Scourge of the Trail, Part V

Previously on The Scourge (link to part 1).

Part 5: Dick Whittingtons in Reverse.

With haste we rose and pushed the lingering few items into our backpacks, and Dave offering a groan under the weight which provided a kind of departing toast. My bag, by comparison, was featherlight: I had painstakingly removed anything which wasn’t essential, and was still thinking of shaving a few bristles off my toothbrush to save even more weight. I foresaw an afternoon of pleasant greenery, blue skies and trickling creeks, ruined by the unbearable, Sisyphean load on my back. I was having none of it. My wilderness was going to be an unspoiled, Wordsworthian Babylon.

We had a few errands to run before our midday train to the north. Principally, I wanted a new t-shirt or two. I had grown envious of two of Dave’s t-shirts, a pair of Merino wool beauties which, supposedly, dried superfast. This was precisely the type of thing that should be in my pack. Down Kensington High Street we found ample hiking shops and even ampler prices. Eventually I picked up some cleverly scientific-sounding boxer shorts at Uni-qlo and left it at that.

Our train departed Euston at 1pm. The sun was high and beautiful and we arrived in early, so we ate a sandwich in the seated area just outside. Dave had recently become vegetarian, I discovered, and I wondered how this would affect the meals I was hoping he would make for me. I crossed bacon sandwiches off the list and shot a glare at Dave, but said nothing.

As we sat there, musing about what to expect on the walk, a young woman in a fur coat sat beside us. We were also sharing the table with a middle-aged, bearded, scruffy man. The lady in the coat, which looked freshly plucked from the back of an artic wolf, expressed such disgust at the man that it would have hurt deeply, had he not been drunk enough to be oblivious to her.

We’d have to average 15 miles a day, Dave told me, peering into the Coast to Coast book, but some days would be long and some short. Starting in the west meant that we’d be hitting the grand Lake District first, and it would be downhill from there in every way.

“You’re really selling it,” I told him.

“It might not be so pretty, but after the heights of the Lake District, it might be nice to be on flatter ground.”

“Especially with that pack you’ve got,” I told him. I’d been reminding Dave regularly how overpacked he was, but I knew that it was really only to disguise my own anxiety at being underpacked.

“When it’s on, it’s OK,” he said, looking down at the bulbous lump of possessions he had sat beside him. It’s quite a sensation to know that everything you have to live on, to live by, is in a bag next to you, and wherever to go next, you can leave nothing behind but that which you will leave forever. It’s a strange mix of freedom and constraint, to leave everything but the essentials. For someone who experiences his anxiety with the potency of a chili pepper, it leads to a severe amount of head-scratching – how and what to live on? I have a weakness when it comes to making decisions, when the infinite ramifications of the multiverse seem to appear before me like phantom futures.* But, sitting there next to Miss Posh and Mr Scruff, and my very own Dave, I was content. We felt like a couple of Dick Whittingtons in reverse, leaving the gold-paved streets of London to find a quainter, more idyllic world.

“Do you think we’ll be more or less wrecked than this guy?” I said referring to the drunk at the end of the table.

“About the same, I’m hoping,” Dave said. “But you’ll have to start drinking again.”

“No chance,” I said. “I’m taking the sober route to the gutter.”

*The tiny torch, for example, is a good space saver. But it has one of those special batteries that go in watches. If the battery runs out, can I replace it on the trail or will I end up buying a new torch? Then what do I do with the old torch? Just dump it somewhere? If not, I’ll be carrying around two torches; then I’m no better than Dave. Or... I could steal one of Dave’s “landing light” halogen bulbs, or rely on moonlight, or ensure I always position things in the tent in an organised, memorable way and proclude the need for a torch at all... Just recollecting this train of thought is turning me into a spinning top.

Take me to Part 6.