First Entry - Day before departure

Preparation, Planning and Toys

 

It’s hard to say when the idea for this trip really started.  It couldn’t have been before I was thirteen, because before then, I really hated hiking.  That summer, I was out in a national forest in Virginia with a bunch of other summer campers.  We got lost in a downpour.  Wound up making our way to a farm house where the owners kindly gave us a lift back to camp.  For whatever reason, rather than putting me off the outdoors, that experience planted a love of being out in the woods that has never left me. 

 

I do not, however, care much for camping, so most of the really impressive American wilderness is closed to me.  I first learned about the peculiarly English approach to hiking from reading a travelogue by James Herriot.  Apparently, when he was neither caring for animals in Yorkshire nor writing with unrestrained whimsy about caring for animals, he was often walking around the Yorkshire dales.  He made it sound delightful.  You can spend hours walking through a beautiful mix of natural and rural landscape, sometimes all alone, but then walk down into a village for lunch at a pub and then continue on.  This was an approach to the outdoors I could get really excited about.

 

In the summer of 1995, my girlfriend Sara (picture above) and I took a week long walking trip in Yorkshire, and found that it did indeed suit us well.  It probably helped that we managed to hit a 20 year record drought, and so didn’t have to deal with the rain, mud, and chill that ordinarily separate English walking from a stroll in a city park, but I became convinced I would enjoy it even in raingear.  I wanted a bigger dose, and that’s what I’m getting now.

 

 

 

I leave early Monday morning for seven full weeks in the UK.  My mother Phyllis (Picture above) is coming with me for the first week.  We plan to spend Tuesday knocking around London, then head up to Keswick in the Lake District for a week of walking and soaking up famous English poet ambience.  Mom recently retired from a career teaching English, so seeing the sights Wordsworth and the rest found so much to say about caught her imagination. 

 

We have few fixed plans, but my luggage will be creaking with maps and guides of suggested walks.  I tend on vacation to over prepare – I’ve read more than 2,000 pages of guidebooks and brit lit specifically related to this trip.  My great secret, though, is that after all the preparation; I refuse to indulge in checklist tourism.  All the reading lets me know what the options are, but while traveling, I make sure I only do the things that seem enjoyable at the time.  If somebody local says I just shouldn’t miss something that wasn’t in any of my guides, I’m open minded. 

 

Having said that, there are a few things I’m hoping we fit in.  In Keswick, we’ll be near a jumping off point to walk a few miles of Hadrian’s Wall – an imperial Roman fortification that runs the width of England.  I’m something of a classics fan, and the wall is supposed to run through beautiful country.  I had a great time one afternoon in Germany tracing a similar wall.  The UK just last year opened a trail that parallels the Wall.  I considered walking the whole thing, but apparently it’s become something of a victim of its own popularity, so a short stretch is probably a better plan.

 

There’s also a walk along the hills above Ullswater, reportedly one of the prettiest lakes in the Lake District.  My favorite thing about that one is that you can walk from one end of the lake to the other then take a steamboat back to where you’re parked.

 

On Tuesday May 4th, I will drop Mom off at Manchester airport for her flights home.  I get rid of my rent a car, and take a bus and train to a town called Edale.  That is the jumping off point for the Pennine Way, a long distance trail that goes about 260 miles to the Scottish border.  I’m not planning to walk the whole thing.  My plan is to go as far as Dufton in Cumbria.  That means about 180 miles of walking over 12 days. 

 

From Dufton, I need to find some way to get a car again – probably get a ride to Penrith then take a train to the airport at Birmingham.  I have myself booked in to a farm bed and breakfast in Wiltshire for most of a week.  That looks like a good base for some day-hiking in the Cotswolds and thereabouts.

 

Sara and I meet on May 23rd, probably in Stratford upon Avon.  We’re booked in to a B&B in Betws-y-Coed Wales for a week.  Again, this is beautiful walking country.  On the last of May, Sara has to get back to Heathrow for her trip home. 

 

My options are open for the rest of my stay.  I have a notion I may be sick of mountains after the Lake District, the Pennine Way, and Wales.  One thing I’m considering is walking the Thames Path from the source of the river near Gloucester back to London.  However, I do have a guide to and some maps of Dartmoor which appeals to me partly because of all the 19th century authors who described it as somewhere no one should ever want to go.  If anyone reading this has ideas of things I shouldn’t miss, feel free to use the comment feature to make suggestions.

 

Except for a tent and a lot of trail food, I’m basically equipped as though I were going into true wilderness.  My most extreme toy is a fancy GPS receiver that even includes an altimeter to record how high I climb and how fast.  I’ve figured out how to download its tracking of my walks so I can upload them as graphics to this journal. 

 

I also bought a compact digital camera and a photojournalist vest so the camera is convenient enough I remember to use it, so there should be plenty of pictures here.  Usually on vacation, if I have a camera, it’s in my backpack, and I only think to pull it out when I’m bored.  I wind up with vacation pictures of everything that was pretty but otherwise failed to interest me.  The vest is an attempt to overcome that.

 

I’ve got a pair of hikers that I’ve put about 10 miles on so far to break them in.  They’re very light and comfortable.  (Picture above.)  If I stay organized, I’ll shoot a new photo every few days to keep track of how they hold up. 

 

Time to go finish packing.