Walk 31: Colkirk, Oxwick… and a radio fanfare

Having walked almost 40 miles in three days, I was glad to have a gentler morning in store on Thursday, in the company of the Revd Robin Stapleford.

Robin has been Rector of the Upper Wensum benefice since 2008, and has recently taken on the Hindringham group of parishes, where I have been based for the last few months. He now has charge of (I think) 13 parishes, with 14 churches and two ruins. He invited me to his Rectory for a walk around one of his parishes and a light lunch.

I have done a fair bit of driving over the course of my sabbatical, and spent a lot more time on my own than is usual. A happy consequence of this is that I have listened to the radio a lot more. A travesty of the BBC’s recent spending cuts has been the rapacious desolation of local radio. Half of Radio Norfolk’s output is actually broadcast to all of East Anglia and a couple of home counties. So local radio is not really very local. There is a telling parallel with the CofE.

Happily, BBC Norfolk’s breakfast show is still very much Norfolk, and is presented by Chris Goreham, who also commentates Norwich City’s fixtures. He is, effectively, the voice of Norfolk.

On a Wednesday morning he has a feature called ‘The Norfolk Reckoning’, in which he sets listeners a brain-teaser requiring a certain degree of lateral thinking. At the end of the show, Chris and his co-host read out some of the wrong answers. Then one of the successful entrants is brought ‘on the line’ to reveal the correct answer, and is saluted by a trumpet fanfare. I’ve heard the ‘Reckoning’ (pronounced the Norfolk way, without the ‘ck’) a few times now, and am always stumped. Today’s riddle, we were warned, was especially difficult.

Chris posed this conundrum to his listeners: ‘A man is going to collect his wife from Norwich Station. He telephones the station to find out what time her train is due in. When he arrives at the station, he is surprised to discover that he is half-an-hour early. What has happened?’

One of the other symptoms of sabbatical is that I have become one of those people who texts in to radio programmes. (Yes, I have to all intents and purposes retired.) The answer came to me straight away. So, pulling up in Robin’s drive, I sent a quick text to Radio Norfolk.

Back to churches and walking. Colkirk is a pleasing village just south of Fakenham. The Diocese of Norwich underwent a very thorough programme of selling old vicarages and rectories in the 60s and 70s and replacing them with more modest houses. Robin has a ‘standard issue’ parsonage, the like of which you see across the county, but set in a very generous garden. He has achieved one of my life goals: a sit-on mower.

After half-an-hour of ecclesiastical chit-chat in his sitting room, we rose to start our walk. Removing my phone from my pocket I discovered I had four missed calls from the same ‘0800’ number. Was this Radio Norfolk trying to get hold of me? I made mental note to have a listen on BBC Sounds when I got home to see if I had got the answer right.

The kirk in Colkirk stands steadfastly at the centre of the village. St Mary, Colkirk has a bulky fourteenth century tower, which also acts as the church’s porch, like nearby Mileham on Walk 25. It’s dark inside: stained glass throughout, including a patchwork quilt of medieval glass in the south wall of the chancel, and no clerestory. But on this warm summer morning, with doors open at both ends of the building, it was a tranquil oasis.

Heading west out of the village Robin led me to one of the finest vistas in Norfolk. Beacon Hill is, apparently, the county’s third highest point, with Fakenham nestling in the valley of the Wensum below us. At 115 feet, Fakenham’s tower is unmissable. But from here we could clearly see Sculthorpe and Shereford to the north-west, and, when the trees aren’t in full leaf, Great and Little Snoring and Hindringham are visible to the north-east.

Robin is in his element standing here. His journey of faith is fascinating, and he finds a deep connectedness to God in the natural world. He prays Psalm 19 daily: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.’ As Robin commented, Norfolk is as much about its skies as it is its landscape. They are as wide as oceans. God’s handywork sheweth very well here. It is a liminal place.

We walked through the fields, with me quizzing Robin on the challenges of managing so many parishes. Robin has an unhurried thoughtfulness which one rarely finds in the highly-charged urban clergy I work with in London. I suspect rural ministry requires a certain level of sanguinity if one is to get any sleep. I asked him, on a scale of one to ten, how much time, energy, and worry is expended on church buildings. He replied, without his customary pause before speaking, ‘Nine.’

It would be difficult to find the ruins of All Saints, Oxwick without a guide. This is one of Norfolk’s lost villages. Surrounded by trees, Robin had to trample down nettles for us to get to the porch. It is hard to believe that this is a very recent ruin. All Saints was deroofed in the 1940s, and Robin directed me to Colkirk’s village website, where there are a couple of photos of the church in its working days, with people standing outside it.

Until recently, Robin held two services a year here. One at All Saints-tide, the church’s patronal festival, and the other an Ascension Day Eucharist. ‘It feels rather appropriate in a church without a roof.’ There was even a wedding blessing here a few years ago. He’s called it a day on public worship here now. The local man who used to strim the churchyard and church is too frail to do so, and the fabric is decaying.

We were able to pass through the (unusually shallow) porch, and to stand just inside the nave. Nature is quickly reclaiming this building. The tower collapsed centuries ago. The gable of the west wall, where a window once looked into the tower, looks precarious. I can’t imagine it surviving another bad winter.

We returned to Colkirk, where Robin had offered to take me up the church tower. It is not a tall steeple, and I had accepted the invitation with alacrity. A spiral staircase takes you to you to a floor above the porch. From there, is a series of ladders all the way to the top, the last and smallest of which is in the centre of the tower looking down over two bells rehung in a steel frame, and, below them, a decaying oak bell frame. I have a good head for heights, but not an excellent one, and decided that discretion was the better part of valour on this occasion.

Back, then, to the Rectory. I asked Robin if he had a favourite church, or a favourite parish. ‘Not really,’ he said, ‘they are like children.’ Wise, and diplomatic! At the Rectory I met Robin’s wife, Sarah, who is a keen bellringer. She is (I think) fourteen towers away from having rung at every ring-able tower in Norfolk.

I returned to Hindringham to listen to the end of Chris Goreham’s breakfast show. To my astonishment, I was the only person to answer the ‘Reckoning’ correctly. No wonder they’d tried to call me so many times. I was gutted to have missed my fanfare in real time, but consoled by being Norfolk’s cleverest person for the day. If you haven’t yet worked it out, you too can listen again. (You’ll need to fast forward to 3:55:35.)

A bit like Robin in Colkirk, I have a favourite place to stand and stare in Hindringham. It’s on a bridleway behind Hindringham Hall, where there is a sublime vista across the medieval fishponds towards Wighton and Wells. A few weeks ago, on a rare clear evening, I watched the sun set from here. I have seen plenty of sunsets over the years, and in places more exotic than North Norfolk. But, on this occasion, I had an incredible sense that, rather the sun setting, the earth was turning. As I watched this sliver of fiery light slip from view, I realised it was me that was moving, not it.

Today was the longest day, the summer solstice. I had intended to return to Hindringham Hall to watch the sun set at its latest hour. I got a better offer, however, when I received an invitation to an impromptu barbecue with some neighbours. I got home late, well after sunset. But it was an exceptionally clear night, with an almost-full moon. The countryside shone with a silvery light.

Robin prays Psalm 19 every morning, using the translation authorised by King James. On this shortest night, the words of Joseph Addison’s glorious (and underused) hymn, based on Psalm 19, came to mind. I fell asleep singing it in my head.

The spacious firmament on high,

With all the blue ethereal sky,

And spangled heavens, a shining frame

Their great Original proclaim.

Th’unwearied sun, from day to day,

Does his creator’s powers display,

And publishes to every land

The work of an almighty hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail

The moon takes up the wondrous tale,

And nightly to the listening earth

Repeats the story of her birth;

While all the stars that round her burn

And all the planets in their turn,

Confirm the tidings as they roll,

And spread the truth from pole to pole.

What though in solemn silence all

Move round the dark terrestrial ball?

What though no real voice nor sound

Amid the radiant orbs be found?

In reason’s ear they all rejoice,

And utter forth a glorious voice,

Forever singing as they shine,

The hand that made us is divine.