Some time around when this piece goes live, I will not be at a swanky drinks evening in Hereford. Most of you probably won’t be either, but that’s a different matter.
I was, at least, invited to a swanky drinks evening in Hereford. I probably wasn’t their first choice, I think they pitched for Richard Negus and missed, but I was invited because it was ‘near Wales’. Being someone who mostly lives in Wales, that would seem a reasonable association to make. Wales is, after all, famously small. Its diminutive size is often useful to journalists as a comparative measurement, mostly to describe the rate of loss of rainforests or melting polar ice caps.
It’s true that the principality (EDIT: yes, I know but I like the rhythm of the word) isn’t that big, about 170 miles top to bottom, 60 miles across at the skinny bit, and most of the eastern border is firmly attached to England. Despite the assertions of those living on the other side of that border, we do have all the things you expect in a modern country: tarmac on the roads, fast internet, we even have a few branches of Waitrose*.
A small country, badly arranged
The thing is, it’s not that easy to get around. We have all the drawbacks of being a small place, but for some reason our travel arrangements need to be planned out like a minor expedition. That drinks party thing in Hereford is only a couple of counties down from where I live, barely 100 miles, but it is also nearly three hours away. Three sodding hours of wiggling down roads that are barely wide enough to warrant the ‘A’ prefix.
When I regretfully declined, there was a little note of surprise. It’s only just over the border, couldn’t I try and make it? This is part of the issue: people simply do not believe you when you say that it can take half a day to travel from one end of Wales to another. Last year, a friend came across from Essex to Crickhowell for some fishing, and he emailed me to arrange to meet up for drinks one night. When I pointed out that me driving down to the Usk would take longer than him driving back home to the edge of London, he simply refused to believe me. I had to send him a screenshot of the Google Maps prediction before he would.
My Scribehound stablemate Patrick Galbraith once, a few years ago, ended up at the wrong end of Wales after a sat-nav error. He was meant to be appearing on stage at the Welsh Game Fair, but somehow drove to the wrong part of Wales. Upon discovering that he was only 100 or so miles askew but over three hours distant, he had to call the organiser and inform them of his non-attendance. The error was possibly due to the similarity between ‘Caernarfon’ and ‘Carmarthen’, or it may have had something to do with the rumour that he was up all night drinking with chunky-avian-funster Mark Avery.
It’s easily done either way. This persuasive assumption that Wales is only a little bigger than Rutland strikes again.
But, you cry, this is not a uniquely Welsh problem. You live in Cornwall, so you have a two-hour drive to reach anywhere worthwhile, because Devon is wrong and should not exist.
Or you’re in Suffolk, which means London is suspiciously easy to get to, but the North Norfolk coast may as well be on the moon.
Leicestershire isn’t really near anywhere but itself, and the Forest of Dean dwells neither in England nor Wales, although if you can paddle a coracle across the Severn you can nip over to the posh services near Gloucester and spend a morning’s wage on a sticky bun.
And don’t even mention driving to anywhere in Scotland north of Fort William or Inverness…
There is, of course, a sliding scale of inconvenience. Most of rural Surrey is essentially just Zone 10 of London.
Really, many corners, and middle bits, of the British Isles have their own unique travel challenges, but we tend to assume that only our rural borough is the one with tricky roads and travel times that need to be carefully calculated. The Yanks scoff at this, but they have the luxury of arrow-straight highways and freeways laid fresh across empty prairie or swamp. Our roads are laid atop the legacy of 10,000 years of habitation and evolving civilisation, with twisting ribbons of tarmac cut between rising slopes and venerable oaks. B-roads visit the gate of every major farm in the county as they wend their way between market towns. Very little of the rural road network was laid out for the travel expectations of the late 20th century.
It’s very easy to moan about a lack of understanding of ‘our rural ways’, I often do, but in this particular case our rural ways and byways are not well understood by those charged with servicing them. Delivery companies can often struggle with the idea of a house having a name rather than a number, or that you don’t live on a named street. ‘The back road to Llanynys that goes past where the school used to be’ doesn’t work on their forms, and the muddy fringes do not integrate well into an increasingly urban-focused infrastructure. There is, of course, a sliding scale of inconvenience. Most of rural Surrey is essentially just Zone 10 of London, while those living in the Highlands and Islands simply have to accept that either their goods will have a delivery surcharge of forty quid, or they will not be able to receive them at all.
Fuel is another issue, especially now, as we may or may not be at war in the Middle East again. Rural fuel prices are always steeper than their urban counterparts, and we do not really have the option of reverting to public transport to offset the cost, apart from that one bus that runs once a week and gives you exactly 37 minutes and 12 seconds to get all your town-based tasks achieved. If, as is currently looking quite likely, we end up with a summer of high fuel prices and maybe even restrictions on sales, what of the rural worker? Our villages are the model for the 15-minute city, but there isn’t much shopping, banking, schooling or healthcare-ing that you can achieve in 15 minutes in a quiet village these days.
The countryside is always somewhere else
There is more to this issue of rural travel than my dreadful lack of free booze in a slightly upmarket country hotel, or the gradual decline of rural public services since the mid-1990s. There is an epidemic of assumption, of decisions being made about what the countryside is for, even if those assumptions are not being made consciously. We all tend to assume that everyone else is experiencing roughly the same life as we do, with an acknowledgement that we ourselves are somewhere in the middle and there’s a bracket of better or worse either side. When we make those assumptions of others, we are also careless about the scale of their problems, about how much an impact the loss of local employment will have, or what rural isolation can be.
The towns are creeping further out into the fields, and the governments of our lands make strategic plans about how best to use what remains of the green and soft in service of the grey and hard. Yet, despite all the think-tanks and all the years of planning, there remains an assumption that those living out in the sticks can find the services they need in the towns beyond the hill. We just need to nip down the road to get there.
Can’t be that far, surely?
*Although the one on Anglesey is a legacy of the time Prince William was stationed at RAF Valley, there was no point in the grocery giant looking any further west than Chester before that.
