Walking Home: A Poet's Journey

by Simon Armitage

  It’s about three in the afternoon when we reach the pub, via a small field with a ‘BULL IN FIELD’ sign pinned to the fence. About forty yards away, a very large bull-shaped creature is standing with its back to us, and there are no obvious escape routes other than the gate at the far end. There’s also another sign offering advice to anyone confronted by bulls, most of which revolves around keeping the dog on a short leash or letting the dog go, and since we don’t have a dog, tiptoeing seems to be our best option. Not many people are killed by cattle each year but some are, usually trampled, including a woman walking on the Pennine Way in 2009, and she was a vet. Before we cross the partly submerged Saur Hill Bridge we pass two men walking in the opposite direction, and all agree we wouldn’t want to be hiking back up towards High Cup at this time in the late afternoon, with no prospect of accommodation or even shelter until Dufton. We also pass a farmer in his yard, power-washing a donkey with a high-pressure hose.

  *

  The Odyssey is one of the greatest works of western literature, and also one of the earliest, a sort of bedrock or foundation on which many subsequent stories are built. In what could also be described as one of the first pieces of travel writing, the Odyssey is presented as a poem, told by Homer, who may or may not have existed, and tells the tale of Odysseus’s exhausting and beleaguered return from battle. Having fought at Troy for ten years, and having finally brought the siege to an end via his cunning wooden-horse ruse, Odysseus sets sail for Ithaca. But the journey will take him another decade, during which time he outwits the Cyclops, is spellbound by the Sirens, sees his crew turned into pigs by the enchantress Circe, is kept as a love-slave by the goddess Calypso, meets the ghost of his mother in the underworld, and undergoes many more trials, tribulations and humiliations along the way. The poem is a ten-year homecoming, and there are few more touching scenes than when Odysseus falls asleep while being transported over the sea to his own island, and wakes up alone on the beach, not recognising his kingdom, just a few miles from his palace but still lost in his mind. When he left Ithaca to fight the Trojans, his son Telemachus was just a babe in arms; now he is a young man with a beard. As Odysseus approaches his palace, disguised as a beggar, he sees his old hunting hound, Argos, blind and lying on a bed of dung, still pining for his master after all these years. Sensing Odysseus’s presence, the dog rallies for a brief moment, then his heart fails. Finally, after slaying all the suitors who have laid siege to his kingdom and his wife, Odysseus is reunited with Penelope, and they retire to the famous marital bed, made from the bole of a living olive tree, around which the whole chamber is constructed.

  In front of the bay window of the Langdon Beck Hotel I read that section from the poem. There’s a big crowd – it’s almost certainly the biggest poetry reading taking place in Upper Teesdale this weekend – with rows of people all the way back as far as the bar, some leaning in through open doors, others propped in alcoves, and through the glass behind me a line of parked cars on the single-track road stretches away into the evening. But I read this piece for my wife and my daughter, sitting on two small bar stools in the middle distance of the pub. Then we eat together, not quite a candlelit meal but a quiet, private occasion all the same, then go to the room, where one single camp bed is positioned alongside one double bed, like a lifeboat tethered to a yacht, and for a while we whisper in the dark, and giggle a few times, then whisper some more, then fall asleep. And I dream of horses.

  Fell Ponies

  They have got up

  out of the dirt, the first

  hauling the buried boat or ramshackle cart

  of its own self

  from a ditch.

  Then four more follow,

  the props of their legs

  fossilised limbs of oak,

  because there were forests here once.

  Not ponies as we know them

  but big-engined,

  an early design,

  leather straps and hardwood cogs

  at work when they move,

  boulders for ballast

  swinging in rope sacks

  strung from a crude frame,

  the flesh

  an all-over daub

  of soil and mulch that won’t set.

  But a lean burn all the same –

  just enough breath

  on the oil

  to keep the lamp in flame . . .

  All this gone wild,

  Ashington escapees grown moody and mean

  on aloneness and sleet.

  They trundle forward

  into some old war, then forget,

  or blink awake from a dream

  of pack road or pit,

  of ploughs or sleds

  at their heels,

  then lower their heads

  to browse on root and weed.

  Wherever they halt

  is the world’s edge,

  or they wait

  just an inch from the future’s wall of glass,

  seeing nothing,

  taking it all in, at any moment

  to turn into mist, or re-emerge,

  come lumbering

  out of the flooded mine,

  now cut-outs up on the ridge,

  now barring the path to the bridge,

  seaweed fringes and axe-head stares,

  their hides

  knotted rugs of rags

  slung over the beam of the spine,

  all smoke and steam,

  ignited by lightning strike in the first storm,

  put out by rain.

  Langdon Beck to Baldersdale

  15 MILES

  OS Explorer OL31 West Sheet, OL19 North, OL31 East

  Saturday 17 July

  My daughter says, ‘This is a funny holiday.’ Last night she toured around the audience with the begging sock, and this morning she has tipped out the proceeds and counted the coins and notes into piles and wads, and arranged them on the windowsill, next to my boots which are overflowing with soggy, scrunched-up balls of yesterday’s Guardian and above several pairs of socks steaming on the radiator. In my notebook she calculates that the £207 handed over by the fifty-five-strong audience works out at £3.763636363 recurring per person, and when I tell her that I counted fifty-seven people sitting in front of me last night she says, ‘Yes, but me and Mummy didn’t pay.’ In her neat, exaggerated A-is-for-apple handwriting she has also recorded several other items that found their way into the sock, including one Refresher chew, one magazine photograph of a dipper with the words ‘Watch out for dippers’ written below it, one HP Sauce sachet, two biros, one lavender bag, one page of the Daily Telegraph folded into a small square (with no news items relevant to my project, as far as I can tell), one poem entitled ‘Ten Things Mark Rothko Told Me’, and one pair of silver cufflinks. As a walker on the Pennine Way I think I could probably find a use for most of those items (especially the page from the Telegraph, in an emergency), with the exception of the cufflinks, which on reflection seem like a cruel jibe.

  *

  Today’s walk, or at least the first half of it, is reckoned by many to be the most pleasant and least taxing section of the whole trail, a saunter through pretty Teesdale along the banks of the Tees, with no route-finding difficulties whatsoever and several picturesque and iconic landmarks to tick off along the way. That’s a relief, given that I’m still reeling from what happened on Cross Fell. On the other hand it’s going to give my wife and daughter, walking with me today, the impression that for the last nine days I’ve done nothing more than wander through buttercup meadows from one public house to the next, making friends and showing off along the way and being paid for the privilege. To counter that notion, I go through an elaborate performance before breakfast, pulling heaps of filthy clothes from the Tombstone, describing to my wife how and where each garment came to be blackened, bloodied or saturated, and giving a mile-by-mile, blow-by-blow account of my most hair-raising experiences thus far. But she pulls back the curtains and the sun is bla
zing across the valley, and in a T-shirt and trainers she waits for me in the car park while I tie the very long laces of my very big boots and secure all toggles and zips. My daughter has also taken the casual rather than cautious approach, and strides out ahead of us in pink leggings, white iPod earphones, a pair of canvas shoes that are not far from being slippers, and a vest. Her coat, which she wears tied around her waist, was given to her by a man called Charles in a pub car park in West Yorkshire, who also gave me several items of clothing made entirely from organic, natural fibres to ‘trial’ during my walk, including a very nice fleece, a luminous orange anorak and a top made out of recycled wood chippings. The exchange, even though it had been pre-arranged and was all above board, must have looked very suspicious from the street, with two cars pulling up boot to boot, two strangers shaking hands, one man producing a range of clothes from the back of his car while the other man and his daughter tried them on, followed by another handshake and the vehicles shooting off in opposite directions. Even though she wears it around her middle rather than in the prescribed manner, my daughter was particularly thrilled with her acquisition when she learned that it was ‘bombproof ’. Army green and slightly sinister-looking, it’s made from a fabric called Ventile, developed in the Second World War for pilots at risk of being shot down over the sea. When it becomes wet the cotton in it expands, making it waterproof, apparently. It is also windproof and much coveted by ‘bushcraft’ people who need to sneak up on birds and animals, because it doesn’t rustle. Modelling it in the car park outside the Co-op that day, my daughter had the look of a special forces trainee, and responded to that suggestion by giving me a highly convincing karate kick between the legs (and while I was getting my breath back, a punch in the kidneys).

  We’re not expecting bombshells today, or even rain. The first stretch of the path loops up and over a set of crags with juniper bushes to each side, then down a grassy embankment before rejoining the river. My daughter might be out in front, proving that no map is necessary, but we’re actually following Shane Harris, a colleague of Chris’s from North Pennines AONB, and his wife, Cath. The juniper is a particular and peculiar feature of this area, Shane explains, and as we brush past the spiky leaves I convince myself I can smell gin. With their knotted, wrenched trunks and bleached, desiccated branches, the junipers are reminiscent of wild olive trees, giving the immediate landscape a biblical feel, as if we’re walking though the Holy Land, an atmosphere which lasts until the appearance of Dine Holm quarry and stone-cutting plant on the left-hand side, which explains the fine yellowy powder coating the shrubs, the grass and eventually our feet. Less than quarter of an hour later we’re standing above High Force, silent as we approached it from upstream, but now a roaring, drumming volley of white water hurling itself over a cliff face and thundering into the deep pool seventy or so feet below. Standing on the ridge above, I can feel the pulsing power of the water in the soles of my feet and my solar plexus, and there’s an even better view thirty yards downstream, looking back at the full spectacle of the falls from a stone outcrop which provides a natural viewing gallery and a photo opportunity. The noise of High Force is amplified by the semicircular gorge into which the river is delivered, a feature which also magnifies its visual appeal. It’s so perfect it could have been designed, and those Darwinism-deniers who seem to be finding increasing employment opportunities in American schools might even argue it was. To keep my daughter away from the edge I’ve told her the legend of Peg Powler, a green-haired water hag who is said to inhabit this valley. Wherever she goes she leaves a frothy substance on the surface, known as Peg Powler’s Suds, and she feeds on children, grabbing them by the ankle if they stray too close to the river.

  We eventually move off without incident, which is a relief in the sense that the last time we visited a waterfall as a family we were arrested. It was in those tense few years following 9/11, and while working in Toronto we’d hired a car for a day trip to Niagara Falls. We arrived there just before lunch, and after an hour or so decided we’d like to look into the foaming abyss from the other shore, so without realising we were heading for the United States we set off across the bridge without our passports. This is something that probably happens twenty or thirty times a day, but rather than just turning us around and sending us back, the guard in the booth, with the gun and the sunglasses and the moustache, made us park up and sit down in the holding area with several dozen other unfortunates, where we waited for an hour and a half. If the atmosphere was meant to be intimidating, it worked. The uniformed officers shouted obscenities at one another and answered every question I put to them with, ‘Take a seat.’ I remember making eye contact with one officer who was holding an old-fashioned typewriter in his hands. After a few seconds he deliberately let it crash to the floor, but never stopped staring at me, even though my daughter had jumped on to my lap and started to sob. We were eventually ‘interviewed’ by another pair of sunglasses and moustache, then photographed, then fingerprinted, and after signing statements and admissions about our transgression were escorted back down to the pound, where the car had been searched and was standing with all four doors, bonnet and boot open, and the floor-mats scattered on the ground along with the spare wheel and the contents of the toolkit. They said we probably wouldn’t be let back into Canada, suggesting we’d just have to live forever on the bridge, cadging fruit and peanuts from passing motorists and drinking the spray thrown up by the mighty falls, but the guard at the north end just smiled and waved us through.

  *

  Walking the Pennine Way in the traditional direction, Low Force waterfall would be experienced as a taster of bigger and better things to come, but approaching it after High Force it is, inevitably, something of a downgrade. All the way along the river, bridges reach out from one bank to the other, some fairly robust, others more flimsy and hopeful, hanging by stakes and pulleys, their suspensions more like suspensions of disbelief, Indiana Jones-style contraptions made of wires and hawsers, with swaying walkways spanning the swirling eddies and rapids below. The path on the riverbank is a natural arched colonnade, a cloistered alleyway beneath overhanging alder, willow, hazel, birch and rowan, with rafts of meadowsweet lining the verges and poppies growing out of cracks in the damp stone wall. My wife says that the humidity and the smell of wild flowers recalls her trekking days in the Himalayas, a smiling reminder that by comparison my own journey is a mere stroll in the garden. The narrow path necessitates walking in single file, meaning that most conversations are conducted over the shoulder or towards the back of someone’s neck. Despite which, I manage to talk to Shane about a shared interest, Rackwick, on the island of Hoy. To the Orkney poet George Mackay Brown, whose entire poetic universe didn’t extend much further than the view from his window and the graveyard at the end of the road, Rackwick became a sacred location, a depopulated valley and dramatic bay which opened its arms to the blast of the Atlantic, full of ghosts, legends, stories and poems. The trip to Rackwick, usually hitched on a fishing boat or passing ferry, became a kind of pilgrimage to Mackay Brown, a challenge to his permanently frail health but a source of nourishment for his soul and his writing. Standing there with the gold flakes of his TB injection tumbling through his bloodstream, I think he saw something of Eden in Rackwick, the long grassed valley where the hull of a glacier had once berthed between two barren summits. Like Mackay Brown, I believe completely in Rackwick as a place of wonder and glory, a holy poetic location, but unlike him I have never been there, my experience of it being entirely vicarious, firstly through his poems and prose, then through days looking at maps and staring at satellite images on Google Earth, imagining myself wandering across the sand in bare feet or bunking up for the night in a deserted croft set back from the ocean. I can’t remember how we get onto the subject, but when we do it turns out that Shane has not only been to Hoy but spent many days conducting research at Rackwick, and once I know this, I instantly promote him from AONB Communications Officer to messenger of the gods.r />
  ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘I was measuring rocks, to find out if they were bigger at one side of the bay than the other.’

  We walk on for another five minutes in silence, while I ponder Shane with his tape measure or micrometer, scrambling around on the shoreline of Rackwick for lonely but blissful days at a time, scrutinising the same stones that lined the boundary and marked the gateway of Mackay Brown’s world, stones that shone and wept and sang in the poet’s imagination, before I say, ‘And what was the conclusion?’

  ‘Yes,’ Shane says, ‘they were.’

  Once, at the Santuari de Lluc in north-west Mallorca, I peeled off from a guided tour of the Stations of the Cross, situated along a stepped path which spiralled towards the summit of the hill, and peered over a wall looking inland, away from the monastery and the gift shop, towards the mountains. Much of that part of Mallorca is dusty and somewhat drab, but the bowl of the valley which opened up beneath me was completely green, and ringed with terraced walls, all lined with pomegranate and lemon trees, the fruit hanging like lamps. Down in the bottom of the valley there were three or four fincas and three or four fields of pasture, with wooden gates set into the stone walls. It was an idealised scene, incongruous and unexpected. There were no visible roads in or out of the valley, so it gave the impression of a place trapped under glass, held in a bubble of space and time. Then a tractor appeared in one of the lower fields, and a farmer got out of the cab and tipped several bags of feed into a trough, and ran what looked like a hammer along the grille which covered it. The hammer clanged against the iron bars, and a few moments of silence followed. Then bells started to ring. Not church bells but small, tinny-sounding bells, like the noise made by those candle-driven, rotating angels on a Christmas decoration, pinging a cymbal with a wand as they sail past. Or small coins thrown in a metal cup. Rain in a pan. Then more bells making the same sound, then dozens, then hundreds, so the whole dome of the valley was quickly filled with that strange chiming, and on the far hillside I saw what I thought was a stream of light brown water pouring through a rocky channel, then another stream, and more streams here and there tumbling from the horizon through stands of olive trees and across walled terraces, until the whole crucible appeared to be in flood, with torrents flowing downhill from every side and from all angles, all heading for the flat fields in the bottom, and not until they streamed towards the feeding troughs could I see that they were rivers of goats, thousands of tan-coloured goats and kids with bells around their necks, jumping and pushing, barging and jostling as they raced towards the food. And new lines and columns of goats emerged out of the groves and crags, came spilling out of the woods or funnelling through an open gate, pouring and pouring from the hills, until the vale in the bottom was overtaken with a swirling lake of brown goats, and the whole of the valley was itself a bell, ringing and ringing, sounding their appearance, announcing mass.