One Woman Walks Wales

by Ursula Martin

  But to make this idea public I’d have to tell a very personal part of my story – which was admitting to the fact that I really didn’t pay attention to myself. In some sense I didn’t think I was worth looking after. There was never the time and space to work out a way to frame it as I was walking. I’d write lists of things to do on my days off and sometimes the Know Your Body blog post would appear on one but it never got written, a subject too big for me to crystalise in a scant few hours of writing, too big for me to face.

  Know your body and love yourself. Maybe the answer to improved health wasn’t through fear, or inflicting punishing fitness or food regimes upon yourself, but true and better health had to start with nurturing, and nurturing had to start with valuing. Simply paying attention, connecting energy levels to nutrition to triggers to emotional states to workload – not masking tiredness with caffeine, or lurching between sugar-induced highs and lows. The subject whirled around in my mind during the hours of walking, mixed together with all my other preoccupations.

  The afternoon of the ITV interview, after finishing filming, I walked over The Cobb causeway to Holy Island at the north-western corner of Anglesey, where I’d arranged to meet Peter who whisked me away south to Rhosneigr. He offered me the use of a holiday home there, I could even take a rest weekend in the gap between paying guests.

  I drifted around in the huge house, careful not to make too much mess, always aware of cleaning my footsteps away behind me. The previous guests had left and, as there was a window before the next set arrived, Peter’s wife Helen would delay cleaning it for a few days to allow me to be there in the wash of the previous family. There was a leftover half-box of chocolates which I ate, half a bottle of vodka in the freezer which I left alone. I acted exactly as I wanted but always aware that the house was a gift to me, and the eventual clean-up would be left to a woman who didn’t need to clean up my mess too.

  At first I used the house as a base to get buses from, trying to walk a little bit, down around Holy Island and along the coast to here, just south of Rhosneigr, but the timetable was too sparse and logistics too complicated to make it an easy way to walk. Covering a few miles helped me feel better about sheltering in the luxury of the big house, even though it was a meagre fourteen miles in two days.

  My chosen bedroom was the large room at the top of the house. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows gave a view of the stretch of beach that lay immediately behind the house. There was a huge bed for me to sprawl in, luxurious white bedlinen, multiple pillows, a mattress topper for extra softness. The sand-coloured carpet was soft under my feet, and the room looked out to the curve of the west Anglesey coast. The Llŷn peninsula lay across the water, a toe of land poking out and turning south: it was out there somewhere, probably within view but the sky lay overcast and murky for my whole stay, sheets of grey misting the view, mixing sky and sea. I lay in bed at night and felt the wind slamming into the house. It rocked and swayed under the non-stop assault. There were constant small creaks and rubbing noises, the timber frame shaking under invisible blows, a humming of wind vibrating the loose pieces of the windows and guttering.

  I pressed my nose against the rain-spattered glass, watching the white waves crash against the shingle below the house, gobbets of foam blowing through the air. The water washed against the small garden wall that enclosed a grassy area behind the house, raised slightly above the beach but otherwise liable for rinsing by the tide. I didn’t want to go out there: didn’t want to walk in the eternal, face-slicing, spirit-dampening rain, bracing my body against the buffeting gusts. So I called Peter and asked for one more rest-day.

  My bones were hurting. In addition to the usual tendon pain underneath my feet I had sharp, stabbing pains in my ankles, shins and heels. It was hard to hobble round the house at night, so much easier just to lie on the sofa and watch TV, put my feet in the air and rub them, trying to ease the pain, relax the muscles and help my circulation carry away the poisons of inflammation.

  My shoulders and neck also started to hurt while I was staying in this wonderful solitude. It was as if I was set to a certain tension while walking – pushing my body onwards, camping on hard ground, carrying a heavy bag, daily walking – but if I stopped for too long my body started to relax and hurt, the lessening of tension allowing my stressed muscles to let go and begin screaming.

  My brain needed rest too; it was a blank, I had nothing to say on blogs and social media. I spent most days crafting beautiful words and insights as I walked with the wind and the hillsides but somehow, when I came to rest, I just wanted to sit and switch off, do nothing at all, my carefully nurtured words melting back to ether.

  A couple of days became five and they had passed in a long blink. I’d glued my boots where they’d split along the sides, not feeling quite ready to buy a new pair yet. I’d also sewn up various holes that had appeared in clothing and rucksack, detangled hair whipped about by 40mph winds. I’d lazed on the sofa for long enough, turning the heating up and snoozing in a lambswool blanket, enjoying channel-hopping on the huge TV, allowing the days to pass in a finger-licking food-haze, regularly getting back up to refill my cereal bowl or make cheese on toast.

  I could have stayed for even longer, but the following day brought a gap between storms. There was more bad weather coming but I couldn’t wait forever. The holiday home would eventually have guests coming in and I couldn’t avoid the inevitable; I was on a walk and that meant walking.

  A man wanted to meet me. He’d been put in touch by Gail in Dwygyfylchi and responded instantly, sharing my links on Facebook, sending messages of support. I found out that his wife had died from ovarian cancer. He was a county councillor, a man of politics and action, supporting a campaign in Parliament.

  I was conscious of his grief, felt that I had no right to intrude on it. It was too big a thing for me to treat in my usual light and casual way. I’d had this illness in name only, I couldn’t lay claim to the same experiences as him, as his wife. It made me feel like a fraud in my glowing health, stepping out under the banner of cancer. We met in a wide, open car-park where a large building towered noticeably above the low surrounding dunes. As we shared a drink in the bar of the restaurant he offered to buy me a new pair of boots. I really needed them. The grips on my pair had worn down to smooth rubber and they were cracked along the edge where the leather met the sole, letting in water to dampen my socks and soften my feet, soaking a bad smell into the internal fabric. I didn’t want to accept: a new pair of boots would be over £100 and it felt strange to accept such an expensive gift. I shied away from accepting money for myself, normally telling people to give to my chosen charities; but I had to think of the effect this man wanted to have and honour that, honour the sentiments behind his gift.

  I pushed up the hill, leaning forward to take the weight of my rucksack against my shoulders, placing my feet carefully to dig against the slope and I thought of others who’d done the same. All of them had trodden in small steps, fighting the wind or basking in the sun. All had made the effort, step after step for hour after hour in pursuit of their own personal challenge, born from the joy of walking or the unexpected obstacles that living brings. My effort was just the latest of the many.

  I came to the Barclodiad y Gawres burial mound about thirty minutes later. The mark of those who’d been here before me, this time thousands of years ago. I read the sign, detailing the known rites and customs of those long-dead people, details scratched together from patient collectors and chemical analysis, marks scored into stones, bubbling brews poured onto embers. Frog, toad, eel, limpet, grass. Muttering incantations, putting the dead to rest in this circle of stones, inside a heap of earth on a headland above the sea, thousands of years ago when the limits of the known world were far nearer.

  There was a short corridor into the mound leading to the covered circle of stones within. Further in, near the barred entrance, I started to breathe heavily, sensing deep power emanating from the inside of the dark space. It was as
if I’d been caught in a whirlwind of energy but was only attuned enough to sense little more than ripples, like a child playing on the carpet as the adults in a room discuss politics or divorce. At the metal barrier I stood and breathed, trying to feel what was coming from the ancient inner space. Like a bird hopping at the corner of my vision and disappearing if I looked directly at it, I could only try and sense, holding my instinct like fingers in the current, trying to feel something trailing through them. Tears fell down my face as I shakily breathed in and out, thinking of the people here, pouring their ritual into the earth, creating their sacred space.

  I may know about the mechanics of cell division, or why we get rainbows, or where the sun goes when it disappears. I may be able to live without hours of daily foraging for food or talk to my sister in Mexico without seeing her face. But is my quality of life better than theirs? Am I more fulfilled? What did they know that I don’t? What beliefs did they have that my culture has long forgotten? I truly couldn’t imagine.

  I came out, unsteadily, back into the crashing, unrelenting wind and continued under the bright sky, wondering whether life really is better these days: animals in cages, food made of emulsifiers and additives, and humans scraping and squeezing the last of the earth’s resources into their greedy mouths. Did the mound builders live in harmony and die in peace? Do we?

  I came to Aberffraw and went to a café where Rebecca Morris had told me to stop. She’d walked in and made friends with the owner, had tea, cakes, dinner and been invited to stay the night. I told the owner who I was, and we sat for a while, talking about her experience of Rebecca, the quiet, unobtrusive woman, tanned brown as a nut, who steadily walked the entire Welsh coastline.

  “She sat over there,” said Linda, the café’s owner. “That’s her seat.” And so we sat there again in honour of Rebecca, and had our photo taken. One walker sitting in place of another, remembering her journey months earlier.

  I said goodbye and walked away. It wasn’t until I was almost at the gate that a man called after me. It was Richard, the craftsman from the workshop opposite and a friend of the woman I was due to stay with that night. He invited me into his space and I found myself having a conversation with another cancer-sufferer, a coper, using work and deliberate cheerfulness as his distraction from the fear that cancer can bring. We had a brilliant conversation about all kinds of things. It was as I was preparing to leave that he mentioned he’d met an inspiration of mine, Christian around Britain, the man who walked the entire British coastline while I was preparing for my own challenge, finishing his walk just a few weeks after I started out. Not only did he walk 7000+ miles, he slept rough the entire time, trying to get people to talk about the problems of homelessness in ex-servicemen. He slept in sheds, in barns, in toilets, and not once did this man crawl into a bed to ease the aches in his bones. Richard showed me a picture of Christian standing outside his shop, and then we took the same shot with me in frame.

  They all came flooding in at me that day, those who walked before me.

  I continued on my path around the island. Fighting to keep my balance on the stepping stones of the River Braint as the gale threatened to knock me over, unable to go onto the beach at Malltraeth Bay with the wind blowing a skin-scraping faceful of sand into the pine forest. The red squirrels were hiding, the snow remained on the mountaintops as I turned the corner at Dwyran and brought the Strait into view once again.

  I took the weekend off in Alexandra’s house at Menai Bridge, a fellow pilgrim who’d taught a course that my mother attended. I hadn’t met her, she’d just offered her house when she heard about me; we exchanged messages and she told me where to find the key. I took a day to lie in bed and sleep, eating cabbage and rice and chocolate mousse, then a day to travel inland to Betws-y-Coed and buy new boots from the cluster of outdoor shops that nestle there, a small centre of outdoor specialisation.

  Sitting in the bustle I considered my options, asking the sales guy about which boots could take crampons. When I returned to the mainland I’d be coming close to Snowdon once more; maybe I could detour inland and take the Llanberis approach, the gentlest and easiest route. Perhaps I could take this last opportunity to get up the mountain; I really felt sad about missing it out. I had a vision of taking a day to climb it, being as slow as I needed, taking great care, then, too late to descend in the dangerous darkness, tucking into the snow at the peak for a night of survival in my sub-zero tent, out of the wind in the shuttered café doorway perhaps. The shop assistant told me that the boots I wanted weren’t suitable for crampons, they were too flexible and the metal attachments would fall straight off. He told me I could hire boots and I added this into the Snowdon dream. I’d hitch to the hiring-place and then to the base of the mountain with my borrowed gear. I really wanted to climb this mountain.

  At the till I was recognised by the salesgirl. She called another woman over and they chatted to me about what I was doing, ovarian cancer survival, walking through the mountains in December and the storms of January, spending so many months on my journey in the pursuit of thousands of miles.

  “I’d like to come and walk with you,” said the curly-haired supervisor. “I’ve got a couple of days off later this week.”

  I looked up at this woman, into a pair of clear and smiling eyes. “Would you? That would be great.”

  I instantly trusted her, the kind of woman who is clear and unfaltering, sharp and capable.

  “Would you like to climb Snowdon?”

  The words tripped onto my tongue, spilling from my mouth in a moment of spontaneity.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m a qualified mountain-leader.”

  The smiles grew in our eyes and became an adventure. We swapped contact details; she promised to find me a set of boots that fitted, to provide me with crampons and an ice-axe. I would walk away south for the rest of the week, enter the Llŷn Peninsula and then double back to climb Snowdon. I left Betws in a bubble of excitement; what had just happened? Was I really going to do this? I’d been so hampered by my inexperience, intimidated by the snowy peak and totally unsure of the best way to approach it. Out of nowhere, I’d made a split-second comment and found a woman who’d take me up the mountain.

  We started early, driving to the car park at the base of the Pyg Track, suiting and booting up, wriggling fingers into gloves, legs into waterproof trousers and saying goodbye to the wagging tails and eager noses of Diane’s spaniels, shutting them into the van for the few hours it would take us to climb and return. The mountain was heavy and grey, snow clinging everywhere except the vertical rock-faces which showed black against the whiteness. Long reeds spiked above the snow blanket but all else was hidden. The light was grey, heavy cloud close above us.

  It was always a well-trodden path, even with the snow, although that brought its own problems where the footsteps of others had compacted the softness to slippery ice. We trod carefully, using our poles to balance against slipping. I’d foregone my usual bamboo flagpoles in favour of proper walking-poles; the handgrips were much better, much easier to hold without strain on my wrists, but I missed my flags. It made me ordinary, to walk without fluttering flags announcing my presence. We walked upwards and into the cloud, light filtering through the mist.

  We stopped a couple of times: checking warmth, shedding a layer of jacket but keeping the insulation of fleecy waistcoats. The idea was to walk without letting a nasty layer of sweat build up on your body, there to chill your temperature as soon as you stopped.

  The cloud was thinning, giving way, a clear blue colour coming through the mist. The snow was shining up above us.

  We climbed above the cloud layer and out into a glorious, glinting landscape. It was a complete inversion: the clouds had dropped low down, filling the bowl between the peaks with a bubbling mist. The mountain tops stood tall and brilliant, bright white and gleaming. We still had hundreds of metres to climb but we’d be doing it under blue skies. We were at eye-level with the cloud, a smooth blanket of white, w
ith only the wall of rock that’s called Cribau sticking out opposite. Eventually we turned a corner and there was the pyramidal summit of Snowdon ahead. It was a clear and easy path, we just trod slowly and carefully upwards, stopping when it got steeper to strap on crampons. The shell of metal fitted around the sole of my boot, providing spikes to stick into the ice and keep a good grip. Diane showed me how to jam my foot against the ice, how to make sure the spikes held my weight, even when little of either foot was on a flat and level surface.

  My breath condensed in white moisture droplets on the fuzz of my woollen bobble-hat. We needed gloves, double layers of trousers, fleece waistcoats and buff neckwarmers, even as we climbed in full sunlight. I never felt nervous – it was just a case of being careful of the cold. Diane was a perfect guide: monitoring without being suffocating, advising without being patronising. The walk itself wasn’t problematic: it was her knowledge of what to do if anything went awry that I valued, as well as her ease of access to all the right kit.

  We came around the curl of the final peak of the mountain, built by humans into a spiral to absorb the high numbers of people present in the summer months. I did a short video, to share the glorious view online: clouds far down below and the mountain ridges dropping away into the mist that stretched out to the horizon. I tried to talk, to mark the moment, but found myself crying, overwhelmed with the fact that I’d done this, that I was really here again. I’d come through snow and ice to reach the top of this mountain for a second time, the winter peak that I thought I had no chance at. I felt all the power of my journey that day. Diane had helped me to get here but it was my body’s strength, my determination, my ability to stay safe that had brought me to this point, the culmination of over 2100 miles of struggle.