To the Ends of the Earth

“Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends” - Lord Byron.

Tiny grains of dirt flick up as my boot stamps against the hillside. There’s a damp patch spreading across the small of my back where my rucksack keeps the sweat contained. My breathing is becoming slightly laboured as my ribcage vibrates to the beat of my heart. I feel fantastic in the cool and bright air - despite it being frustratingly too cold for just a t-shirt and my exertions making it too hot for my fleece. For November it is unseasonably dry, for our luck the weather is shockingly fine.

We slither, single file up the side of Dale Head, our footsteps following the zig-zag originally laid out by miners six hundred years ago. I don’t remember it being this steep when I came this way three years ago. My memory increasingly plays tricks on me, things are rarely quite as how I recollect. The seven of us are a little spread out and I can picture how we must look from one of the other ridges, or from down in the valley. Seven perfectly black silhouettes against the smoulderingly grey sky, each delicately perched on the very tip of the horizon, on the edge of the world.

It feels great to be out of the city, out in the clean Cumbrian air high above the carbon monoxide and the stench of people rammed together. Away from the claustrophobia of endless roads of stationary traffic, away from the smothering, incessant noise of everyday life. Here there is just us and the mountain, the relationship between man and nature is pure. Well, the mountain, us and a couple of dozen Geordies.

I love the solitude you can sometimes find in the Lake District, but it’s harder to do at this time of the year. In the summer I’ve disappeared over the fells and only seen a couple of people in eight or nine hours of walking, but in the Autumn there is a limited amount of daylight and so there’s a greater concentration of walkers on the routes which can be completed in the available timeframe. This particular hike, up over Cat Bells, along Maiden Moor and onwards over High Spy is one of the more popular ones. Even Wainwright, not one normally given to hyperbole, describes the views from Cat Bells as “ravishing”.

There’s a long tradition of associating walking with writing. The Romantics, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, would think nothing of walking forty miles a day and relaxing in the evening over a case of wine or an opium pipe. Coleridge and Wordsworth would walk between each other’s homes in Somerset and the Lakes respectively. Wordsworth walked to Paris to celebrate Bastille Day, Keats walked to the Alps to get some mountain air.

Walking slows you down. It empties the mind and you become locked in to the rhythm of striding out. Your sense take in the world with a new keenness. There’s a clarity of awareness as all the trivia dissolves away back into the regular life tied to a desk and a computer and, instead, your thoughts can soar.

Robert Louis Stevenson was a young man in turmoil. Torn between his desire to write and his family’s expectation of a more respectable trade he took to his heels. He and his long suffering donkey walked for twelve days solid through the Cevennes region in France and along the way he strengthened his resolve to live by his pen.

Peter Ackroyd claims to walk for at least two hours a day around London. He lets the city wash over him and the words come together. Whole pages will form in his head ready to be written down, perfectly formed at birth.

Graham Greene, struggling with writer’s block after a series of early mediocre novels, decided he needed a challenge. Greene became one of the first white men to walk through inland Liberia. One of the first modern, independent African states and virtually untouched by western colonialism the dangers of this expedition were many. But Greene, who had never done anything like this before, left his wife and children in rural England and along with his young cousin, Barbara, headed into the wilderness. The pressure each day of to reach the next remote village combined with the climate, inadequate supplies and outdated equipment even for the 1930s all made the physical exertion immense. On his eventual return to England he, almost magically, metamorphosed into a far superior writer and embarked on a run of novels which include some of the finest ever written. It was as though walking through that uncharted landscape, alone with his thoughts, had removed all his mental inhibitions and had awoken the genius within.

They all march out of history. Left, right. Left, write.

Whilst I have no intention of comparing myself to such illustrious company I do find a similar need to get some miles under my boots in times of difficulty. I pace around the house incessantly whilst trying to write. Occasionally I can only manage a couple of sentences before I’m up on my feet, darting down the stairs, circling the lounge, pointlessly going into the kitchen or the bedroom, but it’s not a very big house and it doesn’t take long for me to need more than it can offer. So I hit the road. I go out into the streets of the city, walking in ever widening circles, along familiar and unrecognisable streets, sometimes with a plan, sometimes just ambling. Sometimes I look up and find myself outside a favourite museum or sometimes I am suddenly, completely lost. I walk absorbed by the characters speaking in my head.

But London is too full of distractions, it doesn’t have the purity of the countryside. Here high amongst the clouds there is just the joking, the nonsensical ramblings, the bickering of friends, and the sweet lilt of people from Gateshead. At the same time there is an eternal silence.
At the top of Dale Head I look back into Borrowdale. From this angle the valley is virtually uninhabited, save for a couple of cottages, the farm at Little Town and the tiny white church hidden amongst the trees. The ridge we have just tramped along dominates the entire Eastern view, its black scree is ominous in the encroaching afternoon mist.

Someone recently suggested that the next time I find myself atop a mountain I try to picture the valley full of water. I shut my eyes for a second and when I open them water laps at the hillside just a few feet below my boots. The tarn and gills flood out to swamp the land in murky rain water. Nothing offers resistance to the surge. I can see how the tide has ebbed away at the rock and carved the horseshoe shape out of the mountains, how the drama of the landscape has unfolded. In my mind’s eye I leap off the cliffside and dive down into the cold water. The chill bites at my bone marrow, but, no, this is a metaphor too far and all my amused imagination can see is soggy sheep struggling with the tide. I’m pulled, gasping for air, back to the surface by laughter as the camera records reality.

I had planned to take us further on, over Robinson, but we decide to drop down off Hindscarth instead. It’s a steeper descent, but we’re running out time. There’s a real need to be off the hill before it gets dark and in Keswick there’s beer to be drunk. It always tastes better when you’ve earned it and whilst the ale flows freely aching legs are not hollow ones. We persevere against our weariness, fool around, reminisce, ridicule each other’s foibles and with each pint I grow increasingly nostalgic. The drunken part of me wants every day to be like this; out on the hills and then down the pub, but it cannot last.

The next afternoon I drive the length of the country back to London, depositing people at various locations on my way. As I drive the tiredness kicks in. We start boisterous and chatty, but the voices get progressively quieter and fewer and the milometer ticks over again and again, a never-ending beat of haste. We drive through the sunshine, through the unexpected fog and through the night until, eventually, there is just me trundling through south London, alone. The inside of the car is lit softly by the glowing dashboard. The occasional glare of passing headlights serve to illuminate my hands tightly gripping, as though welded to, the steering wheel. My eyelids are locked open by exhaustion and my vision is bombarded by endless rows of red brake lights. The Artic Monkeys are blaring out tales of Sheffield through the speakers, but all that I can think of is that beautiful, narrow ridge across the sky. Alex Turner may be singing, but all I can hear is a line from a different song repeating again and again long into the night.