What walking means to me
Wandering in the rain on the South Downs is a trigger for the best of memories made outdoors
Socks ringing wet. Trousers a sodden mass around thighs, calves and ankles. Coat sheeting the day’s rainfall from its sleeves and onto ungloved hands. Brand new trail shoes proving that they are very much not waterproof. Body stretched and ready for a rest. Mind empty.
It has been an extremely soggy morning on the South Downs between Brighton and Lewes. In fact, soggy barely does justice to the damp mess that both of us have become over the past three hours. The forecast last night suggested light drizzle clearing to sunny spells and highs of 18ºC. Instead, we’ve been treated to incessant rain and views blocked by claggy mist that refuses to budge.
The walk from Queen’s Park through the colourful houses of Baker’s Bottom is marked by what my late Irish grandma would have called mizzle. It lends an atmosphere to proceedings, one I am very much here for as I listen to its light beating on the outside of my hood. Stepping into the mature broadleaf woodland of Craven Woods it clears as K follows the muddy track north, replaced by the relentless drip, drip, drip of throughflow making its way from the canopy to the forest floor. Blooms of toadstools and mushrooms appear on the treads of the rudimentary steps that make climbing towards Brighton Racecourse easy and soon we emerge into a moody scene of fog, bedraggled tall grass and brash green beds of nettles. The mast which marks the summit here, surrounded by allotments, is invisible. A pair of wrens dart into the brambles. A solitary magpie is afforded a quick salute to ward off any bad luck.
I can remember my first ‘proper walk’ clearly: A brief yomp up Pots and Pans in Saddleworth near Oldham
I want to say at this point that I am very much enjoying myself. And yet it doesn’t sound like it, as the first complaint about my new shoes shipping water falls on K’s ears. She’s been putting up with my bellyaching for the best part of 19 years now and lets it wash over her in the way someone only of her great understanding can. It’s true, we’re about 30 minutes in and my feet are set to be wet for the duration of this 7.5 mile walk. And yes, I feel the need to get that fact off my chest. But the sense of grounding, of being in motion, of the rich smell of dying vegetation and sheep shit, is giving me life.
I can remember my first ‘proper walk’ clearly: A brief yomp up Pots and Pans in Saddleworth near Oldham, a hill with a wartime memorial at its summit and a set of stones which mimic a crooked face and hollows from which curative water was said to be collected. It is a place of deep mystery, as this excellent Bald Hiker post attests. My mum, dad, sister and I were brought here by my uncle, who lived in a two up, two down in Derker and taught at the local comprehensive school. I remember pulling up to his house, 180 miles from where we lived in Essex, for the first time, on the same trip, and marvelling at the moors which were visible from the end of this utterly industrial street, a place built for factory workers in the 19th century and now in decline. This was 1987 and I was five, almost six, the very depths of Thatcher’s war on the north.
The walk was billed as a great event. My uncle led the school’s Duke of Edinburgh programme and had become a committed mountaineer on moving to the Manchester area to train as a teacher in the early 1970s. He had fed me tales of scaling great peaks in the Lake District and Scotland. To walk up this ‘mountain’ with him was therefore a momentous occasion. In hindsight, it lit a fire inside me, a love for being outdoors which still burns deep, yet one that isn’t always satisfied.
That walk begat others. Soon, every time we went north, usually twice a year, we would head further afield. First to the majestic Gordale Scar and then a Lake District fell, Cat Bells. I can remember clambering onto the summit in an M&S winter coat and wellies, my sister in similar garb, as hardened hikers looked on in disbelief. I can also remember the interminable descent and the sense of satisfaction afterwards. Something which, years later, I learned was called ‘type 2 fun’.
After years of these trips - edging along an icy drop on Causey Pike, an ankle threatening wander up the Old Man of Coniston - I began coming alone. I would take the National Express from Golders Green to Manchester or Leeds and my uncle and I would go on bigger, more daunting adventures. Deep into the Glyders of Eryri. A brutal hike up Helvellyn in the snow. A 21st birthday wander up Skiddaw, descending in fading light on the winter solstice. A whiteout on Kinder Scout. And an abortive attempt of Ben Nevis involving a hellish summer downpour followed by a dip in a burn, one of my first wild swims.
Soon I began my own adventures. Taking friends to the Lakes. Joining a group to climb Toubkal, the highest mountain in North Africa.
I learned that the feeling of having finished a walk, the sweet ache of limbs, the loosening of the mind, the deep sleep, were all things of absolute beauty. Further, these were things to be shared. Where we would talk about everything from cricket, to our love of Tottenham Hotspur to the horrors of the Iraq War, before passing a few miles in companionable silence. Sometimes, my uncle’s friends would join. Other times my dad.
The sweet ache of limbs, the loosening of the mind, the deep sleep, were all things of absolute beauty
Afterwards, we would eat gut busting meals in pubs and cafes in beautiful old towns or villages across the north of England and, while my uncle drove, I would drift off to the sound of Sports Report on the radio. Tottenham Hotspur 3-5 Manchester United.
All of this crosses my mind as K and I strike out through the gorse bushes which surround the Stone Age encampment of Whitehawk and then follow the old drover’s road up onto the South Downs proper at Castle Hill. The weather is, frankly, terrible. But as K points out, we wouldn’t have bothered if we had known in advance. We lose ourselves in the usual chat. Our children, our home, our work. Day to day things that are always best chewed over when side by side rather than face to face.
Soon we begin to descend the lethal chalk slopes of Juggs Road. As we exit the drizzly clouds the rain sheets down. My lack of preparedness for a walk I have done countless times annoys me. Usually I would be in full waterproofs and wearing proper boots. And yet, I have to accept that I am here now. And that this time is precious, beautiful. I am with the person I love doing one of the things I love to do the most. The weather is meaningless in this moment. I am not scaling a high mountain. I am on a wet country walk that will end at a train station with coffee and croissants.
The final section is marked by more driving rain, past the white clapperboards of Kingston Windmill. In Lewes, we stroll Anne of Cleves’ house and the Priory, the rain now hastening our pace. We’ve been at it for three hours without stopping, so the chance to eat our packed lunch on the train back home is too enticing to pass up. Kingston Ridge zips by as we clatter along wet rails, shrouded, our earlier path obscured. We’re home within half an hour. And yet getting out has filled us both with a zest for living, for being amongst it all, for doing. We will rest well tonight, our bodies satisfied and our minds in a place of peaceful contemplation. This is what the gift of walking has given to me repeatedly over the past three and a half decades and will, I hope, continue to as the years wind on.