One Woman Walks Wales

by Ursula Martin

  It was deserted already, and I had a strong feeling it would be a peaceful place to spend the night. And that’s what I did: a three-course meal in the bar, chatting a bit to the other customers and the friendly barmaid, but mostly sitting quietly and enjoying the good hot food before going outside in the dark and making up a bed in the bandstand. It was a warm night. I sat for a while in the silence, feeling the shape of the night. It wasn’t the most relaxing place to sleep – public places never are, especially those where you might be stumbled upon by other people – but I settled eventually, after the clock struck 1am.

  The only thing I made sure of was to wake up early, setting an alarm, not wanting to be caught by morning dog-walkers. It worked. I sat up, seeing a chicken pecking around, bustling for territory with the skulking gulls, put my stuff together and was lacing my boots as the first dog-walker appeared at 6am.

  I walked further and further away from the coastal path. How strange that I was finished with the sea, it had been by my side for so long. All there was left was one river; I was going to follow it up to its source and I’d be home and finished. I didn’t know how to feel about this impending date. Happy? Sad? The exhilaration and the exhaustion pulled at either end of the emotional spectrum, leaving me settled in a middling numbness. I was sure there was more, underneath, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t have to feel anything, just walk fifteen miles every day in order to make it to Machynlleth by the 22nd August. There it was, further days of pain, tiredness and treading the thin edge into injury; but only a finite amount of days. The end was near.

  Leaving Chepstow and heading north it was just an ordinary day, as far as ordinary goes for me. The Wye valley was very beautiful; I walked through old forests, trees reaching high above me. I walked sweating under the weight of my rucksack, climbing hills and dropping down until I reached Tintern. Boots off, feet up and a couple of coffees; I gave my heels a chance to rest. Then I walked an hour more before stopping for lunch in a bus-shelter next to a busy road, then walked some more before being overcome with tiredness. It happens sometimes, in the early afternoons. There was nothing to do but sleep for a short time, half an hour or so. This time, three people walked past and laughed at me as I huddled in the forest by the side of the path. It is very hard to be exhausted in public and without a safe space to retreat to.

  I woke up, chugged some water and walked some more, following the winding, gorge-like Wye valley, so lush and full of trees, until I reached The Boat Inn, Redbrook, a tiny and excellent pub on the banks of the river, which offered a multitude of barrelled ciders. I drank a pint here, rested and rubbed my feet, then walked a couple more miles before I looked for somewhere to sleep. Another day closer to the end.

  I was finally too tired to even pretend not to be homeless any more. I’d slept on the lawn beside the boat club in Monmouth, the hedge providing the merest sliver of cover from passing dog-walkers. I didn’t care any more about safety, about night-time marauders, about looking like a hobo. I just needed to sleep and it didn’t matter where. The bridge carrying the roaring and gritty A40 in Ross-on-Wye was concrete and brutal. I took a Chinese takeaway with me. It was shit food, again, but I was on the edge of town by the time I realised there weren’t any more chip-shops. The uncomfortably bumpy surface where the bridge faced onto the river was deliberately designed to stop people sleeping there; the careless cruelty of society makes life even harder for its most desperate citizens.

  As I sat under the bridge, my evening was made glorious by the most unexpected of sights. Fifteen swans swam slowly against the current beneath a blaze of a sunset: roaring pinks and golds, orange, red and peach-splashed, glowing across the whole sky above the black silhouettes of tree-lined water, all the colours reflected below so the swans trod water in a jewelled ribbon. I hunched awkwardly on the inhospitable concrete and munched prawn crackers, a small happy bystander in the corner of this heavenly picture, before retreating behind a column and making a bed on crushed glass and gravel, dry and comfortable for another night.

  The Herefordshire burr was blurring into a Welsh lilt as I progressed up the river’s course, and I realised that underneath the boundary, these borderlands were a place where separation dissolved. People and their long-held relationship with their surroundings, their years lived with the same weather patterning the same hills, knowing the same neighbours, watching blossom, fruit and leaves falling from the same tree. Divide it by nation if you will – distant governments setting invisible lines, drawing maps above our heads – but cultural identity starts with people and land.

  In order to walk the missing miles of the Offa’s Dyke Path that I’d skived out of when my tooth broke, I took a couple of days away from the Wye Valley and felt like a stubborn bastard as I did so. Rebecca and Phil, Knighton-based good eggs, had me to stay, shuttling me around so I could walk the miles and return to their home easily. I came face to face with Gareth again, as he came south on the ODP after walking all around the top of Wales. Rebecca and Phil hosted both of us for one fantastic night. We sat around their ceremonial barbeque table: three 1000-plus-mile walkers, sharing stories.

  Detour completed, I went back to the Wye. I didn’t know how it was happening; time was running away from me yet pulling me with it. The end was coming, it was unavoidable. I would finish the walk the next week. I couldn’t wait to stop. I was incredibly sad. The finish. It was unimaginable, yet it was coming, it would happen. I was forcing myself forward to that point. It had to end.

  The end of the walk would be a moment in time that I’d already decided upon. The following Saturday: eight days, fifteen miles a day until then. My body was exhausted: feet hurt, pain shooting through them and into the bones of my legs. Every day was an effort, a blur. I saw people, experienced beautiful things; I don’t remember them. I was focused on walking, a slow grind until I could stop.

  The Wye Valley was beautiful, lush and full of crops; the rain only served to make them flourish. I was walking through with no time to stop and wonder. I had to walk hard every day, my body so tired the necessary mileage took all day.

  I didn’t want the end to happen. I needed it to happen. I couldn’t stop it from happening. I loved this, and yet I needed it to stop.

  The walk had become a mania. I was completely overwhelmed with the thought of finishing – never mindful, never simply sitting and absorbing my surroundings. I was always taking photographs or writing a Facebook update or thinking, my mind churning with the pain, my potential reception, the future, the experience. I couldn’t take it in, I wasn’t present in it any more.

  There’s a brief period of time I do remember. Walking along the edge of a wheatfield, the path was a strip alongside the farmer’s planting so narrow I could brush my fingers along the crusty grain tops as I walked. I heard a crackling, so faint that I couldn’t focus on the source, it seemed to be all around me. I stopped and sat down, staring into the wheat, listening. It was the sound of the grain husks popping open in the sun, individual creaks and pops becoming a whisper of crackling, the swelling and growing of the grain becoming audible. I sat for a few minutes and took it in. Only in the silence did I realise how constantly my brain was chattering. How hungry am I? Where’s the next water coming from? Where will I sleep tonight? How much do I hurt?

  Sometimes I smelled food: walking through a village, quiet houses lining the river, set back by their long gardens sloping down towards the water, quiet trees trailing. Lunch came towards me on the air, spools of scent trailing out over the water. It was the smell of civilisation, noted for its rarity, noted for the days I spent with nothing but the scent of the fresh wild wind, the smell of earth and mosses, of sheep, their woollen musky tang.

  When I came to human places I walked into much more intense smells, clouds of rose scent from pampered, preserved plants in cultivated gardens. I’d walk past people and sniff at the fog of detergent or perfume that trailed along after them. The smells of cooked food and roasted meats wound sinuously out of kitchen window
s.

  I realised that I was separated from all of this. I was part wild, had become a piece of the natural world. I squatted to piss as naturally as sitting, bent my hips low down to the ground, rested my weight down onto my heels, reaching underneath to wipe myself. I found my gaze sharply turning to birds where they fluttered in the trees, noting their movement, marking them. I looked for the traces of animals in my path, noting the scat, the scratches, the trails of foxes, badgers, hedgehogs, small mice and shrews. I saw squat shapes along the paths I walked, waited for shadows of movement, of animals scuttering away from my own clash and clamour.

  I was become wild, my humanity dropped away over a year of outdoor living, careless of showers and scents and shopping, forgetful of where to sit, of dirt on my clothes, of dirt on my hands, of a day’s timings and schedules. Uncaring of appropriate behaviour, of anything but walking.

  I entered Wales again at Hay-on-Wye, after following the Wye’s winding through the rich lands of Herefordshire, paced onwards towards Builth Wells, Rhayader and Llangurig, grinding out the final miles. I stayed in a hotel in Rhayader. It was supposed to be my final night of camping, but it was a wet and soggy day and I wimped out; everything felt too difficult, my weakness coming on in the final moments of the walking day.

  Coming towards Llangurig, only a quirk of the rising of the land separated the Severn from the Wye. One rolled south, the other northwards, running away from each other and only meeting again hundreds of miles later as they entered the sea. This rise, preventing the two newborn rivers connecting, signalled the beginning and end of my journey. I began on one side of it and followed the water. More than a year later I was following it back again on the other side, thousands of miles covered in between.

  I spent the next night with Jenny in Llangurig before walking up and over Plynlimon, the final climb. It was a hard and wet slog from the upper reaches of the Wye to the summit of the mountain, a final reminder of just how tough things could be. No path, just a plod along boggy stream-edges, water shedding from every waist-high burst of reeds and grasses, soaking me to the skin.

  I reached the final boundary fence at the heights of the mountain and paused for a while before descending down to Talbontdrain. My old house would be host to the final night of my journey. Here I was at the top of the mountain again, and I’d walked 3700 miles. I didn’t know how to feel. First cancer then walking had consumed the last four years of my life; this had been so big for so long and now the circle was almost complete, it was almost over.

  I walked down Machynlleth’s high street, with its familiar grey buildings and wide pavements, squeezing past shoppers and pedestrians, their blank faces unconcerned at the epic nature of the journey I was ending. There was the clock tower again, the end of the journey coming towards me. Once I was there I wouldn’t have to walk any more; it really was the end. Friends and supporters were waiting, blowing horns and cheering. My steps dragged as I walked down the street. It was the final 200m of thousands of miles and I was scared.

  A thought slammed into my mind, so huge and absolute that my steps faltered and I had to stand still for a second and face it. You did this because you had cancer. All this. All these thousands of miles, struggling forward against the limits of your own body, always pushing on and on. This was all because of cancer. Sobs welled up within me, huge, wet, nameless tears. All the pain of the previous four years had brought me here: this stupid thick pink growth that appeared where it shouldn’t, all the illness and worry and then the inspiration and the walking, the people, the donations, the love and care I’d been shown. This thing that I’d tried to shake off, that I’d tried to treat as if it hadn’t affected me – I saw that everything I’d done was because of it. I’d done all this because of cancer and now it was ending.

  I came to the group and stopped, I didn’t know what to do. I’d set out on a journey to walk an unthinkable, eyebrow-raising number of miles and I – silly, vague, plump, unprepared, determined, strong, stubborn me – had actually bloody done it.

  EPILOGUE

  A year after my cancer came, on the first anniversary of my operation date, I was in Mexico with my sister. We went to an agave bar with spray-painted walls and sat upstairs on a sofa with fairy lights and plants dangling down into the patio space. I poured a shot and said goodbye to my right ovary.

  “You grew a tumour and tried to kill me and now you’re gone. I let you go. I’m sorry this happened.”

  Then I poured another shot of the thin, sharp spirit and I said thank you to my left ovary.

  “Cheers, Leftie, well done! Thank you for not taking up the cancer and growing it yourself, thank you for continuing to produce periods with such monthly regularity, thank you for continuing to maintain my hormonal balance in the face of such abdominal upheaval.”

  I’d never said thank you to a part of my body before; I’d never appreciated it for working as it should, all the quiet tickings and churnings which it carried out on my behalf every second of my waking and sleeping hours. My body was so strong and worked so well I didn’t even notice how perfect it was. I’d only ever focused on the ways it failed me, the ways it wasn’t good enough, the ways I wanted it to be different.

  That anniversary, when I said thank you, was the beginning of true healing; I’d spent a year doing the immediate things, the sleeping and the sit-ups, the swimming and the therapy, the gentle walks and the good food.

  I realised when I was weak that I needed to stop fighting it, that I had to stop denying my vulnerability and allow it to happen. For a short but vital period of time I had to allow myself to fully feel that pain in order to recover from it.

  Part of healing is acknowledging hurt, part of healing is working at getting better, and part of healing is putting that painful time behind you, seeing that you no longer have to fear it. You’re done with it; let it go, this trauma is no longer a necessary part of you.

  The end of healing comes when you can acknowledge that the hurt is over now, that it has gone – and left you different.

  We shall not cease from exploration

  And the end of all our exploring

  Will be to arrive where we started

  And know the place for the first time.

  T. S. Eliot

  Little Gidding, Four Quartets

  FINAL WORDS

  Ovarian cancer most commonly occurs in women over 65, with women over 50 at increased risk.

  Approximately 350 women are diagnosed annually in Wales, 7300 across the UK.

  Approximately 200 women die annually in Wales, 4100 across the UK.

  The five-year survival rate is 46%.

  Symptoms are commonly mistaken for IBS.

  Diagnosis is usually made when the cancer has spread beyond treatment.

  Please take a moment to read and absorb the symptoms of ovarian cancer; one day it might help you or someone close to you live longer.

  Persistent bloating – not bloating that comes and goes

  Feeling full quickly and/or loss of appetite

  Pelvic or abdominal pain (that’s your tummy and below)

  Urinary symptoms (needing to wee more urgently or more often than usual)

  Occasionally there can be other symptoms:

  Changes in bowel habit (e.g. diarrhoea or constipation)

  Extreme fatigue (feeling very tired)

  Unexplained weight loss

  Any bleeding after the menopause should always be investigated by a GP.

  Symptoms will be:

  Frequent – they usually happen more than twelve times a month

  Persistent – they don’t go away

  New – they are not normal for you

  Author’s Note

  There are discrepancies in some of the stated mileages in this book.

  First is the total length of the walk. When I created the route and calculated the total number of miles I made a few mistakes, didn’t take into account the linking distances from one route to another and spent most of the walk thi
nking I was walking 3300 miles. I had cards printed, put it all over the website. It wasn’t until I’d walked 3300 miles and hadn’t reached the end of my route that I realised I was bad at maths. The final total was 3718 miles, but I talked about 3300 miles throughout the planning and for fifteen of the seventeen months the journey took.

  The mileage given in each chapter heading may not add up to the total miles walked (3718). There were days when I took detours or walked extra sections. Routes have changed since I walked some paths (the distance given on the official website for the Cistercian Way has increased by forty-eight miles). I’ve found discrepancies between guidebook mileages and website mileages for certain routes, and I also walked miles between each official path (for example, the 100 miles between the end of the Cambrian Way at Cardiff and the beginning of the Coast to Coast Path at Rhossili). I also walked different sections of certain paths at different times (for example, Offa’s Dyke Path Chepstow to Welshpool in early April, Offa’s Dyke Path Welshpool to Prestatyn in early May, after the Glyndŵr’s Way and recorded in the Glyndŵr’s Way chapter). I have my own record of the actual miles I walked, but it’s difficult to represent them clearly in this book when I’ve divided each section by the name of an official path.

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