One of the longest days of my upcoming hike is a 23-mile stretch from Richmond to Ingleby Cross on Sunday April 19. Thankfully it is also the single flattest segment of the entire Coast to Coast Path traversing the farmlands of the the Vale of Mowbray before the next ascent into the Cleveland Hills and the North York Moors National Park. But this part of the walk has one daunting feature known as “The A19.” In English parlance, this four-lane roadway is an “A Road” which designates those busy thoroughfares with a few street crossings where cars and lorries travel at pretty high speeds. For my Rhode Island followers, think of Tower Hill Road in North Kingstown. Crossing such a roadway on foot requires the walker to use diligence and patience lest he or she end up in a body cast or worse.
Now that the C2C has been officially designated as a National Trail, the UK government risk managers and lawyers have decided that a safer diversion would reduce exposure to civil liability. And so the powers-that-be have proclaimed that the “official” route now includes a diversion to a footbridge located to the north of the crossing originally mapped by Alfred Wainwright in 1975. While this all sounds quite sensible, the footbridge is four miles away from the straight-line crossing and adds EIGHT MILES to the 23-mile trek to Ingleby Cross! Essentially the same as a casual stroll from TF Green Airport to the Point Judith Lighthouse and not stopping for the night in Bonnet Shores.
The company that booked my trip sent an updated map showing the new route but added with a wink and a nod that the original crossing remains available for those who want to assume the risk. But even this is couched in language that makes it abundantly clear that lawyers were consulted before the message was dispatched.
I am announcing here that I WILL be assuming the risk and crossing the A19 on foot. Why would I do this you may ask. The answer is that I possess unusual road-crossing skills that were finely honed in my youth. I’ll explain. When I was a kid, it was decided that it was high time for Rhode Island to enter the freeway age. Interstate Route 95 was but a pipe dream when the Huntington Expressway, aka Route 10, cut an asphalt swath from Olneyville to Reservoir Avenue in Cranston. Where there had been houses across the street from our own home, there was now an embankment upon which sat four lanes of highway. A little ways down the street was a sand lot (now occupied by a Wendy’s restaurant) where my brother and I played baseball with the other kids in the neighborhood. Home plate lay at the corner of Garfield Avenue and West Harry Street. The right field boundary was a billboard that advertised the brands of cigarettes that we all smoked in those days. The shorter porch in left field was “the freeway” as we always called it. Since all of the power hitters (i.e. those of us older than 12) were right handed batters, virtually all home runs were launched into the travel lanes of said freeway. Inasmuch as the entire neighborhood shared a single baseball, the thing had to be retrieved from the roadway or there would be no more games. And so, through mastering the act of fetching home run balls, we all learned the delicate art of watching and timing the coming and going of cars traveling at high speeds.
Therefore, I shall attempt a grade crossing of the A19 Sunday next!