The Hiking Obsession: Preparing For and Tackling Land’s End to John o’Groats When You’re Old Enough To Know Better

By Andrew Beard

What makes a sensible, mature, slippers-by-the-fire sort of chap turn suddenly into a hiking junkie? Why would anyone want to switch from doing moderate, two-mile pub walks to trekking an arduous 289 miles along the South West Coast Path? The Hiking Obsession takes you on an alarming journey, from your comfort zone to the trials and tribulations of long-distance walking, from the seed of a flawed idea to the execution of a meticulous but seriously flawed plan. See what happens when it all goes pear-shaped for Tony, from leaky boots to lost hankies, from a broken cross-trainer to sleeping rough in a church. Will he overcome his obsession or slip seamlessly into life as a hobo?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AG Books
• Release date: Nov 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781785389931

Book preview

Where Did It All Go Wrong?

When the realisation suddenly trickles into your mind that you may have a compulsion, an addiction, something within you more powerful than your will to control it, you instinctively go into denial. You tell yourself that you can stop any time you want to, of course you can, only you don’t want to right now. This is NOT a full-blown addiction and you have NOT lost control of yourself! Perhaps, on the quiet, just for reassurance, you try a little test by cutting down - down to ten cigarettes a day, down to two drinks a night or two coffees per day, just to show that you could stop if you had to - only to find that the numbers start creeping back up again. Maybe you’ve gone cold turkey and ended up with the screaming abdabs, finally having to acknowledge that you do indeed have a problem, that this thing really is bigger than you. Well, with me it’s no longer cigarettes, it’s not yet the booze, nor is it coke or smack or anti-depressants; the problem I have is with walking, hiking, backpacking, call it what you will - and I’m hooked. It has indeed seeped into my bloodstream, my psyche, and it will not shift.

Chances are, once you’ve acknowledged your dependence, you’ll try to overcome it and, as part of that process, you’ll want to understand it, to unpick it. If you’re like me, at some point you’ll find yourself confronting these questions:

How did I get into this thing in the first place?

When and why did it become a problem?

Well, the first of these is easy. It would have been one fine day in the summer of 1970. I’d be sweet sixteen, lying innocently in bed on a Sunday morning with an adolescent’s relish for turning over and grabbing a little more or, better still, a lot more snooze-time. My intentions were being annoyingly thwarted by the sound of a large engine, probably that of a bus, not driving past on the road outside but, instead, stopping right there and continuing to thrum loudly. To compound the irritation, the driver then sounded the horn not once but four blessed times. I was just investigating whether I could cover both ears with a single pillow or whether it’d take two, when there came a thunderous hammering on the door. It was Kev, a so-called schoolfriend, urging me to get dressed and get on the coach - I’d apparently said that I’d go along with him on a sixth form hike. You know what it’s like at that age - you say things, you forget things, it’s all a bit of a blur, really, especially on Sunday mornings.

Kev and I were the only fifth-formers (i.e. year 11s in today’s parlance) who played rugby for the school first team, so were treated as honorary sixth formers, particularly when it came to coughing up five shillings each to help pay for the coach. Sixth form hikes were something of an institution, organised entirely by pupils, with no official school involvement whatsoever. In those days there was nothing to stop a bunch of 16 to18 year-olds from hiring a coach and driver from the local bus company, setting off for the Derbyshire Peak District and getting drunk/lost/pregnant to their hearts’ content. A notice would go up on the wall of the sixth form common room inviting pupils to add their names if interested in the next projected hike, whether from Miller’s Dale, Monsal Dale or Hartington. The cost per person would be just enough to cover the hire of a 29-seater coach, or a 47-seater if it was a popular walk. Less than two years later, it naturally fell to Kev and I to organise the hikes, since we’d been regular participants before reaching the exalted ranks of the upper sixth. Too impatient to wait for clement weather or benign conditions underfoot, our first effort was a winter hike. We were to walk a modest eight-mile circular from Parwich, for which we’d hand-drawn a dozen maps for participants to use for navigation, this being pre-PC, pre-Windows and even pre-widespread photocopier days. Few of us had any proper hiking gear, but we followed standard school advice by wearing ‘stout footwear’ which, in my case, meant a pair of leather brogues. Kev probably had a compass secreted about his person somewhere, because he was doing ‘A’ level geography. Some came with packed lunches, probably forced on them by their mums, others relied on reaching the pub in Alstonefield in time for a liquid lunch. None of us was equipped to cope with the knee-deep snow we encountered soon after disembarking from the coach. Perhaps we should have abandoned the enterprise right there but instead, filled with youthful exuberance at our taste of freedom, we bounded off up the hill in small groups. The only real drawback was that, with conditions as they were, those of us in the vanguard only reached the pub at 1.55, just as the bell was sounding for last orders. I bought five pints of bitter, then spent half an hour fending off heart-rending pleas and blunt assaults on my liquid supplies from latecomers, who were able to buy nothing more intoxicating than a packet of crisps at the bar.

Anyway, perhaps surprisingly, we all survived. Henceforth hiking would for me be associated with fun, albeit of a slightly risky nature. Once married, I’d spend occasional weekends with the in-laws, a large extended family, camping at Edale, Monyash or indeed Alstonefield, where walking was simply a peg on which to hang the boozing. A hike wasn’t considered worthy of the name unless it incorporated at least one pub on the route.

So that’s how it all began. Then in 1976, at the sprightly age of 22, I decided to take on the challenge of walking the Pennine Way because, in those days, that’s how you demonstrated your credentials as a serious hiker. And also because I thought I might be able to persuade CAMRA to publish something along the lines of ‘Real Ale on the Pennine Way’, for which I intended to do as much field research as humanly possible. Having read every book on backpacking and outdoor survival I could find and dutifully included every suggested essential item from each book, I found that my rucksack weighed in at 93lbs (43kg). Unsurprisingly, given that 1976 was one of the hottest, driest summers on record, I only got as far as Hebden Bridge before heatstroke, exhaustion and a self-inflicted lack of nicotine took their inevitable toll. I mean, as if the Pennine Way isn’t trial enough, I had to add the tribulation of giving up cigarettes!

I tried again two years later, minus camping gear this time but with nicotinic support and with the intention of staying at youth hostels and inns for greater ease and comfort. This time I got beyond High Cup Nick, but was unmercifully washed off Cross Fell with everything soaked, so caught the train home from Alston, a sorry, dejected specimen of a young man, whupped into submission. The experience didn’t, however, leave an indelible scar - I didn’t spend the next thirty-odd years as a broken man, slouched in defeat; as a matter of fact, I became a fairly normal, fair-weather weekend walker. Having moved south, I swapped Derbyshire for Dorset, the white stone walls of the Peak District for those of Purbeck. I bought a book by Mike Power called ‘Pub Walks in Dorset - Forty Circular Walks Around Dorset Inns’, with walks ranging from less than two to around seven miles in length, the sort of thing you can sensibly do with wife and kids in tow. If the Pennine Way failures were a monkey on my back, it was a mute, subdued monkey. Admittedly our walks were tending to increase in length over time, but I took this to be a natural progression as the boys grew older, something they could impress their couch-potato friends with; Carl walked 14 miles with us at age nine, Alan did an 18-miler at age eleven. Perhaps I should have recognised the incipient signs of compulsion at this early stage, maybe I should have sought help. Is there even a Walkers Anonymous?

On to the second question - when did casual, controllable walking click over and become obsessive, mainline backpacking? Oddly enough, it started in 2014 when Lin bought herself a new rucksack, partly to use on our gentle walks and partly for carrying some of her files for work. It was a Lowe Alpine ‘Air Flow’ rucksack from Cotswold Outdoor, with a stiff curved frame designed to prevent the pack from resting against the back. I wasn’t envious, partly because it cost £40, which I thought excessive at the time, but mainly because it was pink. What it did, though, was make me take a close look at similar rucksacks when they appeared for sale at our local Lidl; my first thought was that, at a cost of just £20, they seemed very good value. Secondly, I could have a blue one. Thirdly, and this notion took me completely by surprise, I wondered whether the rucksack would be large enough to carry all my needs for a third Pennine Way bid. What? Who said that? Where did that notion spring from, unbidden - was it you, monkey? Anyway, setting that crazy notion to one side, it would still be useful as a day pack for weekend walks and was, at 35 litres, large enough to hold the family’s waterproofs, lunches and water, so I bought it.

Thinking back, I suppose I had already reflected on the possibility of doing a long distance trail with the boys at some point. I’d be retiring in 2018 when Alan would be 15 and Carl 12, so the Pennine Way might be feasible at that point. That being still four years away, the question had to be confronted: would I still be up to doing that sort of mileage after several more years of ageing? Come to that, would I even be able to do it now? There was nothing else for it but to find out, to do a proof of concept in the form of 15 mile walks on consecutive days. This would represent the sort of distance I’d want to cover each day, were I ever to lend an ear to the monkey and set about tackling the Pennine Way again. And, since I now had a rucksack which might, hypothetically, suffice for such an expedition, I would fill it with items adding up to a weight representing my theoretically anticipated requirements for the real thing. But the more I thought about it, the more the idea of finally cracking the challenge 37 years after my ignominious humiliation seemed hugely appealing. I wanted to test the hypothesis, turn theory into reality. The monkey was starting to chatter and hop about and was unlikely to let me wait another four years.

My preparations didn’t go altogether smoothly, though; three setbacks threatened to put the kibosh on the entire venture. It was early October 2014 when I loaded my new rucksack (aka ‘Chimp’) with about 16lbs (7.25kg) of more or less random stuff and set out on the first of two back-to-back trial trails. I set out directly from home in Weymouth towards Bincombe, then over White Horse Hill to Osmington, adding a two-mile circular beyond the Smuggler’s Arms before walking home along the coast, making roughly 15 miles in all. As anticipated, this didn’t present any great problems, although my feet were a little sore by the end, probably on account of the unaccustomed weight on my back and, when I climbed out of bed the next morning, my calves certainly knew they’d been worked. The fatigue wasn’t enough to deter me from doing the second walk though and, anyway, soon began to dissipate once I got moving. Lin accompanied me this time, over to Dorchester via Bincombe. By the time we’d reached Came Down Wood after about four miles, however, not only were my feet sore but my knees had become stiff, with the sort of pain that can’t simply be attributed to fatigue. We took a welcome break for coffee at the Trumpet Major before walking across town, uncomfortably in my case. Lin had to get back to Weymouth to meet Carl from school so, after another coffee and a light lunch at Top o’ Town, she set off to walk straight back up the main road while I turned aside to make my way homeward via Maiden Castle. My aim was to head for Friar Waddon Farm, before picking up familiar paths from Buckland Ripers to Nottington and home alongside the River Wey, then finally up over Spa Road. After we’d gone our separate ways I struggled on at a much slower pace, refusing to accept that I was beaten, that the game was up but, by the time I’d eventually reached Friar Waddon Farm, I had to concede by phoning Lin to ask her to drive out to rescue me; my knees had seized up completely, only allowing me to hobble at a stupidly slow pace. Not wanting to cause permanent damage, I baled out in very low spirits.

What a shock, and what a blow to the self-esteem! My legs had always been able to take me any distance I asked them to, so for them to baulk at this first hurdle was more than a tad discombobulating. Did this mean my attempt on the Pennine Way was a non-starter? I wasn’t ready to accept this, so scoured the Web for solutions to knee issues for hikers. Suggestions for alleviating the discomfort included the use of poles, the fitting of elastic knee braces and the insertion of cushioned insoles but, to me, the thing which seemed to make the most sense was regular exercise. Unsurprisingly, I guess, the muscles supporting the knees, particularly the thighs, become enfeebled when you sit at a desk all week, so I started doing leg stretches, the sort of thing you see footballers doing as part of their pre-match warm-up, and took to walking very slowly upstairs backwards, much to the entertainment of my merciless family. Then I read about the benefits of using a cross-trainer and, recalling that there was one in the park through which I walked every weekday on my way to work, I started to use it. Maybe exercising in public would give rise to less merriment and ridicule than my strenuous efforts at home!

Setback number two came when, after a few days, I broke the blessed cross-trainer. The right pedal and its crank came adrift from the rear axle, on whose exposed washers my shin landed with some force. The washers won that battle, leaving a messy hole in both trousers and leg. Undeterred, I reported the machine’s failure to Dorchester Town Council, who kindly reimbursed me for the trousers and, fairly promptly for a council, repaired the cross-trainer. I got back on it at