The Mall to Cricklade

The Mall – Cricklade

As time passes it becomes an ever more valuable commodity, or so they say. Not for Philip Leslie, who chose to spend his birthday on a walk which must rank alongside the Millenium Dome in the list of the best ways to completely waste your time. He was accompanied in this exercise in futility by Paul, Molly, Mitzy and me. A brave guest appearance was made by Bill, despite this being a rather tumultuous period in his love life.

I am not exactly sure how this walk ever came about. Presumably a number of pints had been drunk at the time. What I do know is that I will never be trusting either my father or Phil to exercise any judgement again. I suspect that Molly feels the same way

Paul and I picked up Phil, Molly and Bill around the back of Phil’s house, followed by a trundle around the Commonweal School playing fields. The next stage was to walk along the old railway track, through Swindon’s lovely ‘Front Garden’, which is currently being converted into a building site. The weather was acceptable, if slightly depressing , with only a slight spattering of drizzle. I am not sure exactly what was being discussed by those in front during this section of the walk, but I do know that as we emerged from the ‘Front Garden’ into a west(ish) Swindon industrial estate, the topics covered by Bill and I had included veganism, new age religion, China, the US and the links between Robert Browning and William Blake.


At this point we were no closer to Cricklade than at the start of the walk. However, what it did afford was a walk along another old railway line which the town planners had decided to use as a natural guide for a line of overhead electricity pylons. After a couple of miles we came out suitably irradiated in Abbey Meads, the new northern development of Swindon which threatens north Wiltshire in roughly the same way as climate change threatens the world.

After negotiating a number of traffic lights and road intersections we again joined up with the old railway. Apart from the fact that it is not so old anymore, and forms part of the Swindon- Cricklade railway, where ‘visitors can enjoy all the facilities they expect from a Heritage Railway centre’ and the joy that that entails (here’s the link for those who are interested in this possibly laudable but in reality painfully parochial idea http://www.swindon-cricklade-railway.org/index.php#top). Fortunately (?), the trains weren’t running, so we were able to walk along the tracks, forced to stare at the sleepers underfoot as we picked our way between them. I noted that the last time that I had engaged in this slightly painful exercise was on the way to Macchu Picchu. Cricklade, it turns out, cannot be compared to Macchu Picchu.


We came to the end of the railway line and were forced to walk along a road for a couple of miles as cars raced home from work. Then we were able to cross into the field and go along a path into Cricklade. This, and the subsequent visit to the Red Lion pub, was possibly the only genuinely pleasant part of the walk. Lindy and Sheelagh turned up after a day of shopping in Bath. Never has that prospect seemed so attractive.