Day 51 Part 2 - Seems like a nice place

(continued from Part One)

With a few more miles walked I paused for a breather on a short flight of steps at Bridge 33. A man with a dog turned up the same path and we fell into conversation. Dave is a retired local planning officer and knows this land. I confessed my ignorance and low expectation, which happily had been confounded.

Dave added his opinion to the claim for the Battle of Bosworth which locals have. He told me that while no archeological evidence has been found for any site there is a letter in which the king promised recompense to four parishes around Mancetter "for my recent battle".

We talked railways and roads, watched activity in the fields, and wished each other a good walk.

As I entered Nuneaton, I left the canal at the moment when a radio on a construction site blared "Gangsters' Paradise". It made me smile and this was broadened when one of the first cars to pass me had "A town called Malice" blasting through its open window. Nuneaton had introduced itself.

The sign marked "Abbatoir" led to a dead end, perhaps appropriately. So I dog-legged back to the main road. This featured one of the best pieces of 'roundabout art' of my walk. A tall pole was crowned with pipes which left it at all angles. Each was capped with a flat nozzle and the whole thing was showering water under high pressure. The effect was create a huge dandelion-head, which shimmered and shed in the sunshine. Quite beautiful.

The centre of Nuneaton was anonymous. I wondered why a local bus carried the name 'Larry Grayson' in large letters. Sure enough, Wikipedia confirms that he grew up in the town as William White. Perhaps the buses are each named after a Nuneaton celebrity - how many are there? I wondered what it was like to drive the Larry Grayson bus and how many times each day passengers would shout "Shut that door!"

I'd remembered Grayson's never-seen friend Everard. Was he named after the Leicester brewery, whose signs were everywhere in Nuneaton?

The posher end of Nuneaton, I discovered, is the east. This is contrary to most towns, where the prevailing west winds priveleged the western roads of houses with cleaner air in the coal-burning era. I wonder why Nuneaton bucked the trend.

I finally walked into Leicestershire as I crossed Watling Street for the first time. Hinckley sits across the border and I wondered if there's a rivalry with Nuneaton.

(continues in Part Three)