It is windy this morning and the forecast is for rain and high winds later in the day. Consequently, I go out for a walk straight after breakfast, heading for the woods beside the common where I know I will be sheltered from the worst of it, should the winds get up soon. Above, the clouds are thick and dark and what light does make it through the mirk is thin and silvery, glittering coldly on leaves and puddles, the latter wrinkled with tiny wavelets scurrying in bursts across their surfaces.
A couple of rooks are calling irritably overhead, buffeted by the breeze, as I reach the edge of the wood. A few paces in, I pass along the edge of a shallow, long-disused sandstone quarry, its banks perforated with badger holes, and with other entrances deeper into the woods. The whole of the sett appears to occupy upwards of a fifth of an acre, although there may well be entrances I have not yet found.
Moving on, I find I am walking to the rhythm of a tune in my head, something that happens to me frequently. This time, it is a track from an album by Stick in the Wheel, a kind of punk-folk group, the track being the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance. Stick in the Wheel are a group I have only recently discovered, and the only album I have of theirs (so far!) gets played rather a lot. This particular tune has a very pronounced beat and I wonder, as I often do, whether the tune has come into my head as the beat matches my pace, or whether I have unconsciously altered my pace to fit the tune.
I also decide it doesn’t matter which it is.
It is still early enough in the day for there to be very few other people about. In about an hour’s time the air will be filled with barking and shouting as the regular dog walkers invade, but for now I have the place almost to myself.
I have just begun to re-read Robert MacFarlane’s The Old Ways, and in this he tells us that at the time of writing (2012) he reckoned he had walked perhaps 7,000 or 8,000 miles along footpaths in his lifetime. Does this mean each mile is a unique mile, in that he means he has walked this distance all along different routes, or does it include the day to day walks along local routes, routes such as the one I repeat day after day? He doesn’t make that clear, and I would guess it includes all repetitions. He then goes on to quote De Quincy saying that Wordsworth walked a total of 175,000 – 180,000 miles in his lifetime (although how did he know?), which would clearly include his repeated local walks, if true. I wonder how many I have done and make a vague stab at guessing a figure. At various times I have worked out I tend to walk an average of 20 miles a week, allowing for good and bad periods of walking, of which probably one half would be on footpaths. There were times when I did much less, and times when I did much more, but it seems a reasonable estimate. That would give me a figure of between 25,000 and 27,000 miles in my adult life so far, which is probably wildly out but is quite similar to Robert Macfarlane’s.
I’ve no idea what to conclude from that.
But I know I would probably walk quite a bit further if I didn’t tend to stop so frequently just to stand and stare at my surroundings. I do it often enough to sometimes irritate those I walk with, although they’re usually kind enough to say nothing about it. But there are also those who just get their heads down and walk, walk, walk, seemingly on some mission to cover as many miles as possible in the shortest possible time, barely able to glance around them as they go. What is that about, unless it’s some sort of charity event and they’re raising money by the mile? Where is the pleasure?
The Welsh poet W H Davies wrote ‘What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?’
What indeed?
I’ve been doing it quite a lot again this morning. It seems so important. Surely everyone must do it to a degree?
Mick Canning 