by Raynor Winn
‘Bloody hell, love, you should cover yourself up, you’ll catch your death.’
She looked up at Dave, seemingly oblivious to the effect she was having by standing dripping, almost naked in front of the fishermen, who were now nearly catatonic.
‘Why, thanks, I will.’
Her breathy tones were more than one of the old men could bear; he put his head in his hands and started rocking. His group of friends poured him a cup of water, and handed it to him.
‘Take your heart pill, Doug, and look the other way.’
‘It’s all right, mate, if you pass out I can do CPR.’ Dave and Julie sat on the other side of the picnic bench. They’d followed our path since leaving Tyneham Cap, only diverting to take a different route into Lulworth Cove, always just a mile or so behind. ‘Bloody hell, old men, eh? Don’t want to get old, me, angina and diabetes, arthritis and stuff like that. No, I’m just going to keep walking, then we’ll be all right, won’t we, Ju?’
‘Hopefully.’
‘We all hope for that.’ Moth gave me a look that said, ‘Don’t say it.’ To anyone else he appeared to be just laughing and drinking tea. We left Dave and Julie eating massive fried breakfasts, never expecting to see them again.
The path was gentle and low level between trees and high hedges. Disturbed by the wind, the gorse seeds rattled in their pods and blackthorn branches clattered. Walking beneath their canopy we didn’t see the purple hue spreading east, or the wall of water approaching from the sea. Without warning the sky opened and a vertical flood hit us, turning the dusty path into a treacherous soup. Hard rain spears drove into our faces, so hard we could barely see where we were going. Suddenly my feet had no hold and I watched them fly into the air in slow motion as the world spun like a gyroscope. The sky was in front, then below, and the hedge came from nowhere. I stopped spinning and tried to stand, but was pinned into a blackthorn shrub by dozens of barbs. Eventually back on my feet, Moth pulled them out one by one, leaving a throbbing red pincushion of hands and legs. The not-waterproof was even less waterproof and I was covered head to toe in black mud. We trudged on through Osmington Mills and dozens of people sheltering under garden umbrellas. The sun returned as quickly as the rain had come, spreading across Weymouth Bay, drying the mud until it cracked like crazy paving and fell off. The puncture wounds throbbed remarkably. We pulled out the last bits of thorn and followed the evening lights into town, intending to get some supplies and camp on the beach if we couldn’t find anywhere else. That was our intention, but we should have known that for us the best plan was to have no plan.
Weymouth was by far the biggest urban area we’d seen on the path since Newquay, a year earlier. We bought an ice cream near the statue of George III and wandered through the town amongst the bustle of the first week of the summer holidays; families heading out for dinner, tired kids that should have been in bed, mothers-in-law and sons-in-law who didn’t care if they never saw each other again. I could feel a weird sensation growing in my gut, as if my stomach was shrinking to the size of a pea and then rapidly expanding to a football. Maybe I was just tired, or I’d strained myself when I fell over, or I was hungry. The swelling and shrinking got faster and I was burning hot, then with one fiery spasm I retched up the ice cream and what was left of the morning’s sausage sandwich. After half an hour my stomach had resorted to producing a strangely frothy green bile, but the retching didn’t stop. Moth found a taxi and asked the driver to take us to a campsite.
‘No point, mate, they’re all full.’
We sat on a bench on the beach, and the retching went on. After two hours I couldn’t walk anywhere and was drifting between sleep and heaving.
‘Can you walk? I’ve found us a B & B.’
I hadn’t even realized that Moth had left my side.
‘We can’t; it’ll take everything we’ve got left.’
‘We can; it’s done.’
There was a lift in the tiny hotel, and a bed and a toilet, and for about thirty-six hours that’s all I saw. I lay on the bed and threw up in the toilet bowl and staggered between the two, drifting in and out of sleep. Then I was sick some more. Then I slept. It was about five in the morning when I realized it wasn’t the same day, this was actually our second night in the hotel. I shook Moth awake.
‘What are we doing here? We can’t pay for this.’
‘It’s okay, it’s all paid for, go back to sleep.’
I slept and dreamt of green ice creams.
The next morning I ventured out of the room to sit in the dining room and eat dry toast with barely the energy to lift it to my mouth.
‘Are you better? You don’t look it.’ A huge, familiar figure dropped himself down on a seat opposite. Dave. ‘Moth told us about the blackthorn. Mind you, I’ve not heard of it giving people sickness though. Arthritis, yes. We’re off round Portland today. Quite like Weymouth, me, we’ve done some shopping, tried to do some washing but it won’t dry so we’ve bought new socks and T-shirts, went to a museum, even got me into an art gallery, didn’t you, Ju? Not for long though. So we’re round Portland. Two days for us, I think, so won’t see you again after this.’
‘What are you doing here? I don’t know if it was the blackthorn. Might have been the ice cream.’
‘Nowhere else to go, was there? Campsites were all full, police wouldn’t let us camp on the beach, so we’re trapped here too, the only place with vacancies. I like Weymouth though, me.’
After breakfast, we waved them off, larger than life with vast rucksacks and walking poles, totally out of place among the holidaymakers. Sad to say goodbye to them again.
The seafront would have the character of any ordinary English seaside town if it weren’t for the stunning Georgian buildings; once the domain of royalty and aristocracy, venue for grand parties held by the holidaying wealth of the nation, now home to hotels and guest houses, cafés and trinket vendors. The beach, which would have been a place for the discreet and delicate to promenade under their parasols taking in the health-giving sea air, was now rammed full with deckchairs, inflatables, chips and herring gulls, pink flesh and arguing families. I’m not sure if George III was standing on his plinth horrified by what the place had become, or wishing there’d been blow-up dinosaurs and flip-flops when he was here. I sat on a bench with my head on Moth’s knee and slept for an hour, then slept on the beach until the street lights came on.
‘You won’t be able to sleep here, you know. Soon as it gets dark the police’ll move you off. Better to head out of town.’
Two men stood on the sand, loaded down with rucksacks and carrier bags. They were as dirty as us, darkly tanned, hair pushed under hats. Backpackers possibly; homeless maybe. No, not backpackers, looking at the multi-pack boxes of food in the bags. Nor homeless, with that much food.
‘Do you live here then?’
‘No, out of town. Where are you heading?’
‘Not sure.’ Moth was on his feet, but I didn’t have the will to get up. ‘Campsites are all full, Ray’s been ill, food poisoning maybe, so we can’t walk on far today.’
The older of the two looked down at me. His face relaxed a little, easing open the wrinkles to expose the white skin beneath, a face that had spent a long time in the elements, months squinting against the sun and wind. He sat down, but didn’t let go of the bags. There was something in the way his clothes hung loose, something in the tight grip of his hand on the carrier bag.
‘Hi, I’m John. So, what are you, backpackers then?’ Something, too, in the way his grey hair curled from beneath the tattered woollen hat.
‘Well, yes.’
‘That’s a good decision, when you’ve got nowhere to go, to just keep moving. It’s the staying still that drags people down. Yeah, there’s plenty here that stay still for too long – they’ve given in and accepted that the streets are their home.’
‘How did you know? Are you an aid worker or something?’
‘No, you give yourselves away. Lying there, propped on your
rucksack with your arms still through the straps. A backpacker would have taken it off, but not you; what’s in that pack’s too important to you to let it go in town.’
‘Really?’
‘Come with us, if you like. We live outside of town; you’ll be able to camp there. Just for tonight though. It’s quite a way, but we’ve got a van.’
Rashly, or instinctively, we trusted them. Moth helped me to my feet, and we followed them to a van parked in the street. We lay on blankets in the back as the van left the street lights and headed away from the sea, into country lanes and darkness. I dozed on and off for half an hour, maybe more, until the van stopped on gravel. Getting out, we found ourselves in a woodland car park, huge pines rattling overhead in a stiff wind.
We followed John and Gav down woodland tracks in the darkness, heading deep into the forest by only the faint light of the moon. The trees thinned slightly and more light crossed the pine-needle path. Ahead of us, only faintly illuminated by low-powered battery lights, shapes emerged from between the trees. Tents, tarpaulins, shelters made from fallen branches. A village of forest dwellers, quietly sitting together, chatting, cooking food. John showed us a patch where we could put the tent, then we sat with them as Gav emptied the carrier bags from what had been their twice weekly shopping run. As the others took their purchases and went to their beds, John sat and told us about their home.
‘Couldn’t live in a town; when the countryside’s in your bones you can’t stay in those places, sucks the life out of you.’
He was a farm worker, had been all his life. He’d lived in a tied cottage on the land where he worked, but when the farm was sold, the houses were split off from the land and bought as second homes; he became homeless. He found other work, but the jobs never came with a house and his wages couldn’t cover an expensive rural rent. That’s when he first camped in the wood. Soon, others joined him, until their camp grew into a fluid village of people that came and went as the need arose.
‘At the most there’s about thirty of us if everyone turns up at once, but usually we’re about eighteen, give or take.’
Most of them worked: part-time, insecure jobs, low wages, seasonal living that made it difficult to secure a rented home.
‘But we can live here, keep a little self-respect. Some leave when things are good, come back when they go wrong. We keep it clean; we’re not substance dependents like many on the streets, just country people; the countryside’s our home but we’ve been priced out.’
They kept their lives hidden, never lighting fires for fear of the smoke giving them away. In winter they used gas heaters and thick duvets, laying pine branches down to keep the mud at bay. In summer the life was easier; they slept under the tree canopy on warm nights with the smell of the pine all around.
‘I’m sure some people know we’re here, but we’re careful not to be seen in a group; there’s a few ways in and out. Don’t know how much longer we’ll be here for, though. There’s talk of them clear-felling the forest; the purists want to return it to indigenous heath, like it would have been in Thomas Hardy’s day. Thought they had forests then; didn’t he write that book about forests? Woodlanders, that’s it. They can’t seem to see the beauty in what we have now.’
‘They were deciduous woodlands though, before the forestry plantations.’ I’d loved that book too.
‘But the pines have been here for so long. They’re as much a part of the landscape now as the old woods are. I know it’s too dark for much life in here, but there’s buzzards, they nest here every year, and foxes, badgers, woodcock, and sloe worms and adders in the heath at the edge and in the clearings. Where will the buzzards go? It’s their home. It’s our home.’
We slept in the darkness of the tent, listening to the rush of wind through the branches, but warm and protected on the soft pine-needle bed.
The next morning John dropped us at Ferrybridge, on his way to work.
‘Come back if you need somewhere. Well, this year anyway; after that there might not be a wood.’
‘Hope you find somewhere else if that’s the case. Take care.’
‘You too.’
As John drove away in the van, we stood on the pavement and looked down the long strip of road connecting the Isle of Portland to the mainland. It seemed to stretch on endlessly.
‘Shall we miss Portland? Just take a slow few days along Chesil? I’m absolutely drained.’
‘Course. Not as if we’re on a purist mission, is it?’
Chesil Beach isn’t a beach at all, but a fifteen-metre-high, eighteen-mile-long bank of pebbles, running from the Isle of Portland in the east to beyond West Bay in the west. Believed to have been formed during a period of rising sea levels, this stretch of stones honed perfectly round through millennia of movement by the force of the sea is known as a barrier beach, or a tombolo. The pebbles are fist-sized near Portland, but only the size of a grape at West Bay, possibly showing that they were picked up from two separate pebble beds and then deposited here by the rising sea at the point of the breaking waves. Inland of the bank is the Fleet Lagoon, a tidal lagoon, cut off from the sea but still subject to its ebb and flow, as Portland is to the mainland. At Ferrybridge in the east, where the sea pushes in, the waters of the lagoon are saline, but at its western end, where freshwater streams feed in, the salinity is reduced by half. A vast area of land and sea in motion together, a never-ending partnership in which each of the couple loses and gains in equal measure, but neither can exist without the other.
It was easy walking alongside the lagoon, hazy sunlight and post-sickness frailty making the day dreamlike. Tiny huts scattered the landward side of the pebble bank and occasional rowing boats were pulled up beside them. A long stretch of wire fence topped by crows bordered the path, over fifty silent black birds perched a metre apart along the edge of an arable field. We paused, not wanting to pass the sentinel. In the Welsh mythological tale, the Mabinogion, the crow is the bringer of death, but also the form taken by those with magical powers, allowing them to escape from danger. In other cultures, they’re believed to be a harbinger of change. Or just black birds, very weirdly lined up on a fence. Two steps further and they took off in a black, cawing cloud.
‘Good job we’re not superstitious then.’ Moth walked on, laughing, his outline shimmering in the heat haze from the dry ground, his footprints firm in the dust.
The path wound through reed beds and rifle ranges, coming out on to a single-track road and a collection of sheds painted in flaking blues and greens, peeling in the hot salt air. On a wooden plank bench in the shade of the shed sat three old men, gnarled, wizened and flaking like the paint, in vests, straw hats, baggy cotton drill trousers and bare feet. Oh no, more soothsayers. One spoke:
‘Where’re you heading?’
‘West.’
‘That’s a long way.’
‘Yep.’
‘There’s a hotel, further on, beyond the swans.’
The scrub hedge and dusty arable land carried on, flat and easy, our legs falling into a metronome of motion without thought. A white haze gathered in the crook of the lagoon, and cleared into a flock of white swans, over a hundred swimming, preening and landing.
‘I thought he meant metaphorically, as in: “you’ll walk with a tortoise”; I wasn’t expecting actual swans.’
‘Yeah, me too, this day’s getting more surreal as it passes.’
And beyond the swans was a hotel, Moonfleet Manor, from Falkner’s tale of smuggling and dirty deeds.
‘Let’s go and have a look. I read the book when I was young; didn’t know it was a real place.’
We sat in the garden with hot water and one teabag and imagined moonlit nights and dastardly goings-on for most of the afternoon. Before we left I went to the toilets for a moment of luxurious flushing. As I came out of one cubicle, Julie came out of the other.
‘What? Even more surreal.’
We washed our hands in the hot water, smothering our sunburn in fantastic-smelling h
and cream, as if we were old friends who’d known each other all our lives.
We walked on quietly together, through the syrupy air of the perfectly still evening. The sun was setting, lighting the sky in late July tones of gentle southern colour. The land ahead turned blue in the falling shadows and the lagoon fell silent, birdlife fading away as the water receded without wave or motion, leaving only channelled streams in the muddy sand. A small boat made its way back to the shore, a black shadow weaving quietly along rivulets of molten sky, disappearing as mud and stone blended together in the low rays of the last reflected light. A mist began to lift as the air turned silver and night blue, the reeds becoming dark silhouettes against the line of the pebble bank and the dimming sky. We pitched the tents amongst the marsh grasses, hearing only the evening calls of the wading birds and the rustle of seed heads in the breeze.
We continued together through the next day and camped near West Bexington, on the shingle ridge of the beach. Mackerel fishermen dotted the shore, the lights of their lanterns swinging through the night and the rattle of the ever-moving pebbles eerily punctuating the darkness. At first light they packed and left, buckets brimming with fish.
As we took the tent down the first of the tent poles broke, splitting through the plastic sleeve where it connected to the alloy ferrule. Dave rooted through his immense pack, reappearing with a pair of pliers, a small saw and a roll of duct tape. We cut through the broken plastic, bound the split and carried on.