The First Day's Walk

In England, you do not start long-distance walking to escape from civilisation, but to meet people. England has no wildernesses, but many field paths and country pubs, market towns and comfy bed and breakfasts. I began my life as a long-distance walker at a lonely time of my life in the 1970s, after divorce from my first wife. I chose the Offa’s Dyke Path because it was easy to reach from my then home near Birmingham, because it led in a reasonably straight line from one shore to another, and because it crossed land I had never been to before.

I had no experience of long-distance walking and no-one to ask for advice. I bought a strange backpack from Milletts, which included a plastic fabric bag with several containers held onto a frame of thick plastic rods by aluminium pins and split rings. Over the following years, the pins broke one-by-one, and were replaced by an assortment of bolts, depending on what was available at the time. I wore a good pair of walking boots, although these were heavy by modern standards. I decided to brew my own tea and coffee en route, and took a small gas stove, plastic water bottle, and containers for tea, coffee and powdered milk. It did not occur to me to take a spare pair of trousers.

I took the train to Chepstow one Saturday morning in Spring and arrived before lunch. The first part of the Path involves crossing the Wye and then doubling back to the River Severn through some suburbs. There seemed no point to this, so instead I crossed the Wye and headed North up the Path. The first part of the walk was a steep climb and I discovered, like many before me, that a pack is much heavier to carry when going uphill. After crossing a few fields, I found that I had lost my map. I decided to retrace my steps to find it. I began crossing a large field when, coming the other way, was the entire Manchester Rambling Club. At its head was a man carrying my lost map. They were due to stop at Tintern Abbey on the other side of the Wye, which had also been my planned destination. But by then I was lost to the joys of walking through sweet-smelling Spring woods, finding footpaths alongside the ancient military dyke, and making progress across an unfolding land. So I headed onwards to complete 16 miles to Monmouth.

For late lunch, I stopped by a bend in the River, sitting on a large log, ate my sandwiches and brewed my coffee. I then continued along the Dyke and by dusk came to the Kymin Hill overlooking the town of Monmouth. Finding a path downhill is a lot harder than finding it uphill, and I got lost, tripped and rolled with my pack over and over through a mass of ferns. I remember laughing at the ludicrous sight I must have been, and then walked down across the Wye once more, and into Monmouth town.

I found a place to stay in the Queen’s Hotel in the centre of town. After a bath and a big steak meal, I went to bed early. It was then I discovered that old timber-frame buildings carry sound efficiently. Below my room, there was a party in the bar. After closing hours, all fell quiet for five minutes, when a couple entered the bedroom next door to mine. There followed an hour of the most noisy copulation, like a kind of audio pornography. After this ended, I became aware of the town steeple next to the hotel, which rang out the hours every hour.

I was still young enough then to be able to recover well from a disrupted night’s sleep. I woke before the rest of the Hotel, had an excellent breakfast, gathered my possessions into my backpack and headed off down Monmouth High Street. I found that my legs hurt from yesterday’s efforts, but this eased by the time I left the town. I then headed through an enchanted land of fields and ruined castles, and came at lunchtime to a pub by the side of the Path. This was full of fellow walkers chatting to each other, while other walkers passed the pub and greeted us. I realised I had joined the company of long-distance walkers, and began a life as a walker that took me all over Britain, to France, Italy and Switzerland, and only ended 20 years later when I lay on the side of the Mendip Hills crying with arthritic pain.