Walking Home: A Poet's Journey

by Simon Armitage

  Once Brewed to Greenhead

  7 MILES

  OS Explorer OL43 West Sheet

  Monday 12 July

  The police cell I wake in is stuffy and dark. In the blackness I can just about make out the outline of a sink on the wall and a single chair. A guard rattles his keys in the corridor and a door bangs. In the cell next to me somebody coughs. Then silence. I need to pee, but there’s no bucket in the corner and there’s a bulge in the mattress on the top bunk over my head, and I don’t want to disturb whoever’s up there and have them come down and smother me with a pillow, or something worse. I must have done a terrible thing, but what? Is that a window opposite me, or a mirror? My eyes are now making the most of what little light there is, and I notice a hook on the back of the door, which is careless, because I could fashion a noose using the straps on that rucksack or the sleeves of that waterproof jacket. More light enters the room, illuminating a map the size of a rug spread out across the floor, and a compass, and a book full of notes – have I been planning an escape? Several more thoughts of this nature go through my mind until I remember that I am sleeping in the Once Brewed Youth Hostel, that the super-heavyweight convict above my head is the Tombstone, that the crime I committed was to drink too much Twice Brewed ale, and that the sentence for that crime is another fifteen days on the Pennine Way.

  I lie awake calculating the miles that have gone by and the miles still to come, and realise for the first time that I’m not looking forward to the morning, because I’m tired, and my back hurts, and there’s a pain behind my right knee, and something has been rubbing my shoulder, and my nipples are sore. I go back to sleep thinking that things will be better in the morning, but when morning comes, they aren’t. I can’t face the communal showers so I splash about in a bit of water in the sink and don’t shave, even though I’m absolutely determined not to go home with a beard. In the drying room, the forces of dehydration and the forces of saturation are doing battle by virtue of their smells, and seem to have arrived at a stalemate. Socks on the pipes dangle like petrified exhibits in Mother Shipton’s Cave and monstrous leather walking boots stand on the shelves, tongues lolling, laces splayed, like hideous horticultural species in a Victorian glasshouse. Sleeping bags with their inbuilt hoods hang cadaverous and larval from pegs on the walls, surrounded by a tangible aura of dried sweat. A thick woolly jumper slumped across a radiator is beaded with pearls of condensation. Dirty and torn towels of every shape, size and colour are draped from every available hook or rail like flags or pennants rescued from the field of battle after a particularly testing encounter. Back in my cell I go through what has already become a ritual, coating my feet with some kind of podiatric lip-balm to guard against blisters, pulling on the thin surgical-like under-socks then the chunky knitted over-socks, sniffing the armpits of my one, very expensive merino wool undershirt and deciding that its miraculous wicking properties mean it will do another day, filling the water bottles and water bag, folding the map into the appropriate quadrant, applying sunblock. In the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the hero of the story manages to clothe, equip and armour himself in not more than three verses, and he’s setting off on an epic journey across the unmapped regions of Dark Ages Britain to do battle with a foe of supernatural colour and superhuman strength. It takes me the best part of an hour to slap on the emollients, tighten straps and replenish supplies, and I’m only walking to Greenhead, less than seven miles to the west.

  I perk up a little bit in the dining area where I am diligent in my breakfast routine, adhering to the clearly stated regulations at every stage. It’s a long time since I scraped leftovers into a slop-bin or wiped a tabletop with a soapy dishcloth in a public eating space, and there are further duties to be done before leaving, including tidying my room and delivering the bundle of dirty linen to a laundry basket outside reception. When push comes to shove, I find myself thinking, I can still muck in with the rest and haven’t become a complete lotus-eating aesthete. And even though I’m unfamiliar with this kind of communal accommodation I’ve worked out that as far as youth hostels go, Once Brewed, with its TV lounge, games room, laundry, garden, liquor licence and library, is practically the Savoy. I’ve also realised that the real source of my grumpiness is the fact that I’ve stupidly volunteered to read this morning at ten o’clock, possibly as some kind of self-imposed punishment for bunking off last night.

  In full walking gear and with a big, red, wind-beaten face, photographic evidence records that I do indeed recite poetry to the twenty-three people in the seated area of Once Brewed’s open-plan visitors’ centre. This ill-advised venture takes place against a soundtrack of hot-drink dispensers, an entire battery of them all approaching percolation climax in unison, plus a looped video presentation of the Romans in Britain on a telly in the corner. During what I imagine to be a lull in the general hubbub, I embark on a sensitive piece about snow angels, only for a coachload of garrulous American school kids to storm the building and form an argumentative scrum outside the toilet door. I can’t call it rudeness on their part, because in fairness to them they don’t appear to know that I exist, or if they do, probably think I’m some kind of working automaton, Simon the Poet, all part of Northumberland National Park’s attempt to present information in a creative and interactive manner. In fact at this moment I wish I was a machine, able to go through my routine without feelings or ambition. A woman says to me, ‘I’m just going outside to get my two-year-old from the car, but she’ll probably cry if she doesn’t like it.’ I plough on, barely audible above the gift-wrapping of model forts, the ringing of the cash register and the general white noise of tourism. Although I’m reading, I can’t help listening to one man’s repeated request for very detailed directions to Hexham, then the Information Officer’s reply, including her meticulous description of every exit on a particularly complicated roundabout and a list of several other notorious route-finding trouble-spots. Even the sheep in the field to the side are bleating and braying at the top of their vocal range. I read something LOUD and a bit ANGRY to finish with, then as is the way with these things, the moment the reading ends the saboteurs and objectors disperse, even the woolly ones outside, and silence descends. There is £57.50 in the sock, most of it, I suspect, donated in pity.

  *

  As he criss-crossed the countryside on his trusty horse Gringolet, as well as his sword, his innocence and the blessings of the Round Table, Sir Gawain, the flawed hero of the aforementioned poem, carried with him a shield, the inside of which was painted with the image of the Virgin Mary, as a badge of his faith and a friendly face to look upon in troubled times. I have no such shield and no such devotion, but I do have something in my breast pocket to spur me on across the hard miles. Robert Kirby, my uncle Bob, was a muleteer in the First World War, and he survived, albeit with his lungs full of mustard gas. He couldn’t read or write until his wife taught him when he returned home, and he was a fine golfer in his day, but by the time I got to know him he was reduced to sitting in an armchair in the front room, coughing and wheezing and despatching gobbets of thick phlegm into the glowing heat of the coal fire. When I was born I inherited his first name as my middle name. When I was ten I inherited his trusty .177 calibre air-rifle which he kept under the bed to shoot Hitler if he ever had the temerity to enter the village of Marsden and the guts to climb the creaking wooden stairs of a mid-terrace house on Mount Road. And a year or so ago I inherited his war medals. They don’t speak of any kind of special gallantry or heroism beyond the call of duty: one bears a laurel and two crossed swords beneath a crown, the other is a coin hanging on a rainbow-coloured ribbon, with George V on one side and a nude horseman on the other cantering over a skull and crossbones, with ‘R E KIRBY OF THE WEST RIDING REGIMENT’ stamped around the edge. But they are tokens of hardship and risk far greater than anything I can imagine, and I carry them with me as an example of what one blood relative endured just so following generations could go strolling about in the great o
utdoors without a care in the world. Compared with mushing a packhorse through the trenches of northern France among the flying bullets and exploding bombs, the Pennine Way is a doddle, and quitting for any reason other than actual death would not only be a pathetic failure, it would be a betrayal. That, at least, is my theory.

  Military decoration also feels particularly appropriate for today’s walk, and in my opinion, even the lowliest foot soldier in the Roman army was surely deserving of some kind of honour or award, one minute strolling the banks of the Tiber or gallivanting in the forum, the next minute patrolling the ramparts of a high wall strung across northern Britain in a howling gale, wearing sandals and a short skirt. (In keeping with the tradition, Newcastle United’s Italian signings have suffered a comparable level of foul weather over the years, and for a similar lack of medals.) Publius Aelius Hadrianus arrived in Britain to quell a sustained period of rebellion and incursion, and in AD 122 initiated the building of a great wall to separate the ‘barbarians’ from his countrymen. There were similar physical boundaries at other edges of the Roman Empire, but lack of timber in these exposed reaches meant construction had to be in stone, a colossal engineering project which would take the best part of a decade, by which time Hadrian had left them to it and gone home to rebuild the Pantheon. Like their roads, there is something direct, no-nonsense and literal-minded about the Wall, in both its conception and assembly. Problem: eighty miles of border trouble. Answer: eighty-mile wall. Problem: big, strong enemy. Answer: big, strong wall. As a declaration of territoriality and power, it takes some beating, but like all such barriers and attempted delineations, be it the Iron Curtain, Offa’s Dyke, the Berlin Wall, or the US–Mexico border, it is in the end a shrine to failure. Holding back or penning in human populations is like trying to fence off the weather, and as much a statement of insecurity as one of power. As determined as it is to divide and exclude, a wall is there to be climbed over or knocked down, and the bigger the wall, the greater the challenge. Fifty men were stationed in each milecastle, several hundred cavalry or foot soldiers in each fort, and up to ten thousand along the length of the Wall in total, and for as long as these numbers held firm the structure and the system functioned as planned. But as soon as the Romans left, turning the lights out behind them, people swarmed over and across it in every direction, and even though subsequent regimes have utilised its position and its many strategic advantages, Hadrian’s Wall, for all its formidable dimensions, was destined to become nothing more than a line in the sand, a monument to a grand but doomed vision worthy of Ozymandias. Sections which have remained intact, and there are several along today’s route, are truly impressive and imposing, especially where the wall seems to be a sympathetic, almost geological extension of the dolerite protrusions themselves, as if the whole thing were a natural phenomenon. In other places the Wall all but disappears; prior to the age of conservation, when need took precedent over pride, it was seen by some as little more than a builder’s yard where high-quality material could be obtained for no charge, and the stone was carted away for roads and edifices of all kinds, even for other walls. Thirlwall Castle is one such construction, built from ‘recycled’ stone, but even that now stands as a ruin and has done for several hundred years, home only to a handful of noisy rooks and a few ghosts.

  Des has walked with me. He works for the RSPB, does merchandising for the Wedding Present and is partner of Clare Wadd of cult independent record company Sarah Records fame. There are wheatears everywhere, and a peregrine above Walltown Crags. Like two old, broken records we agree that all music except the music we like is rubbish, and that today’s generation of rock stars wouldn’t recognise a protest song if it stood up in their soup, etc., etc.

  ‘Is there a lot of call for Wedding Present merchandise these days?’

  ‘Yes, plenty, but it’s an ageing fan-base. We don’t sell many small or medium T-shirts any more.’

  After Thirlwall Castle we head into Greenhead, and through the doors of the Greenhead Hotel. Every village needs a pub and every pub need a Dave. Dave shakes hands with one hand while pulling a pint with the other. Then he takes me through the back to the ‘function room’ where I’ll be reading tonight, a big pink-and-white space with a low stage, a raised seating area at the back, and a door that closes.

  ‘Great,’ I say.

  ‘And I’ll get rid of that lot,’ he says, pointing to a teetering stack of cardboard trays full of mushrooms and potatoes. Then we share a Masonic-like nod and a wink, acknowledging our unspoken understanding that catering quantities of fresh groceries are not a useful complement to a poetry reading, either as ornament or perfume.

  I hadn’t met Des before today. He’d just ‘taken a punt’ and shown up. After a few drinks he disappears and is replaced by Danny (another ‘randomer’, to use my daughter’s term for every person in the world outside her small solar system of family and friends), who comes lugging the Tombstone across the car park and stumbling into the bar. We do a bit of speed-bonding via the subjects of festivals, sport, manual work and vehicles, then I potter over the road to say hello to Wendy, who has set up the reading tonight and offered refreshment to the weary traveller. Wendy lives behind a big wooden door, beyond which is a big old house, full of inglenooks, hearths and laundry creels. On the wall at the foot of the stairs is a blown-up map of the north of England, which she stuck there as a way of reorienting her children, who were brought up in Africa. I like the idea of maps as wallpaper, so much more engaging than repeated patterns of fleurs-de-lys or candy-stripes, although I’m so used to navigating with an upside-down version of this one that I have to do a spot of reorienting myself.

  Wendy leads me to what feels like a secret garden, arrived at through ancient doors, along overgrown paths and down rocky steps. She is rearing several ducklings by hand, and they waddle and flap around her ankles as she disappears into a mass of thorny branches then emerges with scratched forearms and a bowl full of gooseberries. She points out various other berries, currants and fruits and tells me to help myself, then wades into another thicket with a basket on her arm. At the bottom of the garden, next to a water-meadow, I rock to and fro on a wicker chair suspended from a sycamore, scooping cherries from a plate as I swish past, balancing a cup of tea in my lap, feeling that a person could be many times poorer than a poet on the Pennine Way, remembering the prayer, ‘Lord, may these be the worst of my days.’

  *

  At the reading I’m thinking about walls and stones and journeys, and read a piece called ‘Causeway’. One wing of my family are Cornish, my cousin having married a quarryman from Helston. So we’re in Cornwall a lot, and no visit seems complete without a drive to Marazion, then the inevitable traverse to St Michael’s Mount, the island-castle reached via a stone causeway which disappears under the sea then re-emerges at low tide. Visitors can walk over to the island and get marooned there, and it’s all very exciting, in an English sort of way. Not long after we’d had our daughter we were out on the island as the tide started to recede, and saw the causeway becoming visible under the water, a very beautifully constructed roadway made from cobbles in the shape of loaves, and it appeared that the water was shallow enough to make the crossing. Which it wasn’t, but in the spirit of adventure we decided to be the first ones back across, and because we had an audience we couldn’t turn round, so just ploughed on into the ocean, getting lower and wetter and feeling the strong current push against our ankles, then our knees, then our thighs, by which time our daughter was on my shoulders with her legs and arms in a tight knot around my neck. We finally made it to the mainland and were trying to shake ourselves dry, but when we turned around it was as if we had triggered some kind of biblical catastrophe, because suddenly lots of other people were walking into the water, despite our very bad example. Poems don’t have to have morals, or even meanings, but the moral of ‘Causeway’ seems to be something like ‘Don’t follow me, I don’t know where I’m going.’ Or, as I saw on someone’s T-shirt at a festival
a few years ago, ‘Don’t follow me, you’ll end up back at our house.’

  Forty-eight people attend the reading, depositing a generous £120.66 in the sock. I eat on my own in the back room, like the pub ‘turn’ insisting on his contractual meal, gammon and eggs kept warm under a plate long after the kitchen has closed and the fruit machine has been unplugged and beer towels have been draped over the pumps.

  Greenhead to Knarsdale

  11 MILES

  OS Explorer OL43 West Sheet

  Tuesday 13 July

  I don’t want to get up again, but this time it is because I am in a HOTEL. It might not be the Burj Al Arab, but it has a double bed, a double duvet, small cartons of fresh milk next to the mini-kettle, a teacup, and a saucer overlaid with a decorative paper doily. I have eaten every one of the individually packaged stem-ginger cookies and used all the products in the bathroom (including the conditioner) while taking my second shower of the morning before getting back into bed for another half an hour of luxuriating in comfortable idleness. I nod off, and wake up when a train goes rocketing past the window, dragging the curtains with it and all of the air from the room, so for a few seconds I exist in a vacuum.

  Under the beams and horse brasses Danny is eating a full English in the bar, with a ketchup bottle standing on a beer mat next to his plate. He has no boots, only a pair of fashionable white trainers, and only a thin waterproof jacket, but he’s taken a look at the forecast and decided to walk with me to Knarsdale, ‘If that’s OK?’ Danny is one of a growing majority in this world, i.e. people younger than me. A generation younger, in fact, as is apparent by his attitude and lifestyle. He has responsibilities, including a daughter and a ‘proper’ job – something involving precision measurements and avionics, the kind that requires learning and sobriety. But he also has a life, doing as he pleases when it pleases him without guilt or hand-wringing. He travels intercontinentally, dabbles in extreme mountain-biking, indulges himself at gigs and festivals, and if he fancies walking a bit of the Pennine Way with a poet then why the hell not. He admits as we cross the A69 that until last night he’d never been to a poetry reading before, and that his friends and family were mildly concerned when he announced his intended assignation in the hills with a poet he’d met on the internet. But he’s decided to stick around, so I guess that I haven’t horrified him too much.