Chapter 48

The Path Goes on Forever

‘…I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 100 more’

Five hundred miles done, still more than another hundred to go.  Twelve years, twenty percent of our lives, edging our way around The Path.  A few days here, a long weekend there.  Campsites, cottages, B&Bs.  A jumble of images; a blur of beaches, harbours, headlands.  Setting out from Minehead is a distant memory, a time when we last had a caring government, Johnny Wilkinson was still kicking between the posts and social media didn’t rule the world; reaching Poole still a distant dream; a dream we share with our walking buddies Sue and Ade. 

We’ve already clocked over 50 days. We know the routine; we know what’s in store; we know how we’ll feel.  We’ve accumulated enough experience to anticipate how a day, any day, on The Path will unfold.

It won’t be an early start.  We’re supposed to be on a day-out or holiday, not a forced march, and the previous day’s exertions and last night’s beers demand a bit of a lie-in.  It’ll be at least ten before the sandwiches are made, Sue B’s done her stretches, the vehicle shuttles are completed, boots are on feet and rucksacks on shoulders.  No need for a discussion on the route.  Keep the sea to the right and just walk until we reach the spot where we’ve left a vehicle.   Starting off together, easing into a well-honed stride and sliding comfortably into familiar chit-chat.  ‘What’s the chance of a pasty in that village?  Reckon we can get a cream tea where we finish?  Think we’ll be done by four?  Twelve miles.  Can’t be too hard.  Em…not so sure, the guide says it’s a harder section.’

Within an hour, the established hierarchy emerges.  Sue and Ade open a 50m gap: we think they walk fast; they think we walk slowly.  It doesn’t matter.  We regularly reunite at the top of a climb, pausing to take in the view, or down in a tiny secluded cove, pausing for a drink or snack.  On some stretches we’ll be together; in other places we’ll be  spread out.  Often I find myself at the back, alone with my thoughts, my mind wandering, thinking about family, about training or looming events, about work, about Forest, about what’s happening in the news.  More frequently I’m thinking about The Path and our slow journey along its roller-coaster, zigzagging trail around the coasts of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.

How’s the weather looking?  We’re fortunate again, grateful that our excursions tend to coincide with more decent days than might be expected.  Blue skies and gentle winds mean a blue, translucent sea, the sand and rocks visible, metres below the surface. With a little imagination, some of the coves could be Aegean, the rocky backdrop and white sand lapped by small turquoise waves.  Or, if you prefer Australia, the beaches of the Cornish north coast could easily become Bondi, Manly or Byron Bay as perfect Atlantic sets roll in, the breaks held-up in a gentle white peel by the light offshore breeze.  Don’t let the actual air and sea temperatures spoil the illusions.

Some days, fewer days, a blustery gale harangues the cliff tops, exhausting and disturbing to our walking rhythms.  Pauses to rest require shelter: a wall, a crag, a cafe; anywhere to get out of the wind.  From The Path, the incoming squalls can be spotted early, advancing across a disturbed sea of white horses; time enough to judge if we’re the target and should don waterproofs, or we’re in luck and it’s just going to miss us.

Occasionally, the odd rare day, we become part of a storm.  Low grey clouds, a dark, angry sea, and gale-driven rain that needs the full wet-gear defence.  Hoods on, it’s hard to converse.  Best to just watch in awe the endless battle between the defiant headlands, cliffs, stacks and arches and their eternal enemies, those huge swells, flecked waves, and crashing surf.

The Path stretches on ahead. Hidden coves require knee-jarring descents followed by quad-busting climbs.  On some days, I just know it’s hardly worth hoping for a flat stretch and so find myself going down thinking I’d prefer to be going up before then going up and wishing I was going down.  Look to one side, always the same side, and it’s the sea and its many faces.  Briefly watch the soaring gulls carve sweeping turns in front of the sheer cliffs or, far below, a cormorant skimming the waves as it heads out to sea.  Turn the other way to notice the arable fields, ploughed and planted almost to the cliff edge with crops we can’t name.  Elsewhere, fenced-pasture or a rough scrub of grasses and gorse means we’ll be sharing the land with cows, sheep or scraggy ponies.  Look forwards to a sequence of headlands and inlets stretching to the hazy horizon.

‘Which one are we aiming for?’ 

‘The one after the lighthouse, or is that for tomorrow?’

Look back and feel vaguely smug at how far we’ve travelled. 

‘It looks miles away.  Were we really there only yesterday?’

Fellow travellers are a momentary distraction.  The occasional, heavily-laden purist walking to a six-week deadline; the middle-aged pair from Germany, taking annual leave on a coast so different to their native shoreline; and the young couple making the most of their endless energy and pre-kids-opportunities.  It’s easy to know when The Path is nearing a popular beach, village or harbour.  The first indicators are usually dogs.  Released from their leads, they race ahead gleefully, claiming The Path as their playground and toilet.  Soon, their oblivious owners will come into view, sometimes with reluctant kids in tow, promised an ice-cream if they’ll join the family walk to ‘see the seals’ or reach the viewpoint.  Once the park-benches, inevitably adorned with a small memorial plate, have started to appear, the new walkers on the path will have started wearing deck-shoes or white fashion-trainers, the dogs will have become smaller with shorter legs, and it’s evident that a car park will be close at hand.

The harbours, promenades and beach fronts arrive at welcome intervals, rather like motorway service stations, offering a chance to stop and use the facilities and refuel with a pasty or cup of tea; a chance to sit and appraise the yachts, or admire the fishing boats with their rusty gunwales, decks piled untidily high with lobster pots and pink marker-buoys; a chance to note that the old pub, the lifeboat station and fishermen’s cottages are now just part of a mix that includes cafes, arcades, galleries and shops selling designer clothes or holiday knick-knacks.

Brief rest over, we’ll follow the sign-posts out of the village, along the narrow lanes, up past the B&Bs, up-past the retirement bungalows, up past the cottages that are now second-homes available on Airbnb, up past the Grand Design homes, the ones with a view-to-die-for and that are never found on Airbnb.  Eventually we’ll leave behind the houses and return to the landscape of grassy headlands, muddy tracks and stony scrambles where the only signs of habitation are the tin mines, Celtic crosses and coastguard look-out stations.

By mid-afternoon, a mixture of familiarity and fatigue leads to day-dreaming, the mind drifting off into a strange mix of thoughts of its own, somehow related to The Path and Time.  Plodding a bit, head down, it’s easier to notice the details.  The ancient Permian granite boulders that we’re walking past, laid down by massive volcanic activity 280 million years ago, are now lichen-coated landing zones for Fritillary butterflies with a lifespan of barely two months.  I struggle to comprehend the difference in timescales.  Closer focus on the nooks between the rocks, or the greenery where the earthy path weaves through ancient woodland, or the drier grass and gorse headlands, reveals a multitude of wildflowers.  We can guess the month of the walk by whether it’s the yellow primroses, the bluebells or the pink thrift that catch the eye.

I wonder how many others have walked this way.  The Path has existed since the ice retreated and the sea levels rose 10,000 years ago, finally severing the land bridge to Europe.  Early man, migrating from Europe, would have hunted and fished on the new coastline.  It’s the same path from which the Ancient Britons of the Beaker and Iron Ages would have spotted the adventurous sails of the Phoenician traders in the Channel, bringing jewellery, copper-ware and precious stones to trade for the tin,  lead and pottery.  I realise I’m following the footsteps of the locals who, in late May 1588, would have walked up the path to the cliff tops to glimpse the approaching Armada and fearfully light the chain of warning beacons.  Turning for home, a few wise heads would have commented on the wispy clouds on the western horizon heralding the monster storm that would, just a few days later, sweep through the Western Approaches and smash the Spanish fleet to pieces, finishing off the rout that the small English Navy had begun.  It’s the same path that weaves past the Hoe in Plymouth, where Drake allegedly played bowls and where, five hundred years later, thousands stood to wish the Falklands Taskforce ‘Godspeed’ and, six months later, where the bands and cheering crowds welcomed them home.

It’s the same path that the fisherwomen would have climbed, looking for the disturbed patterns on the sea that heralded the arrival of the pilchard shoals, or the faint masts on the horizon of their fishing fleet returning safely to harbour; the same path the Cornish tin miners walked on their daily trudge homewards, grateful they’d survived another day underground; the same path that, on moonless nights, the excise men and smugglers played cat and mouse, and, on wild stormy nights, the wreckers waved their misleading fiery torches, hoping to add another vessel to the toll of those dashed on the rocks over the centuries; the same path along which, 2000 years ago, the Celtic inhabitants dragged their carved stone to erect their now-weathered crosses and where they gathered annually to celebrate the solstice, and it’s the same path along which, for the last 1000 years, the god-fearing folks of Christian Britain would have made their way to church each Sunday.

More recently, sadly, it’s the same path that the villagers of Slapton would have dashed along on the dark night of April 1944, alerted to a tragedy just off the famous Sands that claimed the lives of 749 servicemen when a D-Day training exercise went so badly wrong.  And it’s the same path along which the twelve-year-old Mary Anning would have rushed back to her home in Lyme Regis to excitedly announce that she’d found a huge fossilised skeleton, a 250 million-year old ichthyosaurs in the Jurassic clay beds of Dorset. 

Allow yourself to day-dream really deeply and you can almost sense the ghosts of the many thousands who’ve walked this way before us.

Snapping back to reality…someone’s singing up ahead.  Inevitably it’s Ade, lifting spirits with a selection from the vast I-Tunes library he carries in his head.  Maybe he’s spotted the car park and the cafe and is contemplating a celebratory Magnum to round off the walk.  Ten minutes later, no make that twenty minutes  (on The Path it always takes longer than you think to get where you’re heading,) we wander up to the Van.  Sue B fancies a sorbet but I doubt they’ll do them in the cafe; meanwhile she’s already working her head around the logistics for tomorrow’s route.  Sue S decides against an ice-cream or piece of cake to ‘leave room for her tea’.

Back at the campsite, Ade and I relax with a beer and a book whilst the girls dutifully phone home to check on their mums.  Is it the pub tonight or a veg curry in the vans?  Who knows?  One thing’s for sure though: whether it’s tomorrow, next month, or next year, The Path will still be there and we’ll be probably still be on it, knees, hips and backs permitting.