal Ways is a considerable challenge all along the way but it makes the story. He spends the vast majority of his time alone; so much so that when on Wenlock Edge he copes with the heat by indulging in a few miles of naturist strolling. No exhibitionism here. He was a shy man enjoying the freedom and would have covered up at the slightest hint that there was anyone else about. That there wasn’t anybody else about shows how times have changed.

Base of a Glenelg broch

I like the information we get along the way. The storyteller’s art is an ancient one and the storyteller has to know where to start and when to stop; when to satisfy expectations and when to surprise. All that time in the British Library allows him the choicest fruit from obscure stories and the journey is heavy-laden with such offerings. We pass tin mines and are given a history lesson, pass stone circles and are amongst the archeologists. And all the time his feet move through Cornwall, across Bodmin Moor and into Devon and up onto Dartmoor. The history is brought to life and the present set out before us. It really is the next best thing to walking it yourself, and certainly whets the appetite.

I’ve covered much of the ground myself, either on foot or on a bicycle and these are the sections I liked the best. Because they confirm what I’d felt from the first paragraph. That all is true (incidentally the sub-title of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII which  is far from an accurate record). I’ve read the book twice. The first time was the best part of 30 years ago. I picked it up again to skim read in order to write this piece. There was no skim reading. I began at the beginning and pretty much didn’t move until I reached the end. I liked and admired the book the first time around. I loved it the second. Simply because it is telling the truth. No rosy wash, no fictionalised encounters, no effort to present himself more heroically.

Thurso

He’s excellent company, a truly admirable man, a fine writer (who had to work hard at it, as elegant prose apparently didn’t come easily) and a trail blazer. I’m not sure what he’d think of the mass participation charity fund-raising walks of today. He wasn’t one to condemn. He’d have admired the aims and the exercise and struck off in a quieter direction.

Journey Through Britain has been out of print for some time now but it is still relatively easy to get hold of a copy for a few pence and the price of the postage. If you began your walking life in the middle of the last century and want to re-live what it was like back then, if you enjoy knowledgeable company and a sense of challenge, all written in language, which if it isn’t literary, is at least a fine impression of literary, then I think you’ll enjoy it too.

 

All photographs are from the book.

The Road to Little Dribbling: Bill Bryson

Tags

Barrow in Furness, Bill Bryson, HV Morton, The Road to Little Dribbling

Travelling Companions 2

I seem to have decided on the pattern of reviewing these from most recently read and working backwards. Actually I’ve been enjoying the sunshine too much and haven’t had much inclination to sit, for more than a minute or two, in front of a computer screen if nobody’s paying me. This is one of my occasional extended reviews from Goodreads. Don’t be fooled by the unimpressed nature of the piece. Like many of you I am a big fan of Bill Bryson. I just don’t think much of this book. If you haven’t read any Bryson before and you’ve got a train or plane to catch then it will pass the time quite nicely. If you haven’t read any Bryson before, and there is a choice between this book and any other that he has written…choose the other.

Here’s the review.

He’s become the Paul McCartney of travel writing; once sublime and now pushing out books that we buy because he’s given us so much pleasure in the past. Maybe it’s very clever writing: the ageing scribe and observer returns to look at England and finds it changed mostly for the worse and so reflects this in his prose; also changed for the worse. There are a few laugh out loud moments; but these are largely fart jokes. I don’t mind a curmudgeon and age suits this persona. I just don’t much like the name dropping multi-millionaire with friends in academe spending half a day in so many towns and then bemoaning that they’re not what they could be. My own home town of Barrow* comes in for a particularly sneering write-off when he walks along the economically depressed Dalton Road and is offended that there are some unemployed people there making the place look untidy with their dogs. Surely, after travelling many miles (there is no other way of getting to Barrow) he might have had a wander around the rather good Dock Museum (after-all he does like a museum in middle class towns), the glorious beaches and nature reserves of Walney or the silent splendour of Furness Abbey, the incomparable loveliness of the Roanhead sand dunes and the Duddon Estuary, even Devonshire Dock Hall; all within walking distance of where he was. No, a cup of coffee in a chain was his idea of the acceptable face of a town I am very fond of. It’s indicative of someone fulfilling contractual obligations but doing so grudgingly and with bad grace.

I’m glad he finds fault with the political mind-set that sees cheese-paring as the route to making Britain great again (otherwise known as austerity, otherwise known as getting the poor to pay for the excesses and mistakes of the rich). We won’t improve anybody’s quality of life, or even save much money, by closing down libraries or removing greenery from urban plazas. But I’m afraid his outsider’s ability to spot the glories and weaknesses of British life has declined with passing years. Seeing the world through the windscreen of a car; and a big car at that; re-tracing steps he specifically says he won’t re-trace, re-hashing old material about the supposed delights of dried cake and hard biscuits, having a pop at a popular travel writer (in this case the pop-worthy HV Morton): it’s all a little tired. It isn’t a bad read but it is by no means a good one. Like Paul McCartney he re-invigorated his genre and delighted a generation. The old stuff is still worth the read (especially Notes From a Small Island and the wonderful Walk in the Woods) but this is the travel book equivalent of Red Rose Speedway.

HV Morton withEdward Cahill in 1950

The main criticisms of HV Morton (and it has become fashionable to find fault with old Harry) are that he made half of it up and the rest he painted with a rosy brush. (Putting aside his serial adultery and desire to see fascism established in England). I’m afraid Bill Bryson is guilty of both (rosy paint brush and inventing encounters, not multiple shagging and longing for the Third Reich to cross the North Sea). His meetings with people seem stage-managed and mostly fiction and his admiration of the English countryside comes across as shallower than it probably is; as well as touching the clichéd. I’m also surprised and disappointed that he’s reverted to the ‘short walk around and then into a pub for pints of lager before a curry and bed’ approach to exploring a town.

The book opens with Bryson’s publisher pointing out the money-making possibilities of Small Island Part II. The book is little more than an exercise in cashing in. (Incidentally it does get a little wearing when this very wealthy man objects to paying a few pounds entry fee, and downright patronising when he tells us we really should be putting more into cathedral collection boxes and be raising money for charity). The title is supposed to be an evocation of the unique and slightly humorous quaintness of English place-names. It equally serves as a description of the contents and prose style.

You’ve made your pile Bill. You’ve made us very happy with your early books. Perhaps it is time to enjoy a well-earned retirement where dribbling can be, and should be, a more private activity.

*Also known as Barrow in Furness, but only by outsiders. (See also Kingston upon Hull).

Day 155: Seeking Asylums

Tags

Ballinasloe, Bill Bryson, Connacht District Lunatic Asylum, Digby Hospital, Oonagh Walsh, St. Brigid's Hospital, Storthes Hall

A Cycle on the Celtic Fringe … Part 53

Pulling up Church Street, you pass the grey and slightly forbidding walls of St Brigid’s Hospital. It houses psychiatric patients and has come under threat of closure. The staff have a reputation for providing high quality care and attempts to close all or part of the facilities have been resisted with campaigns and public meetings.

Psychiatric hospitals are often housed in Victorian Buildings whose architects had a very different idea of patient care to today’s practitioners. Across Great Britain they have been disappearing from the map and the memory. At one time the patients entering were being admitted as much to remove them from society as for their own long-term care. The coming of the National Health Service in England and a modern health provision in Ireland, changed both public perceptions and hospital practice. Many of the old buildings have been torn down to make way for new developments. High Royds Mental Hospital, to the north of Leeds is now a housing estate, Storthes Hall Hospital in Huddersfield, which once housed over 3,000 long term patients, is now a student village and second campus for Huddersfield University. Digby Hospital in Exeter is a large Tesco Store and Holloway Sanitorium, as worked in and written about by Bill Bryson in Notes From a Small Island, has been converted into a gated community. The oldest, and perhaps the most notorious was Bethlem Hospital in London, popularly known as Bedlam. The site now houses Liverpool Street Station.

St Brigid’s had been known as the Connacht District Lunatic Asylum. There are few words or phrases so loaded. They summon up cruelty and deprivation. Harsh treatment, danger and imprisonment. We were sometimes threatened with a future of straight jackets and padded cells. The popular perception of the hospital for the mentally ill was not a favourable one even in the 1970s.

The hospital at Ballinasloe was opened in 1833 to house 150 patients. There was a great fear that it would remain half empty and application forms were prepared and advertisements made to attract inmates. “That the Connacht District Lunatic Asylum at Ballinasloe is prepared for the reception of patients, and that printed forms of admission can be had at the asylum.” They were not needed. Ireland during the whole of the nineteenth century was ruled by the British and the British had a way of controlling its own problems which it readily exported to countries under its control. The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act gave powers for the destitute, the aged and those unable to fend for themselves to be put into workhouses. In these, the conditions were deliberately set as being worse that the poorest worker could manage. The workhouses quickly filled up and the authorities had problems with those who were difficult to contain. The new Lunatic Asylums were providential to the workhouse boards. Similarly prisons and gaols had problems with over crowding. It wasn’t difficult to transfer the most demanding prisoners into asylums. It was done on a small scale in England, but in Ireland it went further. “Ireland was the only country in this period to make a legal link between insanity and criminality.” (Oonagh Walsh) No proof of insane behaviour was needed in order to be able to detain inmates indefinitely.

There was also a belief among prisoners that they would be better off if they pleaded insanity. That they could use madness as a way of evading sentence. That they would regain their wits once gaol had been avoided and be discharged from the hospital. The reality was very different. “Experience showed that prisoners who feigned insanity begged to be returned to gaol almost immediately.”  (Walsh) Such was the forced association with the mentally ill and the regime of the asylum.

Families were also responsible for a remarkable rise in the numbers of insane people being admitted to the asylums. Families could have members committed, and often did. In many cases it was a last resort but in others there was an element of expediency. Families looking to find a new life in America knew that taking along a difficult member could make getting through the port of entry tricky. It wasn’t uncommon for these poor souls to be left in the care of the asylum authorities while the rest of the family left Ireland for good. It sounds horribly cruel and inhuman. You must ask yourself if it was the people or the times that made them act in such a way.

By 1900 1,165 patients were being cared for in Ballinasloe. Even with continuous building and expansion, it was only designed to hold 840. Numbers kept growing and growing throughout the nineteenth century. Were the people of Ireland going collectively mad? Was there, rather, a social madness,that resulted in huge numbers of people being admitted who should not have been?

Ireland was among the first countries in the world to embrace this means of dealing with the mentally ill. During the century numbers grew and grew leaving the country with one of the fastest proportionate growths in admissions to be recorded anywhere. When you consider that the population of the country fell during this time the figures become even more startling.

There is an elegance to St Brigid’s today. Some of the buildings remain from the days when hospital care was of a very different nature. When the locking away, the protecting of society from the mentally ill, was considered the uppermost priority. If you read certain popular English newspapers after a crime has been committed by someone with a history of mental health problems, then you realise that these wrong-headed ideas are not too far below the surface in our supposed caring welfare state, even in the twenty-first century.

Inside these walls highly trained and motivated staff treat patients according to their needs. Seek cures and a way of being able to continue caring once the patients have been able to return to their homes. We may not all have become enlightened but talk to anyone who works with the mentally ill and you can be pretty sure that you are talking to one of the enlightened ones. The skills, dedication and commitment in the specialist hospitals on both sides of the Irish Sea is a thing of pride. No wonder people protest at possible closures. You don’t look for savings when it condemns people to misery and degradation. You don’t balance your books at the cost of someone else’s needs. The people of Ballinasloe have a facility to be proud of and it grew out of  a British funded asylum of misery.

There were dedicated staff though, even in the nineteenth century. Abandoned people were left there because they had lost everything. Often including their wits (temporarily or permanently). They were denied the help of their families, had their links with their communities cut and having suffered all of this, were then blamed for their fate. These people often ended up in asylums like the one in Ballinasloe. They had nowhere else to turn. They needed “a place of refuge”. British and Irish society had rejected them. They needed, and found, asylum.

I acknowledge my grateful thanks to the article “Tales from the Big House” by Oonagh Walsh in the preparation of this post.

http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/tales-from-the-big-house-the-connacht-district-lunatic-asylum-in-the-late-nineteenth-century/