“We must make our lives as we sew, stitch by stitch” – Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

The first full week of the sabbatical has been full of learning. Happily the river Lugg and the general water logged state of the ground saved me from attempting an over-ambitious expedition for my first set of training walks. Instead, my sights switched to the Malvern Hills and on Wednesday and Thursday I puffed and wheezed my way to the British Camp and back.

These walks were definitely in the spirit of the British Army adage “train hard: fight easy.” The total climb on day one was 3100 feet, and the following day amounted to 2400 feet. Not a landscape I will face for the first three weeks on the the Via Francigena

A definite advantage of walking the Malverns for me though, is the fact I have to spend less time looking at a map. More time can be taken being attentive to the place. As I grew up in the town, I found that at almost every turn memories of people and events jostled for my attention.

The walk towards the hills took me through Malvern Vale, a large housing development that occupies the former North Site of the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment. When I was a planning officer at Malvern Hills District Council, this site took up a lot of energy within the planning department. It was good to see balancing ponds, retained industrial buildings, the copse of trees dedicated to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers all now a integrated parts of the scheme.

As I approached the Church of the Ascension on the corner of Leigh Sinton Road and Somers Park Avenue – my home church – I spotted a flash of colour on the road. A lost reel of cotton lay wet and forgotten.

As I continued on my climb up to the hills, retracing the journey home from my old high school to the family home, passing “Dougie’s” hairdressers where I once went to reverse an appalling haircut I’d foolishly assented to at a party, I found myself thinking of the role place has in our memory and the stories of our lives. Each of these memories, were like a stitch – insignificant individually, but together making the garment that makes us who we are.

Stitches can function to hold us together, or can be too tight; sometimes they have to be painfully unpicked, or removed to allow healing to continue. As I walked from our old family home, up to the Tank Quarry, I gave thanks for all those people who I had made that journey with in the past. These were friendships from which I learned and grew into who I am today – important seams.

The walking was hard going that first day and the weather did always reward me with stunning views. The following day I walked with an old friend and his dog. Along with walking poles, this day seemed a little easier, although the beginning of blisters pointed to the need to take even closer attention to the state of my feet during the journey. My leg muscles were also very stiff by the time I got home on Thursday evening.

However, the opportunity to re-visit some of the early stitches of my life, was the most valuable experience. It was hard not to see the hand of the Creator in many of those stitches, and for those painful ones that had to be re-done, his gentle work on the unpicker.

CS Lewis spent some time at Malvern College – albeit, probably sewing as many unhappy stitches as happy ones. Of heaven and of the Creator he wrote:

To every soul, God will look like its first love because He IS its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it – made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.