Walks in the Time of Coronavirus

This blog post was going to be a celebration of pilgrimage walks in Lent.  It was going to point out that, while church services might be cancelled due to the coronavirus, churches themselves are still open for prayer.  I was going to argue that not having to arrive at a set time could make for a good all-day walk themed around exploring churches in villages further afield than the one I normally go to – which can be a good excuse for exploring new parts of the countryside.

I did actually do one of these walks, on 22^nd March, because I woke up and it was such a beautiful day from dawn onwards that I couldn’t wait to get out.

I set off while the day was still cold and crisp, and every leaf of every plant in the fields was still decorated with frost.

Some of the flowers were looking as if they wished they hadn’t got up yet.

Early on in the walk, I spotted a sheep lying on its side in the corner of a corner of a field, who seemed to be just sleeping, but who I thought might be ill or injured.  After I had spent some time wondering whether to try and find the farmer and alert him or her to the sheep’s problems, I finally set off across the field to the nearest farmhouse (hoping it would be the one that actually belonged to the field with the sheep in it), only to find the farmer coming to tend to her sheep.

The farmer realised that the sheep had got a leg trapped, and helped it to its feet.  They didn’t seem to need my help, so I watched as the farmer held the sheep steady until it had recovered, and, while I was at it, took a few photographs.  As I left, the farmer said, affably but with a note of warning, ‘Definitely don’t put those on social media!’

I promised not to (though I had wanted to use the photos in my blog) but asked what the problem was.  The farmer said, ‘Because it’s my sheep, and it’s nothing to do with you.’

So I’ll just use a free stock image off the internet.

This was an aspect of netiquette that I hadn’t even considered before.  I knew there were privacy problems with putting photographs of people (especially children) on the internet without their consent, but I hadn’t thought about how this applied to animals, and particularly domestic animals.  After all, most wild animals, such as deer and rabbits, hate having their pictures taken, so most of my animal photographs tend to be of farm animals such as sheep, cows, and horses.

Still, I had been warned now.  As I continued on my walk, I tried photographing a squirrel, who was so alarmed by this that he ran round to the far side of the tree he was on, and then leapt from branch to branch, taking care to keep moving before I could focus the camera on him.  However, I later met a crow who was quite willing to be photographed while eating a dead squirrel in the middle of the road.

The butterflies I met later on – both peacock butterflies and commas - were also willing to pose.

The first goal on my walk was St Benedict’s Church in Stratton-on-the-Fosse.  I walked along the church’s series of paintings of the Stations of the Cross, and prayed by the statue of the dead Jesus in his mother’s arms.  I also saw a statue of a dragon-slaying figure who was dressed as a bishop – so, presumably, not St George or St Michael.

Eventually it dawned on me, given that we’re in Somerset, that this was probably local hero Jocelyn of Wells, thirteenth-century Bishop of Bath, slaying the dragon of Worminster Sleight.  Bishop Jocelyn’s victory is re-enacted in a pageant in Dinder, near Wells, every fifty years, and there is a legend that if people ever forget to do so, the dragon will return.

From there, I went on to St John’s Church in Chilcompton.  By now it was warm and sunny, and I passed many people, mainly out walking their dogs, usually pairs of the same breed (whom I did not photograph, for obvious reasons).  We tried not to pass closely enough to breathe over each other, but waved and said hello from a discreet distance.  I also said hello to a pair of men clearing an overgrown section of the path, who had no objection to being photographed.

I would have liked to do more of these walks, revelling in the great outdoors, and comparing the arches of the empty churches with the natural arches of the tree-shadowed footpaths between them.

I tried rationalising that, after all, the government has said that we mustn’t go out for more than one walk a day, but hasn’t specified a maximum length for that walk.

Realistically, though, I have to admit that going for all-day walks in which I take a packed lunch and eat it with hands that have been touching gates and stiles that have been touched by people possibly carrying the virus, isn’t in the spirit of staying safe.  Neither is going miles from home and, if I already have the virus, transmitting it to neighbouring villages.

So, instead, in the past week, the Beloved Partner and I have been on a series of short walks, in the woods around our house.  They weren’t ground-breaking adventures, but they were short enough that the Beloved (who injured his foot in January, and has been avoiding long walks since then) could stand them.  Somehow, having restrictions on where we can exercise makes us both determined to get some exercise.  We’re discussing going on three-day expeditions when this crisis is finally over, however far off that is.

In the meantime, neighbours who know us don’t object to our photographing their livestock.