A day of firsts

Today in Guildford, I woke up to rain. It was my first but it wasn't the only first. I had my first great coffee (at Cafe Nero, the best, their advert claims, this side of Milan), first climb of any significance, first mud, and first blister. Patrick and I trudged up Pewley Hill to the North Downs Way (NDW), viewing rolling hills draped in fog. 

Up to St. Martha's-on-the-hill, where the verger gave us the local history of dukes and the villages they relocated for their convenience, of brick-built Norman churches torn down and reconstructed in stone, as the duke thought a proper Norman church should be. He showed us the grave of Irving Bloomingdale of NY department store fame, who loved the place, and who was buried there when he died nearby, "though there are two stories about his death," the verger gossiped. 

He described how the Pilgrim's Way is a "bit of Romantic fantasy," whereas  the NDW, called by locals the Harrow Way or the Old Way, is Neolithic, and part of the migratory route from the continent that brought human settlement to Britain across the land bridge that would later become the English Channel at the end of the Ice Age. The Way went on to the Southwest, the opposite direction of my travel, past a Stonehenge yet to be built. Those migrants did not create the road - it was an animal track long before humans ever used it. 

The English do love their rain. Katey was a check-in point for an orienteering exercise, and I met many, many pups (my term for any dog that does not attempt to make a meal of me) giving their symbionts their required exercise. One lovely young springer was accompanied by a butterfly-observing woman who kindly gave me and Patrick directions to Dorking after we'd left the NDW to find rooms for the night. 

I met only one other pilgrim along the route, but he was taking his time, enjoying the English weather. 

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