I was rather sad to leave Glastonbury, as one always is, but I was conscious that when I got to Bristol I would have completed the first stage of my walk. It was not the longest stage, nor the shortest, at a good 250 miles between there and Land’s End, but I felt reassured by the distance under my belt, even if now it had started to take its toll. If I had been a smart-looking chap on starting, now I looked homeless, which, despite the similarities, I of course was not. Somewhere north east of Glastonbury I passed some men living in the woods, which I did not like, although who knows, they might have been quite nice, for I did not stop to check. It occurs to me that I must have had the same effect on others, which reminds me to be more trusting in humanity. I remember sitting on a bench in Wells near the Pauper’s Gate. I had all of my stuff spread out over the bench, I was muddy and I had bare feet while I stuffed rolled-up balls of newspaper inside my boots to remove some of the water. I was also trying to eat bits of bread and cheese off an orange plastic plate with grimy hands. Children would stop, stare, pull the sleeve of a parent and then point at me, at which the parent would glare and then drag the child along. After this, I took to wearing a compass round my neck at all times as an excuse for such poor self-presentation.
That evening l fell asleep in Wells Cathedral during Friday evensong. I had not intended to, you see, but, in my state of tiredness, I became enthralled with the music and architecture, the choral song exquisite, enchanting, and the church too peaceful, a vision of integrity and harmonious structure, nature brought inside, the arches as interlocking fingers of corn and the ceiling a canopy of treetops, bossed with swirls of summer bloom. The beauty is inspired of its rural environment and agricultural context, but the symmetry is intentioned as a reflection of natural order, God, the universe, the world, mankind and animal life.
I wonder what modern architecture says about us, less natural, more square, and think of the numbers, where much of natural growth is like a golden spiral, remembering the labyrinth motifs from the cliffs of Rocky Valley back on the coast of Cornwall, which are not dissimilar to the swirling shells of ammonites or the seed heads and petals of flowers.
I left Wells Cathedral in the twilight, in some bliss, but feeling a little lonely at the prospect of marching up the Old Bristol Road on a Friday night. I was saved by The Castle of Comfort, another fine pub with good grub and beer, and grafting owners that were kind enough both to let me camp in their garden and to let me use their outside heaters to dry my tent in the morning. I hope the crowds flock to your bar in a well-mannered and evenly-distributed procession from now until the world’s end.
Suddenly I was in the city. What to say about the city? Well, a month or so later, when I had reached Southport, the town in which I grew up, I spent a little time explaining my book to John Pugh, the local MP, and my former teacher of Religious Studies and Philosophy whilst at school. We will get to that later, in due course, but there is one good point of his that I would like to bring forwards in time. He said that if I really wanted to write a book about Britain, I could not spend all my time pottering about in the countryside or otherwise I might get a very false impression of what life is really like. After all, eighty percent of the UK’s population reside in an urban area. I took his point, but this then is a walking book about Britain, and so I have not so much to say about urban living.
Bristol in any case seems like a place that is full of excitement, but I must admit I did not manage to access any. ‘Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink’: before, whilst I might have passed only a couple of people per day, they would invariably stop and tell me all about their lives. Now, there were hordes drifting along city ways, all of us sharing the space on the condition of disassociation and anonymity. I wandered around the different areas to see what I could find. Easily accessible is the graffiti, always vibrant and colourful, if sometimes challenging. I ate curry at an Indian restaurant and quiche at a vegetarian cafe. I left to find the Severn Bridge, with which, when I eventually reached it, I was impressed. A suspension bridge in the classic design, its cables are composed of 18,000 miles of wire, a length that could span three quarters of the world’s surface. The mile-long journey across it is enjoyable, for the sense of the Severn moving into the Bristol Channel and out and on into the Atlantic. One stands in the mouth of the ocean, buffeted relentlessly by the winds pouring in, feeling like a little moth, alive for only a moment of flutter in a universe quite beyond one’s scope. Otherwise, I recall feeling pleased with myself, happy to think so far so good and looking forward to Wales. In the movie of my mind, walking across a huge suspension bridge between England and Wales was a fitting end to the first part. Here, I will put aside advance for a moment, to make some observations on the subject of walking, and to talk of my book.
On one rainy summer’s evening, whilst sitting in a hotel bar in Dulverton, about a week before I passed into Wales, I chanced upon The Observer review of Simon Armitage’s ‘Walking Home’, in which Adam Thorpe, poet and critic, lists the generic elements of the walking book. I recite them here for your reference:
‘…elation versus exhaustion; blisters and cramp; ominous black clouds; fear of bulls; pauses to admire a view; disdain for main roads; the superiority of bipedalism over wheels; types of rain (wet to very wet); the kindness and otherwise of strangers; mud; dust; getting lost.’ Thorpe subsequently speculates on the possibility that walkers ‘can be among the champion bores of the year’.
It was only the first, and not the worst of times that on the course of this long journey from Land’s End, across the length and breath of Britain, and onwards through life, that my heart was broken. There were all the best bits of my intended book lain before me as the formula for boredom. My dreams were shown contempt.
At the time I wondered what I would do, to justify the existence of my book, or at least to make it interesting. I cared for what I might say about Britain, not only to please potential publishers and readers, or attract the esteem of critics, but too for the sake of goodness, in relation to this island that then I considered to be my own, in terms of both blood and breeding - my home. Looking back, a decade later, it makes a fine beginning to what turned out to be a very good story, full of swashbuckling and surprises, and I am glad that it did not surpass the traditional limitations of a walking book, for it stands as witness to my innocence.
Anyway there is something to say about walking, of its virtue, where succeeding is largely a matter of endurance and determination, and one step after another will take you anywhere if you give it time, and of its beauty, where body and soul are reformed in joyous tranquility. Each step then is a contribution to natural growth, as with the golden spiral, in that one carries forwards the addition of parts preceding, and the experience close to the essential quality of life, the substance nature. One gets one’s measure, at this level, in relation to geography, county to country, and from there the world.
I love to do it for the fun, also, for it is a glorious thing to roll through the weeks and months, glorious to roll down from the hills in the morning and arrive in good time for lunch, or to arrive at the end of the day in good time for dinner, or to make camp in the dusk and settle in with a bottle of wine for an evening of music and song. It is a glorious thing to be utterly free, once in a while.
Beyond this, there is time to think, and walking is a way to work through problems. I wanted to work through this modern world in which we live, and to decide upon the ways in which I would try to help it, the environment, society, the economy. Of course I did not understand it, and as I began planning what I might do, I could not have known the lengths some would soon go to stop me in my tracks. But walking can be a testament, as it is with the pilgrimage. One invests oneself, energy, into getting there. So it is that I started with what I wanted to achieve, and kept going, and such is all it takes to get somewhere further.