This is something I wrote of the A Walk Around Britain project:
My name is Will. I make long British journeys, at the speed of man or slower.
“Why bother?” people occasionally demand, and on some cold nights such doubts nag thorny.
For what can my slow, old-fashioned ramblings hope to achieve? Am I not disengaging, merely drifting in ancient dreams?
My answer usually sounds like this:
Humans are the upright strollers of the great monkey family. Walking is our species’ root technology and great advantage. It defines our kind.
Cars might shift you quicker, but they’re a shoddy replica of walking. Travel a thousand miles by car, and you’re still sat bored, cursing the other traffic and waiting to arrive.
On foot, this never happens. Outside, walking, you’re instantly part of living Albion, the hedged and wild-flowered land of our ancestors. Each corner turned brings new conjunctions of history, land and self. As new friends and allies are daily met, sharing their hearts and mastery, so secret doors open in yourself, inviting deep exploration.
For the mind, soul and body, walking is an expansive act – it unlocks the landscape turning swift glassy images into smells, aches and wonders. The hedgerows bubble to glory as the birds scream the seasons. The land’s sweetest fruits wait to be plucked. Walking welcomes you immediately to the great event of life on these islands. There is no other qualification; just go out, be on foot, and wherever you get to, you’ll have truly arrived.
Initiation
In twenty-first century England, our coming-of-age ceremonies are plastic and embarrassing. With our elders locked in overheated boxes, our children insulated from experience, how shall we grow? With whose help shall we find our strength, and our role in our land?
Walking offers a way. With the journey as guide, we can initiate ourselves. Irksome personal limitations, endured since birth, shall fade in new moving contexts. Who to be and what to do become the thrilling new destinations.
Living mostly outside, we learn to seek edible and medicinal plants. To keep warm, we trust the friendly strength of fire, or keep moving. A journey offers knowledge and encounters that shake everything previously learned. Walking lets fate get closer.
This doesn’t mean it’s easy, simply unfolding underfoot. Full immersion is needed, observation in all directions, or you’ll end up soggy and sad on the bus back home.
One good trick is to carry something you can give away often. Songs work well. They weigh and cost little, and rarely run out. Most of my journeys are fuelled by song, those trad numbers called ‘folk’, the true British pop music.
People
For many years Britain was seen as the centre of the world. Look at your maps, and see which little island sits in the centre. It’s us, here.
But recently this land has begun to lose its sense of self. Instead of celebrating our natural heritage, our uniquely soft and kind landscapes, our wealth of community, tradition, literature and music, we begin to fear. A spell of unease has been cast over our Islands. Fear seems sensible, while trust seems ill-advised. The spectre of knives, debt, murder, racism, ecological destruction and political corruption have soaked into our everyday consciousness, and we have monsters in our heads.
This will not do. Walking is a fine way to uncover the falsehood in such fear. For where there is darkness, there must always be light.
Hit the Footpath
It is a good and simple dream to leave home with a headful of songs, a pack and a friend; to follow the setting sun, not knowing where you’re going nor turning back; to sleep in fields and woodlands with the sky your roof; to never know where you’ll lie down at night, nor what the next rising day shall bring. The ground underfoot becomes an ally to be seen, smelt, tasted and slept on - to be trusted. The land you walk upon becomes your strength and best characteristic.
In twenty-first century Britain this is a rare privilege, but no lazy option. There are natural obstacles galore, all those storms, hills and frosts. And there are the many internal self-limitations, our deep-set ideas of ‘possibility’ and ‘success’ which dog our steps.
A walker’s life is without central-heating, broadband, fridges, power-showers, carpets or television. Almost all the benefits of a modern housed lifestyle are stripped away. Living without these daily boons, and still believing you are winning, is a trick that takes slow-learning.
But a long-walker is not regretful, suffering the pangs of being homes-less. A long-walker is lightweight, wind-blown, and buoyed by the tantalizing freedom of being home-free. We do not stand beneath the property ladder feeling unlucky. We laugh about outgrown superstitions, and stroll on lightly.
I repeat, twenty-first century British nomadism is no mere whimsy. It is a defiantly valid lifestyle for those who dare to choose it. However bad things might look from the sofa, it is not getting dark outside. What is beautiful is always possible.
And that’s why I go walking.
