Walking with Plato (24 page)

Neither are the two arts of music and gymnastic really designed, as is often supposed, the one for the training of the soul, the other for the training of the body . . . The teachers of both have in view chiefly the improvement of the soul.

—Plato, R
epublic

Chapter Seven

Wild Life

Bath – Stratton-on-the-Fosse – Street – Taunton – Sampford Peverell – Hayne – Down St Mary – Okehampton – Stowford – Jamaica Inn – Bodmin – Newquay

The penultimate stage of JoGLE took us 187 miles from Bath, via Exeter, to the seaside resort of Newquay.

The route we chose was largely functional. We simply started off at Bath and walked in the general direction of Exeter; and, from there, we walked in as straight a line as possible to Newquay. We tried to navigate along footpaths and bridleways, rather than roads, wherever possible, but each day was pretty much pot-luck, as far as scenery went.

However, since the route took us through the West Country counties of Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall, famous for their lush pastures and granite moorland, pot-luck seldom disappointed.

From
Bath
, we walked thirteen miles to the village of
Stratton-on-the-Fosse
. Our route took us along minor roads, country roads, the occasional footpath, and the A367. And, although it was chosen for practical rather than aesthetic reasons, it was very pleasant nonetheless.

It was a grey early-October day. The kind of day when it’s cold and damp enough to make brisk walking enjoyable, but not so cold and damp as to depress the spirits.

The pastoral landscape with its freshly ploughed fields, newly trimmed hedges, and red-, orange-, and yellow-tinged trees, was beginning to look decidedly autumnal, and, after five years of living in a tropical climate, it was a joy to behold.

In our new trail shoes, we made swift progress, and arrived at our B&B, the Kings Arms Inn, with plenty of time for R&R.

From Stratton-on-the-Fosse, we had intended to head eighteen miles southwest to the village of
Street
, near Glastonbury. But this would have meant walking a lengthy section of the wetlands area of the Somerset Levels, and a severe-weather warning, predicting widespread flooding, necessitated a change of plan. So we opted instead to take a nineteen-mile westward loop to Street, via the cathedral city of Wells.

We spent the entire day road-walking with eyes down and heads bent against the rain. So I have no clear recollection of Wells – not even of its cathedral, which is considered one of the most beautiful in England.

The part of the day I remember best was the four-mile walk along the A39 from Wells to Glastonbury. Not because it had any interest or beauty, but because it was a hazardous, footpathless slog into stinging rain and oncoming traffic.

Glastonbury, too, is just a rain-soaked blur in my memory. I recall that it had lots of boutiques catering for devotees of crystal healing, angel therapy, and Tarot reading. But little else. We stopped for coffee there, and then headed off into the rain again, for a final couple of miles, to Street.

The YHA hostel in Street is the oldest still in operation. It’s a quaint little place: a Swiss-style chalet, wooden and weathered, a bit shabby in places, but with what the Japanese might call
wabi-sabi
appeal.

It’s set among trees in expansive grounds at the edge of a strip of woodland, and has a secluded, back-to-nature feel about it.

During the evening, after cooking, eating, and clearing up, I sat listening to the drumming of the rain on the rooftop, and thinking how very glad I was to be there – and how very glad I was to be doing JoGLE.

JoGLE had begun principally as something that Wendy wanted to do, albeit something with enough physical challenge to tempt me a little too. But it had turned into something more. It had become a pilgrimage.

I felt that I, a sceptic and an agnostic, was beginning to understand the fascination that pilgrimage has held over the centuries for Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and the like.

I was beginning to understand that whatever it is you’re searching for – be it peace of mind, enlightenment, redemption, inspiration, guidance, happiness, a closer walk with God, the courage to abandon your beliefs, or pretty much anything else – there are few better ways to find it than to strap on a rucksack, lace up a pair of boots, and take a couple of million steps into the unknown.

From Street, we hiked a mammoth twenty-three miles to
Taunton
, much of it across the big, beautiful – and, on this occasion, exceedingly squelchy – Somerset Levels.

It was a walk unlike any that I’ve ever done, across a landscape unlike any that I’ve ever seen: dead-flat empty grasslands, criss-crossed through with long, straight drainage ditches.

Because of the heavy rain on the previous day, there was no point even
thinking
about taking the footpath across Butleigh Moor and King’s Sedge Moor, at the start of the day. So we had to walk along the small roads that zigzag through the moors instead. Even so, it was delightful to pass through such lonely, lovely country.

The Levels are home to hundreds of swans, one of which blocked our path, partway through the morning, hissing at us and beating its wings in a very aggressive manner.

I remembered reading somewhere that this is mostly bluff and bluster, and that, despite their immense size, swans really aren’t that strong. Apparently, it’s a myth that they can break an arm or leg with their wings. But, still, it was some time before we could summon up the courage to walk on by.

There were lots of cattle on the moors too, including a couple of eye-poppingly muscular and mean-looking bulls. Wendy and I had a long discussion, before passing one of them, about whether it was likely to swim across a drainage channel to get at us.

At around midday, we reached the village of Othery. From there, we walked southwest along minor roads to the village of North Curry, and then a final six miles, due west, to a hotel in the centre of Taunton.

The next morning, we walked southeast for nineteen miles to the Tiverton Parkway railway station. This was another cobbled-together route: first along the West Deane Way to the industrial town of Wellington, then along minor roads, and finally along the towpath of the Grand Western Canal.

As I said, it was a cobbled-together route, but still pretty bloody fantastic, on the whole, with vast expanses of verdant countryside to please the eye and soothe the spirit.

By this penultimate stage of JoGLE, walking had become as natural to me as breathing. It was what I did from nine to five each day. And it was what I
wanted to do
from nine to five each day.

I remembered, in the past, getting bored on country walks. But not any more. End to Ending had got me attuned to the rhythm, to the heartbeat, of the natural world.

End to Ending is a very different thing to day walking. On a day walk, you’re a tourist, an
observer
, of nature. But, on a long-distance walk, you become
part of
nature.

It’s difficult to explain without waxing poetic.

Imagine that you are out on the moors, and you see a weathered old tree. You are acutely conscious, when you look at it, that it
belongs
there, that its roots go deep into the earth, that its branches have been bent and twisted by the wind, and that its leaves have been warmed by the sun and wetted by the rain.

If you are a day walker, you have nothing in common with that tree.
It
is a wild thing; and
you
are a tame thing. You and it have an entirely different kind of existence.

But if you have been walking for months, if week after week you have trodden the same earth, been blown by the same wind, been warmed by the same sun and wetted by the same rain, then you have a connection with it. You have a kindred existence. You belong there too.

As I said, it’s difficult to explain without waxing poetic. But, however fanciful or whimsical it may sound, it’s essentially true. You may not start hugging rocks and trees; you may not compose canticles to Brother Sun and Sister Moon; you may not preach to the birds and the flowers; but you really do begin to feel a connection.

This feeling of wildness was something I’d never experienced before, and it felt good.

The nineteenth-century writer, thinker, abolitionist, tax-resister, naturalist, walker and goodness-knows-what-else Henry David Thoreau was a staunch advocate of wildness.

He begins his celebrated essay
Walking
with the words: