Glastonbury

I've taken a break from walking, moved over to a festival, the glorious Glastonbury.  Rightly deserved reputation.  It's a brilliantly managed spectacle, from the large to the small.  This afternoon I saw a man spinning himself round atop a 30ft pole, people dressed as seagulls stealing food, I had my face painted, all pretty standard festival stuff.
It's been a strange thing taking a break, right now I can't imagine being able to walk again, being able to go back to that world of constant outside, where steps are automatic, my legs striding across the land without even thinkng any more.  Right now, after reversing my body clock completely, awake until 4am, sleeping until gone 2, smoking a bit, drinking a lot, chatting, joking, being deliberately rude, making up stories, flirting, grinning, receiving tips, slinging pizza at a variety of drunken, happy, glitter covered festiegoers with accents from across Britain and beyond.  The solitary dreamer of my walking days seems very far away.  I'm doing the same I suppose, just wandering around and talking to strangers but it's all very intense here.  I watched a butterfly settle amongst a pot of geraniums as I was waiting an hour for my shower this morning and realised that, although I'm living in a tent in fields for six days, it's actually a very unatural environment.  The mud squelching under our feet is the only contact with nature here, otherwise it's all food outlets, sculptures, stages, bars and most of all, an endless parade of faces.
I'll go back tomorrow, with my pockets replenished, enough money for another couple of months.  It seems I'll be walking for longer than eight months, I'll decide at the end of the summer, whether I walk the distance or walk the time; but I already know what I'd like to do, it just depends how my body feels.  I'd like to walk the full route I set out to do, the full 3300 miles, no matter how long it takes me, maybe a year would do it.  I'll decide properly later, it doesn't matter now.  All I need to do is keep walking; back to it on Tuesday.

I'm spending most of today in the Little Chef in Builth Wells, drinking multiple glasses of water, waiting as long as possible to order something cheap from the menu.  At the moment it's a vanilla milkshake topped with a gelatinous pyramid of squirty cream, into which I am dipping strawberries from the co-op across the road.

I'm off to Glastonbury today, to spend a week helping to make pizza for my friends at Pandemania.  It'll be a rest, of sorts, lots of late nights chatting rubbish to drunk people while whirling like a maniac to exchange pizzas for money in the shortest time possible.  Lots of time during the day to stroll around the festival, listening to urban poetry in the spoken word tent, admiring the performers in the theatre field, just nice lazy days.

I hope to write during this week too.  So much has happened since I last spent a few hours in a quiet place, tapping into my keyboard.  I seem to move from experience to experience, with never more than a few minutes in each day to spit something onto Facebook.  I can't write during the walking day, to whip out my phone and keyboard while I'm sitting, sweating on the side of a hill seems impossible somehow.  Daylight hours are for walking, or resting a bit so I can walk again, I can't do it and report it at the same time.

I hope, while I'm sitting in the shade drinking warm white wine, loud music drifting through the air from the stages behind me,  to tell you about walking into Chester in a Wonderwoman outfit, about the vale of Clwyd, about my route down the east of Wales again, about Sarah, Jen, Lou, Rebecca, about my feet, my tan, my happy, healthy body.  It's not as unlikely as it sounds that I will find time to do this at Glastonbury festival, especially if it's raining.

It's hard to tell exactly how many miles I've walked now - the Cistercian Way isn't waymarked, there's no handy guidebook and so if I want to work it out for myself I have to do that annoying thing where I measure the wiggly line on a map with a bit of string then measure the string.  So I'll estimate......the route to Holywell was 754 for definite and since then I've had a 20 mile day, plus a 14 mile day, plus about six av 10 mile days which makes it just under 850, give or take.  It doesn't matter any more, I'm just walking.  When I reach Holywell again I'll add another definite 602 miles to that 754, until then it's just a bit of a haze.  It's probably more confusing for you guys than for me, I could have picked a more straightforward route couldn't I.
More soon, I hope......

Well well, I've had a different sort of experience now.
Off path, off piste and it was dammed frustrating.
I set out to walk along the riverside from Bangor-on-Dee to Holt, following footpaths set out on the book I'm following.  It soon became apparent that the paths were not there any more.  Farmers planted crops, stiles were overgrown.  If people are walking their dogs in this area, it isn't along the river.
There was a river, wide and fast, high banks with trees and trodden down pits where cows stoop to drink. The river wound in sinuous curves, almost doubling back on itself.
There was a embankment, winding through the fields, covered, usually, in nettles.  The rest of the landscape was flat and wide, just trees dotted around in ancient, meaningless, gaping partial boundaries.

The grass was high, thick and dotted with thistles, nettles and other, more innocent plants.  I had to step high with each stride forward, lifting my arms to drag my poles behind me.  It was a very inefficient way to move slowly through the landscape and there was nothing else I could do.  I just had to keep on, looking at the shape of the section of winding river that was in view and trying to relate it to the black line drawn across my map that sometimes touched the river and sometimes set off at an angle to cut across a horseshoe loop.
The sun shone hot on me and my dwindling water.  Sometimes I came to patches of grass that would shoot out fluffs of white powder and seeds as soon as I moved against them and I began to sneeze, the inside of my mouth itching.

I came to a fence where the book said there should be a double stile.  Fuck it, I thought and laboriously climbed over. A field of Friesans came into view, I could see I had to cross through where they were langurously lying, relaxing, chewing cud.  They stood up as I approached and ran away, apart from one.  She stayed and near to her feet was a newborn calf, lying dead on the ground.

The calf was warm, I slapped it in a pathetic, ignorant attempt to make its sides move, to make it breathe, take air into its lungs, to live. There was nothing I could do; just a dead baby calf on the floor in front of me, the mother hovering, making warning noises.  I walked away, nothing I could do, looking back to see the mother nosing her child.  I held it together until I reached the stile and found a fallen tree blocking it.  Impassable.  It was the final frustration I needed to burst into loud tears; I sobbed and told the cow I was sorry her child was dead.  There was nothing I could do, I walked on, looking back moments later to see the cow eating the placenta, chewing vacantly on a string of bloody gore.  My tears turned instantly to scientific detachment; I didn't know they did that, did you?

Another fence, another stile, another field full of long frustrating grasses, no path, just picking my way through.  I was looking for a gate leading to a stone bridge crossing a stream.  But what's this?  The river in front of me.  I looked to see which was it was flowing, confused.  Ok, flowing left so I'll follow it left.  I didn't understand where the bridge was but kind of gave up.  If the river is flowing towards the sea, I'll follow it towards the sea; that makes sense, I thought. I continued, picking my way towards the sea.  Then came a cut through a hedge boundary, a driftwood log lying on the floor.  I recognise that log I thought.  Am I going in a circle? The river looped round in a way I didn't recognise.  If I was going in a circle there'd be a fallen tree up there I thought, so I can't be going in a circle.  There's just been so much grass and fields that it's sent me slightly loopy.  I carried on, cutting across a field to miss out a curve of a river and came to a fence boundary.  The same one I'd climbed over an hour ago.  I'd gone in a fucking circle.
I shouted and screamed in frustration; would I ever be able to leave this stupid overgrown silage patch? Fucking shitty fucking shit.  I climbed over the fence again; this time managing to rip my top on barbed wire.
It was enough for me, I walked on through the next field, going the right way to find a gate and then the beginning of a track.  Another 6 miles of riverside struggle?  No thanks.  I cut across west to a field with sheep in it and then, finally a house, a road.  Civilisation!  After a conversation with the homeowner about why I was cutting through her field I made it out to the road and a 4 mile stride to where I am now - Holt, last town in Wales. I walked into the Peal O' Bells and started swearing about what a shitty day I'd had until the landlord bought me a drink! Tonight I cross the border and tomorrow Chester.  In fancy dress.

Okay, this is ridiculous now.  I didn't set out to have a journey where I'm in receipt of incredible generosity from strangers, daily.  It just keeps happening to me.
I set off from Llangollen and thought I'd camp a night before making it to Chirk where I could go to Val's house again (the step mother of a friend of my mothers). 
I ended up walking more quickly than I thought; thanks to the lesson in foot strapping I received from Sarah, the beautiful person I met in Llangollen.  Just a simple piece of tape along the bottom of my foot means I'm suddenly able to walk 9 miles with no pain; completely different to a couple of days ago.  Val was very accomodating and picked me up a day earlier at short notice so I set off the next day, thinking I would head into a stretch of small villages and no contacts ahead - a chance to really get back into wild camping again, renter the journey I set out to make, just me and the countryside.

I walked into Overton and into the library, to spend a couple of hours sitting, resting, writing.  The librarian asked what I was doing - the flags and large rucksack tend to inspire a raised eyebrow or two.  I get people approaching me to say umm...err.... and I fill in the question they're too embarassed to ask "What am I doing?"  "Yes!"  they say, and laugh.  "What's it all about?"
So I gave the usual spiel about cancer, long distance walking, hospital appointments, Wales. "Where are you sleeping?"  "Well I'm set up to camp but people keep offering me places to sleep which is really unexpected but a massive help."
The woman at the computer opposite asked if I'd like to stay at her house.  Being offered a place to stay by a person in a library that I'd had no conversation with at all was so unexpected that I couldn't really say Yes.  I stammered a maybe and we swapped phone numbers.  It was only 2pm and I also kind of wanted to walk a bit more, it was too early to stop really.  The librarian offered me a cup of hot chocolate which was very nice.  I'd been walking in the rain for most of the morning which gets a bit shocking after a while.  I was dazed and reacting really slowly to things, speaking in a low, slow voice and unable to think very quickly.  I also hadn't eaten or drunk very much that morning.
Rebecca the nice librarian said that she might know someone I could stay with.  "I know someone who will take you in.  They're kind of drop outs, trying to live self-sufficiently" she said.  "And they have people coming to stay with them.  He might come in later, I hope he does."  And he did.  Rebecca placed him at the computer next to me, just saying "This is a special lady that you need to talk to".  We chatted about what I was doing and Steve said "Do you have anywhere to stay tonight, do you want to stay with us?"

We agreed that he'd pick me up a couple of miles down the road; I walked on down the river, without my rucksack and felt a great feeling of lightness. The air was thick with thistledown, floating like fat snowflakes against the trees. A cow stood close to me, I stopped still, said hello and she trotted over! Close enough to lick my outstretched hand and almost let me scratch her poll. Really unusual!
I waited at a pub and was picked up by Steve and taken to his home. There I found a Christian family, driven to give up their business lifestyle and live self sufficiently, keeping pigs, growing vegetables, living without electricity, mostly without hot water, completely without gadgets; striving to show people that we are headed down an oil and consumption addicted dead end that will lead to the collapse of civilisation within our lifetimes.  They were also told by God to keep an open house and accept anyone referred to them in spiritual trauma, usually after suicide attempts or mental illness.
"A person who believes we can keep a finite system in constant growth is either a madman or an economist." said Steve.
It was an out of the ordinary evening that I'm completely glad I experienced.

When, in normal life, do people say to a stranger.....do you need somewhere to stay tonight?  Come and stay at my house.

The words long distance walk for charity appear to have some unappreciated magic in them that has transported me into a world of smiles, horn beeps, free cups of tea, admiration and money thrust into a plastic pot that I have tied to my side.
I've never experienced anything like this in all my years of looking bedraggled with a large rucksack.  But I suppose I've never done a long distance walk for charity before.....simple.

This is hard, okay?  When I got my hair caught on a bush that I was pushing against because the whole of the soggy path between trees had been churned to sticky clay it was extremely irritating and I just had to set my jaw and carry on. I walk and walk and walk, onwards in rain, in sun, every day, I am becoming a machine.  My thighs and calfs are setting to solid muscle. I've been doing this for three months now, I just walk, that's what I'm doing.
But this constant influx of generosity, the wonder of meeting new people and hearing their stories is turning this walk into a completely different thing.  When I get a bed, a shower, a packed lunch from a stranger, just because I'm walking; the walk doesn't feel hard at all.