I’ve been reminded by my sister-in-law Rachel that this blog has had a somewhat limited cast of characters. This is a photo of a church, here is the steeple, but where the heck are all the people? So it’s worth being clear about two things. First, I am by nature a bit introverted. My family and friends, who have seen me socialize, will snort, but I think there’s an important distinction. Put me in a small group situation in which I ought to be social, like a dinner party, and I’ll chat happily with people. But put me in a pub or a bigger crowd of people where I don’t know anyone, and I will go quiet and retreat into my thoughts. And I’m fine with that. It means I have never been any good at meeting people in bars, or at some big party, but I don’t feel some crushing sense of anxiety when I am there, and I don’t feel like it’s a deficiency in my character. I just like being alone. I am self-sufficient.

So, when I walk, I may strike up the occasional short conversation with someone whose adorable dog is splashing around on the banks of the Thames, as I did yesterday, but it’s usually about three sentences and I’m off again.

The second thing to note, and this will bring me to the state of my legs (I know you’ve been dying for a detailed update on my legs), is that the Shakespeare’s Way is quiet. In five days of walking, I have not seen another person with a pack or even with walking poles. I have seen walkers out with their dogs, cherishing the public right of way. I have met my B&B hosts and the reception staff at the two hotels at which I have stayed. But it’s quite different from the Coast to Coast walk, on which Tracy and I saw other people, often the same people a few days in a row, because of differences in our pace. Each day for three days running, if I am remembering this right, depending on who started first and who walked faster, we’d pass that group of American women, maybe it was six of them? And we encountered other walkers a lot, such as the working-class guy who stayed at one of our B&Bs and told us about his walk, which seemed to involve a lot of stopping at pubs, possibly every pub along the way. He was also the one who alerted us that Michael Jackson had died, with the rather offhand “Did you hear? Michael Jackson snuffed it.” (Tracy, was that how he put it? I think so.)

But on the Shakespeare’s Way, I am the master of a 150-mile long domain, one yard wide. At the B&Bs so far, not another walker has been stopping through. Partly, this may be that unless you pass a walker or get passed, you only see the ones coming in the other direction during the day, and I doubt a lot of people would walk this route from London to Stratford. Starting at the birthplace and burial site and climaxing your walk in the big city just seems like the natural direction. But I also suspect that this is simply a lesser way. It’s a fairly new path, and so it doesn’t have generations of walkers recommending it to each other, like the Coast to Coast or the Costwolds Way or the Offa’s Dyke Trail.

And I can tell it’s less popular, because it’s overgrown in parts. I’ve posted photos of those neatly carved paths through fields, but today’s walk, after a pleasant but frankly boring few miles along the Thames, involved a lot of walking on a path with plants growing onto the trail.

As noted earlier, I wear shorts when hiking, and so these wild trails mean my legs get brushed by a lot of plants. That can be nice and sensual and refreshing if it’s soft plants with morning dew cooling my calves. But today, every stinging nettle and thorny wild rose went after my legs with a vengeance. I seriously contemplated stopping and changing into long pants in the middle of an overgrown wild field a few times, but it’s easier just to keep going and tell yourself that you’ve passed the worst of it, things will get better for the rest of the day, you don’t mind a few scratches, and so on. There’s a metaphor in there about life, but let’s just leave it alone.

I stopped in a very nice quiet churchyard to get that photo of my leg, and to take the first photo of the trip in which I make an appearance (see beginning of this post). Walking alone means forgetting to get out the gorilla pod tripod and fiddle with the camera’s timer setting and take a few damn photos of myself. But sometimes I’ll get obsessed with trying to catch a good photo of a hawk making lazy circles over a field of mown hay.

So, the day’s walk had a lot of scratchy overgrown bits, but it was a nice walk, with a lot of variety, passing across vast fields and down quaint country lanes and past the odd moment that affirms that England isn’t all agriculture and charming old cottages. I passed the third, yes third, sewage treatment plant of the trip. This one was massive, but also pretty much odor-free. I passed river path dog walkers and joggers. I passed by someone burning something on the other side of a tall hedge that made a lot of smoke and smelled like burning autumn leaves. Maybe it was dried up hay?

And the next two days are bizarre, not because of the path but because of accommodations. Tonight, I am at the Coach and Horses Inn in Chiselhampton. In the morning, I will set out to walk fourteen miles to Cookley Green. But because my tour company couldn’t find a booking near there, I am instructed to call a car service before I leave and arrange a pick-up time at a pub on the path just after Cookley Green. The car will take me back to the Coach and Horses, where I will stay again. The good news is that the restaurant is very good. The duck was delicious, and the fried wedge of brie with cranberry chutney made me want to throw a party just so I could try making a version of my own. And then, yes, on Saturday morning, the car service will drive me back to that pub where I was picked up, and I’ll start walking from there.

But wait, there’s more. Before I start Saturday’s walk, I have to call my Saturday night B&B hosts, because my accommodation for Saturday is not near the trail again. I’ll arrange a pickup time with them in Marlow, fourteen miles along the trail, and they’ll drive me the ten or so miles to their B&B, then return me to the same point on the trail Sunday morning. Crazy, right? But such is life on a walking holiday.

Total distance: 11 miles

Breaking news update on Dutch barns: The term has different meanings in the United States and in the United Kingdom. In the U.S., it’s a barn with steep gabled roof and an internal structure of purlin plates and anchor beam posts. These barns are of an old construction style and very rare. Yeah, I don’t quite get it either, but that’s what Wikipedia, the source of all truth, says. In the U.K., a Dutch barn is a farm building with a curved roof set over a steel, timber, or concrete frame without walls, used for storing hay. I suspect that in yesterday’s post, the field used to have a Dutch barn but it was removed, leaving me with great but confusing views of the house.