So we were trudging along in the rain feeling sorry for ourselves when we saw the walkers’ equivalent of an oasis in the desert. A white van serving coffee! It had ‘RAMBLER’S REST’ written on the side of it. I started running towards it, worried it might vanish in the rain like a soggy mirage.
‘Morning!’ said a cheery man in the van.
I was so pleased to see him I started jabbering about coffee and hot chocolate and flapjacks and brownies. I would happily stay here under his awning all day. In a rather pathetic attempt to make our stop seem like a useful part of the programme, I asked him what sort of business he did.
‘Oh, I get a steady trade from walkers and cyclists,’ he said. ‘Today I haven’t seen any walkers apart from yourselves but, when the weather’s better, we do well.’
In a way, you get a strange sense of pride from walking in really terrible weather. In another way, you just get wet.
Everything around us had a fuzzy quality and, although we could see about five miles into the distance, I couldn’t make out any features. Gary told me that we could see south to the Tyne Valley and, if I turned round (I didn’t much fancy this because of the rain), I could see the Hexhamshire Moors and the North Pennines.
‘Lovely,’ I said, pulling my cap further down over my face.
After what seemed like hours we arrived at Heavenfield. This was where Oswald won the battle that made him king. I am not very good at imagining battles, apart from in Wiltshire, where I have clear visions of cavalries coming over opposing hills. This looked like a field to me. A very nice field with a tiny church right in the middle of it. Now that’s not something you see every day, especially a church with a bright-red door.
It’s the Church of St Oswald. We sat on one of the seven pews and contemplated the end. Not the end of life, the end of the walk. Lucy and I had done it all and, even though we were soggy, exhausted and cold, we felt a surge of achievement and delight. Martin and Gary can be justly proud of what they and the Revd Michael Mountney have created. St Oswald’s Way is a varied and exhilarating delight, even in the rain.
Although Lucy and I struggled in parts, we have caught the long-distance-walking bug.
Since then we have done the South Downs Way, which stretches a hundred miles from Eastbourne to Winchester, starting on the coast and then along the high chalk downlands of the South Downs. It was glorious, apart from the section we did with a group of Gurkhas, who do sixty miles of the path as an endurance challenge with heavy packs on their backs. The ‘Trailwalker’ takes most teams about twenty-seven hours to complete. The record time was set by a team of Gurkhas and stands at nine hours and fifty minutes. I know. It’s ridiculous. But even more ridiculous was the sight of me trying to keep up as a charming and fit Gurkha jogged along to show me the pace they set.
England alone has nearly 120,000 miles of rights of way, and we owe a debt of gratitude for their preservation to the Ramblers Association and the Open Spaces Society, who campaigned for years to secure the CROW (Countryside and Rights of Way) Act of 2000. There is so much to explore. Every right of way is there for a reason, a footpath that has existed for centuries as a drovers’ path or a way to church or school, a pilgrimage or a trade route. When we walk those paths we tread in the footsteps of our ancestors. We become living history.
There are long-distance paths abroad that I would love to travel, like the Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain or the Inca Trail in Peru, the GR20 in Corsica, the Lycian Way in Turkey, the Cinque Terre in Italy or the Haute Route from France to Switzerland.
More than any of those, however, I want to do the Dales Way, from Harrogate (which seems a fine place to start) to Bowness in the Lake District. Colin Speakman has written a superb guide to the Dales Way, including a planner showing B&Bs, pubs, shops and cafés. He knows what is needed. He also explains rather beautifully the difference between the daily walk and the epic nature of the long-distance walk:
Short circular strolls back to the security of the car, whilst welcome, never really shake off that psychological umbilical cord, that invisible chain which draws you back to that little bit of urban living. True freedom is to stride out, for days on end, with a real sense of purpose, which Germans call Zielwanderung, or destination walking. There is perhaps no finer way of understanding the scale and complexity of a landscape and personal satisfaction in achieving that goal than to walk to somewhere special, the twenty-first-century equivalent of a pilgrimage.
I will do the Dales Way with Lucy, Alice and Archie and our friend Sally, who lives near the start. We may do it for Ramblings, we may do it purely for pleasure or, most likely, we will combine both. Sally says she will have us to stay as long as Archie behaves himself and doesn’t try to get on the sofa or the bed.
We’ll see how that goes.
11
‘Your biological clock will be ticking,’ predicted Matthew. ‘Trust me, you’ll be desperate for a baby and you’ll be pregnant before your thirty-fifth birthday.’
Matthew Norman is a journalist. I like him. His writing had always amused me and during our years working on the London Evening Standard we had found each other a safe port in the storm of the Christmas party. His certainty on this issue baffled me. I had never wanted babies. Never.
‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I just want a puppy.’
He laughed. The laugh of a man who is sure he knows.
‘A puppy? Don’t be ridiculous. I bet you’ll be pregnant within the next five years.’
I fell back on an old tactic I had learned when boys at parties didn’t think I understood football.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘We’ll have a bet. I’ll give you 6:4 on me being pregnant within the next five years.’
He thought it a generous offer – he considered it an odds-on shot. To be honest, I knew it wasn’t. I could have offered him 100:1, but I thought I’d better make it sound vaguely likely. There was also the worry in the back of my mind that the ticking of this mythical biological clock might get me in the end.
Matthew didn’t hesitate.
‘I’ll have a thousand pounds at 6:4. Done.’ He shook my hand. I was shocked at the amount he was prepared to stake but didn’t want to show it. I may have grown up in the racing world, surrounded by gamblers, but I don’t bet much myself and certainly not in large amounts.
Eight years later we met up for dinner. His wife was far from impressed at his attempted reading of the female mind and I felt vaguely guilty that Matthew hadn’t known at that stage that I was never going to get pregnant by accident – as I wasn’t sharing my life, or my bed, with a man.
I took some of the stake – a bet’s a bet – but not the whole amount.
As for getting a puppy before my thirty-fifth birthday, well, this was a serious business. Not something to be rushed into. My mother, who had been putting me off for years, couldn’t really understand the desire to have a dog in London.
‘Well, you’ll have to get a London dog, I suppose,’ she said, with her usual slightly contemptuous pronunciation of ‘London’.
I had no idea until my mother told me, but apparently a convertible is ‘a London car’ and any pair of suede boots are ‘fine, I suppose, for London, but totally impractical for the country’. Ditto white jeans, which I was never allowed as a child.
I’m not sure my mother has ever entirely forgiven me for living and working in London. It’s a phase that she hopes will pass. One day, she has no doubt, I will see sense and come back home. Then I can have a real dog.
Alice and I had been together for two years. I was fairly certain this was the person with whom I wanted to grow old, but there was one killer question yet to be asked. I was nervous. This was a big step. So I waited for a rare shared day off and popped the big question.
This was the real deal, a statement of commitment that I had never before asked of anyone.
‘Would you like …’ Long pause, while I built up confidence and looked earnest. ‘… to get a dog?’ I blurted out.<
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Where I am a slightly idealistic, romantic dreamer, Alice is a practical soul. She knew that during the long weeks of summer sport or during an Olympics or Commonwealth Games, she would be left in charge of ‘the dog’.
There was also the problem of allergies. Alice is asthmatic and allergic to horse hair, cat hair and dog hair.
There was silence. I wondered what I would do if she said no. I blew air out of the side of my mouth, waiting for the answer. Finally, it came.
‘I think that’s a lovely idea.’
Three months later, we were on our way to Gloucestershire to see a litter of Tibetan terrier puppies. The breed was hypoallergenic, non-shedding, medium-sized, good travellers, protective of their owners, intelligent and biddable, and Alice had decided that this was the dog we should have. I didn’t mind which breed we chose – I hadn’t really got that far in my head – I was just beside myself with excitement that we were actually getting a puppy.
We had contacted reputable Kennel Club-registered breeders and were told that a litter had just been born in which there may be one puppy available. Knowing how my mother was with potential owners of her boxer puppies, I realized that this visit was as much about us proving ourselves responsible owners as it was about us choosing a puppy. Good breeders will always vet their buyers as thoroughly as they would their dogs.
We met the mother first, who was a sweet, kind bitch with short-cropped hair. Tibetan terriers can grow hair down to the ground – show dogs all have long, flowing hair – but for functional, pet-owning reasons, a regular haircut is necessary. After plenty of questions about our working hours, our house, the size of our garden, the proximity to a park and our relationship, we were finally allowed to see the litter of puppies.
Oh. My. Word. No bigger than the palm of my hand, these little balls of fluff were play-fighting in their large pen. I climbed in and sat in the corner. Within seconds, they were all over me, chewing my hair, batting me with their paws and sliding down the sides of my legs like children at a theme park.
‘The bitches are all taken,’ explained Ken, the breeder, ‘and two of the boys have gone, so there’s just one left. It’s the white one over there.’
Ken pointed to the smallest of the litter. He was a little nervous and quieter than his brothers and sisters. As if he knew he was being talked about, he chose that moment to climb along my legs, up my chest and towards my face. I put my arm under him to support him and he started to suck on my chin.
‘Well, he knows how to make a girl feel special,’ I said.
‘He’s just gone for the bit that sticks out the most.’ Alice laughed. She winked at me. We were sold.
Percy, for that would be his name, was ours.
Alice went back to collect Percy when he was eight weeks old. I couldn’t wait to get home to see him and, as I came through the front door, I could hear noises from the kitchen. I got down on all fours and called him. He came running along the hallway and skidded to a halt in front of me, jumping up to lick my face. I picked him up; he was all soft and cuddly.
‘Group hug,’ I said to Alice. ‘Now we’re a family.’
Percy was never the bravest little soldier. He got himself up the stairs and then couldn’t work out how to get down again, so he stood peering from the top step as I waited halfway.
‘Come on, you can do it,’ I said encouragingly. ‘Just one step at a time.’ He slid down the first one, stopped and then took the next at greater speed. He lost his balance and tumbled into my arms. I set him back on his feet and made him take the remaining six stairs slowly. He picked it up and soon was haring up and down the stairs, just because he could.
His white hair wasn’t the easiest to deal with and, not surprisingly, my mother was horrified. A white dog? Good Lord, how London can you get? He developed little brown marks under his eyes, and no matter which magic tear-stain-removal lotion Alice tried, they wouldn’t go away. On the plus side, his white hair was as soft as silk and he was the cuddliest little chap.
Even Alice’s mother, who is not a dog person, fell for him,
‘Oh darling, he’s divine,’ she said on first meeting. ‘But he looks like a teddy bear, honestly he does. Are you sure he’s a dog?’
A few weeks later, she proved her point by giving us a teddy bear that looked just like him, and we played spot the difference. Other than the scarf on the teddy bear, there wasn’t much to tell them apart.
We bought every bit of dog kit on the market – from puppy pads (newspaper wasn’t good enough) to organic dog food, dental-brush chews to designer collar and dog bed. Percy wanted for nothing. Yes, he was spoilt. Yes, we let him on the sofa. Yes, we probably weren’t strict enough, but we adored him. Absolutely adored him.
You make a deal when you get an animal, and I knew that better than anyone. We’d had dogs, horses and ponies all my childhood and I knew that the love came at a price. You had to learn the hard way that there is an equation of love to pain and, the more you love, the more it will hurt when you lose what you love.
We had one Christmas with Percy. He was an angel. He was even more excited by Christmas stockings than me, and that takes some doing. He had presents of his own from everyone – including my mother, much against her better judgement. My father, who thought him the most ridiculous dog, was impressed when he saw him bounding through the fields at home, his legs black with mud and his coat heavy with rain.
‘He’s a tough little thing, isn’t he? Shame he’s white but, hey ho, I suppose you girls will keep him clean,’ he said.
Poor Percy spent most of his life in the bath, one way or another.
When Alice had late shifts I had him for company, and when I was away covering sport, she had him. He gave purpose to our days. Every morning we’d be out in the sun or the rain walking to the park. We trained him to sit and stay, to come when called and to give us his paw in a handshake on cue.
We discovered local parks we had no idea existed and stumbled upon a whole new social world of dog owners. It may be considered weird to start a conversation with a complete stranger in the park, but it’s not at all strange if your dogs bound up to each other and sniff each other’s bums. Maybe life would be easier if we were more brazen, but it certainly helps that our dogs can do the introductions for us, getting the awkward bit out of the way.
Suddenly you have a network of friends, all of whose dogs you can name and age before you’ve quite worked out whether their owner said her name was Jocelyn or Jemima. Our London friends are all fellow dog walkers and, because we see each other nearly every day, we know more than we probably should about each other’s lives.
Derek and Chris own a fencing company and a timber merchant’s but, more importantly, they have a whippet called Sid who shakes when he hears loud noises. Bonfire Night, Diwali and New Year’s Eve are all a nightmare for poor Sid, who lies trembling in a corner. We always know when Derek is tipsy because he starts hugging everyone and telling us all how much he loves us.
‘We’re family, aren’t we?’ he says, again and again.
The most glamorous member of our group is Dariel. Until fairly recently, her age was a mystery, and I will not reveal it here. She has a Tibetan terrier called Sunny who is very calm and sensible – until the postman puts his hand through the door, at which point he goes nuts.
Dariel glides through the park in designer clothes, rarely looking ruffled. However, she has a worrying ability to break bones. On holiday in Corfu with the gang (dogs left at home, apart from Sid, who likes the sun and the swimming pool), she broke her ankle coming out of the local shop. It was ten o’clock in the morning so, as she told her husband, Harry, on the phone, she was not drunk. Maggie, who runs a sheltered housing unit, was also there, and her nursing skills came to the fore and she took Dariel to the local hospital, with her passport as proof of identity. This meant that Maggie found out her date of birth, but despite generous amounts of alcohol, offers of bribes and brute force, she would not be broken. Dariel hobbled around
on crutches for the rest of the holiday, still managing to look admirably glamorous.
We get together for evening meals at dog-friendly pubs and we laugh a lot. We have a New Year’s Eve tradition of swapping our worst Christmas presents in a weird distortion of Secret Santa. Alice has a pair of revolting frog slippers that Maggie had been given, Derek is the proud owner of a laughing gnome and Jocelyn now has a pair of XXL boxer shorts that light up to read ‘Happy Christmas’. We got together despite our different jobs, different backgrounds, different family situations and different ages. We became friends through our dogs.
For each one of us, our dog is an essential member of the family and a part of our relationship. We also know that we will outlive our dogs and will have to comfort each other when we lose them. What we hope is that we’ll get a good length of time with them before the inevitable happens. With Percy, Alice and I did not have that luxury.
It was Easter Monday and, perhaps for the first time ever, we both had a bank-holiday Monday off. We took Percy to Gunnersbury Park, threw a tennis ball, practised his recall, and laughed at him venturing near strange dogs then bolting back to us.
Safely home, I remembered I’d left something in the car, so I popped out to get it and, as I came in, Percy slipped past me on to the garden path. The gate on to the pavement, normally closed, was ajar.
‘Percy, come!’ I called. ‘Percy – good boy – come!’
He turned and looked at me and, for the only time in his life, wilfully ignored a command. We lived in a quiet, residential street. It wasn’t a cut-through road. Cars didn’t come down there fast. Not usually.
Walking Home Page 20
