One Woman Walks Wales

then and now - six years difference

2/16/2018

On this date six years ago I was in hospital. It's about now that they got me out of bed for the first time, blue-skirted nurses cheerfully linking hands under my arms and shuffling me the two steps to a plastic-upholstered chair where I could sit in pain. It was the day after major abdominal surgery and nobody had told me what the morphine button was for.
I gritted my teeth as the thin sharp burn of my insides pressing against the freshly sewn opening made my eyes water. I couldn't pay attention to the physiotherapist sitting with me, trying gently to tell me about the benefits of small situps.
I didn't know then what I was going to do, what shape my future would take; confused and frightened, I only coped with what was immediately happening - the threat of cancer, a newly sutured line across my belly, a great deal of pain and the urgent need to find a place to live once I left hospital.
Here I am six years later, still attending hospital, with a tiny risk of the return of my ovarian cancer but not scared of it any more.

From uncertainty to calmness.
From fear to satisfaction.

I've let cancer go, basically. It no longer causes me fear. It no longer lives with me. I have teased its sucking tendrils from my being. It has no place in my life.
It helped when the one year anniversary passed and I was able to look back and see how much better I felt.
It helped when the two year anniversary passed and my projected chance of reoccurrence dropped by 75%.
It helped when I found new strength and vigour in my own body through the walking of, first hundreds, and then thousands of miles.
It helped when I came out of the prism of fear, spent time outside and looked around me, released the tightly held breath of emergency paralysis and realised that maybe my illness wasn't that bad after all. I had survived, relatively unscathed and could begin to see my situation as a positive.

In the last six years I have had ovarian cancer, then I walked 3700 miles, then I wrote a book. If I try to think now of why I did all this, nothing comes to mind. I have spent so long retelling my story, first in spontaneous blog and then in considered book that it is as if I have poured it all out of my mind and left a hollow behind, holding only the faint warmth of a newly fledged nest. My story is set down, made tangible, and when I try to trace the memory back to its tingling origins there is nothing there.
I just did it, that's all I can say. I just had the idea that I would walk thousands of miles, inspired by my travelling experiences, inspired by my knowledge of the camino, inspired by my knowledge that it is often our fearful mind that shapes the boundaries of possibility, not the conditions themselves.
And when I'd finished the walk, exhausted and sore and travel hardened, I had to start it all over again. A vague dream of being a writer, based on the romantic ideal of a thousand books eagerly scoured, long hours spent living inside others creations. I travelled the path of learning to write, taking on a seemingly impossible target and pushing stubbornly ahead, treading words down bit by bit, keeping on returning to the page, day after day until the book came glimmering into being.

I have had cancer, I have walked 3700 miles, I have written a book and it is only now I have done these things that I know I am capable of them...but now I have that knowledge it has changed me forever.

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where i am

8/22/2017

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I am sitting in a barn that has a kitchen in it. I have made a pot of tea on the camping stove and now I sit at a table covered in plastic gingham, red and white. When I look up I see the wrinkly tin roof above me, with gleams of daylight at the apex. Two flies buzz around the teapot. It is a beautiful smallholding, gently sloping down towards the Severn river, still young in width and volume. Every part of this land is well used, bursting with potatoes, fruit bushes, courgettes, flower gardens and livestock. I have six days to live here and admire it, pacing down the field to feed the pigs twice a day, pushing a wheelbarrow of soaked oats and peas, essentially savoury muesli.

There is a peace and calmness here, I am settling into my second week of no writing, of absorbing the fact that I have written a book, of getting used to free time.

Last week I lived in the forest, in a small cottage surrounded by pine trees. There was wetness everywhere, in the water running over the ground, in the moss that clumped and straggled from tree branches, in the misty rain itself that appeared as a silver grey shimmer against the close crowding trees. The hens were free here, I took their eggs from a cluster in a rotting tree stump, wiping them clean on a clinging patch of moss.

I was alone in the forest, just me and the birds and a small black cat with a bad eye. He snuggled against me in the evenings, tight up under my chin, a paw on my shoulder and my arms around him to keep him from drooping down my body as he slept.

It was my first week after handing the book over for editing and I slumped in the lack of intensity, didn’t know what to do with myself if I wasn’t writing The Book. I moped a little, felt melancholic and alone. The fairyland forest was a perfect place to do that. I lolled on my bed and watched the ceiling. I made strange, almost meals of boiled vegetables. Potatoes and green beans, red cabbage and carrots, just piling them in a heap, burying a lump of butter and sifting down salt and pepper. I read books, wrote letters, all things I have not had time for when all literary and creative brain power had been consumed by my single project – the story of the walk.

For the final month of writing I lived in a medieval longhouse at the end of a track in a valley where the steep, rocky sides reared tall around the flat fields. The track led across the green where sheep grazed to a barn-sheltered enclosure where a house squatted, growing out of the hill, timbered walls and huge ancient flagstones underfoot. It was a glamorous house and I became glamorous just by living in it. I wafted around barefoot and made delicious food, serving it to myself in beautiful pottery with drizzles of olive oil. Two brown spaniels pattered around my feet, competing for the place to sit at my side and stare at me lovingly, their replacement mistress.

The luxurious house is where I finished my book, took as much time off work as I could, ten days to sit at a computer and finish the accumulation of months of work. It was a writing retreat that came to me at just the right time, far enough along for me to have the confidence to fully focus.

Here I am, two years after finishing the walk and I’ve done it! I’ve got far enough along in my writing to have a draft with an editor. I have a publication date, a publicist, a listing in a book catalogue, a front cover. It still needs a lot of work and later this week I will receive back the first set of amendments. I will be in another house by then, looking after another cat. I will have two weeks to absorb the suggested changes, assimilate ideas and reflect them in new wordings. I do not feel ready, I do not know how I could make myself ready for this.

Tomorrow I will bake bread. This is what I do for money. I am a yeast farmer. I mix together fermented flour with more flour and water, then add varying portions of oil, salt and seeds. I keep time and temperature controlled until the yeast has eaten enough to make the perfectly risen consistency and then I slam trays of loaves into a hot oven to kill everything and capture it there; a loaf of bread, browned to the point of burning, crisply mottled crust and spongy moist inside. Flour and water transformed by yeast, under my shepherding.

Sourdough, yeasted loaves. Rye, spelt, white, wholemeal, buckwheat. Ciabatta, tin loaves, burger buns. Croissants, pain aux raisin, baguettes.

This is how I have lived my life to make a book possible. I work part time as a baker and I live in a van. I make myself available for housesitting and animal care to avoid the discomfort and accumulating dirt of what is essentially a home in a tin box. It is not a luxurious lifestyle but it is how I have afforded time to create. It has worked. I have done it. I have written a book. This is where I am now.

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where I've been

8/20/2017

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I got the publishing contract 14 months ago, gave them a date. I’ll have you a book in seven months, I said. “How hard can it be?” I thought to myself. I know it seems that most books take years but I just have to set my mind to it. That’s what I do isn’t it, overcome unlikely obstacles through perseverance and determination.

So where have I been? How can something take a year longer than you think? A whole year! How can 12 months disappear as you turn around, wipe sides, tidy up, drink coffee in cafes and go swimming. Leaves grow, leaves fall.

Although I have been nominally writing a book ever since I finished the walk, a period of almost two years, I realise now that I have had to become ready to write. I have had to show myself exactly how much I want this by continuing to return to the project, by never truly letting it drop.

I am a writer now, I wasn’t two years ago, I was a woman who blogged, who read, who dreamed, who scratched sparks of inspiration into notebooks and if she didn’t catch her ideas they disappeared forever, fragmentary sentences melting like mist.

I have had to learn how to be a writer, how to have periods of inspiration and periods of collation. How to cluck over repeated words, how to move my hands in the imitation of feelings, to draw words from the air in condensations of elusive memory.
I have had to learn how not to give up.

It turns out that writing is turning up. It is repeated application. It is practice. I may have had talent but I have had to learn how to turn it into skill.

Writing a book is incredibly intimidating. It is scraps of story that have to be expanded to fill pages. It is a blinking cursor that remains mute. It is the chance to be a thing that you have always dreamed about, whether you are ready for it or not. I have procrastinated my whole life and I have had to take time to learn how to overcome this. Procrastination is scheduling other things so that you cannot write, such as holidays or festivals or work. Procrastination is an addiction to scrolling through Facebook, keeping the mind deadened. Procrastination is feeling like you really should eat something. Procrastination is picking up the thread of story and feeling utterly incapable of the necessary concentration. It is your brain pulling away from the effort required, shutting down, seeking to do anything but take up the yoke of creation. I have had to tape my change jar shut to stop myself from counting it.

I have learnt to keep going, to know that each day belongs to itself, has a feeling of its own and that if I stare into space and the story only increases by 200 words then that is ok. It’s just a day like that, I don’t have to give up, I am not a failure.

Although I have made the focus of my life the writing of this book, sometimes it has been hard to believe that I am capable of the feat of production. I have felt lost and overwhelmed, stumbling and mute. Sometimes the things I have had to do in order to make time to write have made the act of creation difficult. The summer I spent without electricity in a remote, secluded caravan. The way I jump from house to house, always taking care of other peoples animals, never a place to call my own; always having to pack everything together, move on. Every new place necessitated the search for the right writing spot, the place that feels comfortable, where the light falls gently, where I am not cramped.

Steadily, over the course of a year, this book has become a priority, an obsession. I didn’t know, when I want to be a writer, what writing required of me.
I drove to Pembrokeshire in March and looked at the sea, scribbling notes. I walked 100 miles of the Glyndwr’s Way again, scribbling notes. I read books by other travel writers and analysts, the best ones were by Robert Macfarlane; they gave me vivid flashes of memory, a bird hanging in the air above a cliff, sunlight diffused in storm clouds and I scribbled them as they came to mind.
At Christmas I had 25,000 words. On the 15th of June, when I printed it out, I had 90,000; after typing in the scribbled changes, I had 95,000. When I sent the first draft to my editor on the 4th of August, I had a 147,000 word manuscript. And breathe.

That is where I have been, I’ve been hiding away, doing some of the most concentrated creativity I’ve ever done in my life. And I’ve created a book out of the story you all followed. It’s the same but different, more poetic, I think, less flippant. I’ve realised I was always trying to put a brave face on when I blogged, when I shared Facebook updates. Too many exclamation marks, too many upbeat endings. I’ve written a real book, or at least the first draft and now I have sent it to my editor. It’s left me and I am sitting in the space this concentrated effort has left behind in my life, wondering what I do now.

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Something different - a return to the same

5/10/2016

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This week I'm doing something I haven't done much of recently - walking! Remember that?

I've signed up to a writing course titled Travel, Memoir and History writing - Life and other journeys at Ty Newydd, the Welsh Literature Centre, .
What better course to attend if I'm writing a book about my long long journey and what better way to enter into the mindset of the book I'm trying to write about than to relive it physically. I've decided to walk to Ty Newydd, roughly 90 miles from Llanidloes to Criccieth, taking in a climb of Cader Idris on the way.

I'm hoping it will be a return to wilderness, a forgetting of the structured and busy life I'm living now, of all the ways I rush and never think.
I want to strand myself in adventure, just an unprepared body trying to sleep in a wet field, feel the difficulty again, more intensely.
I don't have a tent any more, I had to give that back. I'll shove some clothes in a bag tonight, along with a sleeping bag and a piece of green tarpaulin. A tupperware box and a spoon to eat with. A notebook and pen. Maps. Washkit. A switched off phone. Tins of mackerel, couscous. My bright orange water bottle. A loaf of bread and cheese.
Then I'll walk to work tomorrow morning, bleary eyed at 5am. Make bread in a bakery until 10am, then shower and leave.

I will return to the outside and return to discomfort, allow it to refresh my brain, shock it into real, raw memories and physical sensation.

I haven't done the same thing for five days in a row for months and months, life has become a series of hitch hiking journeys between varied and interesting events. I'm not complaining, my life is both easy and brilliant, it's just that the walk and the book I'm trying to write about it sometimes seem very hard to grasp. Events have receded to distant memory and I need immediacy, it's how I thrive, it's what I feel the best.

So this week I'll treat you all to a redux of my previous walk, a few tales of uncomfortable sleeping and foot pain, a few photographs of beautiful views. I hope you enjoy it.

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April 15th, 2016

4/15/2016

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I've been facing a choice recently - about whether to carry on caring about cancer or not.

I'm four years into an ovarian cancer diagnosis, my chances of it returning are roughly 1.5%. That's not very much is it, it's a small enough chance for me to leave it alone, to stop being scared of it. There is no shadow of cancer in my daily life, it's shrunk small enough that I feel no cold from it, no dimming of the light.

I've done my piece of charity work, floating in the ripples of my sudden diagnosis, grasping at facts like the pitiful survival rate, the camouflaged nature of the symptoms, using them to give me forward motion, the DOING OF SOMETHING being a thing I could aim for, taking me out of the confusion of illness.

Walking was my response to cancer, in refusing to allow it to change me, trying to stay the same wild and adventurous person. It was also my way to talk about cancer, to make it my mission for a while, my small attempt to improve Welsh survival rates, trying to spread the word about the symptoms.

But now, as you all know, the walk is over and you know what? I'm more than ready to put cancer behind me. I don't want it in my life any more, to talk about it, think about it or worry about it. I have cancer fatigue, it's been a huge focus for me for a few years now and I'm ready to put it down.

There's a problem though, I can't. I did for a while, after I crossed the finishline. I wanted to stop everything for a bit, let go of all the effort of walking, fundraising, caring about stuff.

But then.....two things. I learnt that the Welsh Goverment have annointed 2016 as their year of ovarian cancer effort - there are letters to GPs, there are public events, there is the possibility to make something national and effective, maybe even with some help from the Health Minister and the NHS.

I also went to visit Annie Mulholland, a woman I've talked about on here who, since her own diagnosis has been a major force in awareness raising. She raises money for Target Ovarian Cancer, volunteers for them, acts as a spokeswoman, organises conferences to talk about NHS cancer treatment in Wales, highlights the disparity between Welsh and English drugs funding. She is, in short, a hugely effective campaigner. She's also dying. Following five years of treatment for an illness she always knew was terminal, Annie has been given less than a year to live.

I'll be blunt, Annie and other women I've met don't have the luxury of choosing whether or not to care. This illness is an inescapable part of their lives, they cannot leave it behind because it is living in their bodies and slowly killing them.
So I look at their situation and I feel selfish, doing nothing with my excess of health and energy while they campaign between operations and chemo sessions, hosting garden parties, awareness events, writing to MPs, fundraising.
I know it's not selfish, not really. Charity work is a choice, not an obligation. I just can't leave it solely to the women who can't help but care.
So. I'm in. I've been talking to Annie about what we can do to help publicise and support the Welsh Goverments initiative this year.
We've come up with different themes for alternate months throughout the year, culminating in Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month next March.
In May we'll be contacting wool and fabric shops to ask them to change their window displays, in June I'll be asking for open gardens and garden parties and in September I'll be going for walks (something I am definitely good at organising). That's as far as we've got and even those are just ideas, it can all change, depending on who wants to get involved. This isn't just me and her, it's a whole group of women who want to do something and anyone else who wants to be involved.

I can give this time, that's what I'm thinking, spend one more year trying some awareness raising. If all goes to plan I'll be finishing my five years of follow-up treatment in March 2017, I'll also be heading out on my little motorboat towards the Black Sea, aiming for the Ukraine where I can begin a walk back towards Britain, finishing the project that ovarian cancer interrupted.

Five years after diagnosis, with no reoccurrence, my chances of a cancer then becomes the same as anyone elses. It seems like a good end to this whole life changing affair, maybe that will be when I can finally leave it behind.

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Where am i now? starting again

3/19/2016

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I'm past the exhaustion now, past the pain. I've rested and relaxed and come through to the other side. The mania of forcing myself to the finish, the focus and exhilaration of constant praise and good wishes, of struggling to take my body through the final few months of nothing but constant movement.
The other side is a place where the walk is just a thing I did once, where it's not the only thing I can talk about, no longer the first thing to my lips, it's just another story now, just a quirk from the past. I'm just an apprentice baker who lives in a small Welsh town. I am ordinary again.

And yet, what is left behind after this intense experience washed through me? It's hard to find a perspective in my post walk landscape. I am too busy doing things to stop and gain a point of view.

While I was walking my time was completely my own and now I have parcelled it into chunks in exchange for things, money, mostly but also vegetables and a place to stay. I attend courses, I volunteer, I have appointments, I have friendships, I even have (whisper it) a boyfriend and somehow the time for creativity, for simply existing while words come to me, has been nibbled away until I am either doing things or travelling in between them. Is this called adult life? Is this what you were all doing as I trundled through the countryside, using my expanse of time to cover an expanse of land.

While I was walking I had so much time, there was only one task to do and it was so enormous, I couldn't grab hold of it, pin it down, I merely swam in it, taking it along one stroke at a time. My days were more than walking though, my mileage so small that I could stop and stare whenever I wanted, at sunlight on hillsides, at birds fighting for space in the sky, at the pattern of lichen on stones, at mosses, cows, crashing waves. There were many pauses for contemplation as I moved slowly and sometimes painfully through the land.

I miss that, the time I had to sit and think. I didn't realise it wasn't a part of ordinary life and I want it back.

I remember sitting in a field that sloped down from castle walls, waiting for darkness to fall so I could sleep there. I sat still, so peaceful in the quiet of approaching dusk that a wren hopped through the hedge beside me, I could turn my head gently to watch its small round body flitting and fluttering, inches from my own.

I miss the simplicity of a single task to complete - I am learning to grow vegetables, I am learning how to be a baker, I am learning how to be a girlfriend, I am learning how to live in a small town, how to have small conversations with people you see every day. There is also a book to write, more ovarian cancer awareness raising to work on, a boat to rebuild, savings to build up, the next journey to plan for.

So I'm doing my best. Time passes, I have dreams and I'm doing my best. This is also adult life, I guess.

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Unpacking

9/15/2015

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A large storage box lies on the floor next to me, on top of it is a stolen shopping basket, and piled haphazardly against it are various cardboard boxes and packages.
I brought them down out of a stiflingly hot attic, sneezing with the disturbed dust, heaving heavy loads down the stairs and back to the barn that is currently my centre of operations.
I can't open them, I am ignoring them. I tried yesterday, opening a lid to begin the task of sorting, dividing, discarding what is no longer useful. These boxes are my supply dump, the storage of all the things I needed and used over the course of my walk, maps, books, clothes, packages I have posted home from all over Wales; the physical memories of my walk. I opened the lid and pulled out a fleecy waistcoast I wore to keep me warm during the cold seasons, a thin sleeping mat I used for extra insulation from frozen ground, a packet of red lentils, an envelope of maps. I closed the lid; there are too many feelings and memories in there. I'm not ready to relive the intensity of what I experienced.
Already the walk feels like something I once did. Friends I haven't seen yet shout their congratulations, excited for my achievement, yet I just shrug. They're talking about something very far away in the past.
I'm in shock I suppose. It's taken a great deal of perseverance to get me and my body to walk such a long distance. Now I've finished I simply can't maintain that degree of unwavering resolution. I can see, looking back, that my determination in the end was almost a mania. It had to be, in order to achieve such an incredible thing. Now I've finished I have needed to drop my compulsion to achieve and, instead, to crawl into a dark place, curl up and rest. I am shying away from picking up that energy once again and yet, in order to produce a book, to self-publish the story of my journey, I must command myself to action - no-one else will do this for me, just as no-one else could order me to complete or quit my walking challenge.
I know what I am going to do next, I am going to make a crowdfunding attempt to publish a book about my walk; yet I am having trouble taking those first steps to make it happen. I have been doing other things. I have opened up other storage bins, the objects I packed carefully away when I left Machynlleth and I have discovered that I am a different person now. I packed as a person who wanted a home, who was attached to objects that held her history, who kept things in preparation of a dream future home. I was scared of losing the roots I'd built so carefully during my cancer aftermath, the roots I'd found myself so shockingly in need of on being a travelling person faced with a cancer diagnosis. I was scared of setting off again, unsure if this was what I wanted, so I packed against it, hoarded away my beautiful china, my crafted decorations, well loved clothing, books read many times, books never opened. I packed away the security of a life once lived and the promise of a life to come.
Yet here I am now, I've come back again and found I don't need this security any more. I'm not looking for a home, I'm looking to leave again as soon as possible. I want to walk across Europe. The walk I've completed, these 3700 miles, has changed me, it's made me more self reliant and it's made me more mindful. I feel happier to exist with the needs of my immediate present, not harvest and store for the future. I have what I need now - a small amount of money for food and a place to stay. I don't need to keep objects in a box in a barn to make myself feel better about my future. When I do find a home, whenever in my future that will be, I'll find more beautiful things to fill it.
It seems I'm writing this blog about two things at once; simultaneously opening some boxes and ignoring others. I'm facing the larger, organisational themes of life and my current place in it but unable to think about an intense recent period.
Perhaps my mind requires recuperation in the same way as my muscles do. I walked two miles the other day and my calf muscle has been cramped ever since. Perhaps the principles I'm applying to my tired, over used body; stretching, massage and gentle exercise, should also be applied to a tired brain.

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the end and the aftermath

9/6/2015

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Is it really so long since I wrote a blog post? Time in the final stages diminished to a focus on my immediate needs, what I had to do that day and the following one. I never had enough time for all the things I wanted to do, responding to messages, writing blog posts, sitting in quiet corners for long periods of time simply doing nothing at all. It was all a push to get to the end; I set myself the target of 22nd August about a month in advance. It helped to have a date to work to but it meant, in my procrastinatory way, I rested and fiddled my days until I absolutely had to walk as much as possible for the last few weeks in order to get there. Each day a push, no time for anything else but walking. I was finishing, somehow I didn't even want to, I didn't want it to stop, I didn't want the extreme love and support I felt from so many people to end. My life felt easy, I knew what it was, I knew what to do and people were helping me to do it. Ending meant an unknown, getting off the safe tracks of a route and a backpack, I would have options, I had no idea what to do with them.

I finished! I walked to the clocktower in Machynlleth. My steps dragged as I walked down the street, the final 200m of thousands of miles and I was scared of ending. I cried, unexpectedly, as I crossed the road and my friends cheered. Here it was, the finish. I'd done it. I'd set out on a journey, to walk an unthinkable, eyebrow raising number of miles and I, silly, vague, plump, unprepared, determined, stubborn me had actually bloody done it. The point I'd been focused on for so long.
I got drunk and hugged people in a happy, dazed kind of a way. The next day I went to a festival. In some ways it was great, I had no time to think about what I'd just experienced. In other ways it was awful, too much noise and hedonism, I felt very disconnected.

Finally, here I am at my brothers house, two weeks later. I've experienced some sadness but not as much as I expected. I think it helps not to have a home to return to, feeling changed and trying to see how I fit into familiar surroundings. I'm still journeying, in a way, but this time picking up my rucksack and hitchiking from place to place. I have the luxury of my brothers house and then a house sit, places to rest my body and recover my thoughts, angle them towards new plans.
Having direction helps too; I'm not adrift in the absence of an intense and overpowering project, I know where I'm going. I'm aiming for book writing and, long term, I'm aiming to walk across Europe. There is no life to pick up again following the big walk, wondering if I fit it or even want it at all, there's only a life to be lived, time to enjoy until the next goodbye, the next adventure. This feels like a good thing, this wanting to leave again. Cancer made me so weak, so vulnerable I went from being a live, powerful being to a scared and vulnerable one, needing roots and security. When I set out on this 3700 mile walk I wondered what I was doing, leaving Machynlleth, my place of safety and friendship, my community. As I walked I realised I was strong enough again, I'd healed, I could be out in the world again, I could handle it. And so I feel good about leaving again; I am able.
Something else helps too - less walking means less pain. I don't miss the constant pain I experienced every day. My body was ready to stop. Parts of me were ready to stop after 500 miles, I just pushed and cajoled them to keep going, far beyond what they wanted to to. I'm talking to you plantar tendons. I spent most of the walk trying to keep them from ripping further from my heel bones, coping with the damage already done. It feels good to be sitting on this sofa. I don't miss sleeping on the hard ground. I don't miss the heavy bag weighing my shoulders down. I don't miss pain at all.

My body is still incredibly tense. I know from my experiences in previous endurance events (okay, one endurance event) that I need time to bring it down from its active state. My body is an overworked horse, I may have taken the saddle off but it doesn't know that this is truly over, that it doesn't need to keep going. I had three massages last week, each only showing my just how tense many parts of me still are, my shoulders in particular are absolutely solid. I walked yesterday, just a stroll with family, two hours around a closed down theme park, reliving memories. Today my body aches, I am lowering myself, crabwise down the stairs, each joint and tendon shouting their existence, a cacophony of body awareness. There's plenty to do, mainly stretching, something I am not very good at remembering.

I feel as if I could sleep forever, each day is a dazy expanse of hours, mainly spent eating and playing cards and looking at the internet. I'm taking tentative steps into a Kickstarter project, researching self publishing a book. I'm treading a line between adequate rest and keeping up a self-imposed work ethic. I think I'm doing it right. It feels right.

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A dip in morale

8/5/2015

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Arriving in Cardiff was easy. I took an accidental shortcut from Cadoxton, walking straight ahead at a roundabout instead of turning right. It cut out a whole four miles of the coastal path, leaving me joining Penarth at the pier a whole hour early to meet my next random internet stranger - Arry, the woman who holds the record for the first and fastest completion of the Welsh Coastal Path, average 26 miles a day.
I had a good sit down in the pier cafe, consumed a fantastic bacon sandwich and walked with the effervescent Arry across the barrage and into Cardiff centre, absorbing her incredible stories. She doesn't talk about how hard her run must have been, simply stating a series of casual facts about her journey, leaving you to realise the impact of her statements and the absolute incredible achievement she made.
I met an old friend for a few drinks and then went to another friend for a bed. Nice catch ups in a week of meeting person after person. I'd pushed hard to get to the city, walking almost twenty miles a day for over a week.

Leaving Cardiff was more difficult. I headed to the shops to buy my maps, aiming to head up the river Taff and down the Usk, no easy guidebooks so I'd require maps for my navigation. I stopped in at a cafe on my way to the river and unfortunately I chose a really good one. Soft leather chair in a quiet corner of a room full of mismatched tiling, irregularly placed mirrors, table lamps, large windows and iced coffee served in pint sized glass jars. I did some writing, a couple of hours passed and suddenly I found myself greatly desirous of a day off, the urge to walk was completely absent, my body felt heavy and tired. So I had one. Night in a hostel, bag of crisps and Netflix and I set off the following morning.
Well, I walked towards the river, stopped in at Wales Online to meet a journalist and then found myself in the castle tearooms ordering a Welsh breakfast (laverbread scone, nice touch). I finished my writing, published it and set off, finally at about midday.
Something had changed, my energy had gone. I'm not sure what keeps driving me forward but it had gone. I just didn't want to walk. All my energy, all my focus has gone into one thing, pushing my body forward to walk for thousands of miles. But it's all an illusion, this pushing forward. I can stop at any time, I just don't give myself the option to do it.
Now, as the end is so close I can almost touch it, the temptation, the thinking ahead to the finish when I will be able to stop walking, to stop putting my body through all this effort is bleeding into the present and I am simply running out of steam.
I made the finish date public that Monday, told everyone that I was aiming for the clocktower in Machynlleth on the 22nd August. It's not a random date, I need to get there by that time in order to go away and work the following week, see some good friends at a festival. If I didn't have this arrangement I'd probably finish a week or two later. Something happened when I named the date; I let my guard down and let the finish, the thought of no longer walking come flooding into my mind.

My body felt heavy, no impulse to move, no energy. The Taff trail was no help either; hard tarmac under my feet, making them hurt much sooner in the day, constant noise of traffic following me as the path wound beside the A470. Time seemed to pass incredibly slowly. There was no joy in my walking, I felt close to tears.
I wondered where I was going to sleep, the Merthyr valley seeming to be a long conjunction of town after town, bleeding into one another with industrial areas at the edges.
It was a couple on bikes who saved me from urban camping that night. The guy slowed alongside me, asking me what I was doing. "I'm going to talk for a bit" he shouted ahead to his partner. After a few cursory questions he asked where I was going to sleep and, on hearing I was going to walk a bit further and find something, offered me a camping spot in his garden. I took a sideways glance at this open faced, lycra clad valleys man and said yes. An offer made so quickly and so openly can be trusted, I decided. So I found myself walking a few extra miles that day, feet burning, as I talked to the well travelled Dai about his many experiences on the way home. It's just up this hill he'd say, it's just next to that pylon. I made it and had a meal, shower and camped in their garden; David dropped me back into Pontypridd early the next morning.
I had a pretty rubbish day, on my way to Merthyr, nestled at the head of the valley. All tarmac and worry about where I would sleep that night. I skirted the town really, too wary of all the negative things I'd heard about the place. "Merthyr", people say, and give a knowing smile as if we all know without saying it what a terrible place it is. "They're all a bunch of headers up there love", a man in Abercanaid warned me, beer swinging in his carrier bag, the smell of more coming off him. I stopped for half an hour of phone charging in the ex-servciemans club. People spoke to me, asked me what I was doing, gave small donations. All as normal really, my pre judgements clouding a real experience of the town.
I walked to the very edge of the town and beyond, not wanting to be caught by the people who came to the underpasses and bridges at night to smash glass and drop their empty cans.
I walked until the sun was almost setting, out to the first few farms beyond the town, out to the edge of the forestry where I found a tall tree growing beside a stony track and behind it a patch of smooth grass, edged with mossy stones and foxgloves where I could lie down and feel safe. The full moon rose behind me and I pulled my sleeping bag around me against the cold night. I woke a few hours later to the sound of an animal near me, so close that I could see the shape of it moving and snuffling around my flags. I flicked the light from my phone onto it and saw a hedgehog, biting and sucking at my welsh flag, undeterred by the flash of light. I moved the flags closer to me and it scuttled away, leaving me to the peace of the night.
The next morning found me rested but no more motivated. I spread my kit out to dry in the warm morning sun to dry off the overnight dew. I ate breakfast and read a book, no urge to move at all. It was hard, so hard to get going. Without a reason pushing me forward, there is very little impetus to shoulder my bag yet again and take the steps that lead me to throbbing feet and exhaustion yet again. I knew that there was a hostel about 12 miles ahead and the temptation to give up early and pay some money in exchange for a hot meal, shower and warm bed was just far too tempting. My target is always there, hovering in the background and in order to meet it I must always be fixed on forward movement but sometimes the need to stop is overwhelming. I walked to the hostel, slowly, pausing often.

Something changed on the way there though, as I walked out from the confining, narrow valley into the more open hills of the Brecon Beacons. My mood lifted as the horizon widened. I found myself walking on sheep-cropped turf instead of tarmac, the path ahead went winding up and over a hill instead of twisting through housing estates or under roads, the roar of traffic noise faded, the signs fell away and it was just me, a map and the wild, living land again. I felt at home, realising that this is the kind of walking I love.
I slept at the hostel, filled my belly with as much food as I could, extra toast at breakfast, cramming yoghurts into my rucksack and set off to find the source of the river Usk.
It helped a lot, walking through the open land. Somehow I felt better. All the problems are still there - a finish date looming, a few hundred miles for me to walk before then, rain, wet tents, painful feet, empty bank account. But most of them have been there all along, there's no reason why they should overwhelm me in the final month of this odessey.
I can do this, it's not an impossible target. I just need to, as ever, keep walking.
So that's what I've done, coming down the river Usk to, today, the town of Usk. It's been a pretty mechanical few days, I'm up at 6am, walking as much as I can for the day and collapsing into sleep wherever I can camp. I still feel like crying lots but I'm not sure exactly why. I'm not worried about what will come next, I'll worry about that when I've had some proper rest.
Once I reach and leave Bristol I'll be able to relax somehow, there'll just be one route left, the Wye Valley Walk. A finite number of miles and a finite number of days. Simple. I just need to make the calculation and do the miles. No problem. Right?

1 Comment

Advice to anyone thinking of walking more than 500 miles

7/29/2015

10 Comments

My name is Ursula, I'm a 35 year old woman and I've just walked 3300 miles. I've another 200 miles to go before I finish. I'm walking unsupported and I carry a 14 kilo rucksack. It's taken me 16 months to get this far.
I'm the only person ever to walk a 3500 mile route in Wales but be assured, as soon as someone else does it, they will be faster than me. I'm not the fastest, or the best, I'm not breaking any records but I have had the capacity and tenacity to take my plump body step after step until I have walked thousands of miles.
If you're thinking of doing something similar, here are some things you might like to know -

Perhaps you can handle the enormity of what you are setting out to do - weeks of walking, hundreds of miles. I couldn't. Walking 3500 miles is cartoon numbers, I couldn't comprehend what I was setting out to do and a part of me still can't visualise it. The only thing I could do in the planning without sending a bubble of panic rising into my chest, cutting short my breathing was to think IF. IF I was going to walk 3500 miles what would I need. IF I was going to leave my home and go walking, what would I do.

Don't worry that you haven't done enough training. You can walk without any preparation or a high level of fitness, anyone can walk out of their front door and set off to walk a thousand miles, you will just be slow to start and gain fitness along the way. The more you prepare, the easier it will be, you will experience lower levels of pain and a lower likelihood of serious, walk-ending injury.

I'm not going to tell you what to take, there are plenty of lists available elsewhere, only that you do not need everything you will pack at the beginning when you're freaking out and thinking of how to survive in the desert and in a snowstorm all at once.
Get together all the things you think you will need - the knife, the waterproof trousers, the book, the suncream, the washing up liquid, the pack of safety pins, the spare tent pole.
Pack it all into an incredibly heavy rucksack, take out as much as you can, set off and a week later, take stuff out again. Post things home, post things ahead, just don't carry anything unneccessary.
I don't carry a stove, for most of last summer I didn't carry a tent, just slept under the stars - a little morning dew is worth the weight off your shoulders. I did, however, carry a book. However minimal you think you can get, it's always possible to drop more pieces of kit.
Beware of 'just in case'. What you are putting in your bag will weigh upon your shoulders for every single step, forcing your muscles to work harder, putting more stress on your ankles, your knees your hips, costing more energy, making you hungrier. Is it worth carrying something that you only need once a month? Weigh it up - literally.

I don't pop blisters, just tape them over with micropore and leave them alone. Mine all reabsorbed and disappeared. After the first week I didn't have any more blisters.
I wear two pairs of socks, one thinner liner and a thicker woollen outer. Change them every day, it will help stop your boots smelling. (Your boots will still end up smelling, nothing will stop your boots from smelling abysmal)

Take regular breaks while walking your daily miles, put your feet up wherever possible. Take your shoes and socks off, wiggle your toes, rub your soles and calves. Do this even if you're just stopping for ten minutes, it will help blood circulation and relieve the tension caused from keeping your feet in the same enclosed position for hours on end.

Stretch whenever you can; at the beginning, middle and end of each session. You can walk for long distances with tight muscles but it will only transfer the strain of impact onto your joints.

Take baths as often as you can get them. Same for steak dinners, foot massages and having your rucksack carried forward for you.

Your body will hurt. Especially in the first couple of weeks. Your feet will swell and throb, your shoulders will burn with the weight of your bag, your joints will creak, random parts of your body will shoot with pain and then quieten again.
Stick with it. Don't give up. You are asking your body to do something incredible and I promise you it will harden and become capable.

The things you carry but don't wash - rucksack, food bag, waterproofs, sleeping mat - will slowly start to smell. Everything you can wash will still become smelly by the end of the walking day. By the end of the walk you'll probably smell like a mixture of wet dog and wet socks.
If you walk for long enough you will find you have stopped caring.

The people you meet have the potential to provide some of your most unexpected and interesting moments, don't just walk but make time for conversation and interesting distractions.

Never think to yourself, when you are so so tired after 20 miles of walking and you just want to lie down and become unconscious as quickly as possible, never think to yourself that this lump under your chosen sleeping spot will not matter and you can curl up around it. You will not sleep properly, it will be come incredibly uncomfortable within an hour and you will wake up the following morning with stabbing back pain. Be a camping princess, always pick a smooth, level sleeping place.

I once met a woman in tears almost at the top of Snowdon, she was on her way to the end of a 24 hour, 3 mountain challenge - she'd had no sleep and not enough to eat. She was shivering, her brain shutting down, unable to take action to keep herself safe. I encouraged her to eat, put a jumper on and left her. Twenty minutes later she caught me up, refreshed and revitalised - always keep enough food and make sure you eat regularly. Learn the effects of sugar on your body and balance it with slow-release carbohydrates to ensure a steady supply of energy through the day.

Looking after yourself is hard. Looking after yourself when you have been walking alone for ten hours and you are exhausted, probably low on blood sugar and unable to make decisions is really difficult. Talk to yourself, prioritise, help yourself to take action, bring your struggling brain into focus and form the sequence of things you need to do to make yourself warm, safe, fed, rested, relaxed and ready to do exactly the same thing the next day. Keeping your brain able to do these things is what will make your walk possible - just as much as the amount of power in your legs.

You cannot throw yourself at this journey - a walk of hundreds of miles cannot be pushed until the end. This is too big, let the target dwarf you, you cannot force this journey to be over quickly with your strength of will - this is too big for rushing, you will break your body trying.
Settle in to this, accept that the amount of time you spend achieving this will stretch and slow down, you have to live in this journey, not speed up and miss it.

Walking hundreds of miles is hard. Walking hundreds of miles to a schedule is stressful and demanding.
Get rid of schedules and targets, they just add pressure. If you must have one, make it flexible.
Only one person can be the fastest, you are probably not that person. Just walk, it doesn't matter how good you are, just the fact that you are pushing your body to walk hundreds of miles is enough. Do it in your own time.

All your ideas, your expectations, your targets, your plans, your competition with yourself, your competition with others. Drop them. Just walk, get as far as you can every day, keep yourself warm, keep yourself safe, keep yourself rested, get up the next day and do the same again.
Let go of fear and expectations. Just go for it. This is what your body evolved to do.

(Have I missed anything? Ask questions in the comments. )