Month: February 2020

I’m adding these references to the blog because I can never find them when I want them; they relate to the horrific frozen journey’s taken by Ernest Shackleton. When researching my MA dissertation, I did a lot of research into Antarctic exploration. It comprised a single page in the final draft – which should have taught me a valuable lesson about researching without doing any writing during that process.

What stuck with me was a line in a diary written by one of Shackleton’s team. Stranded and bored in a tent, he noted that the men had engaged in “more trips around London this evening” (quoted in Sara Wheeler’s Terra Incognito, p183). I love the idea of such imaginary journeys.

Shackleton’s team “never forgot what they had endured… Joyce said that when they got home they were frequently invited to festivities in London that went on to the early hours, and afterwards they would find destitute people on the embankment ‘and line [them] up at the coffee stalls’. When he was ninety, Dick Richards said that he hadn’t yet recovered.” (Terra Incognito p98).

Shackleton’s expedition is also referred to in TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. To quote wikipedia’s article on the Third Man Factor, “Shackleton wrote, ‘during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.’ His admission resulted in other survivors of extreme hardship coming forward and sharing similar experiences.”

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
— But who is that on the other side of you?

I’ve just added Shackleton’s South to my Kindle. It’s a book I really should have read by now.

A week or so back, the Guardian had another article about the ongoing campaign to save Britain’s historic footpaths. The government has set a 2026 deadline for these paths to be registered; after that, the rights-of-way will be lost. The Ramblers are stepping up their campaign to save these routes, with a new mapping site. Some of these routes, particularly urban alleyways, are taken for granted by locals but not recognised on official maps.

There have been some fantastic articles on the campaign, including ones in the Guardian, Ramble On: The Fight to Save Forgotten Footpaths, and New Yorker, The Search For England’s Forgotten Footpath.

In a 2017 interview with Guernica Magazine, Walking is a Democracy, Iain Sinclair spoke about how important walking is to freedom, and how walking is becoming constrained in cities:

Walking is increasingly a sort of final democracy. The weight of what’s being [politically] imposed is very much anti-walking, and has to do with control of space, creating public areas you can’t walk in—which are completely covered by surveillance, policing, private spaces, gated communities, and unexplained entities at the edge of things. So walking around becomes actually difficult. But the walking process is the oldest natural form of movement. It puts you literally in touch with the earth and the weather around you and allows you to get into conversation with people as you move, which seldom happens in the other ways we move.

I was recently reading up on an access dispute near Uckfield, where the landowner was outraged at the idea that walkers’ access rights were ‘the law of the land’:

Where does this law come from? Because these so-called public footpaths in inverted commas were for the serfs to walk from A to B. They weren’t for the public. The public have never walked anywhere – they’ve had horses and cars and things. You don’t think the lord of the manor walked along a footpath do you? Course not. They were just for the serfs. Remember that prior to 1700 and something, nobody had any rights here anyway, they were all slaves… Why do people have to trespass on not just my land, but any private land? And what kind of people go rambling? Perverts.

Which makes a direct connection between the rights-of-access and more profound freedoms. There may be more urgent battles over rights and freedom than the one over English footpaths, but this small debate quickly reaches towards fundamental questions.

I arranged to go out for a walk with a friend on Sunday, and said we should go, whatever the weather. I was a little surprised that she didn’t cancel, considering how bleak the conditions were:

As Billy Connolly is often quoted as saying, there is no such thing as bad weather, only a bad choice of outfit. This was a good opportunity to test my waterproofs. And they mostly did OK, but my boots and gloves both took on water – something to fix before this year’s longer hikes.

The route was a familiar one, which I blogged about back in May 2017, visiting the abandoned village of Balsdean. Despite having visited the valley a few times, I managed to get turned around, and the familiar ‘This Way’ signs helped me find my bearings:

(Edit 22/2) – I also had to rely on my friend Sophie to put us onto the right track. If we’d gone the way I suggested, we’d have ended up in Rottingdean.

There were not a lot of people about, unsurprisingly, but it was interesting seeing the Downs in very different weather to what I’m used to.

I didn’t take a lot of photos, for fear of my phone getting waterlogged.

The ruined farm buildings near Balsdean looked particularly menacing, the floor covered in damp sheep’s wool:

When I was running, I used to love running on wet days. It’s easy to go out when it’s sunny, but it takes determination to go out on unpleasant days. I was glad we went out. As we returned to Brighton, the skies were beginning to clear. We found our way to a pub and rested in the warm bar.

Every day I have to walk my Fitbit 10,000 steps, almost 5 miles. It nags me when I put it on, buzzing and telling me to get moving. A long walk the day before does not matter. Every morning the counter goes back to zero.

It’s cheaper than a dog – a one-off payment, rather than needing to buy food for it every day. And no little plastic bags.

I need to remove the Fitbit for typing, since that gathers steps; as does applauding; and every gear change in my car. The problem with this is that I miss the activity prompt, telling me when I’ve spent too long at my desk.

The modern world is obsessed by counting and interruptions. Sometimes we’re interrupted by notifications about counting.

The research says this won’t help me get fit, that the benefit from 10,000 steps could be gained from shorter but brisker walks. But the main thing is getting me moving, eliminating those sluggish days where I don’t leave the house and barely move. I know it is good for me to keep moving.

It’s another example of consumerism – what’s wrong with the advice to go for a walk for an hour a day? Why does this need a new piece of electronics?

A dog would be better. But for a dog I need a larger place to live, and more green nearby. So for now, it has to be the Fitbit. A dog would be better, but this will have to do.