DARKNESS AND LIGHT

I FEEL LIKE A PUPPET, one which has lost any control over its destiny. I am powerless, entirely vulnerable to the whim of the puppeteer. My strings are pulled and I obey. Whether I like it or not, I dance to the puppeteer’s tune. If he wants me to be happy, I frolic in the sunshine. If he decides I should suffer, then I’m strafed by apocalyptic storms.

I am a solitary hiker on a personal quest: attempting to summit all 214 Wainwright fells in the Lake District in a continuous, self-supported hike. The narrative of this journey is polarised, and oscillates wildly between light and dark, good and evil, joy and tragedy. There is no inbetween. The puppet master is not interested in the boring or mundane. He wants his puppet protagonist to experience the extremes and to exist on the edge. Dizzying highs and crushing lows. Halcyon days of sunshine and soul-crushing squalls. That is to be my fate.

The Greeks would call this puppeteer Zeus; the Romans prefer Jupiter; and in Norse mythology it’s Thor. For me it is simply the weather god – a fickle, almost schizophrenic, deity with the power to bless you with immaculate blue skies and warming sunshine, or torment you with biblical downpours and terrifying winds. Saviour and tormentor, all in one.

Such is the lottery of hillwalking in Britain. You roll the dice and hope for the best – but the inescapable truth is that whether you’re attempting a long journey like mine, or just out for the day, you’re not