Walking with Plato (18 page)

For me, JoGLE contained precisely the right amount of tension between past achievement and future accomplishment. On any given day, I could look back with satisfaction on the miles I had already covered and the difficulties I had already overcome. And, at the same time, I could look forward with eager anticipation to the miles I had yet to cover and the difficulties I had yet to overcome.

For this brief period of my life, I had committed myself wholeheartedly to a single, freely chosen goal: that of walking from John o’Groats to Land’s End. And each day gave me the opportunity to progress towards that goal.

In a sense, JoGLE had become, for me, a taste of what life
could
be and what life
ought
to be. It had provided me with an escape – or, at least, a respite – from a sense of meaninglessness, which for years had cast a shadow over my life.

It began like this.

In my early to mid-thirties, I entered a new and unpleasant phase of life, which I wrongly assumed would be a passing one.

Each night, as I lay in bed waiting for sleep, with the day’s business and the day’s pleasures behind me, I would fall prey to a nagging sense of unease. I couldn’t identify any cause. I had no specific worries. I just felt vaguely depressed and dissatisfied. Even a little afraid.

The next morning, and all through the following afternoon and evening, I would feel perfectly normal again. But come night-time, the unease, the depression, and the anxiety would return.

At one point in
Man’s Search for Meaning
, Viktor Frankl refers to a psychological condition he calls ‘Sunday neurosis’: a form of depression that affects people when the busyness of the week subsides and their inner emptiness surfaces.

Looking back, I would say that I was suffering from something very much like that. But at the time I had very little insight into the problem. I knew that when I had nothing to occupy my thoughts I felt sad. But I didn’t understand why.

All of this would have been of little account, and hardly worth mentioning, except for the fact that, contrary to expectations, the feeling never entirely left me.

There were times, for example when I took a break from teaching to study philosophy, or when I first achieved some small successes as a writer, when I thought it had gone for good. But once the novelty of a new project or a new interest had worn off, the void would reopen – and each time a little wider than before.

By the time, I set off on JoGLE, at the age of forty-nine, the sense of meaninglessness and unease had become chronic. The void had become a more or less permanent feature of my inner life, and I had begun to doubt whether anything could fill it.

But strangely and wonderfully, the simple act of walking through the countryside every day, and slowly making progress towards Land’s End, brought back long-unaccustomed feelings of cheerfulness and contentment.

We set off from Clove Lodge, the next morning, on a fourteen-mile hike from Baldersdale to the village of
Keld
. This began with a three-mile stretch across Cotherstone Moor: an extensive area of peat bog covered with low woody shrubs and tough grasses.

At the southern edge of Cotherstone Moor, the Pennine Way crosses the A69, and shortly afterwards crosses the River Greta by means of God’s Bridge, Britain’s finest natural limestone bridge.

It was a sunny, mildly breezy day, and Wendy I were tempted by the weather, and by the picturesque beauty of the rocky riverbank and the surrounding meadows, to stop and rest. This gave us ample time to admire the structure of the bridge, which, with its huge, neatly laid, horizontal slabs, looks for all the world as though it really has been constructed by divine hands.

From God’s Bridge, the path heads across Wytham Moor, Bowes Moor, and Sleightholme Moor to the remote Tan Hill Inn, the highest inn in the British Isles.

The moors here are boggy, criss-crossed by streams and covered in heather. Progress across them is often achingly slow because the track frequently vanishes into the heather, and because the ground is so boggy that there’s a constant risk of sinking waist-deep – or worse – into the mire.

Wendy and I had walked this section of the Pennine Way once before during a particularly wet summer, and had had a very bad – not to say scary – time of it. Consequently, I had been dreading this crossing for days. However, thanks to the unusually dry summer, this time around we crossed it quickly and easily.

I don’t suppose there has ever been, in the fifty-year history of the Pennine Way, a hiker who has walked straight on past the Tan Hill Inn. Nobody, surely, could resist the lure of beer, food, and shelter in such a wild, windswept, and lonely location.

Wendy and I stepped inside for a pint of beer and a packet of crisps, and then stayed on for a second pint of beer and an additional packet of crisps. Then, feeling slightly tipsy, and disinclined to exert ourselves any more than was absolutely necessary, we exercised our prerogative as End to Enders and abandoned the Pennine Way to follow a small road to our campsite at Keld, four miles away.

Keld is a pretty little village, nestled among some modest hills in the Yorkshire Dales, and has the distinction of being the crossing point of the Pennine Way and the Coast to Coast Walk.

Sadly, we timed our arrival there to coincide with a plague of midges of biblical proportions. So we were not sorry, the following morning, to pack up our tent and move on.

The eleven-mile hike from Keld to the small market town of
Hawes
began with a tiring section along the steep rock-strewn valley of the River Keld.

Here, a combination of fatigue and inattention caused me to take a slip on some wet rocks. In the resulting fall, the screen of our tablet computer, our main navigational tool, was cracked. Fortunately, it still worked, and, thanks to Wendy’s judicious application of duct tape, it lasted us all the way to Land’s End.

After stopping for coffee at the village of Thwaite, we set off across hilly moorland, then up and over Great Shunner Fell, one of the highest points on the Pennine Way, then through the tiny hamlet of Hardraw, and finally through meadows and pastures to our campsite, just outside Hawes.

Hawes is the highest market town in England. It’s situated at the western end of the Wensleydale valley, and surrounded on all sides by moorland fells. It’s a pretty little place with a handsome main street of stone-built houses, and with some nice little shops and cafés and inns.

We arrived during a spell of beautiful warm weather, and made the most of it by taking a rest day there, which we spent doing laundry, mooching around the shops, enjoying cream teas, and lazing around on the grass beside our tent. It was good.

Walking JoGLE had given me a new sense of purpose in life, and this had led to my feeling uncharacteristically cheerful and contented. Sceptically minded readers might object that walking from Land’s End to John o’Groats isn’t, in the great scheme of things, much of a purpose. Not like seeking a cure for cancer, or writing a symphony, or stamping out racism, or snatching sinners from the jaws of Hell, or something of that sort.

But that’s not really the point. As far as happiness and flourishing are concerned, the purpose to which an individual commits need not be of a kind that counts for much
in the great scheme of things
. It need only be freely chosen and replete with personal meaning. It can be a great or a small enterprise; a public or a private one; a long-term or a short-term one.

In
Man’s Search for Meaning
, Viktor Frankl writes:

The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.

And for me, at that time, the simple act of walking a thousand-plus miles from John o’Groats to Land’s End had become meaningful. Not in a grand and cosmic sense. Not ‘in the great scheme of things’. But meaningful to
me
.

The next section of the Pennine Way, from Hawes
to
Horton in Ribblesdale
, was a fifteen-mile journey across rough pastureland and lonely moors. It was fairly easy walking, and included some long, easy-to-navigate stretches along old drove roads and old Roman roads.

It was cold when we arrived, and looked like it was about to rain. So we decided that, rather than cooking and eating dinner alfresco, we would treat ourselves to a pub meal and a pint or two of beer.

There are two pubs in Horton in Ribblesdale: The Crown and the Golden Lion. We strolled first to The Crown where we were greeted with a dazzling array of notices, printed on A4 paper, informing guests how best to conduct themselves with a view to the mutual convenience and satisfaction of all parties:

NO MUDDY BOOTS

NO DOGS

DO NOT SIT AROUND THE FIRE

DO NOT DRY YOUR COAT NEAR THE FIRE

NO BACKPACKS.

I can’t be sure, but I think there may have also been a notice saying something along the lines of: ‘WHY DON’T YOU WALKERS TAKE YOUR FILTHY BOOTS, SMELLY DOGS AND DIRTY GREAT BACKPACKS AND FECK OFF OUT OF HERE?’

In any case, we did feck off out of there, and had a gigantic and delicious Yorkshire pudding with roast beef, peas, and gravy at the slightly down-at-heel but perfectly welcoming Golden Lion.