Three and a half months. It is outrageous. Three and a half months since we last ventured out on a decent walk. Sure, we regularly follow a circuit of just under 8km in those green and pleasant hills and valleys around our village, and the other week walked from a country pub with a name borrowed from the Highlands to a valley carpeted with snowdrops. But these aren’t proper walks. Not walks that bark at mutinous muscles like an irritated drill sergeant, where exertion pumps oxygen into the lungs and beads of sweat slalom down the forehead.
Travelling north before and during Christmas took up some of those three and a half months, but only a fraction of it. Dreich and dreary weather accounted for most. At times, it was easy to believe the Sun had died. Week after week of grey weather, with only the occasional bright interlude, left us wondering if he/she/it just didn’t want to be our friend anymore, a bit like yer man on the other side of the pond. That shouldn’t have stopped us from lacing up the boots and pulling on wind and waterproof jackets which kept us cosy on Chilean glaciers to plunge into the great but squelchy outdoors. It shouldn’t have, but it did. We’re still spoiled after years of warm and dry winter walking in the Canary Islands and Portugal. Oh for the days when boot cleaning wasn’t a necessary part of the hiking drill.
Andy spotted a fissure in the dreichness. The Sun, possibly bolstered by the promise of a recuperative spring over the next hill (hopefully), was encouraged to try a few faltering steps. Andy declared ‘Carpe diem’ and we hastily mapped out a circular route around Porlock Marshes on Somerset’s north coast.
Last time we were there was our penultimate decent walk, when a heron goose-stepped its way across the road in front of our car, and then our front tyre was shredded by a concealed rock thanks to one of Somerset’s demon drivers hogging the middle of a narrow lane on a blind corner.
The rumour the Sun was coming to town proved true, but only just. Not dead, but still feebly weak, it raised itself into the sky, breathless and shivering, not strong enough to burn away the thin grey film thrown over the contours of the land like a threadbare dust blanket. It certainly wasn’t strong enough to see off a bullying east wind whose bitter bite chewed at our faces within seconds of us getting out the car. This is why we haven’t walked far.
It. Is. Just. Not. Pleasant.
And yet, after a few hundred metres, the wind’s bitter sniping became, masochistic though this may sound, quite bracingly enjoyable (Andy was not of the same accord I have to say). We crossed a wooden walkway over a sucking marsh to crunch our way along a stony fortification of a beach – a barrier against the invader sea. Carefully negotiating smooth boulders the same colour scheme as our kitchen, I kept touching a face I couldn’t feel, marvelling at how warm the rest of me was despite my cheeks having the texture of a side of meat just extracted from a butcher’s freezer. The sea, although calm, rattled and jostled the stones it lapped, making a noise that was like a cross between shaking a bag of marbles and a jet fighter approaching. It was an unnatural natural sound that was both intimidating and enchanting.
The Sun, as seen through a thin gauze, shone, if that is the right word, on a landscape that could have belonged in a tale of fantasy and magic, a tipsy-topsy world where our path led us through a village the size of a hamlet, or a hamlet the size of a village, where a quaint and quintessentially English thatched cottage was also a Caribbean Kitchen. What irony.
In another hamlet/village, the door of an old house opened directly onto the cobbles of a tiny, humpbacked pack bridge beside a gurgling ford. Here be fairy tales.
The Sun, although making a valiant effort, did not yet possess the strength to defeat an eastern breeze that has outstayed its welcome. However, the obese bulk of Bossington Hill did. As we hugged its western slope, climbing relatively steeply to a derelict coastguard post, it threw a protective cloak around us which stole the breath out of the ill wind, allowing the sickly circle in the sky to finally stroke our cheeks and say, ‘Here I am. Trust me. I am becoming stronger and stronger by the day.’
And, bolstered by those comforting words, I felt an awakening. With each step upward, power seeped into limbs that have been neglected for too long. I felt a surge of pure, sweet, undiluted exhilaration.
Way below us, the transparent landscape beamed its beauty.
This is why we do this.
