One Woman Walks Wales

by Ursula Martin

  I walked from Ty’n Cornel down the Doethie Valley. The grey skies tamped down the beauty of the place, but it was wonderful even without gilding sunshine. The valley wove south, hills sliding together like interlaced fingers, steep sides covered with bracken and moss, trees growing in the cracks made by the descent of water to the river. No road, just a well-worn path winding around each curve and turn of the river, deciduous trees everywhere. I only saw looming pine forest at the top of a single rise. Eventually I came down into woodland covering both sides of the river and it was a rare pleasure to see the entire side of a hill covered in deciduous trees, so different in their natural bumps and rises to the ranks of pine which spread, rigid and silent, in their man-made rows.

  Arriving in a stone church porch in a drizzle of rain, I decided to read my book there for a while and decide whether I wanted to go any further. I could search for a hospitable field, quiet, not overlooked, free of animals, with a clean, flat, grassy covering, and put my tent up to shelter from the rain, or I could nestle into the stone floor here and be uncomfortable but very definitely dry. The very fact that I’d stopped at the church was a sign, really. I definitely didn’t want to go any further, just had to run the gauntlet of the warden coming to lock up. I wanted to completely and utterly stop, make no more movement; it was a familiar end of day blankness.

  Eventually I heard someone inside the church and as they came towards the front door I worried that I’d scare them, anyone would be scared to open the door and find a silent figure in a darkening stone porch. The little lady took it well, not jumping too much, and we had a conversation about what I was doing.

  “Do you want to sleep in the church,” she asked and I said, “Yes”. I could tell she felt sorry for me and I politely fended off offers of a heater and food, I didn’t really need those things in that moment, plus my pride wouldn’t allow me to appear too needy.

  I lay down to sleep on the luscious red carpet, bats squeaking and flapping above me, rattling plaster down from the walls. I managed to knead some more of the tension out of my neck and slept in fragments, waking up every so often to ease myself into a new position, pain in hips, pain in back, pain in neck. My body was too tense to relax into deep sleep.

  There was a rustling at the door the next morning, and a note slipped underneath, near my head. Dear OWWW. Hope you slept well! Please call in to ‘freshen up’ and have some breakfast. Sue.

  A lovely, kind woman, she said I’d looked exhausted the night before so she had to help me. I sat in her clean, simple kitchen and chatted about her grown children, living in nearby villages. She asked what else she could do to help and I allowed it, choosing not to brush her away with an I’m fine. She could do something, she could take my bag ahead for me. I hated asking, I hated needing help, I hated people going out of their way for me but it would be so nice to walk without my bag for a few hours and reduce the strain on my body. We arranged that she would leave it at a hotel in the centre of Llandovery, and I watched her pack lunch into the pockets, squirming under all this tenderness but staying quiet.

  I left. I can’t remember if we hugged or not but I took a photo of this mild and generous woman, just one of so many people who were giving to me, lifting me up. When I reached the hotel – a wide-roomed, traditional town hotel, the dark wood and wide floorboards evidence that this had been a place of eating and meeting for a few centuries – I retrieved my bag and discovered a card and £20 note in the top pocket. For you, towards your new boots or whatever you need.

  I sat in the corner of the bar behind the door, against a wide light window and cried quietly, gentle slow tears trickling down my face. I was trying to keep my spirits up but I was so often tired and in pain. This all seemed like very hard work, especially with the added neck-pain and mountains of recent weeks, and it was when people were kind to me that I collapsed a bit, able to let some of the tension go.

  The hotel had a lunch menu and I decided that, rather than put Sue’s money into my normal budget and let it slip away piecemeal on ordinary things like peanuts or mackerel, I’d treat myself to a whole lunch at the pub. Cafés were for pots of tea that I could magic into an hour’s sit down, eke out with hot water, occasionally with the additional treat of pieces of toast. I didn’t have enough money saved to eat meals out all the time. But today I’d enjoy it, worry-free. I had a cheese sandwich and chips, followed by coffee and an ice-cream sundae. It was simple food but excellent quality; the chips were cooked in beef dripping and they were incredibly delicious, a short, thick, juicy kind of chip, each one savoured and crunched. The cheese was proper mature cheddar, in good healthy bread. It was real food, I was so glad I’d chosen to do this, give myself a haven for a couple of hours.

  On the way out of the town I stopped to buy some magnesium tablets. I’d read online that they were a help in energy release; I knew that months of a broadly similar diet would inevitably affect my nutritional balance and already took a multi-vitamin to try and keep myself healthy. I’d added in cod liver oil for my joints, then glucosamine sulphate to try and help my knees; now I wanted magnesium, an essential chemical component of the release of energy from food and commonly found in green vegetables; I definitely wasn’t eating enough of those.

  I walked away from the town and out to the beginning of farms and pastureland. Then came a sunken green lane for me to ascend, ancient hawthorn writhing and bowing, marking the edges of the ancient thoroughfare. This was wealthy and fertile Carmarthenshire: no major hills, just rolling pasture. I passed outlying farms and came to a small wood where I decided I’d sleep, finding the place where fields marked the beginning of the farm, as if I’d walked out of reach of one village and into the next, the woodland acting as a barrier between the two communities.

  I found a perfect spot at the beginning of a ditch, barbed wire protecting me from curious beasts and a tree standing sentinel above me, its roots parting to run either side of my head. It was a dry night so I could camp out and lie down to sleep early: 6pm, and there were at least twelve hours before sunrise. I dreamed, despite waking regularly to change position, the usual pain of hips crushed against hard ground keeping me from sleeping too deeply.

  In the night a cow cropped grass close to me, munching and swishing her thick tongue around the blades. I woke with her movement and lay safe and comfortable in my cocoon as the full moon sailed overhead, lighting the cow and the trees in shadows and gilding. A fox bark struck the air; the animal circled through the woods, first near the farm buildings and then closer to me, each call a jagged streak in the deep night silence. I imagined hens nestled warm and fluffed behind closed doors, the slumber of the man in his sheltered bed; here I was with the cow and the fox, one of the animals, happy and living in the darkness. Part of me knew I should be afraid of this calling from the wild night, this shriek to make settled beasts shiver, but I was calm in the moonlit tableau, happy to be part of it. We were united, roaming with impunity in the freedom of the dark.

  The next day I felt rested and happy after twelve hours lying down. I’d obviously really needed it. I plodded through the village of Myddfai and onwards, up a hill and out to rest against a tree. I leant my back against the trunk and looked out at the view: the Black Mountains and the Brecon Beacons lifting from the wide Usk valley, a first and last barrier between north and south Wales. I was coming at them from the west so these great, flat-topped heaps of earth rippled away in front of me, one after another, like piped cream on a birthday cake, made mountains by height above sea level, not their crags or peaks.

  The pain that comes at the end of strength is blunt and blocky. It is muscles that have set solid and have nothing more to offer. Legs burning, body heavy, I’d struggled up yet another hill carrying my weighty load along with the exertion of all the mountains gone before, the weak focus of tiredness, the rarity of private resting-places nibbling away my concentration. And yet I looked ahead at those steep climbs to come and thought, That’s where I’m going. No questions, no uncertaint
y, no fear of the pain and effort involved, just the simple fact. That was where I was going. All the chattering uncertainty of my fearful brain was silenced by this solid statement. I looked at the hills and knew that I’d walk over them, that I wouldn’t give up or stop, no matter how long it took me.

  I didn’t realise I had this blunt certainty within me; a summer of pain and shuffling had ground me down, reducing my reserves to the point where, when my paths took me over the mountains, up each slope and down again, I didn’t know how much deeper I could dip. But here it was, I’d scraped through to bare bone, broken myself open, and the revealed core still had tenacity and achievement all the way through it. There they were, those hills, and that was where I was going. I laughed aloud in relief and happiness; the uncertainty, the creeping doubt had vanished.

  I came over the first of the southern mountains following a windy night in a rescue-shelter alongside dingy Llyn y Fan Fach, water tainted by rusting, disused machinery. Three sheep munched disconsolately at the greening edges of the waterline as the wind boomed at the shelter roof. I expected expressions of discomfort, half-shut eyes perhaps or bodies huddling together, leaning against walls, but there was nothing. These steadfast animals lay relaxed on the cropped grass, streaks of mist blowing between them, content, as if the sun was shining. I lay for the night in the tin-roofed shelter, wind banging and blowing so hard I thought the building must surely collapse.

  I was starting to feel exhausted and blank. The walking had become much harder with this mountain route and so the breaks became longer, more frequent. When I stopped, I’d slump against something: a tree, a pile of rocks, a stone wall. I stared around me palming handfuls of trail mix into my mouth, gulping and swilling cold wild water from my shiny blue bottle.

  On this high level route there were no houses to fill from, just hills. I drank water from streams, checking maps for blue lines crossing the path, gulping litres from the final source before I went high. Filling my belly with a litre and a half, ballooning it with liquid then taking a litre up to the drier mountain peak. I didn’t realise how chemically flattened tap-water tasted until I returned to it. Water from the mountain was full and fresh, sharp and clear in my mouth, bringing the earth with it, not in its floating particles but in the absence of human interference: pipeline tampering, filter it, dull it, kill the essence, kill the life.

  The water lives and I drink it straight from the mountain as I walk across the ground. I’ve taken water from streams, from springs, from lakes – even, in dry-mouthed desperation, from puddles of brown oozing bog. Only at the tops of the mountains though, where humans can’t drag their polluting machinery or the sheep piss and taint the peaceful flow. Just the algae, the fish eggs and the small water creatures, shelled and jointed, swim in my water bottle; you’d never know though, it’s clear when I hold it to the light.

  The morning after the windy night, I sat in a semi-circle of built-up stones up on Picws Du. The shelter was the accumulated sum of travellers’ contributions, placed there rock by rock to build a retreat from the mountain. Ducking down into quiet air gave a place to pause, the constant abrading of wind and weather was as exhausting as the physical effort required to traverse these rocky high places. A tall figure loomed into view, thin and grizzled; he said my name and proffered a chocolate bar. Hooded and suited in waterproofing, lumbered with a gigantic bag, the man had large, kindly eyes and a gentle air about him. Turned out he’d been following my tracks along the Cambrian Way for days, drinking the gin I left in the bothy, seeing my symptoms-awareness card in Strata Florida, talking about me to Russ in the hostel. Another long-distance walker, going my way. I was intrigued.

  We talked, circling each other for a day or so, meeting at odd points, not wanting to commit to a shared walk, both admitting that we were aiming for the same hostel but taking different routes to get there. Finally we shared a day or two walking together. He was searching; I recognise that in people sometimes. There’s a sense of people who need to unburden themselves, who carry hidden pain that can be brought out, flooding from within.

  Finding someone to walk with was a joy, I had some inspiration and entertainment. However, Olivier was interesting and irritating in equal measures. I wanted a companion, someone to walk with and share the experience, share the hardship. My solitary experience was both a support and a cage, both bolstering and limitating. It was great to hear Olivier’s stories: chatting together made time and miles pass so much more quickly. It was so rare to find someone else who was driven to do what I was doing, to walk a challenging path, wild camping, carrying all you need for longer than a weekend. He was only walking for three weeks but it still felt like a similar journey.

  The problem was that he walked faster than me and I couldn’t keep up; irritation came quickly as I forced my body into more pain just to match his pace, prioritising a companion over my own capabilities. By the end of the second day I was trailing way behind him, thin slivers of pain shooting from my ankles up through the bony front of my calves. I was frustrated at myself for not articulating that I couldn’t walk the daily distances he was set on covering. Over a summer of walking 1500 miles I’d learned to balance my body’s limitations with the demands I put on myself and I couldn’t change it to match another’s physical capabilities, especially not a tall thin man who strode longer than me and covered ground so easily. He had his own path too, his own reasons for walking and his own adventure to discover, his own wet feet, leaking boots, challenges of weighty kit and his own peace to come to from the life history that followed him. It’s hard to mix adventures when you meet half-way through. I missed him and yet was glad to say goodbye.

  I sat by the canal outside Crickhowell and checked my phone. There was a voicemail from my work, the care agency, wanting to know if I could come back to cover holiday for two weeks. I didn’t want to break the walk for this, I needed to stay in this journey, not keep stopping, prolonging it over and over. Part of me felt that stopping would break the spell that held me in this constant movement, show me the reality that all this pain and effort was optional. Plus, I didn’t want to return to normal life; the magic of fresh air and freedom was intoxicating, the spirit-lifting life of constant outdoors, sunlight gilding, dew blanketing, steam from breath and bird calls echoing. The fairy-space of moss forests and stream-gurgle waterfalls, the spell cast by a charity walk meant a dreamtime where every person I met was incredibly nice to me. I didn’t want to return to a tight schedule, rushing between houses containing waiting elderly people, making the same small conversations over and over, completing the same small tasks, keeping people alive, fed, warm, safe so that they could repeat the same again the next day. It’s a life of stasis, of slow decline, creams and medications, television, microwaved meals and a background drone of minor ailments.

  My walking life was fulfilment and freedom and I wanted it to go on indefinitely. But I’d told my employers I’d be away for eight months and here it was: eight months passed and I was only just coming close to half-way. Going back to cover might win me the goodwill to postpone my eventual return. I wanted to keep the possibility of a job to return to, income to pick up immediately after I’d dug to the bottom of my savings and through into debt in the name of this journey.

  Maybe I should accept this unexpected two weeks of wages, top up my meagre balance. I phoned back and said yes. Once the decision was made I felt relieved; it was the right thing to do and I really needed a break. I was beyond tired, slipping into blankness. First, though, I’d walk to Cardiff, just another week to get to 1660 miles and the half-way point.

  I’d been waiting for half-way for months, looking forward to the next milestone for far too long in advance. Almost half-way felt no way at all, the photos and fizz of the previous 1000-mile landmark was long trodden away. It had been a needless psychological load, trudging through 600 miles in an aching grind of looming mountains and the chilling, darkening turning of the year.

  The wind was strong as I left Crickhowell,
driving thin rain against my side. I’d climb that day, head north up to the exposed hilltops, a long, amorphous range of hills, the contours wide and clear once I reached the heights. It meant nowhere to shelter. I couldn’t sleep up there, the wind would continue all night; I’d have to walk the entire length of the hill route before I could drop down into the Cwmyoy Valley and find somewhere to sleep. It was going to be a long hard day and I braced myself for a tough time.

  The weather became grimmer. I walked upwards into a thick layer of cloud which completely obscured any view and, more importantly, hid any hint of my route ahead. I could see about 100m ahead, enough to navigate with the contours of the map. It was a relatively easy piece of map-work, I just had to follow the highest line along the top of the hill until it met another, then turn right, cross one valley head and dip down into the next. I found a trig point and crouched down behind it, finding the side that faced away from the biting wind, a bleak sea of trampled peat around me. The clouds cleared for a few seconds to give a view of a sun-dappled mound of a hill half a mile distant, then reformed and I was alone in a blush of white, my clothes sodden with the accumulation of thousands of small droplets. I couldn’t fully rest here, the wind was snatching the heat away from my body too quickly, so I took enough time to locate and chew on a sesame snap and gulp some water before heaving myself up from the crouch and lumbering on, back into the blind walk from point to point, the lack of view taking away any real sense of progress.

  It took all afternoon to walk the cloud-laden hilltop route, and eventually I came to a crossing point I’d visited before, as I came down the Cistercian Way. To my left lay the path down towards Hay-on-Wye, ahead was the short 100m to summit Lord Hereford’s Knob, and to my right was the start of the valley that would lead to Llanthony and Cwmyoy, my route back to Abergavenny. Last time I’d been here in bright sunshine, and I’d lain down in the grass for a long rest when I reached the highest point of the pass. Today there was neither sunshine nor rest. I was tired, but there was still nowhere to shelter. My route was supposed to take me up to the rising point of the lordly outcrop and then retrace back and down into the valley. I was sorely tempted to skip it, just walk straight down into the valley, but couldn’t bring myself to cheat. What was the point of putting myself through this entire, painful, exhausting enterprise if I was just going to dodge parts of it?