Wandering

Most of the blogs I come across seem to have something somewhere that’s labelled ‘About’. Sometimes this is a potted biography of the blogger; sometimes it’s a political or social manifesto; sometimes it’s a sales pitch; sometimes it’s a mysterious statement that really doesn’t tell you anything. My ‘About’ falls firmly in this latter category: ‘A wanderer in many senses of the word, with interests in many directions and at last some time to pursue them’.

What on earth is this saying? Clearly it depends on the meaning of ‘wander’. The Collins English Dictionary gives five definitions:

1. to move about without any definite purpose or destination
2. to proceed in an irregular course
3. to go astray, as from a path or course
4. (of the mind, thoughts, etc) to lose concentration or direction
5. to think or speak incoherently or illogically

These definitions have a common thread – the idea that wandering is an essentially aimless or random pursuit. In my view this is wrong, at least for me. Yes, I may seem sometimes to move about without any definite purpose, but that’s because you haven’t recognised the purpose. Yes, I may seem sometimes to proceed in an irregular course, but that’s because you haven’t recognised why that irregularity exists. Yes, I may seem sometimes to go astray, but that’s because you haven’t recognised the route. Yes, I may seem sometimes to lose concentration, but that’s because I’m focussing on something else entirely. And yes, I may indeed seem sometimes to think or speak incoherently or illogically, but that’s because we’re on different wavelengths. I assure you most sincerely that my wandering isn’t in any way aimless or random.

The easiest way to get some idea of what I think of as wandering is to look at what I’ve posted here on the blog in the past five years. Here are a few snippets, all of them directly walk-related.

Variety – the key characteristic [8 January 2015]:

“The great thing about a LEJOG is that the route is not prescribed, other than that you start at Lands End and end at John o’Groats. The route I am planning to take is above all varied: coastal, inland, defined trails, cliffs and beaches, moors, towpaths, rivers and lakesides, bridges and viaducts, disused railways, classic geological localities, forests, wildlife, a part of England where my family lived 250 years ago, two Munros in Scotland, drove tracks, mining areas, Roman and military roads, towns, even the odd city, and one day off to go gliding!”

The readiness to change when change is necessary [26 June 2016]:

“It didn’t take me long to realise that a change of plan was necessary. This was because the path network in the woods above Evanton is not readily navigable – a polite description. There are paths marked on the map that clearly haven’t been walked in a month of Sundays, and there are paths and forest roads that clearly are used regularly but aren’t marked on anything. Discretion dictated that I head back down, to try to go around the problem.”

Glitches are inevitable [14 May 2015]:

“Forgetful? Oh yes, I almost forgot. I was 3.5 kilometres into my day this morning when I realised I’d forgotten my water bottles; they were back at the B&B. I was lucky that a delivery truck was passing whose driver agreed to take me back into Marshfield. That meant I only had to walk those 3.5 kilometres twice.”

Detours are valuable, particularly ones to sites of special interest [11 May 2018]:

“What I did today was cut about nine kilometres off what otherwise would have been an appallingly long tomorrow. I walked from Whaley Bridge to Thornsett then got the bus back. Tomorrow I’ll bus out to Thornsett then start from there. Actually that’s not strictly true. Yes, I did walk to Thornsett, but I then made a detour to see the Mass Trespass site at Hayfield – I blogged about this a few months ago. It was thus from Hayfield that I bussed back to Whaley Bridge.”

Keep weighing up the options, again and again [3 May 2018]:

“I looked again at the map, trying to devise alternatives that would get me successfully from Bwlch to Hay on what was evidently going to be thoroughly wet day. Plan A (my original plan – a high-level route across the Black Mountains) was surely not going to work. Plan B (a short section over the hills immediately north of Bwlch followed by roads from Talgarth to Hay) seemed better. Plan C was roads alone – back lanes where possible.”

The foul-weather alternative – always a good idea [15 June 2016 and 22 May 2017]:

“We [Martin and I] decided therefore to give Ben More a miss and to take instead what I’d planned as the foul-weather alternative – walking down the glen to Inverlochlarig then up through the pass on the west side of Ben More.”

“I was wondering more and more whether I should try to go directly over Dartmoor to Lydford, or whether the foul-weather alternative along the lanes to Okehampton would be more sensible. An important decision, because risking being caught in bad weather in the middle of Dartmoor, alone, is not a good walking strategy.”

Don’t be frightened of problems [15 April 2017]

“Of course there’s always my innate apprehensiveness, but that’s just me – there’s always something that might go wrong. Interestingly, Kerstin, who accompanied me on one of last week’s walks, the Westweg leg from Kalte Herberge to Wilhelmshöhe, asked me what I’d do if something went really wrong in the middle of a walk, alone and miles from anywhere. My only answer was to say that there are two kinds of problems – ones you can solve and ones you can’t. If the problem that comes up is of the first kind, you solve it; if it’s of the second kind, you don’t.”

Big problems have to be faced, and big decisions have to be made [6 June 2015]:

“I’m now planning to stay here in Crosby – a million thanks to Ian and Janet – until the day on which I’d originally planned to walk from Rookhope to Hexham. Karen will then pick me up here on her way up to Hexham so that we can walk together as planned from there to Jedburgh. I’ll then go on alone to Norham, to Jill and Neil. If all goes well with my leg – and this changed plan allows me nine more days to rest it here in Crosby – then I’ll continue on to Edinburgh as originally planned. I’ll decide there about going further. The missing bit between Haworth and Hexham I’ll fill in afterwards, either later this year or perhaps next year. That is Plan B.”

Some problems can be seen well in advance and therefore be planned for [24 July 2017]:

“Look at the result! Every single one of those footpaths and bridleways and minor roads has now been cut between the motorway exit at A and the motorway bridge at B, a distance of more than five kilometres. This certainly is severe severance. To get from R to T on foot you now have three choices. You can walk via minor roads to the motorway bridge at B, then to the northern river bridge; this adds about six or seven kilometres to your journey. Or you can walk along the trunk road from R all the way to the northern river bridge; there’s no footpath or cyclepath of course and you’ll have the added pleasure of walking through the motorway exit at A. Or you can use the southern river bridge instead; the segments of trunk road that you’ll have to walk along are seriously busy and of course have no footpaths or cyclepaths, and again there’s a motorway exit to walk through.”

Other problems crop up unexpectedly at the very last minute [27 May 2018]:

“The bad news came on Wednesday afternoon. Alastair called to say they had a safety issue with those escalators – they are effectively museum pieces – and would only be able to let me through the tunnel via the lifts. “And I know that won’t work for you”, he said. (I’d explained to him previously that walkers like me are not permitted to use any forms of mechanical transport.) The upshot was that I had to use the Millennium Bridge alternative. It was a very long way round!”

For instance when your ever-faithful equipment suddenly fails [28 April 2019]:

“Maps OK, but no waypoints. Absolutely none. Nowhere. All gone. Which was a problem, of course, because it meant I couldn’t navigate effectively using the Garmin alone. I had therefore to use the screenshots of the maps on my phone instead.”

Aimless or random my wandering certainly is not!

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