Just a bit of Greta Thunberg paraphrasing there!
I needed a walk, because to be honest my body keeps telling me it is none too happy with this prolonged period of procrastination. Okay, alliteration achieved, my back ached, my legs – well having the affliction: “Meralgia Paresthetica” which sounds like something Harry Potter might say to magically make everyone’s socks fall down (I sooo cleaned that up for the original edit!), is actually more fun to say than to experience, a ‘tingling’, SERIOUSLY TINGLING ? It’s like having something attach itself to your thigh and then run away from you!!! On top of this my chest is frequently more tight than I would want. Add all these together and you have … stress! That’s the cause, and walking is a damn good releasing agent (oh that sounds far too posh for someone like me to say!).
So, with me still not trusting the car very much – we broke down on the M58 a couple of weeks back, (did I mention that motorways seriously freak me out? ) I opted for a local walk. I spent a good hour on Saturday afternoon plotting a route via Google maps …. which I then completely disregarded and went for an altogether different traversal of
The Moss
The route was simple, go from Kew up to the back of Homebase-that-was (cheers Sainsbury’s you really messed that one up!) along Foul Lane and Wennington Road into Churchtown, Moss Lane, Wyke Cop road and back down to Kew via Pool Hey Lane. Essentially that’s what I did. I’ve done a variation of this walk when we lived at Leyland Road – omitting most of the Kew section although still returning via Pool Hey Lane. So essentially this should be a really short post and what of the title?
What indeed?
The Moss can now be dubbed “The Rat Run”, such is the amount of traffic to which it is now subjected. Okay so it’s far more scenic than most rat runs and to be honest don’t rat runs make journeys shorter? Well that’s by the by! The truth is (as far as I can see) that because there are just so many roadworks – hence queues of drivers all sat there twiddling their thumbs or attempting to devise routes around these messes, that the good folk of Southport (and surrounding area) have tired of the constant waiting and decided it’s still better to drive three to five miles out of your way in order to continue one’s progression. I understand the logic … I also understand the lyrics to “Puff the magic dragon” but that doesn’t mean either of them reflect any kind of reality! This used to be a quiet place, a place where one could amble for hours and barely see a soul. Not anymore. I have no qualms at all about the seemingly constant stream of cyclists – they are mostly green but it would be ever so nice if they would take their empty water bottles back home with them as opposed to just dumping them at the side of the road. My concern is that these are narrow roads and some of them are in no way flat. I imagine it would be quite easy to lose control of a speeding car / van on here and end up either in a field or lay waste to one of those strings of cyclists – or a walker ahem I never see other walkers on The Moss, perhaps they know something that I don’t! Moreover, The Moss is principally an agricultural zone, our food is grown here you big daft bunch of pillocks, why is it alright for you to vomit your exhaust fumes over the fields of corn, wheat, leeks, cabbages, stretches of wild garlic? I used to build up an appetite traversing The Moss, not just because I was using up calories, just because the stuff growing there smelt so bloody gorgeous. Now, it smells of brake and clutch linings, of petrol and diesel, an echo from a future ‘how screwed up are you?’.
As I ambled along, dodging cars every four to five seconds I considered our plight and the future of this land. How much will change? More importantly perhaps, how much should change? An ethical dilemma but are weeds, weeds? If we take a plant which is not indigenous to an area and mass produce it at this area is that in keeping with climate etiquette? Is it this a thing or something I’ve just invented? Is the mass production of food, any food, now something that we should be doing as in itself this is not natural, this is not what nature does. If we take a patch of land, plough it, fertilise it, sow our seeds in it to the exclusion of the true indigenous flora is that how we are going to save the planet with reductions in meat – cattle etc production forcing our lands to grow crops which don’t normally grow there?
Ironically (?) the overriding image I had from the walk was a last lingering look at an old electricity pole, definitely not a natural feature of the area and yet somehow I felt it might be the only thing to remain the same as we progress into a future which could either be the destruction of our current way of life or (hopefully) a chance to do things better, more earth-friendly, cleaner and with more evidence of planning and preparation over knee-jerk reactions and interim workarounds.
You see, I haven’t been that eco-concerned up until, well fairly recently when it started to dawn on me that we’re kind of heading towards a bit of a disaster! I found it more than a bit interesting that we were hosting the Cop … whatever version, and anticipated great news of a fossil-fuel-free-future (I must stop it with this alliteration, I’m beginning to sound like a journalist – ‘cept with a conscience!). I was looking forward to hearing how governments and think-tanks across the world were strategizing in the battle against climate change. And to what end? Biden brings over a motorcade the size of an a-road, Boris behaves like we are somehow the pioneers and leaders of the eco revolution, whilst erm ‘well carrier bags now cost twice as much!’ and yet at the same time, “we’re not phasing out coal, we are phasing down coal usage!” PRICELESS! No wonder the afore-mentioned Miss Thunberg looked somewhat gobsmacked, but note, not altogether surprised. In total Cop 26 probably did something towards climate change – it impounded upon it! I’m inclined to agree now that it’s no longer a case for governments to handle, we have to do the changing, we can’t rely on a bunch of bandwagoning , greenwashing, sycophants more interested in raising their own profile than tackling the rising of the planet’s temperature (and sea levels).
Oh well, at least the walk was a lovely change from visiting garden centres, the weather was astonishingly warm and clear for the time of year and I got another 7.75 miles on to my yearly total.
Song of the walk: I seriously can’t remember as an impromptu meeting has yet again broken out within five feet of my chair and it’s kind of distracting!