The sun was setting far away over the hillside and I could see that I would arrive in Gladestry after dark. Then the internet told me that it would rain before dawn. I thought maybe I would find a little piece of woodland where I could pitch a shelter or maybe go for the church-porch scenario.
These were the things that were running through my mind as I came to the sign announcing the start of the village.
There was a house by the road and a caravan in the garden opposite; it was a shabby trailer kind of caravan, not a shiny white pristine Caravan Club type. This probably influenced my decision, but as I stood there in the road, I suddenly thought I am going to knock on the door of that house and ask if I can sleep in their caravan.
A decision like that is a great departure from my usual self; I feel like an animal when I’m looking for a sleeping spot. I must be safe before I pass into unconsciousness, and with no walls or familiarity around me the animal part of my brain fusses and frets and won’t lapse into sleep unless I’m absolutely certain that no other human knows where I am.
Before I could doublethink myself and slink away, with no more than a pause in my step to mark a decision made and reconsidered, I walked over to the house and knocked on the door. I wondered who’d be inside, what they’d say, what I’d say.
There were some faded postcards in the porch window, scattered feathers and a burnt-out tealight. I forecast potential friendly spirits within and felt hopeful.
It happened. A woman opened the door, about my age and with a very small baby sitting on her front in a carrier, a blanket wrapped around them both.
I took a deep breath to make sure I spoke calmly before I started an unstoppable chain of unknown actions and reactions.
“Hi there, I’m doing a long-distance walk around Wales and I’m camping as I go. It looks as if there’s going to be rain tonight and I was wondering if I could sleep in your caravan across the road.”
Pause.
That’s how I wound up sleeping on a stranger’s sofa, while she and her child slept in the next room. The people upstairs, the caravan owners, sent down an Indian takeaway and a £20 donation. They were all bright-eyed, relaxed and friendly; perfectly capable of coping with an outlandish stranger appearing in their lives.
As so many other times, we ate together and shared our stories, talked about the world and our learning of its intricacies. T was a single parent to this brand-new baby, alone and worried, admitting to her depressive history, asking me if I thought the baby was ugly. We were both confused people in our thirties, wondering how others have found it so easy to decide what they want to do with their lives.
I left her a postcard the next morning with the story of the crescent-moon bear on it: a woman is told to go looking for a cure for her woes in the form of a hair from the bear’s throat but, in the end, discovers that the cure is the journey itself. It’s the same for all seekers; there’s nowhere to go and find yourself, all you can ever discover is that you were there all along.
The Offa’s Dyke Path was more difficult than the Severn Way. When I was following a river down to the sea, it was either downhill or flat, whereas the Offa’s Dyke Path was green and luscious and beautiful, but also very hilly and muddy. The ground was still saturated from winter, so it didn’t take much rain before it became slippery everywhere. When I stopped walking and became silent, sometimes I could hear the glugs and gurgles as water slowly seeped into the ground or downhill to the waterways. The path switchbacked constantly, sometimes following a border, sometimes obeying the constraints of a long-distance footpath imposed on existing farmed land and around houses, but mostly following the dyke itself.
Offa’s Dyke, the ancient monument, was always there: sometimes a winding heap alongside me, sometimes a rise too big to be climbed, sometimes imagined, sometimes disappearing altogether. It was a barrier to keep the Welsh out, or in, providing a platform to land a boot to the head of anyone in the wrong place. I thought of how many sentries would be needed to patrol this earthen defence, impossible to lead a horse up. This tangible mark of ancient history, too big to destroy, time has only blurred it. No more than a mound of earth: ploughed into flatness, cut through for tractor access, worn down by subsidence, rabbits eating away the insides, riddled by burrows. Sometimes it was tree-covered, sometimes it turned into a fence, a field boundary or sometimes it disappeared around me, with only a trace to be seen on the hillsides ahead, a groove carved across the land.
The walking started to become mundane here, in a way. Or maybe not the walking, not the stunning sights, but the rhythm of my days became repetitive enough to seem ordinary. It had been just over a month since I’d set out from Machynlleth, and my life of constant movement was becoming normal. I got up every day and walked, packing everything carefully into its place in my rucksack, safely strapped up and accessible during the day’s journey. I’d started stretching since Bristol, making myself a list of all the different stretches to do. I stretched for twenty minutes before setting out every day and included a few after each rest stop. I was a ball of aches of different kinds and needed to release them, to make my body as fluid as it could be.
If I was staying with someone there would usually be some kind of delay, interesting conversation or a drive back to my drop-off point, meaning I’d start walking at ten o’clock or so. If I’d camped then I’d still delay, but instead this was self-imposed staring time; sleeping outside in the way that I do means I don’t sleep as deeply as in a bed. So, even though I’d wake with the dawn, turning out of sleep to see the first pale washes of colour in the sky, it would take me a few hours of first dozing in and out, then sitting up and staring, then eating breakfast very slowly, then a little bit more staring, before I got up and walked, usually nine at the latest.
And then I walked, all day, for hours. That’s what I did, every day. I just walked, sometimes at a moderate speed, sometimes slowly. I walked and looked at around me. Each day was stunning, surreal and memorable. I saw signposts stranded alone in fields, a faded medieval painting on the wall of a church, the sun rise over a castle, hundreds of spring flowers and three black-nosed lambs sitting by a stile. Every so often there was an abandoned, falling-down house that I wanted to buy and make my own, to live in and grow vegetables, be a hermit writer, learn to weave, set up an arts centre, a workspace, a B&B, become self-sufficient, sell the place for a profit, leave it to rot and go travelling, never live in Britain, stay here forever. A thousand futures sprang before me. My mind raced more quickly than my body as I moved across the land at the slowest human pace.
A lot of walking is tiredness. It’s stopping frequently, whenever the impetus slips a gear and the hovering pause pounces, compelling you to stop, turn around, watch the view and catch your breath.
A lot of walking is an utter empty-brained exhausted nothingness; especially at the end of a day, when it’s important to find a flat place to lay your body that won’t curve your back muscles into screaming discomfort. Ground that looks flat must be lain upon to be certain. Once there it becomes hard to get up; just lying down is a relief as you feel your body start to let go of the tension of ever-forward motion. You want to slide into sleep, but you haven’t covered yourself to conserve body temperature, you haven’t eaten to restore energy, you haven’t rubbed your muscles to ease them and you haven’t pissed to prevent the necessity of unwrapping your cocoon in the chill deep of night.
The bed, which looked flat, isn’t. You know that if you lie here you’ll feel your legs become bloodless as all your body fluids obey gravity and slide towards your head; it’s a pressured and uncomfortable feeling, and you know you must change position. As daylight fades, the temperature is ebbing from the world and it won’t come back. You must move, take action. But all of your being wants to be still on the floor, here, now, in this moment to lie and do nothing, to feel nothing, to lapse away from the effort and just stop. Your mind is dense and dark treacle, dipping into a coma of fatigue. To heave yourself back to vertical is a gre
at and terrible effort.
A lot of walking is automatic; it’s letting your body function while your mind wanders in its own realm, traversing tired old pain, inventing new and unusual scenarios with which to probe and torture long guarded scars. They’re comfortable, these mental ruts: easy and smooth territory to glide in.
A lot of walking is time passing, small events amusing you for a second and then passing into insignificance. Climbing a hill that’s marked by a line of larch, and realising that the branches carry rows of budding flowers that are shocking red, small red lapping coronets that nestle in the fresh green branch-tips, starkly contrasting against the previous year’s deep green growth. The buds are at eye level because you’re climbing up underneath them, and you stand for a second with your face close to these baby rubies, smelling the optimism of new growth, glowing in spring sunlight.
I walked and walked and walked. When it was easy, I strode along, feeling great, trying to lengthen my stride to work the muscles in my thighs instead of stomping on my calves. When it was hard, my feet hurt in multiple ways and it was time to stop for a rest. About every couple of hours I’d take twenty minutes or so to put my feet up, eat something from the never-shrinking bag of trail mix, drink some water.
Water was always on my mind. To limit the weight of my pack I only carried a litre bottle, but I needed to drink at least two litres a day. I had to find cafés or pubs to replenish my supply, or even knock on doors, feeling awkward whenever I did it, although I was never refused. If there was no water source then I had to conserve water, which I really shouldn’t have. If I didn’t keep topped up, I’d get tired and develop a blinding white-pain headache.
I started monitoring how much I pissed. If I didn’t have a good long wee before bed, it meant I hadn’t drunk enough that day. There was a time-delay with dehydration. If it came on, it was because I hadn’t drunk enough the day before, not that day itself, meaning there was no quick fix of downing an immediate litre. Water took time to percolate through my body, and I learned to keep a constant supply of it going in, never leave it until later, never do without. During the first month, I’d tried to limit myself to a litre a day for the ease of getting to the next supply-point. But very bad headaches soon taught me that this was an awful idea. Food and water were fundamental; there was no going hungry for a day, or thinking, wow, I didn’t drink very much yesterday. I didn’t have the reserves to be able to deplete myself in that way.
There’s a section in the middle of the Offa’s Dyke Path that is the most arduous thirty miles of all. It’s a sequence of numerous switchbacks, steep climbs and drops of 100m each time, an endless painful ache of rises and falls, making my calves burn, my ankles bent awkwardly against the gradient.
Someone came towards me and said hello in passing, then, an hour or so later into that day’s gentle beauty of copses and streams, hedged fields, oak and hawthorn and curl-edged leaves, to my bemusement, the same man came towards me again. He explained that he was with a group that were following behind. He came a few miles in his car and walked back to meet them before walking to his car again and driving ahead, his hip too damaged to allow him to keep up with a full day’s exercise.
The group caught up with me a few hours later and I tagged along with them for a couple of days, enjoying conversations with different members about children, retirement, cancer. They were a stalwart, experienced group of men, slowly becoming elderly. Years ago, in their thirties, they’d decided to get out and have adventures, feeling themselves decline and become soft, homely, as children made their lives more regulated and comfortable. Now, twenty-five years later, their level of adventure had declined to something I was capable of, walking the Offa’s Dyke Path. Age notwithstanding, they were still faster and fitter than me and I struggled to keep up, especially on the steep hills. I happened to be walking next to the unofficial leader one time, the man who, so many years before had hustled this group of friends into getting out there, taking risks. Just take smaller steps and don’t stop, he said. Solid advice from a solid man.
I was unexpectedly alone as I came up and into the ring of trees that marks the Iron Age fort at Beacon Ring above Welshpool, a couple of the men just ahead of me and the main group further behind. At this point there was a view of the wide valley below, where the Severn had carved a path curving away to the east. I stopped walking, struck with an image of my tiny self walking down there. My small steps had taken me in a wide curve all the way down to Bristol, and all the way up the humps and climbs of Offa’s Dyke to return again, a dot in this land pushing and propelling my body to get here. A month of walking and sleeping: a month of effort, to bring myself round in this 300-mile loop. The completing of the circle flashed in my mind. I’d cross my own trail, the first of many invisible overlayings I’d make on this journey, and I felt proud of my new knowledge of the landscape.
I came down the hill, chatting to the friendliest of the men, trying to keep up with these two as they walked, long-legged and bagless, striding ahead of me. One began to run, he couldn’t help himself, and I moved quickly, trying to keep up. It sent pain shooting into my left knee, feeling as if it would buckle backwards, wanting to bend in on itself. I had to stop, letting them go ahead while I raged at myself for trying to keep up with them and paying no attention to my personal pace or needs. I limped down the hill and into the pub at Buttington, sitting as dazed as they were, allowing ourselves a single pint before we all must keep moving: me to Welshpool where I’d begin Glyndŵr’s Way and them to their pub lodgings further on. I’d follow them northwards but not for another fortnight. First came a 140 mile detour into Central Wales.
GLYNDŴR’S WAY
Route description: Named after the leader of the last Welsh rebellion, Glyndŵr’s Way runs entirely through Powys in sparsely-populated countryside. One of three National Trails in Wales, it visits many sites associated with the Glyndŵr campaign against the English in the late 1300s.
Length: 135.5 miles
Total ascent: 7,180m
Maximum height: 504m
Dates: 10 – 23 April 2014
Time taken: 14 days
Nights camping/nights hosted: 4/10
Days off: 2
Average miles per day: 11.3
When I saw that Glyndŵr’s Way made a C shape into mid-Wales, with the end of each arm perfectly lodged against the Offa’s Dyke Path, I knew I had to include it. I could walk the Offa’s Dyke Path up to Welshpool, turn off onto Glyndŵr’s Way and, 136 miles later, wind up back on Offa’s Dyke, thirty miles south at Knighton. It would be a journey to Machynlleth and back again, even passing through my old garden at Talbontdrain.
I used Couchsurfing for that first night in Welshpool, walking into a gift shop in the town centre and meeting the friendly face of Claire, who turned out to be a boisterous and big-hearted nurse, full of giggles and mild debauchery. She took me to a terraced house in a quiet cul-de-sac and we drank tea and smoked cigarettes, swapping tales of gin and foolishness. She was kind and friendly; I immediately felt like I’d found a friend, taking time to sit in her house the following morning before she set out to work, going back to boil the kettle again and again, just one more cup, topping up with tea and friendly chatter before I set out on the latest path.
The first afternoon I wound out through the parkland of Llanerchydol Hall, the ancient, tall trees carefully selected to fit the grounds of a grand home, the grounds-keepers carefully managing the estate. Peeping into a walled garden was the closest I came to the house itself: path edges crumbling, it had a stately aged beauty.
Here I began to see pheasants. They scooted awkwardly away from me, necks rigid with fear. Staying low and hidden until the last possible second of my approach when they were provoked into chirring alarm, signing their exit with a clatter. Rabbits glimmered at the edge of view, flicking away under the depths of gorse skirts. They all saw me well before I became aware of them, my contemplative ego separating me from a natural mindful state
. It’s a particularly human blindness, the laziness of the predator who buys pre-packaged prey.
A few miles later I came down a soggy and awkward field, claggy with loose earth: sheep snuffling at the brown, chewing away turnip lumps into white flat moons, all they could reach without eating the soil itself. It was a wide slope, tree-dotted but otherwise a blasted, over-trodden expanse. There was a rotting sheep corpse at the base of the field by the gate and more reedy soggy mud beyond.
It was an unfriendly place and I was glad to get beyond it, heading up a small rise and along a wooded field edge where tree roots had created shelters for sheep to lean against; their regular resting there had flattened out small rounded places. I looked at them longingly as I walked past, imagining myself sleeping there, curling my body into those spaces. Discomfort awaited, if I was desperate enough to try it, unable to roll over or stretch out beyond a very specific positioning. It wasn’t so late, I wasn’t that tired, so I carried on.
Another couple of fields ahead came a stream and a slope upwards above it, with a flat, almost-disappeared track running horizontally along the contour. It was a lovely space for me to sleep and I happily laid out my tarpaulin. There was still plenty of light in the sky and I surveyed my chosen bedroom: fallen tree nearby with intertwining bare branches, stream meandering along the bottom of the field and a rosy glow lighting the woods opposite. I was eating and relaxing, all until a group of horses trotted down the slope behind me, wheeling round into the space below my sleeping spot and spreading out to graze. They would wend their way closer and closer to me, pretending not to, so casual in their inquisitiveness, ready to wheel away at any sudden movement. Each horse took its turn to come nearer, each having their own particular comfortable distance. I watched them for a while, admiring the muscle and shining skin, in no particular hurry to get up and leave this calm and comfortable spot. But I knew I would; there was no way I could sleep in a field with loose horses, the fear of a hoof crashing against my prone body in the night meant I’d never be able to relax here. I had to pack away all my things again, stuff the puffed-up sleeping bag back into the base of my rucksack and fold away the tarpaulin.
One Woman Walks Wales Page 6