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4 days 4 hours, 369 miles

I realised the other night, as I was stood at a cold, wet bus stop, that space has contracted over time. Well, from a Mathematical/Physical/Geographical point of view that’s not entirely true, but my world seems to have got smaller as I’ve got older.

Not in the way that most people mean when they say that-in the sense that they don’t travel far out of their town-more in that distances seem to have shrunk for me.

When I was a child we went to two places on holiday (to be fair we only had two actual holidays so that’s not entirely unreasonable)-Whitby and Derbyshire. The former, for those who don’t have a map handy, is in Yorkshire, and smells like fish. It’s also where the characters in Heartbeat, when it wasn’t *that* bad, used to take holidays. It is sort of like a posher version of Skegness and Scarborough, but not quite Eastbourne/Brighton gentrification.

In Derbyshire we went to a place called Rowsley. It is round the corner from Chatsworth house, and nowadays is mostly famed for having a hotel (The Peacock) that Keira Knightly and some bloke stayed in when they were filming some film that I’ve not seen, so can’t recall the title of. It’s not far from Matlock which is Derbyshire’s administrative town (and as far as residents in that part of Derbyshire are concerned is the county town), and Bakewell which is the puddingy bit. We also stayed for a bit in Tideswell which is closer to Buxton (according to Google Maps it’s in Buxton, I think the people of Tideswell might have something to say about that).

Both holidays seemed miles and miles away from home. Partly I imagine because it was a week/2 weeks trapped with my mother and grandmother, and no hope of escape. Mostly I suppose because of perspective. The distances I travelled ordinarily at that stage were considerably smaller. According to the map my first primary school (sat between 1,2,3 psychiatric hospitals so site of much parental paranoia*) was 0.6miles from our house, 10 mins walk. My second Primary School (which was named differently, and was a nice 50s building) was a mile and a half from my house (30min walk)as was my secondary school.

Now I live 15 miles ish from the two nearest county towns/cities (much as I like Derby and find it friendlier than Nottingham it is really only a city because of the Cathedral, it is just a big town otherwise). I live  ten miles from where I’ll be going to college. At least once a week I travel into Derby or Nottingham, and once a week travel ten miles with 2.5 on foot (because joined up transport isn’t nearly as joined up as it should be). I was, until 3 months ago, travelling once a week to Bakewell, which is nearly twenty miles away, and none of this struck me as being far at all. In fact I regularly describe Mam Tor as being around the corner (25miles) and Glossop as just up the hill (40 miles).When I go ‘proper’ shopping, which hasn’t been for some time given that the skint fairy has made herself comfy, I think of Trafford as being a nip up the road (53miles), and Meadowhall* as local (30 miles).The journey to Max didn’t strike me as particularly long (120miles), which I did try and express to the man at our local train station. Sadly my argument of “it’s only a two finger stretch across the map and just straight down” didn’t work.

The fact that some of these places are regarded as distant arrived in my inbox last week. My travels to Bakewell had been as part of an ongoing support project. However, the project I was part of ended and I and the person I was supporting were transferred to the next nearest project. Though ostensiably happy for us to transfer over they evidently weren’t, given the distance between me and the person I was supporting. With a few initial flurries of “well perhaps someone closer could support X”, well yes if you want to magically counjure up someone with the requisite skills and an instant level of trust. They concluded that we could meet half way, and then after we had had a soujourn in visits due to belated travel expenses they decided that it was too far, and they wouldn’t fund the support. Fortunately X is in a better place now and has developed some natural support systems, but I’m not going to pretend that it doesn’t annoy me. Firstly because frankly it isn’t that bloody far, and secondly why should distance be a barrier to someone getting the right kind of support?

However, it has made me realise that my world has got bigger and smaller, all at once. My concept of a long way seems to have changed considerably. When friends in chidhood went on holiday to Cornwall it seemed a million miles away, these days it doesn’t strike me as far at all (still though it doesn’t strike me as somewhere I have any great desire to go-the language and history, yes-the many beaches, rahs and surfer dudes, no thanks).

I wonder if I’ll get to a stage where this seems around the corner?

*2, which was Mapperley Hospital (previously Workhouse as so many were), was changed into the Priory Nottingham. Which contrasts nicely with the one on The Wells Road which is where Nottingham’s Drug and Alcohol services come from. So one road has the posh drunks, the other has the regular type. The last I knew number 3 was primarily Children’s and outreach. All were fully functioning (and to a certain extent still are) when I was at school, and then there was this one (which is a gorgeous Hine building) which was closed while I was at school, and is now very expensive flats. Also closed during my childhood was this one (no I can’t work out which bit used to be it either and I used to know what it looked like). Fortunately the one my mum used to teach at is still open, which is just as well since otherwise your options are pretty much the locked floor of here, or this place here.

*Incidentally-Google Maps when I zoom in on Meadowhall that means I want to zoom there. I do not want a closer view of bloody Rotherham and a “we couldn’t find anything called” sidebar. I know it’s not there that’s why I selected “Zoom Here”.

Title is apparently how long it would take me to walk to Paris.

Tags: curiosity, places