The Flood and the Ark
'And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth’.
The Noak’s Ark, Lurgashall, West Sussex
The Ark originally built of gopher wood, has had a refurb. The Biblical damp and dark barge has been transformed into a warm and brick-walled pub overlooking Lurgashall’s picturesque village green in West Sussex. We, the Surgeon and I, arrived as the others had done millennia ago, soaked and mud-caked. A re-vamped Mrs. Noah with swept back grey hair and a striking pair of black-rimmed glasses, checked our kind against her list and agreed that we had a reservation. Other touches of post-biblical modernity, included a fire flaming in the grate and glasses of post-ride beer called Tea.
When, we’d set out earlier this morning from the pub’s car park, the day was limp and sealed in a deep grey tin. Wet and windless light filtered weakly through trees. Our tyres swished along the surface of the rivered road, squeezing mud and water as they turned. The woods which crowded the lanes of West Sussex, gave off a rich and sweet smell tinged with a woody bitterness. Spring barley sprang in sodden fields, whose hedged-lined boundaries were those from another age. The country was companionable, human in scale. And wet.
Waters, freed from the confines of dark-ditch walls gorged on black tar, leaving bite marks, stony and white in the road. The rain began again as soon as we set off. It snapped through the woodland branches and crackled through the leaves. As the road reared upwards, we rode past Pheasant Copse, where a bevy of pheasants panicked and fussed, running headlong away from us into thickets and trees. One, a brown, leaf-coloured female, raced across the road and noisily beat its feathers into flight, only to fly straight into the parkland’s stone wall. It landed with a thump on wet ground, rallied, shook its head, squawked and raced back across the road into a thicket from whence it came and where I imagined, it nursed its bruises and its pride.
In the Rother valley, the river came to greet us on an incoming tide. The road on which we rode, turned from greasy black into a liquid milk chocolate-brown and stretched for as far as we could see. We stopped by the water’s edge to consider the depth and speed of the flow and to ponder on how wide this muddy ocean might be. As we did, the river-tide rose to greet us and began to lap around our shoes.
The Surgeon was not keen. “I think we should turn back”, he said.
“This bike’s not for turning”, I replied, thrilled by the perverse adventure ahead of us. After a minor pause, I shouted, “Ride on, ride on in majesty/The angel armies of the sky will look down at us with sad and wondering eyes!” And I rode into the mud-brown sea, whose waters quickly rose above the chain ring, over the axles, and stopped at my knees. Four hundred metres later, once on dry(ish) land again, I turned to see the Surgeon pedalling through the water behind me. He was framed by florescent coloured leaves, a wake of rippled water trailed behind him.
”I’m not happy,” he shouted, once my camera had caught him mid-flow. But he rode, half-grinning, aware of the deal (‘expect nothing but the unexpected’) which he strikes whenever he chooses to ride with me.
We rode past isolated farms which were tidy and orderly with not a tractor out of place. Houses were a vision of rustic loveliness, their walls a mix of flat, madder coloured pantiles, creamy rough cut ragstone and ancient dark wood. Naked rose stems climbed the walls and tidy beds of dead-headed flowers grew in beds. We had these tiny oozing, mud-covered lanes, walled high by still-in-leaf-hedges, to ourselves. We met no one. No car passed us. Chaffinches fired from the still-in-leaf hedges like shot-gun pellets.
Mid-ride, the flat sky emptied without warning. Water rushed from the sky as water pours down a drainpipe. We raced to the tiny Selham Church where we sat on a hard wooden bench, surrounded by an ancient cold and stoney air. A limp Jesus hung from a cross in a stained glass window and medieval serpents writhed around the stone capitals of the chancel. The rain hammered on the roof and water pooled around our shoes.
The Surgeon’s legs began to give way on the final hills. He’s more used to bending over bodies than a bicycle’s handle-bars. He stopped for a while and as he regained his breath, guns in the far field began to blaze and I watched a bouquet of pheasants race for hedgerow cover. They hunkered down low, stick still and watched me warily, unsure as to whether I too was a threat. The Surgeon thought it not a good idea to stop near to where the guns were firing, so he re-mounted and we rode on.
Noah’s Ark, the pub, appeared a few kilometres later, like the proverbial olive branch. We ordered pints of Tea at the bar, a beer of fruity sweetness mixed with woody bitterness, just like the woods earlier in the day. The rain continued to tap against the windows and the light lost itself in the trees beyond the carpark. We ordered large plates of warm food and another pint of Tea. “We might be here awhile”, I said to the surgeon as we settled beside the fire, “have you seen the Met Office’s weather warning?” He grinned, aware of the deal he makes when he chooses to ride with me.
