Epic Journeys

The River Stour

There is no shortage of content across all media telling us that other people are doing lots of amazing and exciting things. Beautiful filmed, lavish presentations, inspirational people and spectacular places. Streaming has given us access like never before. Gone are the days when if you wanted this stuff relating to your special interest, you saved your pocket money and bought the VHS tape from a specialist shop or magazine advert.*

(*before you start sniggering at the back, I’m talking about skateboarding!)

This stuff is great, but does it serve to diminish our own experiences?

I often fail to see the wonder in my surroundings. The landscape, its history, its evolution and the human stories that fall out of it. Living in a cradle of the industrial revolution much of the countryside where I regularly is a relic of a past only recently gone. Places that are green and ‘wild’ conceal works and remnants of industrial endeavour and a past characterised by dirt and sweat.

A close friend recently embarked on a mission to plot a running route along our local river. The Stour gives its name to my hometown and run’s it’s course through the southern end of the urban Black Country in the Midlands of England.

It has been invisible in plain site to me for much of my life often appearing as a dreary course between nondescript commercial premises until it breaks out into the Staffordshire and Worcestershire countryside tracking Worcestershire canal until it empties into the mighty Severn at Stourport.

The source is in the Clent Hills – a well known local oasis of calm elevated above the Black Country and looking over the plain of the Birmingham conurbation. It sits behind St Kenelms, a historic church built on a Saxon worship ground and housing the legend of the murder of the child and king’s son Kenwulf (Kenelm) at the hand of his jealous and ambitious sister Quendryda and her lover Askobert.

The spring sprang forth when the Archbishop of Canterbury’s emissaries released the child’s body from the ground. If this 1000 year Games of Thrones doesn’t inspire you at the start of a 30 mile adventure nothing will. Thankfully the only victims on this journey in 2023 were the calves of some of the participants.

The nine pilgrims who set out from that venerable place followed the flow as near as possible and this took through a number of places that provide an oasis of natural life in and amongst the brutalism of the urban environ.

These places exist in full view of the inhabitants, but the points of access are often concealed in a way akin to Platform 9 ¾ at Kings Cross station and similarly it’s only those who are really looking that discover.

The power of the natural world is never more evident than when you see how people have had to engineer solutions to claim their piece of the land. Tunnels, gullies, channels and bridges litter the route and although their scale is not comparable to the wonders of the world their presence is a constant reminder of our true place.

The ingenuity of our forebears is brilliantly exposed when travelling under and over some of the grander structures, most of which result from the explosion of civil engineering in the canal and railway ages.

But, it is the way in which nature has reclaimed so much of that which was spoiled by our legacy industries that gives the most joy. It was these places where the modern world lies in ruin at the mercy of rampant growth, a rewilding of sorts that gives hope to those of us who would like to see a restoration of the balance between men and the natural order.

A short route through a riverside oasis and an unexpected encounter with a horse soon gave way to a path alongside an industrial scale recycling plant and a pit stop at Greggs.  These stories don’t get told on Netflix.

This route didn’t take us over mountains or along grand national trails. There is no guidebook and it’s unlikely the Stourbridge Civic Amenities site features on any adventurers must do list. Despite this, this route along this most modest of waterways holds endless opportunities to be engaged, educated and thrilled.

One man’s ambition (cheers Col) and his nerdish cartographic tendencies have served up an Epic Journey by any measure.  All it took to turn this into an adventure was 8 other willing and somewhat unprepared runners (white trainers…really), a few willing drivers and a few of our favourite grocers who kept us going on route.

photos credit: Danny K