I intend this, my first “get over yourself” hike, to be the first of many, hence the triple digit counter. It also means I have to think a little harder about the form of this writing. It’s less about my heart, hopefully, and more about the external experienced during the hike. It’s a little too much of I did this and then I did this, that’s linear time for you. But first, before even the cold hard quantitative details, we need a motive.
I’ve got to stay busy to keep happy. This sucks. It constantly sucks. I hope to God himself that it doesn’t suck for the duration of half the relationship, as that’d be 4 wild years of frantic motion; of spotless kitchens, award winning wood whittling and scale models of English Market Towns made solely out of guitar picks and instant mash. I must keep occupied. If I sit, or lie in bed, alone without distraction, my foolish little mind can’t but help turning to the many glaring clues missed, the deep rooted personal failings and the horrible injustice of it all. This royally fucks my day up.
But the brain is a fickle organ, or mine at least. I can be wracked with guilt and anger, in an endless cycle of blame and doubt, receive one sensation and the chain is fair snapped. And, as there are few wounds unhealed by time, there a few thoughts that I can’t silence by throwing myself full tilt into something challenging and rich in sensation. This, tempered with restraint, is my momentary superpower. I woke on Christmas consumed, remembering and mis-remembering the way she’d act around the people she’d cheated on me with, the manner in which she boasted to her friends about pulling my heart apart, yet, the English Channel didn’t care for my bitterness. If you plunge into the sea on the 25th there’s no room for moping, for self serving misery. Only salt and sand, nipples like bullets and deep down the sound of the primordial genes singing as they returned to the icy water. And the death of over-thought isn’t limited to the single sensation, it’s pushed out before by anticipation of the cold shock, there’s little room for it to cling after as the fans spin overtime to reheat the muscles after and the misery that remains has to shout hard over the endorphins to be heard.
It’s cold showers from here on in. But nothing fuses a good cold drizzle with lasting satisfaction like a Hike in the Great British outdoors.
Pack Weight: 16kg
Any hiker will stop reading there as it’s clearly amateur hour at Joe’s hike distribution centre. The pack should be no more than 20% of my weight which would be 14kg, and I’d much rather have it down to 12kg for a 2 day. Blame comes later.
Length and Time: 25 miles/50km, one and a half days
Let’s not bother breaking it into per hour as it gets boring. But rest assured these are days of 7 hours, the first full day comprising rain without end, so I’m nothing but chuffed with my first outing in months.
Detail
The blame of the heavy pack lies in my own uncertainty. I wasn’t sure of the weather, the path to take or how many days I’d be away from home. I just wanted to walk. So I brought enough food for 3 days, enough water for 2 and clothes of every season. 50/50 I’d either stop at the end of the road and catch the bus back or keep strolling til the soles fell out and I found myself at the sea.
So, early doors, packed with waterproofs, light tops and scarf, with machete for the negligibly managed Severn Way River path and map of the County I headed South out of the house, into driving rain and darkness.
I knew there’d be difficulty of the underwater variety nearest my house, as December had been fairly wet and in the city the path dips to only a metre above the river, with no bank to hold the course. Yet south the walk is well shielded by earth and the fields hold rain better than the car parks and roads of Worcester. I took the high road which led me up to Ketch Lookout on the cities edge. Though the drizzle cut back visibility, it was enough. I started giving the sort of giggles let out by immigration officers when a sudden, irretrievable data loss permanently wipes out all migration records for the last 7 years.
Essentially there was no South Worcestershire. At the Western horizon lay the Malverns, the lights on the hillside fading as the sun rose and uncovered what appeared to be an inland sea a mile wide, broken only by the tops of trees, it stretched from the far hills to the ridge I was on. The way was fucked.
In my defence I hadn’t seen the Severn in flood before, the fenlander in me not realising quite how much of the landscape a full river could engulf. The county of Worcester lay as no more than lines of ridges and hills, separated by endless, countless streams and rivers fed by the water sheeting off them. The scene was missing only the sound of Chinooks and screams of the un-drowned. Yet the cars kept coming, the weather alert remained yellow and life continued above the valley, so I kept walking.
Stuck between the two impassable voids of the Severn and the M5 I headed south along the puddles at the edge of the A38 til I found myself, hilariously wet, north of Tewkesbury on the otherside of the day, one hour before Sunset. An hour is a fairly long time to prep, especially since the next day was to be the solstice, but in rough weather an hour choosing campsite saves four hours of sleepless misery before having to find another site. This we will never forget. Yet was it still tight finding a safe place to bed. No copse without trees knee high in water, the highest corners of the fields were but the mouth of rivers carrying the endless rain off the saturated soil and down at pace over the tops of hedgerows into rivers. After 40 minutes of searching I found the spot, a small wooded hill or Hurst, somewhere near the M50. At this point I’d headed well into Gloucestershire and my map was useless, the sleeping bag was a little wet and my back unused to the ground. But the stars were bright, the rain had passed and too tired to start a fire I simply slept, long and deep without concern of heartbreak.
I woke as the sun entered my tent. The ground was less soft, the rivers in the fields around me had dissipated, leaving muddy ruts. I packed my camp away and headed South again through Tewkesbury and another 9 miles down to Cheltenham. When I arrived for lunch I only had slightly sore shoulders and a few blisters on one foot to complain of, though sleeping in a slightly damp bag robbed a little of my joy at entering the town. So, though I’d never really visited before, I had the first hot chocolate I could find and headed straight home on the train.
That’s all there was to this walk and hopefully to my recovery. Just putting one foot in front of another until I find myself in a better place. Today is a full 2 minutes longer than the day I finished walking, tomorrow I’ll have another 52 seconds on top of that. Every day will get longer at an increasing rate until all my days are full of sunshine and I can rest and do nothing with a happy heart, at least til I pick the next wrong un.
Joe Stuttle's Blog 