Wednesday morning, I decided to check the Rambler’s website to see whether there were any organized walks in the area. I found one quite nearby, but it was starting in under an hour. I scrambled into trail clothes, filled my water bottles, and made sure everything I might need was in my pack. I raced down to the car, stopping at a picnic table to put my boots on, figured out the route and drove off. I took a couple of modestly wrong turns, but got to the jumping off point just in time to see the group disappearing into some woods. I figured I could probably catch them if I hurried. I opened the back door to grab my pack and discovered I’d left it back at the inn. This left me with two problems. First, I wouldn’t have any water, which I would certainly need at some point. Second, I’d look like an idiot foreigner who didn’t know enough to have all the “in case” stuff along that British walkers insist on. I dithered about whether to just give up for about two minutes, and decided I’d still try to find them.
I headed up to where I’d seen them on the trail. There was a branching just there, but when I followed one of them with my eyes, it went straight towards a place name that I remembered being part of the description of the walk. I figured it was a pretty good bet they’d headed that way and started pressing along that way. Ten minutes along I still hadn’t seen any more sign of them, and figured I’d probably guessed wrong. I just kept walking along while I thought about whether I should turn around to go back and get my pack or just take myself for a short walk around the area. I’d popped out of the woods onto the top of the down by now and knew they weren’t ahead of me. The views were nice, so I decided I’d carry on for a while then try to figure a circular route back to the car.
Just a few minutes on, I saw a person walk onto the trail ahead of me. I glanced at the map and figured out the Ramblers must have taken the other path down into the valley then climbed back up on an intersecting path, basically taking the punishing route to get exactly where I’d gotten walking nearly on the flat. I decided I’d walk over and introduce myself and see about walking the rest of the way with them. I still felt a little awkward, but they were amused to have an ignorant foreigner join them and were very welcome.
They were a group of 17 people. One of them, a woman named Cynthia, had put the route together and was acting as leader. It was such a luxury to just walk without having to think about where I was going. It was also nice to have a bunch of people to talk with, even though I wound up repeating two conversations with almost everyone I met: a) What was I doing in England? b) How did I feel about the war in Iraq? I got to where I could power through those two topics in under four minutes and leave room for them to tell me things. Most of them seemed to be in their sixties and had started walking seriously only in the last few years. They’d taken to it well, though. Cynthia pushed a pace of 3 miles an hour. A few of them complained about the pace, but they all kept up.
I did hear surprising things about some of my fellow walkers. I walked up on two of the women while they were comparing the finer points of their husbands’ infidelities and very calmly invited me into the conversation. That’s probably the most extreme example, but how much more extreme do you need to get? English reserve obviously falls apart when you start charging through the countryside together. It was an almost uniformly charming group of people. The only few who weren’t actively charming were just puffing too hard to enter into conversations. I got advice about other walks to take, reviews of shows on stage in London, and good advice about what ale to try at the pub where we stopped for lunch – a small market brew called hobgoblin that was the darkest bitter I’ve ever seen and very tasty.
They even invited me to join them for tea at the end of the walk, but I needed to get back and wash up because I was going to the theater.
Garmin Facts: 12 miles in 4:06 walking for a rate just below 3 mph 468 meters climbed, and my fellow walkers walked a bit further than I did and did one big descent and climb I got to skip.
Chichester Festival Theatre is a complex of three auditoriums and a bunch of restaurants distributed over two buildings. They do a summer repertory season, and Wednesday night was the last preview night of a new play they are premiering. It was in the Minerva – their smallest venue I think with a bit less than 300 seats. It was over 80% full for a Wednesday night preview of a new play, so their audience developmentdepartment clearly knows its business.
I don’t want to say much about the play, because I think it was good enough it might go places, and a lot of the fuel of the script is a sequence of surprises. I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. The use of language and the deftness of information revelation were both impressive. I can tell you it was called Three Women and a Piano Tuner, which also lists the characters in the play. The playwright sat next to me, so I felt very much at home. It was an enjoyable evening all around.
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