There were walks in the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex. Not in the snow. And in the snow.
There was a bit of magic. And a lot of waiting for the spring.
Now, it is finally April. And all the proper walking can restart again.
This was the winter I did not get up to Scotland. And Scotland had the finest winter in decades. But what do you do. There will be other fine winters. And other mountains. And other times for visits – like May. ❤
2017 ended very locally. Very beautifully, very painfully, very strangely.
In November, my lover took me away on a surprise trip to Dartmoor National Park. I have written about this phenomenon before – of going away without knowing where. And of how much I love it, and live for it, never knowing, never preparing. But what made it even better was the Wistman’s Wood. The forest I had forgotten about for two years. And suddenly, there it was, at our doorstep. The weather was gloriously moody, yet not serious. There was more light than rain. The gnarliness of Wistman’s Wood was even better because we had not expected it.
This is how my first Dartmoor visit stays with me: utterly gorgeous autumn lanes, forever meandering, forever narrow. Huge fir trees escaping towards skies, while tiny ones held themselves closer to the ferns. The famous tors were there just like in story books, and we climbed one. I will remember the nighttime mists, the flood lights and shadows we projected to the skies. The boggy meadows where you should keep to the paths. But of course, you do not.
I saw my first ever badger crossing the road we were walking on, saw a sudden stone cross appearing from the mists, hares jumping across rivers. It was a perfect trip, filled with stepping stones, late autumn moods, warm rooms, villages more real than Hobbiton, pubs more cosy than a goose mother could dream up in her feathery bed (and with actual geese and chicken visiting us at our table), amazing scones in a pub and just happiness, without the words ever getting used or thought about.
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And in December, a trip to Cotswolds followed with friends. It was supposed to be a quiet one, I know. Just relaxing, just sitting by the fireplace, going for short countryside walks, and all those things people do in Castle Combe. Drink sherry. Gently mock the lawn of the golf course. Yet somehow, I was never there in my mind.
Cotswolds in December sunshine. (Photo brutally stolen from Rainer S.)
Once again, we got amazing weather for the entire trip, from Lacock to Castle Combe and beyond. I was tired. I was confused. I just never fucking recognise when the seasonal depression kicks in. I have become quicker at recognising it, for sure; now it takes me a couple of weeks to discover what is going on. Not that the heureka is the highlight of my month, but at least then I know. But being around friends and trees is always so good. Even if you might as well not be there. But maybe it does make a difference. You just can’t tell because of your disturbed brain chemistry. But what definitely helps is the sun, the neolithic stone formations, old mounds and trees with visible root carpets. And the goodness of people. And some ale.
Into the light.
And that was how 2017 ended. All together, around 30 days spent walking, so a wonderful year filled with mountaints from Scotland to Wales and Uzbekistan. Not to mention the coasts and the forests. Yup. All will be good. Also this time.
What: Sevenoaks – Knole Estate – Ightham Mote – and back again
Who: E, E, N, R, K, R.
The look of the primeval summer
I understood something a couple of days ago, on last Saturday when we set our course towards the Medieval-Tudor-Victorian Ightham Mote in Kent. I understood that many forests in Europe smell the same.
I also understood that summers are the most melancholy yet the most carefree seasons, and that for the second summer in a row I am not going kayaking or mountain biking as I had mused about. That’s the trouble with musings, however, they never get me anywhere. This makes them different from actual dreams/plans, of course, but it also works a nifty little beacon to any underlying dreams that might go untouched. It is good to know the undercurrents, I think.
Kentish countryside.
Kentish forest.
Kentish fernscape.
Kentish meadow curves.
Gentle, yet promising
Luckily, last Saturday also brought many lighter realisations. My leg has become stronger. Slowly I’m starting to feel like I can move again. And it is a good, satisfying, smile inducing feeling. Fair enough, running up little hills with R after a double pint of Hells Bells might have helped to get to obtain that positive outlook. But it was not only that.
There was a sweeter realisation at the top of those hills: nothing beats walking into the golden hour with your lover and your friends. (Technically, yes, fine, there are some things that beat this, but that is for the other blog.)
And also, most surprisingly – I understood that although I do not know what will be the next place or the next country where I shall be living in, I shall definitely miss English countryside when there. I shall miss it differently from the Welsh and the Scottish one which fall into a category totally of their own making! But the English countryside. The one that feels small and gentle, yet promising. The one that lacks the feel of the wilderness but that greets you as a friend. The one that can get so ridiculously pretty so fast that it feels like you should stop laughing at the way the sun is breaking through to the undergrowth.
See, the thing is, nature is beautiful everywhere. Yet there’s something about the English countryside that can’t be experienced anywhere else. It keeps a fine balance of alluring you in and then looking the other way for showing you its posh butt cheeks. And yet, you feel welcome. Somehow, it does feel like anold friend you meet again, again, and again.
On the gorgeous Saturday of June 10th, I set out to walk the Chess Valley Way with three of my friends (N, E & L). It turned out to be one of the best days in months.
However, it was not the gorgeousness of the Chilterns AONB nor the perfect walking weather nor even the shallow chalk rivers that allowed us to playfully wade through them that made that day into an acutely special one. After all, technically speaking, the entire last month has not been lacking in the special – I finally obtained my PhD (yup, I’m Doctor Marion now :)) and signed my first book contract (oooh yeaaah!). But none of those specific moments can now be compared with June 10th. Why?
For starters, had I walked the Chess Valley Way alone, it would have still been a gorgeous day out. Also, had I taken the same friends into a pub – we would have most definitely had a good day out as well. But I would not be writing about this at the moment. So now I’ve been wondering for nearly three weeks… What renders walking with friends so special that it makes your heart sing with joy even 1.5 fortnights later?
Where does the walking joy come from?
There is enough research out there (without me having to repeat it) about the benefits of walking in nature. It lifts your mood, boosts creativity – and hence, helps to think outside any box and see new connections -, pimps your immune system, and generally makes you into a better person (fine, fine, meta tests are yet to prove this last one, but I don’t think I’m too far off the mark). But this is not all.
People who undertake longer treks and walks seldom do it out of politeness. This means that all the people you meet during your walks are enjoying what they’re doing. Fully. I think this feel gets mirrored back into your micromuscles and neural networks. Also, lots of people come with dogs – so, even better. You can pet the dogs together with your friends. But even this does not fully explain the essence of that special joy to me. So, to properly figure it out for myself, I’m turning to my oldest friends: lists.
What does it really mean to go walking with friends?
It is a perfect combination of alone and together. Walking with friends allows you to fall silent for long periods of time with the knowledge of the bubbling word being right there, at your fingertips. It is the feeling of doing your own things in your room while overhearing all your friends having a party in the kitchen. My semi-silent version of a secret heaven.
It is old topics. It is new topics. The change of scenery acts as a catalyst for new ideas and for new connections. Suddenly, you are asking questions about your friend’s thoughts and feelings on topics you had not even worded to yourself yet. This is the time that showers you with ideas for new stories, games, services – you name it!
You let new people into your life. Better than a dinner at home or a pub visit – walks with good acquintances have a good chance of turning them into friends later.
The shared process of witnessing the new. This experience is richer than a bag of gulab jamuns dipped into clotted cream! This how life itself should unravel, being on the road with the people you love, not fully caring about reaching the destination or getting lost.
I spent the three very last days of April in North Yorkshire, in the land of wild garlic, frolicking ewes and magnificently shaped rocks.
Brimham Rocks of North Yorkshire.
Little brooks, arched bridges, slate roofs, trees that are still barely accepting the arrival of spring, private fancy bidges and light hearts – these are the keywords from one of the best weekends of the year. So far.
My heart feels light in Yorkshire. Not because you can go trekking with llamas there and imagine yourself to be standing high on the Andes platoo. Not because it offers you the best little pies in the country, and shop keepers who literally say “Welcome to Yorkshire” in your face. 🙂 It’s actually not all romance and glory. On our circular walk from Pateley Bridge (via Brimham Rocks) we also saw large flags with the word “Brexit” written all over them. Fair enough, the flags were also half-burnt but… Even that could not take the lightness away. I do not know how to be a political person, really. And probably never will.
North Yorkshire’s lightness seems to come from the wide open spaces, from the tiny brooks leading you to bigger rivers and bigger bridges. Yet, there’s no unnecessary quaintness (like sometimes in the Lake District, for me, sorry!). Spring always arrives much later in here. In fact, it’s almost like you get two springs in one year, just by travelling between Yorkshire and London.
The source of the lightness seems to be a mix of natural beauty (the land is never too flat), a certain sense of time (nothing is too compressed or too eternal or long) and from forgetting to complain. Completely. (A habit I picked up during last 6 months and am now dancing a slow departure walz with.)(Can’t wait for the music to end!)
And then there’s a sense of magic. Somehow, behind every corner, there’s a surprising view you just did not think or imagine to meet you. Everything is clean. So clean that is has an immediate effect on your mind. Something would almost suggest the presence of a monastery, of sorts, but all you can see are country lanes and daffodils. Maybe this it, though? Might as well be. The real reason why the heart becomes so light in here? Parts of North Yorkshire feel like a vast, outdoors monastery where walking is proof of your silent yet lively dedication. To life.
And it sure helps to hear the cry of a close-by yet unseen peacock just when you are crouching down to pick some of that long-awaited-for wild garlic. In your undefined and unnamed temple gardens.
A hunt for unstructured experiences is the easiest way to summarise my year of 2016. Yes, I did doctoral research on the topic but the theme was definitely prominent also in other areas of my life (in art, mountaineering training, etc.).
An Arctic island. Norway, September 2016.
The Arctic. September 2016.
Finnish Lapland. September, 2016.
For a while now, I shall probably be posting about different ways to go after that specific type of experience. I will give my best to try to approach it from all angles, large or small, crooked or right angled, and see what makes it longed for, for me and for a lot of people of my time.
Travelling north. ❤ The Arctic, September 2016.
Uløya island, east side of the Lyngen fjord. Norway, September 2016.
Uløya island, east side of the Lyngen fjord. Norway, September 2016.
This post will focus on two very straightforward ways of achieving a completely fresh spatial experience without throwing yourself off a train without a map. It will focus on ways for designing surprises that work, for yourself.
1. Give someone permission to take you on a trip without telling you the destination.
Lessons learned from the Arctic Norway and Finnish Lapland in September 2016.
Let another person pack your clothes, choose the date and not tell you where you will be going. Destination awareness can be left for the check-in desk, train station or the boat mooring spot.
Uløya island, east side of the Lyngen fjord. Norway, September 2016.
Uløya island, east side of the Lyngen fjord. Norway, September 2016.
Norweigan ruska. September 2016.
Heading towards the heart of autumn. Borders of the Finnish Lapland. September 2016.
Be still, my heart. September, 2016.
The Arctic Norway. September 2016.
In September, I had a fabulous chance to experience that type of once again. It is definitely one of my most favourite modes of travelling. Of course, it is romantic to the core, but it also frees you from the philosophical task number 1: to know where you’re going.
Saana tunturi. Finnish Lapland, September 2016.
Land ruska. Finnish Laplant, September 2016.
Saana tunturi. Finnish Lapland, September 2016.
Saana tunturi. Finnish Lapland, September 2016.
Saana fell. Finnish Lapland, September 2016.
And this is where the surprise design kicks in. If all you know is the return date, every following detail starts acting as a structural element of your adventure:
– not knowing when you have to wake up;
– not knowing whether there are plans for the next day;
– not knowing what is in the neighbourhood, near or far;
– not knowing what to take with you;
– not knowing which means of transport to use;
– not having to worry about reaching a place at a certain time;
– not knowing when and where you’ll be eating;
– not knowing which direction you’re going;
– not knowing what to expect.
Unstructuralism achieved!
2. Change the time and scope of your wanderings
Lessons learned on Venice canal shores in November 2016.
It is worth it. If you suddenly find yourself attracted to a city that is an object of admiration to the entire world … don’t go exploring it at the heels of it.
I am talking about these destinations that do not even have an off season, to use holiday parlance.
So, how to find your city inside everyone else’s?
Night in San Marco, Venice. November 2016.
If possible, arrive very early or very late. This makes your first impression more personal.
Then, schedule your first longer wander outside the tourist hours. Yes, you are on a holiday (I only use the word “holiday” for city trips; outside of it, the concept does not even work), so setting the alarm for 3.30 AM may feel like the first signs of madness, but the sleepiness will lift as soon as you enter the empty maze that every new city is.
San Marco at night. Venice, November 2016.
Venice before the sun. November, 2016.
Imagination works better when left alone in an empty space. It is also easier to get a feel for a place that is uniquely meaningful only for you.
Venice. November 2016.
The reason for travel: Italian autumn bleakness. November 2016.
This unfocused capture still manages to smell of Thomas Mann. November, 2016.
What else helps? Making a game of spotting a certain elements (like a weathered pattern on a wall) in every new street or square. This way you will end up looking into little side streets and courtyards more often.
Patterned Venice. November 2016.
Patterned Venice. November 2016.
Visiting cemeteries always helps. When a city is crowded, her cemeteries are usually less packed (well, depending how you’re counting). Cemeteries let you in on the spirit of the place (no pun intended) without having to fight the crowds.
Isola di San Michele, in the Venetian Lagoon. November 2016.
Isola di San Michele, in the Venetian Lagoon. November 2016.
For extra ideas, it is worth reading Microadventures by Alastair Humphreys or taking a an official city guide book and reversing everything that can be reversed.
Also, on the topic: “The rational flâneur is someone who, unlike a tourist, makes a decision at every step to revise his schedule, so he can imbibe things based on new information, what Nero was trying to practice in his travels, often guided by his sense of smell. The flâneur is not a prisoner of a plan. Tourism, actual or figurative, is imbued with the teleological illusion; it assumes completeness of vision and gets one locked into a hard-to-revise program, while the flâneur continuously – and, what is crucial, rationally – modifies his targets as he acquires information.” (From Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleeb)
So, what will actually happen when I finish the Lea Valley Way? Will there be a tiny deluge or will the river itself disappear? (No, no one is suffering from illusions of grandeur in here, no one.)
Lea Valley Way is the 50-mile long-distance walking route following the River Lea from its birth spring in the suburbs of Luton to the Thames near Limehouse.
It can be pleasantly walked in 4 days or so the Internet says. When I was planning to walk it in one go last summer, there was only one proper description of all stages available online.
I’ve walked the Lea Valle Way:
– Lea Valley Walk, Stage 1 / 17.07.2015 / ~ 36 km; read about that stupidly lucky walk here
– Lea Valley Walk, Stage 3 / 19.07.2015 / 23 km
– Lea Valley Walk, Stage 4 / 26.09.2016/ 7.9k km
– And on 16.04. 2016, S-L, G and I set out to do the Lea Valley Walk, Stage 2 (25.9 km)
Stage 2 of the walk stretches from Hatfield to Broxbourne. By all accounts it should be pleasantly doable in one day, during the warmest sunlight hours. “I can’t believe I’m finally finishing it today!” I told my lover, my friends and my housemates when leaving for that last stretch that Saturday morning.
The first half of the walk was cloudy, but after leaving Hatfield behind and lunching in Hertford, the skies lit up and our step got faster. (Sadly, G actually had to go home, since his foot had managed to seriously convince him it was too exhausting to move.) I also witnessed my goldenest golden hour during this stage of the walk. Everything was going brilliantly.
Lea Valley Walk, from Hatfield to Broxbourne. Hertfordshire, England, April 2016.
We continued on, following the lovely water. The darkness had long-ago fallen when S-L and I reached Dobb’s Weir – a location separated from the Broxbourne train station by a few kilometers. Finishing the Lea Valley Way was going to happen tonight. Suddenly, all the tiredness was gone from my legs as we started to cross the canal (the river has been directed into a canal around those parts already), I could clearly imagine reaching the station within the next half an hour and… and… and… The road was closed. Blocked (even cordoned off, maybe?; can disappointment also create false memories?) off by a large road works sign. Somewhere not far off in the darkness we saw the orange working lights of the industrial vehicle. But. Not all was lost yet!
I dashed off to talk to a security man. And yes, all types of roads were closed. However, he directed us to a path in the forest which would take us straight to Broxbourne train station. So we entered the dark forest-like area with the help from the flashlights on our dying phones. We walked to the railway (“When you’ve reached the railway, you’ve gone too far,” the man had also said). Upon then retracing our steps we found the path. Also to be blocked off.
And we decided to call an end to our day.
I asked for local cab numbers but the security van gave us a lift to the train station. (Reminder to self! Always carry chocolate around to give to nice people!)
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I still have roughly 3 km to finish, which I will do at some point this year. How else can I ever say that I’ve followed an entire river, right?
Lessons learned:
1) Never underestimate a journey;
2) If destination becomes a goal the journey will lose a bit of its magic;
3) Passing a race track in the dark makes you feel like a character in a James Bond movie;
4) Trips can be undertaken that take you to a beginning of a journey which itself is actually shorter than the trip to get there. (Which part of the journey is the real journey? she asks in an ominous voice.)
My dear and much-esteemed last kilometers of the Lea Valley Way, I’m coming to find you in 2016.
I did get out of town during the first month of this year, I swear! And I did leave the city in February as well. But two months without a real wander is as long as I can humanly stretch it. If not for any other reason, then to stop myself from staying up until morning to search for all the possible tracks and paths on this island. (And off it.) You know, those if onlys, if onlys…
I do prefer to keep my books and magazines more or less intact and *not* to crumple their pages up every time I see a photo of place that looks just too… mmmmmppffff. Origamis of desperation, those.
But I have such good news! March marks the change! And updates on this blog start appearing more regularly again, which is only a good thing!
Until then, here’s proof of the only bit of snow I managed to see in January. Spotted in the Epping Forest District, Essex.
The walk from Chepstow to Llandogo took around 6-7 hours. It was the very beginning to the Wye Valley Walk which runs from Chepstow to Plynlimon. A beautiful 136 miles all together. We did about 22 km of it.
Just three weeks earlier, Ashdown Forest in East Sussex had welcomed us with the last wave of autumn’s strength. The leaves were still hanging on, the ferns still looked pointy. It had been a darkening but friendly welcome. The time in Monmouthshire was completely different. We had stepped into the silent part of autumn.
Everything around us had the feeling of having given up. (Not having been conquered; that’s the feeling you get during the third week of winter or so. Difference!) We still managed to walk in sunshine for the better part of the day, however. And no! There’s no magic to us always catching the sun, it’s just the layman’s luck. Or we actually come with a blessing from the Gods of the Woods.
The path we took mostly meandered up and down a valley bank. No grand views but loads of close meetings with gnarly trees. And a passageway through a massive boulder where at least one bat had taken up its residence. This was my first time being inside a boulder together with bats. I’m guessing there were many.
Wales must be the gnarliest place on Earth, though. I think that part of its mythological charm might actually stem from the gnarls. But we were not in deep Wales, though. Just like the cave entries inside the valley bank that didn’t lead us very far, we kept getting hints of things to come without allowing ourselves to go and fully find out.
For a little while we walked very close to the river. That part of the valley was covered in the prettiest trees imaginable, every branch and twig so utterly alluring that I nearly left my companions and ran off to see those things from up close. I did, however, suspect a trap and kept following our set course. This willpower is probably the only reason I got back to the the city again.
The border walking kept mentally pulling me away from the valley and more towards “the actual” Wales. I have been to Wales only twice and a certain feeling has lifted its head at both times. It’s the feeling of “if you practice feeling scared, you’ll remember your very first dream”. You know, that type of strange shit that feels too epic to be real.
You don’t need grand cities if you have nature like this. And if you have returned from the actual nature, you might find a small (and locked) village church from the far corner of a tiny cemetery. And if you are lucky, you can peek in through the keyhole and see colours you cannot name. Because you shouldn’t be seeing bright colours in a closed church that is not lit from the inside. And yet to do. And it is twilight outside. But if asked to describe the objects the colours were attached to, I’d really owe you an explanation.
Borderlands make me restless. They are too rich in light layers of meaning. Every time you want to follow a thought deeper, you’re left with a choice to completely change your course or to give up on the thing that caught your attention. This part of the Wye Valley walk left me hungry. It left me hungry to step deeper over the border, to walk west from where I was, and from there, to go up north again. At the end of the day, it’s the north that wins in most cases.
On the last day of October, a small group of us set out from London Victoria on a train to East Grinstead. From there, we a took a bus to get closer to a certain forest. I did not carry a camera this time, so all the pictures posted today are in courtesy of Mr Rainer S.
Ashdown Forest is located in East Sussex, on the the highest sandy ridge-top of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. When not knowing where to go, you can spend a bit of time wandering in rather civilized areas before fully reaching it.
At the start of our walk, we sauntered along an old railway track for a while (oh, how it really, really reminded me of the Ayot Greenway trail between Wheathamstead and Ayot St. Peter! –> my unplanned detour that shaped the real outcome of my Lea Valley Walk’s first day this summer: the road where I started limping and the reason I got stuck on a field of beans (the full story is here). After the old railway and some nibbles on the roadside, we decided to go and find the Poohsticks Bridge (a famous bridge from a famous children’s book) and wave the houses good-bye.
Having easily found the bridge after a bit of walking next to fields and across them, we crossed it together with some horses (or donkeys in disguise?) and finally found ourselves in the beginning of the forest.
There were leaves, everywhere. There should be special word for the way leaves smell on the autumn forest floor before the the first night colds. Hopefully, at least one of the languages has it. On the small paths, on the soon-to-be naked trees, in the creeks that had to be crossed and between the mythic looking ferns – the leaves where everywhere, bringing with them the feeling of carelessness known to people before they reach the age of 20.
Ashdown Forest needs time. In order to fully roam around there, a day is probably not enough. At least not in the season when the light starts fading rather early. But in our case, the day almost was enough. It left all of us with that bitter-sweet taste of wanting more, just an hour, two or tree more or time, yet not making us feel as if we had not had any time at all.
We wandered deeper into the forest when noticing that the sunset was a mere two hours away. The plan was to go as deep as possible and then find our way back to civilization again.
This was the happiest I had been that entire week. Thinking about it now, October was a deeply happy month on all levels. (See, how I just avoided at least a one worthy mountain pun!) October was also a month that started and ended with a walk. As every month should, I say.
Walking in Ashdown was calming and exciting at the same time. A small practice in zen, a small exercise of looking at the leaf patterns. The ferns rustled although there was almost now wind. When we got deeper into the forest we met no other people.
After the clear and sunny day, the darkness started to gather fast. The bats came out and the owls started hooting.
Only when the tongues of mist started crossing our road did we understand that all the sheep we had seen during the day had been black.
More owls started to hoot.
And more trees appeared that looked like they had been brought here from the 19th century. (Probably that’s the last time they did have leaves, when I think of it.) The darkness fully took over when we had walked through the mists and encountered our last flock of black beasts. This was pitch dark countryside darkness, the proper kind where you forget that cities exist. And in the middle of it, someone found a pub with a living fire. I can’t remember who but I’m very grateful to him or her. I would have taken that window for someone’s living room.
But things shouldn’t be too easy. And because life doesn’t want you to miss out on all the possible courses for one day, we had to leave that beautiful coziness quite soon and step into the deep darkness to make our way to the bus stop.
No street lights, no house lights, no moon light. Just the stars, the occasional passing cars and the hope that the bus would come, not miss us or not run as over.
More owls hooted. The old church spire was still there, probably looking as pastorally perfect as it had done in the fading light. More owls. More darkness. The most simple Samhain evening one could wish for.
Institute of Wander 