I wrote about Canterbury yesterday, and forgot to post it. So if you are faced with two blogs today, this is the second. Sorry.
I was faced with a difficult decision this morning. The Cycle Travel app wants to send me on a beautiful quiet hilly 50 mile ride to Guildford. But I think there isn’t time. Google maps has a nice straight route, though unfortunately involving a lot of A25, for 40 miles.
When, after a few coin tosses, I opt for Google, I didn’t realise that it alternates the A25 with Surrey jungle.
For the first hour I make good progress. The main road isn’t too bad – there’s so much traffic it’s quite slow, and hardly scary at all. There’s a lot of cycle path, though some of it is a foot wide and separated from the traffic by an incomplete white line. It offers probably as much protection as a raincoat on Jupiter.
When you look at a Google maps route, you can’t of course see what’s under its confident blue line. And it gives names to things. “Turn left onto Happy Lane”, it says, for instance, and half a mile along Happy Lane I’m in a field, or a forest, or a gravel pit turned into an industrial graveyard.
I stop, frustrated, for coffee, in an expensive town, full of timber framed houses with beautiful roofs of tiny dark clay tiles. The customer in front of me is in full morning dress, with a stiff white collar that doesn’t quite hide a gruesome tattoo on his neck. I’m trying to work out why the place puts me in mind of Sweeney Todd. Ah yes, the two tables next to me both have open, but apparently abandoned, laptops on them. I think maybe it would be unwise to go into the back in search of the loo.
If there is a hell, those Sustrans people responsible for National Cycle Network Route 22 should be condemned to a Sisyphian eternity on it. Three miles takes me 45 minutes. It is no more fit for cycles than the Little Ouse is for ocean liners.
When eventually this emerges onto a road I meet a bevy of cyclists looking very much the worse for wear. We agree to abandon route 22, and just follow road signs to Guildford.
It’s a really splendid town. But the cathedral isn’t in Guildford. It was built in the early 60s, on a hill outside the town. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
The cathedral is unprepossessing from the outside, but inside it’s just magnificent. More open and uncluttered than any other cathedral I’ve seen so far, it soars. The light is glorious.
Unfortunately its very unclutteredness means there’s nothing to absorb sound. Notes from the cello bounce around the stones in a four-second echo. Bach Suites need clarity. But a slow rendering of Amazing Grace works rather well in this wallow of surround sound.
It’s a happy occasion. Several old friends are here, and among the audience there’s a gentleman who says he came to a performance in Kendal, and wasn’t gong to miss this one. Canon Chris gave me a warm welcome, and now he’s giving me a valedictory ovation way beyond my deserving. It’s about 55 years since I was last in this cathedral. I hope it won’t be so long until my return.
In a world that has largely lost authenticity as a guiding value, what you offer is very rare and special Kenneth. Sarah and I felt it a privilege to witness and wonder at the performance in Guildford Cathedral yesterday. Canon Chris’s observations were spot on… You are giving us the priceless opportunity to revisit, reconnect with and revitalise our souls. Thank you.
Er. Yes. Cycle.travel and the NCN routes are brilliant but…. Sometimes impassable without a cello let alone one
Cycling paths unlike on the continent are piecemeal and often sadly are almost unrideable, so “Chapeau” once again for your stalwart determination and sangfroid in overcoming the numerous obstacles placed in the path of your pilgrimage visiting the cathedrals and giving a cello performance at each one.
You should have gone ahead and found out what those two were up to in the loo.
A path more appropriate for cyclocross than commuting!
Yikes!
Proving yet again that one should not believe everything they read.
Oh Goodness! Did you ever see Sweeny Todd?
I’m very late coming to the party: I was at the Meditation in Lincoln’s Chapter House! Regarding the Bach in Guildford Cathedral, I was told by a musician many years ago that the acoustics in the cathedral were poor. He told me that sound left the front of the building; arrived at the back; and then began a return journey towards the front again. If you sat half way along the nave you heard sound coming in front of you and behind…at the same time!
I heard you play variations on Amazing Grace in Lincoln and couldn’t believe that by just using harmonics you played the tune! Libre’s harmonics were so clear and piercing.