Remains of the day

'I thought I would mull over my life situation. But all the time you're thinking about which muscle is aching. No time for the big stuff'

Not long ago I wrote an article about an extraordinary piece of industrial archaeology on the Kennet and Avon Canal, called Claverton pumping station, which is open to the public occasionally in the summer. And not long after that I was rung up by an old friend of mine from my university days who said that he had read my piece. And he would like to come and see the pumping station, and where exactly was it?

David is a very London kind of guy. He lives in W4, and works in W1, and I have never seen him outside London. He has a highly pressurised job in a famous organisation, and I sometimes see his name in newspaper headlines, along the lines of "David under even more pressure, as famous organisation comes under fire". So I wasn't sure if I ought to tell him where it was, partly because I wasn't sure if he could look after himself all right in the country, partly of course because Claverton Pumping Station is very close to where I live, and if he came, I might have to give him lunch and let him stay the night and let him make fun of the country, as London people do. But he stuck to his guns and a weekend or two after that he turned up with his archaeological antennae quivering, and we went to the pumping station open day.

It was a great success. (It was a long way to come to be disappointed.) He thought the pumping station was brilliant, and then – because he had come so far just for a pumping station – I took him to the Dundas aqueduct. This is a ancient stone structure a mile down the canal, which, even in the middle of Rome, would be sensational, and he thought that was brilliant, too.

"You know," he said, "walking along canals would be the best way to see the country. I must do it. Miles, you have given me a great idea."

I thought it was a lousy idea. Canals, in my opinion, are primarily for bicycling along. You could take a boat along one if you were pushed. But walking? Forget it.

Last weekend, on Friday, I had another phone call from David. He was not at home in London. He was somewhere between Devizes and Bradford-on-Avon. He was walking along the Kennet and Avon Canal. He had actually done it. He had left his highly paid and highly pressurised job (which, to be honest, he was due to anyway) and, having spent his last few days in the office buying canal guides and sending his secretary out to buy walking boots for him, had almost immediately taken a train to Reading and started walking down the canal. All by himself.

How many of us say: "That sounds wonderful – I'd love to do that!"

How few of us actually do it?

"I've been walking nearly a week now," he said. "I'll be passing your place tomorrow. Let me take you out to lunch."

Over a lunch-time pint of shandy, as he had soup and I had a pair of faggots, he told me with shining eyes what a difference this experience had made to him.

"It's the first time for years that I haven't had to talk to people. I've had a week or more of silence, not talking, not taking phone calls, not being asked to make decisions. Just looking at things, just calming down. Great."

Did he, I asked him, find himself having deep thoughts as he walked? After the first four or five hours of canal-trudging each day, had he solved any of the world's problems?

"Well, I thought that might happen. I thought I would mull over my life-situation and come to great decisions. But it never happened. All the time you're thinking about which muscle is aching, or whether to ease a shoulder strap, or studying the clouds for rain. Very little time for the big stuff. Incidentally, what are faggots?"

I told him. He didn't look impressed.

"And what's been happening in the world while I've been on the canal?"

The most important thing that had happened locally was, oddly enough, the uncovering of a Roman villa on the playing fields of St Laurence School in Bradford-on-Avon. They had scraped back the turf at one end of a playing pitch, and bingo! There, a few feet below the surface, was a wonderful Roman mosaic floor that was almost intact, with dolphins swimming and heaven knows what.

I had been to see it the day before I met David, and it was an extraordinary sight. Quite memorable.

I didn't tell him about it, though.

Can you imagine what it would be like if he had forgotten about canals and fallen in love with Roman remains instead?

We'd never have got rid of him.