Diagonal Walking

by Nick Corble

  After the station, a small gap appeared at the end of the road: the coast. There were echoes of Formby when I got there and crossed the road to look out over the sea. Grand houses, a sense of tidiness and a long, wide beach. It differed from Formby in having no asparagus and, instead of pristine sand, the view here was one of pebbles, miles and miles of unremitting pebbles. These stretched to the stumpy twin towers of the Dungeness nuclear power station to the right (the south), and the white cliffs that marked Dover, the only one of the Cinque Ports that can realistically still call itself a port, to the left.

  This wasn’t actually New Romney, but Littlestone-on-Sea, a companion, naturally enough, to Greatstone-on-Sea. One theory for the names is that the entrance to the old New Romney harbour, reached via the River Rother, was always tricky to navigate. To make things easier two rocks, one larger than the other, were placed at either side of it. An alternative theory suggests that the effects of longshore drift mean that larger stones are deposited at one end of the beach, with smaller rocks found at the Littlestone end. From where I was standing it just looked like a long line of pebbles, too numerous to count.

  I met up with Annette and we started to make our way north. A flock of white seagulls sat resting on one particular spot of the beach and took flight as we approached them. A few brave souls, young children and teenagers, were in the sea. Although the sun was shining, the sky was blue and the temperature was in the low twenties, from the expressions of the bathers the sea retained an ability to shock the system. Pockets of sea kale added a splash of green to the various hues of white and brown provided by the pebbles.

  My target was marked on the map as a ‘Tower’, which sat conveniently exactly where my biro-drawn diagonal line hit the sea. A Victorian water tower, built in 1890 of red brick, with mock windows and a crenelated top, it was an appropriate landmark: quirky, privately owned (or so it appeared), revelling in its history and, to our eyes at least, decidedly in need of some TLC from the third floor up, despite looking very impressive from a distance. At least it wasn’t leaning like the tower at Newchurch. Not yet, anyway. People were still living in it, and good luck to them, I wouldn’t fancy living in something that might crumble around you at any moment. I wondered how they got it insured? Maybe they didn’t. Also distinctly English was the small shed at its south-east corner, which needed a fresh lick of paint.

  Climbing over the sea wall, I crunched onto the beach. After 932,000 steps, around 410 miles, 39 days walking, a herd of aggressive cows, a flock of clever sheep, numerous encounters and a lot of lost sweat, it was time to bring the walk to a close. Annette took some photos and I recorded some thoughts for a podcast, but the end needed to be marked somehow.

  I remembered the start of the walk, when I’d decided against carrying a plastic bag of sand from one coast to the other, resolving to create my own traditions. Back then, I’d decided against carrying a pebble from Formby all the way to here, but in reality I had been carrying one for a good half of the journey, the painted one with ‘Wokingham Rocks’ on it. I didn’t just want to leave it where it would get lost amongst the ocean of pebbles on the beach. Instead I wanted the sea to take it, to move it, send it on a journey, allowing it to land where it saw fit. Maybe, in time someone else would find it. I hoped so, and that they’d pick it up and take it on their own journey.

  But Diagonal Walking had always been about more than just the hike from one coast to another through the centre of England. It was also a journey of discovery, to test the state of the nation, or at least to arrive at some kind of understanding of it, and my conclusions on this will end this book. For now, all that remained was to take a short run-up and toss my painted rock into the sea, which I did as Annette looked on, filming the final moments with my phone.

  A signpost where the Littlestone Road from New Romney meets the coast points towards various landmarks: the town centre, the miniature railway, Dungeness Lighthouse, the toilets. It also has one arm pointing out towards Romney’s twin town of Ardres in France, its arrow pointing out over the sea to the horizon.

  Ardres, like the rest of Europe, wasn’t going to go away; and similarly, I sensed that the puzzle that was Brexit would retain its power to confuse for some time yet. The problems and challenges it represented weren’t going to go away either, but neither were the opportunities. The only option remaining to me and my journey was to plunge in – not into the sea, but back into England.

  So I turned my back on the waves and began walking once more, immersing myself again into the country, my country, and the future, whatever that might look like.

  Afterword

  It was always my intention that Diagonal Walking should be more than just another book about an old bloke on a long walk. Sometimes I referred to it as a ‘project’. Another word that buzzed through my head was ‘brand’, the idea of creating something people could buy into, feel part of. Central to this was the concept of ‘Walk With Me’, through which I tried to get people to join in the journey – to follow and feel part of it, either in person or, more likely, through the various virtual channels I set up.

  The model I had in mind when I started was crowdfunding, except instead of asking people to invest cash, I wanted them to invest their interest. Recognising people have different preferences as to how they engage online, this meant covering all the main bases. As such, as well as the usual social media suspects of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, I also taught myself how to make and upload podcasts and videos. All these were designed to complement, and be channelled through, a website (www.diagonalwalking.co.uk), which also featured regular blogs.

  Another of the ways the trek was more than just a walk was a commitment to share some insights into the whole process of preparing, writing and publishing a book. I wanted to lift the lid on the dark arts involved in getting your words into print, by giving a frank and honest account of my experience. I hoped this would be interesting and helpful to others.

  The whole enterprise wasn’t entirely selfless. The trek was going to take place during my sixtieth year on this planet, and I wanted to mark that in some way. Whilst some might see this milestone as an opportunity to consolidate, I saw it as an opportunity for fresh challenges, to learn new skills and stretch myself. How would I cope with the walk, both physically and mentally? Was it even possible to follow a fairly random line just by using public footpaths and rights of way, especially when I’d set a self-imposed corridor of two to three miles on either side of that line?

  To summarise: Diagonal Walking was always intended to be multi-faceted. It didn’t have one purpose, it had many: tangible and intangible, practical and psychological. Perhaps the biggest challenge of all, though, was to try to gain some insight into the ‘state of the nation’ as it got to grips with what it had done by voting to leave the European Union two years previously. That decision was still red-raw when I set out, and it remained a running sore throughout.

  It was a sore reluctant to heal through the slightly surreal summer of 2018, one marked by extremes both of weather and politics unseen for at least forty years. For all of my adult lifetime in other words. When it came to the political situation, there were times during that summer when matters looked like they might be coming to a head, only for that sense to evaporate instantly, like water dropped onto hot concrete.

  All matters Brexit-related remained up in the air throughout my time on the road. At no point did I feel a sense of closure, of shaking hands and agreeing to disagree. Rather, there was continued confusion, frustration, sometimes even anger. By and large, however, these simmered below the surface, reserved for the big stage, while ordinary people got on with the business of living their lives. When it came to the practicalities of implementing the referendum decision the gap preventing closure appeared, if anything, to widen, as if we were all watching a cliff-hanger TV thriller with an unknown number of episodes. The forces driving the decision itself, though, remained much the same –
hard to put a finger on, but definitely out there somewhere. The thoughts I’m about to share therefore, should be read in the context of that summer, of ‘just before’ what happened next, knowledge of which, dear reader, you have the privilege of knowing and I can only speculate on.

  Before sharing my conclusions, there’s one more thing to clear up. Minutes after finishing the walk, Annette interviewed me for a podcast. As we sat on the sea wall overlooking the English Channel staring towards a distant and perhaps suitably hidden France, one of the questions she asked me was whether there might be a Diagonal Walking II. Whilst acknowledging the possibility (the north-east to south-west route is kind of asking to be done), I reflected that in many ways Diagonal Walking was itself a follow-up to Walking on Water. Written on the eve of the Millennium, that book had shared the grand aim of trying to understand what made England tick. The final angle therefore, was to identify how England had changed in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

  *

  Add all those together and you have quite an ambitious list, one probably best tackled in the same order I’ve set it out, so I’ll start with an assessment of the success of the ‘Walk With Me’ idea.

  My response here is a bit like the one given by the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai (not, as is often thought, Mao Zedong) when asked if it was possible to judge the impact of the French Revolution, namely that it’s too early to tell. The multiple platforms I created to communicate Diagonal Walking remain very much live. The completion of the walk itself was just the end of a phase of ‘the project’. This book represents the next phase, and promoting it the one after that, all of which will involve further use of those channels. Early followers (and you may have been one of them) were simply founding members of the club, the early investors if you like.

  I do, however, have some initial observations on my engagement in the world of social media. By far and away my most engaging account during the walk was Instagram, where I was able to gain more than 1,000 followers over the summer. Twitter was reasonably successful, whilst Facebook gained followers later on in the party, just as the slower music came on. Numbers are only one measure though, and one of the unexpected bonuses of using social media turned out to be virtual interaction whilst out on the walk, such as asking followers questions or setting occasional quizzes. There was also the occasional unsolicited praise, comment on a photo or note of encouragement, all of them gratefully received as temporary relief from the loneliness of the long-distance walker.

  The podcasts and videos were fairly consistent throughout, attracting a small but dedicated band of followers, whilst the blogs and other traffic through the website underwent a steady but upward curve. It’s possible that the balance of power among these different media will change as the project goes into its subsequent phases – hence the ‘too early to tell’ comment.

  Another component of ‘Walk With Me’ was inviting others to accompany me in person. Around a dozen people did so, many of them friends and family, although not exclusively so. People’s willingness, even eagerness, to get involved, was a genuine surprise and unexpected bonus. Countless others, previously strangers, also shared in the pleasures of a chat, the physical process of a shared walk loosening both tongues and social inhibitions, even if for only a few hundred yards or a couple of minutes, resulting in literally hundreds of ‘encounters’ along the way. I also managed to generate some press coverage of the walk, both in traditional print media and digitally, including online articles and even an interview on an internet radio station.

  A final aim of ‘Walk With Me’ was to engage with third parties capable of acting as a portal to audiences who might be interested in what I was doing. Early on, I took the decision not to get sponsorship or commercial tie-ins as I wanted to keep the experience ‘pure’. Whilst this did limit my scope for third-party engagement, I was able to forge informal alliances with other walking groups and media, as well as a link with a national initiative to get more people to stay in pubs (www.stayinapub.co.uk). The latter included the running of an online competition to win a copy of Walking on Water, and provided a welcome early bump to my Twitter following.

  All things told, with hindsight I believe this level of engagement was reasonable, a seven out of ten, falling just shy of the possibly unrealistic expectations held at the outset. There are reasons for this. Foremost of these was the sheer time I found it took to engage people on social media. As the walk progressed, I was often reminded of the comment from the boxer I met early on in Hale, who said that he and his pugilist friends spent as much time developing their brand on social media as they did training. Even at that early stage, I could empathise, as I found myself spending an hour or two every evening after a long day’s walking, fiddling with my iPad trying to stir the social media nest into action.

  As time went on I found myself questioning whether this was something I was willing to do. I enjoyed certain aspects of the different channels, such as the videos, podcasts and sharing photos on Instagram, and I also enjoyed writing the occasional frank blog. But it all took time – time I was struggling to find. I was on my own with this; it was my project; there was no back office doing the planning, booking and updating; it was all me. And, of course, I was also the one doing the actual walking, note-taking and writing. The process became all-encompassing. I had to prioritise.

  On top of this, there were two other external constraints beyond my control. The first was the weather. When I started planning the project we were still in the grip of one of the worst winters for years. What I couldn’t have known was that we were about to have one of the hottest, some claim the hottest, summer on record. This meant tempering my walking to the conditions, planning shorter days, longer rest breaks and more days out, all of which had an impact on the time available for other things. Yes, you can sit and tweet at the same time, but when your body is screaming out for a break, sometimes you just want to rest your brain as well as your legs.

  The second constraint was making sure I was in a position to release this book into the world whilst it was still relevant. Given the ‘eve of Brexit’ angle, I did not want to produce a book that was out of date the moment it arrived. I consoled myself with the fact that the planned Brexit Day of 29 March was mostly symbolic, with a transition period to follow. Then talk of a ‘No Deal’, crashing out of the Union, escalated during my walk, spooking me a little. Whatever happened, I was convinced I needed a book in my hand by early summer 2019.

  A trade-off was required, between taking longer over the walk and slowly building more followers, something that was probably possible, but would be fairly laborious; or focussing on getting the walk finished (in the sunshine!) and the book written, ideally by late autumn 2018. I chose the latter. This decision was aided by the growing impression as the walk progressed that a lot of my potential audience weren’t necessarily big social media users anyway. Many of the people I met during my ‘encounters’ were clearly interested in what I was doing, and were probably also book readers; but when offered a card detailing my website and social media addresses they looked at me as if I’d just handed them something laced with Novichok. To them, the World Wide Web was strictly for Amazon and email; Facebook, YouTube and, heaven forfend, Twitter, were for younger folk.

  Then there was the issue of actually getting the book published. My initial instinct was to self-publish the book on the basis that this would give me more control, and allow me to manage its timing. As time went on, I wondered whether there might be potential to go through a publisher after all. The burden of being responsible for every aspect of the project had become a heavy one, and the prospect of offloading the actual publishing to the experts became an increasingly enticing one. Unfortunately, the traditional publishing world moves with the speed of a knackered sloth. A manuscript couldn’t be considered until it was finished, and then they wanted months to consider it. As time went on, it became clear that the traditional publishing route just
wasn’t going to work. That my initial instinct had been right. Time spent finding this out wasn’t wasted, but it was time that could have been spent on other things.

  All of which brings me on to comfort zones, and whether the project allowed me to stretch mine. If conclusions around the success of ‘Walk With Me’ are fuzzy, those around this aspect of the project are clearer. Diagonal Walking allowed me to learn new skills, particularly digital ones, and gave me a deeper insight into how social media work. Take podcasts as an example. I’d initially seen these as a series of recordings of my thoughts and updates on the walk, a sort of audio-blog. It took my son Ed to point out that podcasts really needed at least two voices, to give the listener a sense that they are eavesdropping on a conversation, not a monologue. This was valuable advice, and resulted in me recording discussions (with the participants’ permission) on the road, podcasts I labelled ‘Diagonal Walkers’. These remain available on iTunes and offer an extra dimension to the words in this book.20

  Given these observations on social media, was learning more about how it works a good thing? I believe it was. Interaction across the internet, in whatever form it takes, or will take in the future, is here to stay. Having an appreciation of how to participate in that conversation is one way to avoid isolating yourself from how opinions and attitudes are formed. If you don’t know what (and how) others are thinking, and choose not to become involved in helping to form it, then the over-riding temptation is to fall back into established positions, which then become entrenched.

  Care is, of course, required. Over-reliance on social media can encourage polarisation, a world where only the loudest or most extreme are heard. Equally, the difference between ‘the buzz’, or zeitgeist, and simple ‘noise’ is a fine one. There is a growing body of evidence that social media can also entrench views. People with certain views follow people with the same views, which then become self-reinforcing – the ‘echo chamber’ theory. But isn’t this what newspapers did when they were the main vehicle for transmitting news (and to a lesser extent, still do)? Ignoring social media in the twenty-first century is akin to refusing to learn how to read in the twentieth century. It’s important to know how to engage. Handle with care, but don’t ignore altogether.