I sat there for a few hours, reading as the sun went down. The story of Hannah Hauxwell, the woman “discovered” in the ’70s living a life of Dales isolation straight out of the 1930s. A black and white photo come to life. I wrapped my sleeping-bag round my legs and put my jacket on, but otherwise it wasn’t so cold that I couldn’t sit still. When I first started out in March, I’d have to get straight into the sleeping-bag and fire up my handwarmer as soon as I stopped for the night. The field was peaceful the whole time, no walkers, no animals, just the occasional call of a far-away pheasant. There were sheep in the adjacent field and sometimes a run of lambs would pelt towards the corner of the field where I sat, hidden by the tree. They would run until they saw me, an unknown animal sitting quietly; then they would stop, standing, unsure, until their mothers called them away.
I’d managed to find a patch of signal at the top of the rise so I’d checked the forecast which suggested rain between 8pm and 10pm, and dry the rest of the night. It was 9.30pm and still no rain; I kept checking the sky and the clouds weren’t moving, they didn’t look black or ominous, just a patchy covering of grey. I decided that I’d chance it without the shelter, but tied it to the fence at one corner so I could throw it over me if it started to rain in the night.
As it became too dark to read I tucked down into the three layers of sleeping cocoon. A bat flickered over me in the remaining grey blue light, and I could hear an owl somewhere a few fields away. I slept, not all night but tolerably well for a night outside. The ground was well shaped for my body; sometimes, when I sleep on hard, flat ground, the whole night can be spent shifting from side to side, trying to sleep in the gaps between the onset of hip pain. There was a small slope downwards from my head to feet, enough to be comfy but not so much that I started to slide downhill as soon as I relaxed. I woke at various points during the night to rearrange the sleeping bag: not so open that I got cold, not so closed that I couldn’t breathe, the bag collapsing over my head as I relaxed down into sleep.
I first checked my phone at 5.45am and roused myself properly at about 7.30. The field was a new world of thick fog, dewdrops at the tip of every grass-blade. I don’t just wild camp because of my budget, I do it because I love it. I love to open my eyes and directly see the sunrise, right in front of me. Beetles investigate my tarpaulin, rabbits come out to eat, owls hoot in the blackness of an unknowable world. Even a tent-wall feels as if I’m separating myself from that experience. I do greatly appreciate every chance I get to sleep in a bed and have a shower; wild camping is hard and tiring and difficult to keep clean in. But it also gives me a deep sense of peace.
Another wonderful camp came that night, at World’s End. I’d walked past Llangollen, keeping alongside the canal at first, even as it crossed high above the River Dee on an aqueduct, boats floating through the thin channel, leaping into space forty metres above the tree-lined river gorge below. I climbed Castell Bran and took a celebratory photograph; I’d walked more than 500 miles to get here, the Proclaimers song echoing in my mind for a few days. The land changed on the way to World’s End. I tiptoed on a thin strip of footpath, between high limestone cliffs, raw and rugged, and a flat valley below me, as if the land fell away to a sea bed.
Eventually the road bent into a U-turn and a path led straight up into the head of the valley: World’s End, where the road turned back on itself and climbed to a moorland pass. There was nowhere further to go, it was a perfect place to sleep, the track running gently up between the pine trees and around a bend. There was a high rockface above the path and, sitting down on a bench to eat and wait for darkness, I heard shouts high above me and gradually discerned the small bodies of climbers, roped and belaying downwards.
I had to wait until they left, not wanting anyone to see my bed, so I ate a slightly forlorn meal of mackerel and couscous, squeezing stolen condiment sachets around the bowl edge and feeling the lack of private space.
Eventually the young, fit boys whooped and shouted their way down from the climb, fresh and bright-eyed, virile. Finally I was alone and could select a sleeping spot. A deep mattress of moss, nestled among the scattered, shattered fallings from the climbers’ playground. A seeded pine, blown by the wind to root, became a totem, a sentinel to stand at my bed-head.
I lay in the open air as twilight darkened the sky, feeling vulnerable and scared of attack until I realised there was nothing in this environment that could hurt me; humans had killed all the dangerous animals. I had the luxury, in animal terms, of being able to lie down and lose consciousness wherever I liked. With no fear of predation, my survival instinct could lie dormant. It was a great and relaxing freedom.
Rain came early the next morning, driving me from my mossy nest. My eyes hurt, they weren’t ready to be open yet, but rain was coming, the first gentle misty drops were tapping against my eyelids and I knew the longer I lay here the wetter I’d become. I packed away, unwillingly, and walked away from World’s End.
The road led upwards, out of the gorge, around the corner and out of tree-cover altogether. I found myself on misty moorland, a thin tarmac line of road, surrounded on either side by gouts of heather and gorse and bilberries, thin sheep-nibbled tracks wavering away between bushes. I couldn’t see into the far distance, grey mist held my viewpoint to the nearest thirty metres. It was a total change of terrain and I loved the sensory dissonance that came from such a quick transition.
I could hear something. The air vibrated with noise, shimmered. Liquid burbling came from everywhere at once, it was the air and it was inside me. Somewhere, there was a great population of birds in this stark landscape, happily pecking and breeding and living – ululating to each other, inhabiting the wet and grey. Searching them out, I could see one or two black round birds, pecking and busying themselves, not enough to account for the noise. I found out later they were black grouse. The rain brought me out of bed early enough to hear them, a special moment far away from normal life, walking along a grey and heathered moorland at 6am.
The moorland pathway, boardwalks and flagstones laid onto the soggy peat didn’t last long before I descended into Llandegla Forest, and came out into the village on the other side. I breakfasted there, still early enough for only a few cars to be on the road, and walked the day away in the small hills leading to the Clwydian Range. I spent a miserable night in the forest up at Bwlch Penbarras, squirming down in my sleeping-bag to get away from the misty, penetrating rain, the tree roots and sloped ground underneath me not allowing my body to relax into deep sleep. I left my meal, couldn’t face more cold couscous, and was visited by a mouse in the night which whisked in from the pine-needle desert to nibble at my congealed dinner, leaving small grains of black poo at the mouth of my food bag. I was visible to early morning dog-walkers but they steadfastly ignored me, looking away from this seemingly homeless and desperate shadow in the woods.
The next day was up and down in the high hills that dropped away either side of me to the Denbigh valley and the north eastern coast, Dee estuary and views of England. I tucked down to read a book in the shelter of a stone wall, rain speckling and darkening the pages. I didn’t care about getting wet, just wanted to stop for a while. I had a window of time to sit and read and dream until the cold drained the comfort out of my body and I was forced to continue.
Fortunately, coming over the next hill I was greeted unexpectedly by my hosts for that night, Morg and Nige, who’d come with a view to encountering me as they made their daily dog-walk. I could have asked them to come back later and walked for another hour over the final hill and down to Bodfari, but I caved in and went home with them for an early finish, snuggling on the sofa with their friendly dogs. I could stay with these guys for two nights, so the following day was rucksack-free and I made the most of it, coming over the up-and-down rises of the Clwydian hill range, getting larger glimpses of the sea each time. I’d almost made it to the top of Wales.
The second day of walking away from Morg and Nige I felt awful and I didn’t k
now why. Every step was an effort, I just had no energy. I came down Moel Maenefa, turning left and right through leafy lanes and seeing the invasive A55 dual carriageway cutting through obstacles, splitting the land open for blind cars to pass without the time to pay attention.
There was a caravan park ahead and I turned into it, knowing it would have a pub somewhere. It was a strange, unfriendly place, done up like a posh bar, thereby removing any semblance of character. The drinks were overpriced and the clientele steadfastly avoided eye-contact. I took my crisps and pint of John Smiths over to a table and sat back to dream for a while. The relief was short-lived. I crunched into a crisp and my damned tooth cracked right open. I felt the gum stretch in pain and a warm wash of blood spread a tang through my mouth. The tooth had broken completely and I spat out a small nugget into my palm, much smaller than what felt, to my nervous, probing tongue, like a gaping hole left behind.
I sat in the expensive pub, with its high-backed, uncomfortable bench seats, upholstered and tanned caravan-owners crowding around me, and wanted to cry. I’d only walked nine miles that day before giving up. My kneecaps felt as if they were floating away from my knees and my tooth had fallen apart. So much for the filling – ten lousy days. I needed to go back to the dentist immediately and the walk would be interrupted, again. I felt as if I was crawling sluggishly across the land, never actually achieving any goals or getting anywhere at all. I had an urge to get wildly, blindly, destructively drunk. Instead I called Morg and went back to her and Nige’s house, lay on the sofa enfeebled and sorry for myself, wrapped in a blanket watching Britain’s Got Talent.
It was the Saturday of the Easter bank holiday weekend; I couldn’t even phone the dentist for another three days. Yet again, a night’s rest strengthened me and I could think more clearly. The tooth didn’t hurt anymore so I kept walking.
I made it down to Prestatyn and the end of my third path. I’d walked 551 miles along the Severn Way, Offa’s Dyke Path and Glyndŵr’s Way. At the end of my day I arrived in Rhyl. Broken glass, vomit-stained seafront, bad burgers, casinos and candyfloss, this was a desperate and heavy-drinking town, dazed by alcohol, edges blurring into miles of blank-faced caravans. There was no secluded place for a wild camper. I needed a safe sleeping-spot so I got on the train. Conwy, a few stops down the line, provided a quiet field opposite the castle wall, and I came back to Rhyl the next morning to complete the concrete seafront miles to Colwyn Bay, the smell of sick and bins floating through the shuttered town as I hurriedly made my way to the seafront.
It was a pretty uneventful day, just a strip of tarmac path between road and sea, the blank line of the flat water and the rush and roar of cars alongside me. I couldn’t escape Rhyl, it was there hovering in the dusty skyline whenever I looked behind me. I waved my flags, I chatted to people, I took donations: all normal, until I reached Vicky the Couchsurfer’s house and sat down to rest. Once I got up I couldn’t walk properly. I couldn’t bear any weight on my right heel – sharp pain shot through my foot whenever I put it to the ground.
I’d intended to stop the next morning and go back to Machynlleth, anyway. The tooth needed attention and now it seemed I’d injured my foot too. I felt scared. Allowing the idea of stopping the walk to deal with the tooth and the foot meant admitting the possibility of stopping permanently was out there too. The only way I could continue this effort in the face of such hardship was to completely deny it.
The dentist pulled out the remnants of the break and filled it again.
“You’ll have to come back next week for the permanent filling,” she said. “The gum needs to heal first.”
I decided to rest for the week. Limping and tired as I was, I couldn’t face returning to walk with the final dentist ordeal still to come.
CONWY VALLEY
Route description: A path that follows the length of the Conwy River from the estuary at the castle walls of Conwy through open farmland of the flat Conwy valley, past the tree-lined gorges of Betws y Coed and through the upland pasture of Ysbyty Ifan and on to the wild moorland of the Migneint where it rises from Llyn Conwy.
Length: 41 miles
Total ascent: unknown
Maximum height: 473m
Dates: 15 – 22 May 2014
Time taken: 8 days
Nights camping/nights hosted: 1/7
Days off: 1
Average miles per day: 5.85
Annie’s yurt embraced me. I bought food from the town – cheese, pâté, bread, tomatoes – collected my post from a friend, and hitched the ten miles back out of Machynlleth, up to the land. Annie had a yurt on the acres that climbed behind her barn, and she graciously offered it to me. After a polite cup of tea and a chat I could escape up there, falling, dazed, into a luxurious double bed. I drifted into unconsciousness, waking only to eat cheese on toast or read for a while. I dozed and dreamed, watching the sunlight dapple against the circular roof opening, coming to shine on me and then passing again, the darkness of the green canvas enclosing me. Four full days passed this way, before I tottered down to the barn to say hello to Annie and drink tea with her again. It was the first time in eight weeks, 500 miles of walking, that I’d been truly alone in my own private space and could let go, release into total exhaustion. I hadn’t realised that something was missing, that single rest-days weren’t enough and I was slowly depleting myself.
This walk was overwhelming, I was always busy. Days were spent walking in public, nowhere to retreat from people, the world. Nights of wild camping were beautiful but not relaxing; nights in houses were comfortable but I still had to interact with people. I hadn’t realised I felt this way, caught up in the intensity and adrenalin of daily walking and social media interaction, the necessary elements of a public journey. It wasn’t a conscious state of alert, more the realisation – once I got to an empty house and could shut the door on the world – that a small part of me had remained tense, buried too deep to notice.
Annie gave me energetic healing, running her hands through the air above my feet and coming up with a worried look on her face.
“They’re fucked,” she said. “Your earth chakra was frozen, I restarted it moving, I brought the lines of energy which were trapped in your legs back down into your feet. The lines were broken and the energy transfer was jumbled.”
She was right, in her way. My feet weren’t communicating properly, they weren’t flowing. Whether they were lacking the full relaxation of muscles and tendons to allow efficient flexing and function or a more spiritual energy transfer, they were broken. She looked at me tenderly, my wise friend.
“Ursula, you’ll permanently damage your feet if you carry on. Continuing to walk won’t heal them, it will only do further harm to your body.”
I knew she was right, at least the risk of what she was saying was right, but I had to put it away as a possibility; there was only a chance that I’d permanently harm myself. I respected Annie’s statement for the care and gravitas she put into it but I couldn’t accept it as the truth, not if that meant cancelling the walk.
On the final morning of my dream retreat, dentistry done and no major excuse to keep resting, I could feel pain in my feet as I walked down the short grass path to the main barn, a dull ache underneath the arches, threatening to ripple out into sharper pain if I moved too suddenly. My rest time hadn’t worked – they weren’t healed. I’d have to continue this way. I hitched up to Conwy town, limping slightly as I gathered supplies together. I wasn’t really ready to start again, but every day resting was a day of procrastination. The target remained and I had to face it.
Sun setting slowly over a calm Conwy estuary, I walked across the bridge from the town and into the narrow strip of nature reserve which ran between river and road. I had a vague idea that I’d sleep there, find a bird hide perhaps, endure a hard wooden bed in exchange for the calm, enclosed air of a shelter. Sun shone colours across the endless grey-brown mud-widths that bordered the receding water, draining channels and cr
acks silver outlined pale orange and white illuminating the rustle of tall thick banks of reeds. It was a calm and inviting place, perfect for wild camping. Except that there was a man walking about the place. I’m not sure what unsettled me about him but I kept seeing him as we walked the twisting, crossing paths and there was a dark, lurking air about him. I didn’t like the feeling and knew I couldn’t stay there without trying to hide from this person, feeling nervous about him finding me sleeping. The reserve was edged by fences; I took a muddy skip-and-hop over the fence, then stepped carefully along the edge of the deep mud washes and ducked down to squeeze through a flood channel under the railway and into the village of Glan Conwy. I sat with a half pint, slightly forlorn, in a pub, the sky darkening through the windows, coming to the dangerous time where it was dark and difficult to find a camping-spot.
As I sat wondering what next, my phone started to buzz; it was my old next door neighbour Deri who had an Auntie Shân in Capel Curig and she was firing off messages of support, calling in her contacts to help me out. I had beds waiting for me all along the Conwy valley. All I had to do was wait another twenty minutes in the pub, staring dazedly at the quiz machine, and Irene pulled up.
“Feminism in action,” she exclaimed, and I was taken home by this chain-smoking ovarian-cancer survivor, ex-college head, a woman of power, both in personality and influence, now passing her retirement in a pleasant haze of gin and cigarette smoke, trailing sentences and crinkle-eyed smiles.
Next day was tough: dropped back at the pub, for my first real day of walking in ten days, and it hurt. My feet, my feet, my feet…it’s all the problems there ever were. They felt hobbled, clawed and pained. It wasn’t the sort of injury that could stop me walking, and the pain was mild most of the time, it’s just that it was always there. A bruised ache underneath the arch of my foot, spreading in a line across my heel, pain turning from tender through to sharp, depending on how much I walked that day. The sharpness was that of tearing, of separation of tissue from bone. I knew what it was, I’d Googled it: plantar fasciitis. The only way to keep on was to stop every hour for a long rest, raising my feet, reading a book. The enforced stillness was frustrating. I wanted to walk, to get on and do this. But sometimes, as I lay back against a gate, by the side of a back road, chestnut tree shading me as I read about George Eliot, I looked around and thought about how lucky I was. There was part of this enforced stillness that was OK. Being able to walk amongst such beautiful scenery, my breaks were the time to truly absorb these surroundings, no matter how much pain I was in.
One Woman Walks Wales Page 9