I carried on south out of the valley in sunshine, coming out of the enclosure of the Black Mountains and out onto the Offa’s Dyke Path again, to follow this familiar route all the way down to Monmouth. It was 4pm; I’d walked maybe six miles so far and spent about three hours feeling ill in the church.
I decided to walk the final two miles to the next village, maybe sleep in the church porch there, but when I arrived I found a sweet little pub full of people interested in my walk. I sat and chatted, got given plenty of donations and even a couple of beers and a free meal. The owners were interesting;:a pair of brothers who’d clearly done a lot of travelling and wild living over the years. I got invited to the house of one of them, quirking an eyebrow as he took two bottles of wine from the fridge on our way out of the pub. We drank late into the night, swapping stories across the kitchen table, refilling glasses and hunting out more bottles. He’d spent years abroad but had run away from his adopted country, a midnight flit to avoid a failing business and the looming bankruptcy of an unpayable tax bill. He’d brought his wife back here and now she hated him, he said. She resented their fall from grace, frustrated with their small life here and being unable to return to her home country.
We were unafraid to get down to the bare bones of our experiences, telling details of sexual partners, his time with a much older woman, my time on the banks of the Danube, with the freedom of expression that comes when the person you’re talking to will never be part of your daily life again.
There came the moment where all the wine was finished and the hours had long since dropped into small numbers and begun to grow again, where the conversation dwindled into silence and we looked into each other’s eyes for a long pause, where the spark of another energy began to grow between us and time hung still in the split second before action, the moment before we leapt together and ripped at each other, biting, pressing and tugging, mingling spit and sweat.
“Shall we go to bed?” he asked, and all the potential for an alternate reality where we fucked gathered and formed until I shook my head, retreating from instinct into sensibility. He was married and not all that attractive; it was just an animalistic thing.
I collapsed into his teenage daughter’s bed, all pastels and pillows and slept like an animal instead, drooling and snoring. I felt far too rough for walking, spending the next day on a zebra-print sofa, extremely hungover, watching bad TV and enjoying this unexpected time. The man went to work and came home late and drunk, I didn’t see him until I went into his bedroom the following morning to say goodbye.
I looked at him, the way his hair curled greasily into a little flick at the base of his neck, the smell of booze seeping out of him as he sat blearily in a black T-shirt, sheets carelessly rumpled around his near-nakedness, and was glad I hadn’t submitted to that tremble of lust. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have sex, didn’t feel horny or crave physical contact. It’s just that it wasn’t important enough to share with just anyone I had a momentary lust for. I was becoming animal-like on this walk, turning wild and growing in physical power, but this was still a behavioural boundary that my human ethics kept me from crossing over.
I slept outside Monmouth in a straw field shaved down to bristles. I’d headed for the patch of grass left long in the centre, hoping for camouflage from the dog-walkers who patrolled the field edges. It was a mistake; twenty slugs were all over my kit within an hour of lying down. I deeply love camping without a tent, the immediacy of the experience, waking up to see the moon beholding me, my night-time companion. But I do wake up with dew all over everything, slugs as bedfellows, and avoiding rain is a permanent problem. As this journey lengthened – and it seemed that I’d be walking for at least ten months, through into November at least – l knew I’d have to sort a tent out for the autumn/winter. I could avoid the issue by creeping into church porches or hay barns, but they wouldn’t always be available.
After spending a morning in Monmouth, sorting out my non-charging phone, new maps, a food top-up, I headed for Tintern, where I’d turn a corner and walk through south Wales to Tenby following, as far as possible, a medieval pilgrimage route described by John Leland in 1540. The modern guide contained such descriptions as, The main track, once the way between Pontypridd and Ynys-y-Bwl before the modern road was built, has been badly eroded by rain and is blocked in places by burnt-out cars but it’s still passable with care. My first time in South Wales, the most heavily-populated part of the country. What would I find there?
It was so hot in the few days I spent around Tintern, I felt as if I could never drink enough water to maintain myself. I felt achy and stinky almost all the time; it was coming to the end of July and the full summer heat that came with it. I was always sweating, my skin crusted with salt, my rucksack odorous, the heat of the thick bag pressing the full length of my spine. I was covered in insect bites; horseflies in particular were a vicious menace. I was drinking three or four litres of water a day and still woke up with dehydration headaches. Everything was starting to smell bad. I was sick of eating trail mix.
I was walking to have fun, I was walking to raise money for charity and I was walking to tell women about the symptoms of ovarian cancer.
But when, for the hundredth day in a row, I’d sit down for a midday break that couldn’t last longer than forty-five minutes before pushing myself up off the ground, heaving up my heavy, smelly rucksack and walking on I thought, Why the hell am I doing this? Had I really thought this through? Did I really realise what my plan entailed? When I thought, oh yes, I’ll walk the length of nine rivers and five long distance trails in one continuous journey, I really didn’t consider the amount of steps, the sheer time, effort and strain involved.
Sometimes people would stare at me as if they’d never seen a sweaty woman wearing a gigantic rucksack before. Sometimes the idea of someone walking thousands of miles for charity was odd enough to someone that they would call me mad or crazy. It was undermining and irritating. I felt insulted, wanted to tell people they had no imagination.
There were always moments of splendour, though, that underlined why I was doing this. Sleeping one night in a public park, a small triangle of ancient trees and rhododendron bushes, I heard a noise as I was drifting off to sleep and turned my head to see a deer disappearing into the nearby bushes, rabbits lolloping on the grass.
I walked around the abbey, taking time to go in and admire the ruins and set off south, taking the Stony Way, a 900-year-old path that obviously wasn’t walked often. It was part rocky pathway and part riverbed, crumpled stones moved by water and gravity. This was the path the monks walked to get to their grange farms at the top of the hill, up on the flat lands, in the good daylight. I felt very pleased to be following such an ancient path, imagining the footwear they might have worn, hooves of cart animals slipping and catching on the same stones I trod.
Spending a night above the Bristol Channel on the edge of a wheatfield, I heard the tinny noise of a Tom Jones concert coming up from Chepstow racecourse, waves of cheers a few miles distant. The late summer night turned the post-sunset sky a pale lilac, and I sat content with the rustling wheat as the pale yellow moon rose over England and the Severn Bridges. The next time I’d see these bridges I’d be crossing them to Bristol, after another few thousand miles of walking.
The Cistercian Way was a pain to follow – the route was badly described, there were no waymarks and the paths were overgrown – but I really loved the places it was taking me.
I took another week away to go and work at a festival. In the planning of the walk I felt it would be a good idea to take the odd break when opportunities arose, help me to maintain connections to a somewhat normal life.
This one felt wrong, though. It had only been two weeks’ walking since Glastonbury. I was dirty, aching, tired and yet somehow it still felt as if I should be carrying on. I would surely regret this lost week when it came to November, when the wind was blowing rain into my face and I still had hundreds of miles to go.
> On my way back to Cwmbran I stayed with Rebecca and Phil, my mid-Wales walking supporters. They were going to Pembrokeshire and could drop me off en route. Arriving in Cwmbran I put my rucksack on, we said our goodbyes, I waved them off, walked away…and ten minutes later searched for my phone. I knew straight away it was gone, I’d left it on the bonnet and they’d driven away. I walked back and searched the ground around the drop-off point. Nothing. I walked into the shopping-centre that makes up the centre of Cwmbran, found a phone shop, demanded that they let me use their phone and internet, and phoned Rebecca. There was nothing on the bonnet of the van. They pulled over, searched the engine, there was no phone. I cried, closed my eyes, trying not to break down in the middle of the shop. I’d been talking to people over the last few weeks, or rather, they’d been talking to me, telling me I should back up my photos, be careful not to lose it. I hadn’t done it. All my pictures from the first four months of the walk were gone. All those memories of little corners, rest breaks on the sides of hills, stiles filled with nettles, inscrutable looks from curious animals, all the silly little things that weren’t worth uploading for other people but contained so much of what made this journey wonderful. Gone. It was a real blow. I had a little cry on the phone to my brother Owen. I sorted out a temporary replacement, did my admin things in the town: new maps, post office to send home the old ones and carried on. Nothing to do but walk.
It wasn’t much of a distance that day, only down the canal, across a hill to Risca and then another hillside and down to Machen, where a woman called Samantha Minas had offered me a bed through an online comment. I was pretty active on Facebook and Twitter, trying to post something different each day, making sure I didn’t bore people or overload them with similar posts. Sometimes it was a beautiful landscape photo, sometimes a quirky report of a stuck sheep or blocked stile, sometimes a photo of a person who’d helped me and a little bit about their story. It was important to keep people interested, engaging in my story of ovarian cancer and a walk would make them more likely to donate or see the importance of symptoms awareness. It also became a support network for me; I wasn’t operating in a vacuum, wondering if this was a lunacy-induced trek, I had people remotely cheering me along the whole time.
I walked slowly and steadily, taking a short nap by the side of the road until I was rudely awoken by a shouting motorist. This was a theme of south Wales. Boys shouting from speeding cars to frighten pedestrians, an aggressive noise, timed to appear loudly and suddenly. It was really unpleasant. I stopped in at a pub on the way for some water. It was hot and sunny, as it had been all week and I need to keep topping up. The woman behind the bar, early 60s with beautiful big eyes and nicely cut blonde hair, gave me a jug of water to guzzle and somehow we started talking about good and evil; she told me what she felt about the different facets of evil and how it can be hidden behind beautiful faces. I suddenly felt that she was a witch, in the traditional wise-woman sense. It was a real surprise to meet her behind a bar in a rural pub but then all ordinary people have sparks of greatness within them, it just flashes more brightly in certain people.
I walked on, up the final steep climb and down past the quarry into Machen.
Samantha was lovely: a very calm, beautiful woman, riding the waves of her particular circumstances with a transcendent strength and spirit. She provided good food, a shower, a washing machine, a comfy bed, a packed lunch and a small glimpse into her life – a very grounded person. I had the idea, as we were having breakfast, that I should phone the Argus and ask if they wanted to do a story about me. They wanted to send a photographer to meet me at Caerphilly Castle, another five miles along the road. I, in my eager-to-please manner, named a time that was just a bit too early. Damn, now I would have to rush. I gulped my coffee, hugged Samantha and set off along the long, straight main road to Caerphilly. I’d have to walk fast, I was almost definitely going to be late. Well, things happened, I stopped to pat a dog, cars beeped and waved at me (the flags on my walking poles were a great decision) and finally, a silver car pulled up beside me.
“I own an ice-cream parlour about 100 yards down the road. Go in there and tell them that Richard said you could have a free ice cream.” When did you ever dream that such a thing would happen?
I rushed into the parlour, ran through my story to the giggling girls behind the counter, met Richard’s wife, had my photo taken, gave out some cards and rushed out again. The ice cream was bloody lovely!
My temporary phone rang as I was on the outskirts of Caerphilly; the photographer was at the castle already. I jumped on a bus, met him at the castle, had a few photos taken and got him to drop me back at the same bus-stop on his way back to Newport, so I could finish the walk into Caerphilly. An hour at a café (it was a fast walk and I needed a rest!), an hour in the library, a place to make online updates without a smartphone, and I was ready to head on. My aim for the rest of the day was to walk up to the high hills to the north west and curl around on a long road towards Pontypridd. There was no point walking all the way down into Ponty as it would be too late to go all the way through the town and look for a safe, quiet bed on the other side. Better to walk a slightly shorter day and make myself a nice bed somewhere up in the hills.
I walked along a quiet country road, waving my flag at cars as they came around corners to make sure they slowed down for me in plenty of time. There were two pubs on the way. I called in at both of them, of course, the first one just for water. It was obviously a very friendly, well-loved kind of pub where everyone knows each other, the kind of pub I really enjoy finding in quiet country places. I chatted a bit, filled my water bottle up, received a few donations, set off again. Another hour or so brought me to the common land where sheep wandered across the roads. I made it to another pub – a pint this time and another chat with the locals and the landlord: more donations, more good wishes.
I left close to sundown, wanting to sleep. Unfortunately, it seemed I was wandering into the Pontypridd young couple’s prime sunset-watching spot. There were cars every quarter of a mile or so and litter covered the cropped grass. I carefully avoided looking too closely into any of the parked vehicles and carried on, hoping to find somewhere quieter. The road started to curve down towards the town and I started to worry. There would have been a good spot to sleep out in the woods, but first there were fences and then there was another family camping: children’s shouting filled the air. I moved on. Finally I discovered a gap in the fence and found myself on the edge of the golf course – perfect. I wasn’t on the course itself but at the edge of an adjacent field; the grass had been cropped for silage and I found a level, sheltered spot. A few drops of rain and some threatening murky clouds made me experiment with putting my shelter up; I was still trying to find a good design that I could put up alone without struggling to get the material taut in several places simultaneously.
I was woken by people walking their dogs and it wasn’t even 6am. I rolled over and slept again until seven, then packed up and walked down the hill to breakfast on a park bench in Pontypridd. It sounds silly and very obvious, but the big difference between this part of Wales and the rest of the country is the number of people tucked down in the valleys. As I walked across the hill tops I could see the Wales I was familiar with: miles of hills, sheep, wind turbines, beautiful views. But the valley bottoms were different; instead of scattered farmhouses, maybe a small village, they were full of row upon row of terraced houses all looking the same and creeping in lines high up the sides of the valley, each settlement with a fast, dual carriageway splitting it in two, the road running north-south to carry people into the cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport with all their shopping and employment opportunities. It was a real shock to see how heavily populated each valley was, all the towns running into one another along the long thin valley floors. The air filled with the constant noise of traffic
That day’s walk was meant to be a short forest ramble over the hill to Ynysybwl, but somehow what started as a path turned i
nto a steep-sided riverbed, and I found myself crawling under fallen trees and scrambling through brambles. I’d followed many paths on this journey – human paths, sheep tracks, badger paths through steep woods – and now it was the paths that water makes across a landscape. I found a human path again, and set to following the right direction over to the next town. The woods were criss-crossed with options and I kept randomly choosing left or right, just trying to head in the right direction. Eventually I came to a thin trail between fences which came out at a layby. A layby with a bed in it. A bed on fire…
It was a fresh fire, licking over the bed base. The bed had been carefully piled up, the drawers pulled out and placed on top, along with some empty beer-cans. The fire wasn’t really catching, probably thanks to modern fire-resistant fabrics, but just licked along the woven plastic fabric stapled between the wooden uprights, a slow trickle of burning rather than a blaze. I watched the fire and thought about the person who had pulled up, unloaded a bed by the side of the road in the countryside, set fire to it and driven away, imagining that this was a great way to destroy what you didn’t want. So much ugliness and stupidity. It was shocking to see such an aberration in the peace of the quietly-growing countryside. The plastics of the bed dripped fire onto the ground. The fire wasn’t fierce enough for the wood nearby to ignite, so I just let it smoulder away.
One Woman Walks Wales Page 14