Scourge of the Trail: P3

Previously on The Scourge (link to part I)

Part 3: When the Planning of the Doing of it Still Takes Longer than the Doing of the Doing of it.

Walking. Yeah, I know about that. I’ve done it before. Even since the Coast to Coast I’ve walked from time to time. I even did a little before breakfast today. However, in the week leading up to the Big Walk, as I’m going to call mine and Dave’s Coast to Coast walk from now on, I decided to put my walking into practice by walking a bit further than I usually would. The first walk involved a Mr. Marc-e-b and a Mr. Mike Todd, and we walked from New Milton to Brockenhurst, taking an unneeded and tiring detour on the way back, to the tune of 20 miles. We finished at the Kebab House, in an attempt to undo all the health we can accumulated, whereupon I bought a massive doner kebab I called my mum to come pick me up.

The combination of walking and kebab caused very different pains in very different places, but provided a good test for the Big Walk. With the promise of averaging 15 miles a day, it seemed very doable. Even better, as we all noticed, the next day the muscles were positively fresh and only the lingering heaviness of doner meat remained. Eat healthy, walk healthy, I promised myself.

Mike and I also walked the coast from New Milton to Lymington. It pelted with rain, providing a good test for my bag and coat (which were not adequately protected) and took us past the wonderful low marshlands which sit beside the Solent. On this occasion, we set something of a precedent: after a quick and mighty start, we stopped off for a coffee, feeling very good about ourselves and sure to plod on gallantly to the finish line. Sadly, we were only about 10% of the way through and we’d already had our break. When you reach the 12 mile mark or thereabouts, you can’t help but curse the fool you were when you breaked so early.

In Lymington we went into the camping and hiking store Millets where I bought a few items: a tiny torch which you can wrap around your head, waterproof trousers, a tiny pillow and tiny ‘quickdry’ towel, and first aid items. Dave was going to sort out eating equipment.

“Gonna need that if it’s a day like this,” said the Millets Man. He’d cleverly made the connection between the waterproof trousers and the deepening rainstorm outside. “You couldn’t be more right,” I said. “We’re walking back to New Milton.”

“You’re what?” he said, astonished. Unlike you, reader, this Millets Man of Lymington knew exactly where New Milton was, for New Milton is Lymington’s scummier, unruly brother. Whereas Lymington is the proud home of the likes of teenage piano cover queen Birdy, New Milton is the proud home of machete-wielding townies. A few years ago, I came back from living in South East London, with all its gangs and big-city perils, only to find myself in a pub brawl outside New Milton’s Rydal. Millets Man thus he knew that it was some distance, and was surely wondering why anyone would go to New Milton, even on a sunny day, even in a car. “You’re walking to New Milton, like, now?”

“We’ve just come from New Milton,” said Mike, evidently feeling a bit manly. “Gotta get back somehow.”

“Blimey,” he said. For a man who worked in a hiking and camping shop, he was surprisingly surprised to come across walkers. His astonishment only deepened when I told him I was going to walk the Coast to Coast. I had suspicions that this man was not a real walker at all, but simply a mere retailer.

I had bought a tent, also from Millets, but online. It turned out, later (when emailing them from a pub as my ripped tent dripped rain in the garden) that I hadn’t bought it from Millets, but from Millet Sports. The latter is a sports store, also trading in Millets-type equipment, but at a lower quality if the frozen moisture in my nostrils was anything to go by.

After these walks I felt positively sturdy, somewhere between Conan the Barbarian and a gorilla. I had some Keen hiking boots which I had spent hours deliberating over, reading reviews and whatnot, before buying them from Taobao. Taobao is China’s Ebay, and a haven of cheap shit. It was a risk, but my Keens were great! And they continue to be so. With all my stuff stuffed into a smallish Oakley backpack bought from the Fake Market in Shanghai, I was ready to go.

Take me to Part 4

Scourge of the Trail: P2

Previously on The Scourge (link to part 1)

Part II: When the Planning of the Doing of it Takes Longer than the Doing of the Doing of it.

These days, you can’t just wander out your door with a copy of Wainright, jump on the 18:05 to St. Bees, throw a shilling at the guard and go hiking. The world got all complicated and micro-managed. Trains in the UK are extortionate – the result of a clever ploy to get UK citizens to buy more cars and engage in more road rage. To avoid these costs, the savvier traveller uses a new-fangled gizmo called the Internet. The Internet, also known as the web, the net, or, amongst particularly cool individuals, the interweb, is pumped into everyone’s houses through pipes and allows people to operate on a newly unrestrained level. Protest, shopping, bullying and, most enthusiastically, sex, have all gone online and not even the fact that the governments of the world are watching us can stop us behaving like absolutely disgusting morons. Take me, for example, with thirteen windows open, including National Rail, the Trainline and six different Megabus windows. Disgusting.

Once upon a time, the Trainline.com was cheaper than a normal ticket. Now, it’s the same. Am I wrong? Once, you could get a Megatrain ticket for £1. Now it’s £15 at the cheapest unless you want to alight at a station which is underwater or in a volcano. When you’re nostalgic for good train prices which were available only one year ago you know the world has become too rapid and too boring, but there I was, fond memories of £1 rides in my head, cursing at the screen.

The number of websites which profess to offer cheap train tickets are now more numerous than the number of straggly beards in East London. Megatrain tickets only go to certain destinations, and you have to get off at that destination. You also need to get the specific train, at the specific time. Hence, if you have the time and the will, you can plan a complex, labyrinthian journey across the country, making smart connections at tiny prices until you get to the end of your rainbow. But only on specific trains. Each successful journey would depend on the reliability of the previous ones, and that’s a lot of faith to have in British transport. Do you really have what it takes to withstand that kind of pressure for a whole day? With my anxiety the way it is, with the 13 windows on the computer screen jostling for attention, I knew I couldn’t do it.

So, I bought two tickets, one for Dave and one for myself, from London to St. Bees, and two more tickets, one for Dave and one for myself, from Robin Hood’s Bay to London two weeks later. The return tickets presumed that both of us would still be alive for the return journey. I considered reading the terms and conditions to see if I could get a refund on Dave’s ticket if I were to murder him in his sleep, but terms and conditions are impenetrable, as you know, so I figured I’d just worry about that if and when the situation arises.

The date of the return ticket was of paramount importance because the following day I would be taking a train to Brussels en route to Japan. These tickets I had planned, with equal frustration, with the aid of seat61.com, an excellent if geeky website dedicated to all things train. If you want to know if there is a working soap dispenser in the toilet in car E on the eastbound 15:45 train from Paris to Strasbourg, Seat61 can tell you.

Needless to say, taking trains across land to China takes you through a number of countries. As an EU citizen, travelling through Europe is blissfully easy. But after that, you have Belarus, Russia, Mongolia and China to deal with. Already working in China, I was sorted for entry there; Mongolia doesn’t require visas which is lovely, and neither does Japan if you’re British, which is also splendid; but Belarus and Russia were another story. To get these visas I had to send my passport to each embassy, and get them returned to me. This is usually not a problem, but then again, usually I’m not walking across the north of England like a ragged, hungry hobo.

“Get it sent to my house,” said my mum, “and I’ll send it on to you.” Good old mum. But, hang on, that won’t work. I’ve got to get my first train the day after the walk ends. It’ll never arrive in time! “Get it sent to my house,” said Dave “and it’ll be waiting for us when we get back.” Good old Dave. That’s a man with a plan. Dave lives in London, less than four miles (and three hours by public transport) from St. Pancras, gateway to Europe.

I dropped my passport off at the Belarussian embassy, having already secured the Russian visa. “Send it to Dave’s,” I waved. It all seemed so easy. Too easy. It was, and all too late when I realised.

Take me to part III

Scourge of the Trail

Part 1: Proximity

I suppose I should've known better. After all, it was summertime in England - a wretched time that even the most hardy seaside go-getter can attest to. Perhaps I had been away from home too long, and a cosy fog which suggested warmth had clouded my judgement, and filled my head with the English summer of pub gardens, beach parties and cocktails on the lawn. Pym's. On top of that, I hadn't erected a tent and shivered my way into a sleeping bag in a good fifteen years, and I had long since ceased to remember the discomfort, the sheer depravity of camping in England. More than once did I consider uttering that immortal line, that of the sacrificial Captain Oates - "I'm just going outside and may be some time," in order to save my frozen friend, Dave, from certain doom. I'm sure he thought the same thing.

Our mutual friend, the generally-more-reluctant Chris, had declined to join us, citing an absence of hair straighteners and naturally sourced lime and aloe moisturiser on the trail. "There are a thousand better reasons to reject this trip, Chris," I said to him, number 1 being me and number 2 being Dave. Proximity, it could be said, is the greatest test of a person. It has to be delicately handled. If you're stealing oxygen from your neighbour, oftentimes this is too close.

One tent each, said Dave. That should be enough. Enough to save us from ourselves. Lord of the Flies was flickering across the back of my eyelids, crossed with some twisted version of a weekend getaway on the Goode Life. I pushed the idea of murder (which had now evolved to murder-suicide) from my mind – seriously, the chances of being killed while camping in the English countryside must be tiny, perhaps as high as being killed in a terrorist attack, which, I assure you, is lower than you’d think – and looked over at Dave. His pale brown flop of hair had been recently shawn and he peered through his glasses with an alert keen. His newly shaved head accentuated his neck, somehow increasing the enthusiasm in his eyes. “I’m really looking forward to this,” he said.

the idea had been raised a few months before, while I was in China. Coast to coast, said Dave, west to east. “it’s Wainright’s walk,” he iterated, “and a woman did it on TV. With a film crew.” A film crew, I pondered. There could be something to this. Just shy of 200 miles, the walk stretches from the sea to the sea, starting at St. Bee’s and ending at Robin Hood’s Bay. Before you ask, we saw no bees at St. Bees and no Robin Hood at Robin Hood’s bay. Alfred Wainright, grumpy countryside wanderer par excellence, did the walk over a number of occasions – not in one go ­– and wrote about it in 1973. Since then, the trail has been tweaked a little and attracts 10,000 people a year (according to Henry Steadman’s map-cum-guidebook Coast to Coast Path), mostly in summer when the weather is it its shittest, each of whom curse the skies, their friends, and the long-dead Wainright for coming up with the blasted idea in the first place.

But, as I mentioned just a paragraph ago, I was in China. And I had to return to China because of work. This meant my trip east from St. Bees was going to take on something of a marathon quality far beyond the 192 miles of Wainright’s puny walk. It did, but that’s a story for a later time. Before that, we had planning to do, and as everybody knows – planning is cool and always, always fun.

Take me to Part II.