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.