Written early 2023
Moving back to a city after a year in Cornwall has seen me even more determined to walk. I received two books at Christmas this year which have both inspired and enabled me to live out this determination – Robert McFarlane’s, ‘The Old Ways’, and ‘Beyond Bristol: 24 Country Walks’. The first is where I found the title quote, originally a Spanish saying which beautifully encapsulates that feeling of gift that comes from walking in nature. The second provides point by point instructions for a range of walks just outside the city: they range in length, hilliness, and wildness, but follow footpaths trodden by many, full of history both ancient and modern. For some, wandering without direction is their way to explore. As someone with very little natural sense of direction, these instructions allow me to track paths with confidence and purpose, where each stile or waymark feels itself like a piece of treasure – a satisfaction from following guidance and it coming into being.
This Sunday, I set off on my third walk from this book, but this time I took a pen. I usually walk with purpose and a clear mind, to achieve a sense of calm in the moment. However, I also like to write - to put a moment or feeling down; to capture that calm or excitement or thought, which often float away with the beginning of the next. Stopping to make a note is reason to pause along the way, when, in solitude, it is easy to just keep stomping.
To think about writing whilst walking is to take note of what is around you, but also to give further thought to your own bodily experience. What became particularly apparent along this walk – no. 5, North Nibley, Stinchcombe Hill and Coombe Hill (10 miles) – is the constantly moving relationship between body and surroundings. My experience changed with the landscape, feeling ecstatic and free when faced with miles of panoramic views, but more relaxed – quieter - when passing through stretches of woodland. However, these experiences are also deeply dependent on your body, influenced by hunger, chill, sweat, distraction, bird song, voices, a slip on the path. It is a dialogue, external and internal influences playing a game, taking turns at playing their hand.
If to walk is to gather treasure, it is the kind of treasure which leaves you content, rather than the gold which leaves you digging for more of the same. It is realised in the moment, rather than promising anything for the future – no exchange required. Some of the treasures I found and left: my first snowdrops of the year whilst hiding behind a tree to pee; mushrooms of unknown variety with deep red insides, like alien mouths looking for food; a branch of still-red leaves, drooping with the effort of keeping its colour amidst its browning friends; a fairtrade banana sticker half-stamped into green golf-course grass; the William Tyndale monument, with hazy blue views stretching across the Seven Estuary and Welsh hills.
However, the greatest treasure might be the recognition that not every walk, or every moment along a walk, has to be perfect. Accepting moods and blisters as they come, acknowledging that fairtrade bananas in this country have great intentions but come with a set of baggage - their flight across the world. It also doesn’t have to be wild or off-the-beaten track to be special – a walk on paths well-trodden allows a deeply personal relationship between you, the ground, and those who have stepped in this place before. But walking gives a sense of purpose where there isn’t any. It gives us energy to make tracks in the other paths we are treading every day – those without clear instruction; non-circular routes into an unknown, and often scary, future.
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