Mousehold Heath Confusion

The original plan to walk between two WB Sebald exhibitions, from the Castle Museum out to the UEA, was abandoned. Emerging from the Museum, fresh afterimages were imprinted on my mind. Grainy scenes of Orford Ness and Sizewell sat alongside grim reminders of World War 2 concentration camps and colonial brutality. These were superimposed onto a liminal vision of the rural Suffolk coastal zone with its vast swathes of deserted beach and countryside peppered with strange wonders such as The Sailors Reading room and Somerleyton Hall. Into the mix flew the taxidermy seabirds in the Museum's natural history section. Not part of the Sebald exhibition but merging  into the images left by it they didn't seem out of place. In particular the absurdly grotesque large pelican, apparently shot by the Prince of Wales in 1802. I could imagine it instigating a Sebaldian diversion into an arcane and possibly fabricated tale of the Royal family. Pelican shooting as a relief from the day job of ruthless colonial surpression at the turn of the (19th) century.

It felt like a visit to the second exhibition might be a bit much to take in. The first needed to be properly digested. Instead we decided to drift to Mousehold Health, just North of the centre of Norwich. It was a place I knew little of, my expectations formed by a brief appearance on ITV Regional Television news and on a programme where Dr Alice Roberts visited the heath while discussing historic Norwich. It would be good to get to higher, more spacious ground and observe the city  from what I imagined to be a deserted grassy mound.

The heath is bifurcated by a road, which was the route we took. An earlier attempt to follow a path through a wood accessed via a promising looking gate, that looked like it would allow us to shadow the road unseen, was abandoned after it ended at a BMX/Skatepark. The road, trees either side, was a fast one and peppered with speeding cars and vans passing at irregular intervals. This slightly monotonous scene eventually opened out to one side. An ice cream van and a map board were signs that we had arrived at an entrance into the heath. Also in sight was what I took to be the pavillion shown on the map, a platform featuring a hexagonal or octagonal pointed roof, which is something I've always associated with the word 'pavillion'. The seemingly random piece of victoriana seemed to placed Tardis-like, as if providing a portal between the now and an imagined past.

Based on the presence of the 'Pavillion', we headed into the woods on the left hand side of the road, since the map had indicated the clearing Regional Television had planted in my imagination was somewhere just beyond it. The map also indicated several abandoned towers from an abandoned  brickworks at various intervals in the woods, adding intrigue.

The path/track we followed through the woods suddenly veered left and we found ourselves on a concrete path overgrown with brambles and budlia. On one side there was an apparently abandoned windowless building, part brick, part corrugated iron. It lurked behind a thicket if brambles. The broken warning sign hanging off the gate featured a simple exclamation mark on a yellow background. What it warned of remained ambiguous.

Opposite the building was a playing field, the other side of which stretched a long wall in front of a building which we took to be Norwich Prison. At the abandoned building, playing field/prison nexus it felt like we had shifted suddenly from an unremarkable but pleasant wood into a sinister peripheral zone. Our sense of direction, which we had previously felt certain of, became disoriented. The map board we had relied on to point the way suddenly made no sense. Checking Google maps, it seemed impossible the clearing could be this side of the road.

The concrete path went not much further before a dead end of brambles marked it's it's conclusion. Still disoriented and keen to extract ourselves from this zone, we retraced our steps and crossed the road.  On the other side was a diner, located in what looked like a former pub or house. Signs pointed to it indicating toilet facilities were also available. Up close there was no sign of a toilet block and the building appeared closed. The silence as I approached was uncanny. But upon opening the door I was greeted with the site of families gorging on burgers to a soundtrack of 'La Bamba' style Latin music. I closed the door again and the silence resumed.

Eventually we did reach a clearing on higher ground, covered in ferns and gorse, and heavily populated by dragon flies. It was as if we had crossed a line into the Jurrasic period. The clearing didn't look and feel like the one I had in mind. We sat on a lone memorial bench and had lunch. Upon checking Google maps again it suddenly became clear. The diner was the Pavillion, while what we had taken to be a Pavillion was a bandstand.  The diner lacked a 'pavillion-esque' roof or other features so had thrown us off the scent. It more resembled something from an American horror film, a creepy house in the woods. Things suddenly made sense. The confusion disappeared and the weird atmosphere with it. Soon after we left the Heath and headed back to lower ground via a long path hugging an allotment, which allowed a view of Norwich similar to the one expected but unseen from the Heath. A city whose outskirts required further investigation. But not today.

Liminal lunchtime

Lunchtime walks had  yet again been on a bit of a hiatus. The overbearing heat of a globally warmed summer and work and non-work based busy-ness being the main barriers to ability and motivation to get out there. The malaise brought on by both factors had impeded any will to write about any of the sporadic walks I had done in this period. Edited highlights will be forthcoming once (if) these prohibitive factors subside sufficiently for any length of time.

Last week I did get out for a 30 minute(ish) drift. After aimlessly heading up Eastfield Road I unconsciously took a right turn into Dickens Road. Past the Salem Chapel, the locus of my first Peterborough post, then onwards into a zone made up of a Rec/School Field on one side and on the  other a strip of green which is apparently  vunerable to fly-tipping, it's trees and bushes obscuring the sight and sound of the Parkway just beyond. The zone is bifurcated by 'The Airfield' cycle path which is part of a network of cycle paths shadowing the various Parkways, weaving under them at various intervals via Clockwork Orange-esque underpasses.

The transition into this zone was marked by a dilapidated house featuring a makeshift sign bearing the legend 'Site Keep Clear'. I wasn't sure which sort of site the sign was supposed to indicate. A building site, where work was ongoing to make the house inhabitable again at some future point. Or just a 'bloody site' as my mum used to say when referring to any sort of shambolic mess beyond immediate hope of being sorted out. That the facade of the house appeared unchanged since my first memory of it over a year ago indicates the latter.

The fly-tipping prone zone is also apparently a location subject to public outbreaks of drinking. A sign warned that I had entered a 'designated public place' which meant risking arrest and a £500 fine on refusal to surrender booze to the law when asked.  There were no imbibers present as I passed. Maybe the sign was effective. Or maybe it was just less hassle to go to one of Peterborough's Wetherspoons, which are in their own way 'designated public spaces' for the disaffected daytime drinker.  I considered whether there was a difference between a 'designated public spaces' and a plain 'public space' other than the threat of being fined a monkey for drinking in one and not the other. I couldn't think of one.

Emerging from a bush behind the sign was an impressive array of deposited rubbish. Too much to be the product of discarded items thrown from car windows on the Parkway.  I don't recall seeing a no fly-tipping sign. Presumably rubbish is considered less of a threat than booze on the scale of public menace in the zone.

I passed the Mellows Road underpass with its impressive graffiti and lure into the opposite liminal fly-tipping zone the other side of the Parkway. I resisted the urge and kept going forward.

Soon after, having followed the curve of the Airfileld Cycleway, the route passing under another underpass. I didn't record the name of this one and the memory of it has since faded. At the 'mouth', three posts which were all appeared to belong to separate eras resembled inadequate static guards. The white painted rectangle on the floor between two of them was ambiguous. The legend 'NCS' stenciled onto the concrete above at first glance seemed official, like a construction company logo. But closer examination indicated it was something to do with football.

Within the underpass, I was engulfed in a profusion of incoherent graffiti tags, slogans and symbols. 'Just say neigh' seemed a particularly odd thing for a tagger to write.  The ambiguous message possibly something to do with a pro-horseriding oppressed minority campaigning for the right to share the cycleway. Or maybe a jibe from a visiting Yorkshireman.

I emerged out the other side near a MacDonalds set on the edge of the Eastfields Induatrial area. I could see a communications mast rising in front of me to the left located somewhere deep in the maze of industrial units and warehouses. The same one I had noticed from my office window numerous times. I had tried to walk to it before and failed to reach its base in the labyrinth of roads.  This time I headed up the main drag (if such a thing exists in an industrial estate). Soon, directly ahead I could see the towers of Peterborough power station. This edifice was another site visible in the distance from my office window. That bit too far to reach in a lunch time. This was the closest I'd got. The road was partially blocked by roadworks, lorries and white vans. A silent checkpoint Charlie. I had the irrational feeling I would be challenged if I carried on, and felt like I didn't have the right paperwork. I had no business here and I probably couldn't speak the lingo. This 'barrier' appeared as if to remind me it was time to go back if I was to get back to work on time.

As I paused before retracing my steps back to the underpass I looked left at the communications tower. There was no obvious way to get nearer from this point either. It remained tantalisingly close but elusive.

Just before leaving the industrial estate, I noticed the roof of the Pizza Hut rising above the petrol station, in the cluster of 'servces' that include the previously mentioned MacDonalds. Catching it out of the corner of my eye I mistook the roof as being thatched. For a brief second it resembled a giant hut-like village hall from an earlier age. Then the brown brick and glass reality of the building coalesced. The cluster of services was typical of those found in this type of liminal environment having marginalised greasy spoons, makeshift cafes and burger vans that once would have prospered in such places.

I had found a grease cafe on Google maps  located somewhere near the communications mast in a similarly obscure location that I doubted would be easy to find. Two pictures that came with the map location and address. One featured a small industrial unit with its shutters down. The second was inside where a man with his back to the camera was in the kitchen, flipping eggs and looking not unlike Phil Mitchel from EastEnders. I also noticed a burger van not far from the main drag. It was good to know old school eateries still survived on the margins of their more corporate and bland nemisi.

On the return journey the lure of Mellows Road underpass this time pulled me in. The profusion of graffiti/street art was of a different league here. No reference to football. Instead a bloodshot eyed weed smoking Homer Simpson and the tag 'Talos' were two things that lingered in my mind upon departure. An image came to mind of the Bronze giant of Greek myth relegated to spend all enternity in a piss-soaked underpass with a dim-witted middle aged cartoon man.

The 'road sign' had been customised to feature yin/yan symbols, which coupled with the word 'mellow' suggested a  mystical element to whatever proceedings had been taking pace here with Talos and Homer Simpson.

I followed the footpath through the greenspace which was parallel to the Airfield Cycleway zone, except this time with the addition of Peterborough indoor bowls club behind a perimeter fence on the left. I emerged on Star Road and shortly afterwards re-encountered another locus of an early Peterborough lunchtime walk. The ex-church building, featuring memorial bricks with carved names of various apparently once important people, again drew me in. I re-read the inscriptions and noticed some i'd not seen (or forgotten) when I was last here. I lingered for a while, pondering  why 'J S Anderson for Deeping St James' or 'Mr T Farrow for Thornley' might be important or whether the places named on the various bricks might have some significant pycho-geographical connection. The last 'brick' I noticed, emerging from behind some ivy, was 'Mr J Alley for New Road'. New Road' being close to my office, I took this as a direction to go back to work. My time was up.