Journey through history to Penda’s Fen

One bright, cold April morning in my fourteenth year, I borrowed my father's old bicycle and headed south. We lived on the outskirts of Birmingham, so south meant into Worcestershire. My route abides in pencil on a Bartholomew's half-inch map: along the Pershore Road through Alvechurch and Redditch, past Headless Cross and Crabbs Cross, and Astwood Bank, where for several miles the road followed the Worcestershire-Warwickshire border. I then pedalled south-west, through Holberrow Green, Inkberrow, Abberton, Bishampton, to Throckmorton, where I stopped.