Baggage
I went on another training walk yesterday, from Blackburn to my mother’s in Bolton, across the moors. It hurt. More weight in my pack, more distance.
If you say you’re doing a long walk, people assume you’re some uber-fit yompster who eats hills for breakfast, probably while whistling irritatingly. But it’s 9 years since I did a properly long walk, and then I lost the sensation in four toes, and my feet hurt for two years afterwards. My feet, knees and ankles aren’t great now, and it wouldn’t hurt to lose 20kg or so. The first three miles were comfortable, and the last fifteen hurt every step of the way.
But these are problems I choose, and many people don’t get to choose their problems. I walked out through Blackburn, one of the crumbling mill towns north of Manchester, like my home town of Bolton. I went over to look at a ghost sign for a District Nurses Home, and found that it is now a homeless hostel; a man died there last month. I passed a food bank, now just normal part of the fabric: pharmacy, school, community centre, food bank, pub, takeaway.
On the way into Witton Park, I passed a guy coming the other way with a backpack, and I wondered, whether he’d just tucked himself away in there for the night. It’s where I’d choose. When I worked at Bethany, a homeless charity in Edinburgh, I did “security” for their sleepout a few times, and I remember talking to a woman who had slept rough and was now a nurse, about the difficulty of finding somewhere.
“You need to tuck yourself away. It’s bad enough sleeping out without someone waking you up at three in the morning by pissing on you because they think it’s funny.”
Real problems. That guy was probably just going to work, though.
The field on my old map was now a building site for homes, for those who can. The path was diverted round it, to the farm behind, and then on past a wood where people shot air rifles. They didn’t stop as I passed, following the path under the motorway, to where I was warned about archery. I rather felt they should be warning the archers about walkers.
A long walk is an indulgence. It’s not cheap, and the money could better be spent elsewhere. I can tell myself that I need to do it for my mental health, and there’s truth in that, but homeless people have mental health issues aplenty. My walk will help Freegle, and Freegle helps people in homeless shelters (there was an example just a few days ago), but…really?
I read The Salt Path recently, a beautiful and heartbreaking book. Raynor Winn and her partner Moth lose their home, Moth is terminally ill, and they walk the South West Coastal Path, because…what else are they to do? Walking is a socially acceptable way of being homeless, you see.
I walk because I choose to, and because I can. She walked because she had to. She now lives on the path, and I will probably walk past her house; should I try to say hello? But everybody hates a tourist. Buy her book if you can.
This walk, I am asking people to donate to Freegle. I struggle with that. It’s not a bad cause, but there are better. It’s not either/or, of course.
I reached home safely. Not everyone does, even if they have a home.
