Putting One Foot in Front of the Other
“I’m thinking of going for a walk”, I said to my parents after dinner one evening in June, “from one end of the country to the other, to raise money for Alzheimer’s Research UK”. “Oh,” came the slightly surprised reply. “This year?” mum asked, no doubt thinking summer was already upon us and wouldn’t last long. “Is there time before the weather turns?” “Yes”, I replied, probably unconvincingly. “And I’m going to add in the three peaks too – Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis – to make the whole thing a bit more interesting and challenging, and a bit longer”. “Oh, OK”, mum replied. “Alzheimer’s Research is a great cause”. A number of very reasonable questions followed. “How long will it take?”, “When will you start?”, “Wouldn’t next year be better?” I didn’t have answers to these or many other questions. I’ve never been much of a planner. I prefer to just get on and do things. I don’t enjoy being constrained by having everything set out in advance. Spontaneity is much more appealing, if sometimes a little more stressful. I’d only started thinking about a possible walk a few weeks earlier, triggered by an idea from a friend which I’d initially dismissed as a crazy notion. Part of me telling my parents about the walk was probably to vocalise the whole concept; to make it ‘real’. Once the idea was out in the open, I knew it would naturally gain momentum. If I say I’m going to do something, I usually do it. But if I don’t, ideas are easy to ignore or avoid completely, particularly if they are challenging. I did have to do some planning, of course. Before I could start walking, I needed to get some new boots and a few other bits of essential hiking and camping equipment. I would need at least an outline of my route across the country too and an idea of how long the walk would take, so I could be confident of finishing before the winter. So, over the next 3-4 weeks, I set about organising myself. I scoured the internet for tips on long distance walking, recommendations for equipment, and routes others had taken on similar treks. I battled against frustrating Brexit and Covid shortages of everything from camping gas to lightweight hiking gear. With most people planning staycations because of Covid travel restrictions, many things I needed simply weren’t available or took considerable effort to find. At times, I thought my mum might have been right; doing the walk in 2022 would have been a better idea to give me more time to prepare. But I wasn’t going to give up easily. The idea was now firmly fixed in my head. I was asked more than once why I didn’t just cycle the route. Cycling is much more common way to do the ‘end to end’ challenge, not least because it takes much less time. But that didn’t really appeal. Cycling restricts you to roads and I wanted…