Wilson Climbing Down

Long distance walks in the Scottish, Welsh and English hills in manageable chunks
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-906148-96-6
Verlag: Vertebrate Digital
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 300 Seiten

Graham Wilson's Climbing Down, selected as a Travel Book of the Week in The Guardian, features long distance walks in the Scottish, Welsh and English hills - but in manageable chunks. Wilson makes an entertaining companion; once he was fit enough for the Bob Graham Round, now he's the victim of a crumbling hip. So, he breaks the walks into sections and, instead of calling on a shuttle-service of friends with cars, takes to public transport. The walks include an Alternative Snowdon Horseshoe, a Scottish Coast to Coast and the Yorkshire Centurion, as well as several Peak District rounds. And a new, gentler activity is proposed for the compulsive list-ticker: island-bagging. Wilson's experiences are recounted in his own inimitable style, with the usual eccentric digressions into topi such as coffin roads and cut-hopping, Munros and mobile phones, solo climbing and slippered pigs. Wonderfully illustrated with drawings by Gerry Dale.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wilson, Graham

Leseproben

The Beginning of an End

Now, infidel, I have thee on the hip.

(The Merchant of Venice)

It was not long after the publication of Macc and the Art of Long Distance Walking that I met a long-standing acquaintance in a place of public refreshment. I knew that he had bought a copy of the book and I was trying to engineer the conversation in the direction of his purchase. Finesse having failed, I adopted the forthright approach and awaited the response. His brow furrowed.

To tell the truth, I was disappointed.

I waited for further elucidation but there was none forthcoming. We fell silent. The bar fell silent. Half-a-Lager Joe stirred, sensing an opportunity to join the conversation and conveniently catch hold of the coat tails of a round. The pause, however, had been for thought.

You see, it’s not what I wanted or, I suppose, expected. The Art of Long Distance Walking — he seemed to weigh the words individually — I have nothing against long distances as such. In fact, when I sort out the present little wrinkle — he waved his hand with the air of a man constantly impeded by such unfortunate inconvenience — I intend to put as much ... distance ... as possible between it and myself and, what is more — another gesture, probably indicating magnanimity — I have always admired the idea of a marathon effort ever since I saw Scott and the Antarctic at the Picturedrome in nineteen whatever it was. No, I have nothing against long distance walking. It’s walking long distances that I find — he paused again — a little pedestrian. You see, I thought that’s what you meant by the ‘Art’. You had discovered the secret of Long Distance Walking without walking long distances. Bliss without blisters, if you see what I mean.

I saw what he meant and it had crossed my mind at the time of writing that I might try something along those lines but I had other matters to attend to that occupied my literary ambitions. In any event, the book had been born out of the training I had been doing for an attempt on the Bob Graham Round and a sponsored jog through the Lakeland fells from Coniston Old Man to Skiddaw and those days and companions were gone. What’s more, I still felt that short walks in the Peak District, whilst pleasant enough, were not that much to write home about. Then something rather odd happened.

I was, belatedly, about to start Stage 3 of my thirty-year plan. The decided aims were not exclusive but were to form the core of my walking campaigns. Stage 1, in my forties, was to explore Scotland, with particular reference to the Munros; Stage 2 (fifties) to climb all the remaining ‘interesting’ mountains in Britain; and Stage 3 (sixties) to complete a series of long distance through-routes which, linked together, would form a continuous journey that meandered through the length and much of the breadth of the country. At the time of its conception this seemed a modest enough plan without unduly tempting fate. But, as I said, something odd happened.

As a starter to Stage 3 and to test tactics and temperament, we embarked on the Southern Upland Way, a well-marked cross-country route, starting at Portpatrick and finishing 212 miles later at Cockburnspath, and crossing in the process the whole of Scotland in an area between the border and the M8. I had sped through this marginal country on numerous occasions to reach the real Scottish hills, but felt perhaps the area deserved more than a cursory glance and the SUW would provide the opportunity. The route falls into twelve days of obvious but at times lengthy walking. Rather than bash straight across, we decided to divide it into four separate excursions and, while we were there, explore the towns and villages of Galloway and the Borders. As the area is comparatively well served by public transport, the plan was to leave the excess luggage at our eventual destination and then train/bus to the starting point of the section. After three days’ walking, we would be reintroduced to clean socks and civilisation.

The first section includes a fair amount of road work and it was to this I put down an ache in my left thigh. Section 2 is the crux of the walk. It crosses remote moorland and forestry from Bargrennan to Sanquhar and, as there are few stopping places that offer the opportunity to replenish the vital liquids, distances of twenty plus miles had to be accomplished in a day. After ten miles my left leg began to ache, after fifteen to hurt and I eventually limped into Dalry at what might be best described as a whimper. The four Bs (Bath, Beer, Bed & Breakfast) seemed to cure the problem and the next day went well until after ten miles, etc, etc. Plans were hastily recast. Four sections became seven and, towards the end, twenty-four hours’ rest was required between daily stages. I, who had previously walked non-stop all day, ignoring piteous requests for a moment’s pause to unwrap a Mars Bar, now trudged disconsolately in the wake of a companion who seemed unnecessarily invigorated by the thought that she could stop and prepare a three-course meal before her reduced male eventually caught up. It was not long into the day before I was left behind with the exhortation that a stout troop of Girl Guides would be doing this in half the time — or perhaps it was a troupe of stout Girl Guides. I really only caught glimpses of the words as I passed them hanging in the air.

Matters got worse. By Christmas, even a trip to the local was proving almost too much. The time had come for serious consideration. Earlier X-rays had proved inconclusive so I decided to burgle the NHS through the skylight of private consultation. Immediately all was revealed and I jumped ship to join the public queue waiting for a free hip replacement. Diagnosis is one thing; action is another. It is all very well for governments to proclaim the availability of free health for all at the point of delivery, but if the patient, when finally seen, is then past remedy, there seems little point of, or in, delivery at all. With regard to the treatment of defective joints, it seems that the alleviation of pain is given higher priority than returning flexibility of movement. In other words, unless you writhed in agony you would not be moved on to the operating list. Although this is understandable on humanitarian grounds, I feel it is rather short-sighted. Pressure on the Health Service in general might be lessened if the public were kept active and on its feet. In my experience, mooching around the house is conducive to neither physical nor mental health.

So, with a collapsing hip and the advent of Foot and Mouth, the mountain challenge disappeared into the metaphorical mist. As a result, it seemed as good a time as any to consider another walking book. The bonus was that I could meet up again with my illustrator, Gerry Dale. It was generally agreed that his drawings in Macc and the Art, with their mixture of cartography and charisma, gave much to the text. What is more, it was always a pleasure to discuss detail and watch him resolve the problem of producing long and complex routes in a single drawing. At the very least, it would give me the opportunity to recall past outings. If I couldn’t walk the hills, I might, to some extent, relive them on the map. I was also delighted that the publishers, Millrace, were again keen to produce the volume as a proper book, i.e. hardback, sewn, dust jacket, etc. Books and mountains have given me much pleasure in life and to have the opportunity to bring them together is, to say the least, satisfactory.

I soon discovered another consequence of relative immobility. It is my habit to avoid driving if an alternative form of transport is available. This is not an attempt to cast myself as the saviour of the ozone layer but rather that I find traffic jams particularly irritating — I even dislike stopping for petrol. If you are sitting in a bus or train and it ceases to move, you can continue to read, write or fill in your football pools. In a car you can only fume or drop into a Radio One-induced coma. So, if I am annoyed by roads that are rapidly approaching gridlock, it would be a particularly foolish self-inflicted wound were I to contribute to the present mess. The simplest form of alternative transport is to walk and the network of existing footpaths connects most places that you would care to visit. It is, after all, usually the shortest way from A to B. As an example, I am writing this in Lyme Park. To travel from home to Lyme Hall by road is eleven miles of single carriageway which includes the horrendous A6. If I walk, it is eight miles which I can accomplish by setting foot on no more than a few hundred yards of tarmac. No great affair when I was fit but, as deterioration set in, walking distances were getting inexorably shorter and uneven ground became more difficult to negotiate at anything above snail’s pace. The spirit was willing to travel the distance but the iliofemoral department was not overkeen. As a result I was forced to investigate the local public transport system and found it more extensive and flexible than I had imagined.

The key is the Wayfarer concept. Both Greater Manchester PTA and Derbyshire County Council run such schemes and through them you can easily purchase a single ticket that covers any bus, train or tram journey on the same day. If you were to start at Buxton, for example, you could complete a mini-tour of the varied delights of the Peak District within the bounds of reasonable comfort. A day out could be as follows:

Stage 1: Bus to Baslow through the villages of Tideswell and Eyam.

Stage 2: A walk along the gritstone edges of Baslow, Curbar and Froggatt, dropping through the Longshaw Estate to...