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18 June 2003
So Beckham’s made the move then. Well, it’s not gone through yet, but chances against it are slim.
He was so sneaky about the whole thing. Not only did he wait until after the Barça presidential election, he made the move while I was out. Out for over three and a half hours, walking all the time.
Burningbird seems to do a lot of walking. There’s something about her photo essays that I find fascinating, and not what might be immediately obvious. It’s that the areas are so diverse, that she drives somewhere to then walk, and that there are set trails you walk. OK, that’s three things, so not really an
‘it’
at all.
(Warning: this shouldn’t be necessary, but this entry is long and rambling [haha] and was written while I was very tired. Expect even less.)
- Diversity
Most of the walking I do is very close by (see next point), so I don’t see many animals that aren’t cows, sheep, or birds. On the other hand, I see a lot of cows, sheep, and birds. The landscape near here is tamed for the most part, mainly because the village I live in has been around for around about a thousand years.
That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing interesting, just that there aren’t many different types of animals. And no swamps, apart from one bit near the river that might be classed as one.
- Driving to walk
I don’t drive, mainly because I walk. I like walking and do it for fun. So I’ll walk for 45 minutes into town, pop into the library to drop off a book, then walk the 45 minutes back. It’s only time that I’m spending, and I waste too much of that online anyway. At least this way I get exercise.
Back to driving. I’ll admit I get driven places, but that’s usually when I’m going somewhere with someone who’s driving. But the idea of saying
‘right, I’m going to go for a walk’
then getting into the car just baffles me.
- Trails
I’m never sure if I’m actually allowed to walk where I do. I know that the first section down to the river’s a public right of way, but there’s nothing so grand as gravel paths and the like, just bits that people have walked on. And those are what I tend to follow, even when it involves thinking
‘well, the grass over there looks a bit bent, must be a path.’
I wasn’t even aware of National Trails in the UK until I heard about Hadrian’s Wall becoming one a little while back. It would be nice to walk it, but I’m not sure how long it would take me or when would be a good time to do it.
When I walk I usually take photos. I’ll have two cameras in my bag: the digital one and the film one. Both are by the same manufacturer yet polar opposites. The film camera is nigh-on indestructible, fast, and takes decent pictures. The digital camera makes it harder to take bad pictures but feels fragile and clunky.
The photos that I take aren’t good photos. They aren’t good technically or in their composition. I tend to take them as a reference more than anything, to remind me what I’ve done. Last night (yes, it’s gone midnight, I’m talking about Tuesday) I took over 60, which wasn’t bad considering that I set out sometime approaching nine, giving me only an hour or so of daylight.
Actually, another thing about Bb’s trips has struck me, and it’s tied into the point about trails: I’m generally looking for solitude, some peace and quiet. Today I saw a load of cyclists as I passed the church, which doesn’t really count because I was still in the village then, and after that, one fisherman by the river. That was it.
It was a good thing really, because at the start, when it was still warm and sunny, I walked barefoot for a while because my feet were too hot in shoes. This did mean they got very dirty, however.
Of course the upshot of that is that I don’t walk along in harmony with nature, birds singing to me and me singing back. I’m wary of animals in general, and every time I disturbed a bird in a tree, making it shriek, flutter about a bit, and fly off somewhere else — disturbing every other bird nearby in the process — I almost jumped out of my skin.
I had an encounter with some sheep, where we stood there, me Sean and them shorn, staring each other out. After a while the biggest sheep and therefore, as I’m male, the leader, looked nonchalantly away then back at me, as if seeing me for the first time. Its sidekick did the same, only on a slight tie delay, so I found it very funny when the leader turned and tried to stride off as if I was of no concern, but smacked straight into the other sheep. Then I started closing them down to take a photo, approaching in a bizarre fashion, like a mime almost, but they ran off. I
‘chased’
them across that field because I was headed that way anyway. And then things got really interesting.
I’d never been this way before, but it was still just about light so I thought I’d chance it. The image above shows what I could see in front of me — at head height, mind! — so I was cautious. I climbed into a field without a path, just a bit along the side where the crops couldn’t go. The plan was to follow the river to the hump-back bridge nearby, and then walk along the road for just under two miles to get home.
Following the river as far as I could, I eventually ran out of field. There was no way to the next one unless I was going to try to take one of those really vicious hedges head-on, with stinging nettles and thorns either side. I did the only thing I could do, and followed the field around.
(It’s probably worth pointing out now that I have an aversion to turning back when I’m walking somewhere. It all seems so amateurish, like I’ve conceded to the landscape. In the past this has seen me do the equivalent of going from Birmingham to Manchester via Leeds.)
Having followed this field round through more twists and turns than I would have thought possible, none showing me what was ahead, I found another field, a grassier one. At one end of this was what looked like a farmhouse with the lights off; farmers are early-morning people, so this didn’t surprise me. I could see other houses with lights on in the distance, and hear cars driving along roads that sounded an awful long way away, and those sounds were coming from the wrong direction for me; I was heading away from them.
This probably not being a public right of way, I skirted the field, ankles getting tangled in the grass, sheep bleating at each other across the fields. In the far corner to the one I’d started in, I found a little copse and a gate. The gate had a sign that said
‘sewage’
on it and it was by now about as dark as it was going to get, so I trod the well-worn path between the trees with care.
Once more I found myself somewhere unfamiliar. In a break with convention, I headed towards the farmhouse — yes, another one! — in front of me. I was about half-way there when I saw headlights to the left. A road, at last. I knew this wasn’t the road I’d intended to find, and I was worried that unless it was the one that runs parallel to where I wanted to get back to, I’d end up going even further from home.
Thanks to some astounding luck it was that very road, the one with the cricket ground and tennis club on it. I set off down it, ducking into a field every time a car came past. Cars sound so much louder and more threatening when you’re walking along what’s effectively a single-lane country road, at night, without lights, and without anywhere to walk except the road. After ten minutes or so and about five carsI found the main road, the road home.
It wasn’t over then. The walk home was more of the same, hiding from cars and walking along the road. As you can probably tell, I’m very jumpy, but there was something on that road that terrified me. At a guess it was a fox killing something, possibly a rabbit, but I really have no idea. I just know that one minute I was walking along, no sound but my own footsteps and distant car engines, not even a gentle breeze, and the next I hear this high-pitched growling, tearing sound. Then feet scampering, then the sound again, then feet scampering into a bush and leaves rustling, and silence.
It’s easy to want nature in a rawer form that tourist paths and maps, but it’s also intimidating. By my measure I walked for two hours or so in the dark, mostly in places I didn’t know. At the time — although of course emotions are always dulled by time — I was excited but tired and annoyed. I didn’t know where I was going or how long it would take me to get home.
Comments
The marker pictures;
Some of your pictures are not bad.
Keep doing them. I like.
M.
Posted by M on 4 December 2003 at 23:9:19.