The C2C Trail, Part 2: The Art of Solo WanderLost

My lonesome yell is a record scratch in these peaceful, sheep-dotted hills that stretch in every direction as far as the eye can see. Spindly-legged lambs and their munching mothers pause and calmly turn in my direction.

“Son of a b –––!!” I shout at the sweet, puffy clouds that float overhead in an otherwise blue sky. “What the actual f –––?!”

It’s the first time I’ve spoken since the innkeeper in Shap cheerfully wished me good luck a few hours ago, and my voice is rough like sandpaper. I drop my heavy backpack on the ground and rub patience back into my eyebrows.

It’s just me out here. Me and the sheep, who have already returned to their meal of grass and bluebells and buttercups. I sit down right there to rest my pounding feet and check my GPS again.

The trail today winds through farmers' fields, which means tricky navigating.

There are stiles (narrow ladders that allow you to climb over walls or sidle past gates) that can be difficult to spot even close up, and you have to make sure you’re going over the right one, which is harder than it sounds.

At many points on this trail, I find myself walking up to a stile, sighing in resignation that I have to set my hiking poles aside, unlock my phone, open my GPS, wait until it has updated my location, and zoom all the way in to make sure this stile is correct… only to be happy I have, because the stile I’m standing in front of isn’t the right one – the stile I need to cross, for example, might be 37m north and almost invisibly built into the stone.

So what? You may think. Surely, 37m doesn’t make much of a difference if they go over the same wall. That’s what I thought too, before learning the hard way that 37m of difference means you’re now on a trail going in a slightly different direction and can quickly find yourself off course. Or worse, on the wrong side of a 7-foot high stone wall that’s proved impregnable for desperate humans since 996 AD.

Back to my current conundrum - that is exactly what has happened to me.

About 1km ago, I impatiently checked the map for the umpteenth time, which showed me that for the next kilometre, my trail was simply straight, following the wall to my right. So I lazily, overconfidently, pocketed my phone and strode onward.

What I failed to notice – what I would have seen if I had zoomed in all the way and scientifically analyzed every inch of this seemingly straight line – was a small zag about 100m into the stretch. Just a tiny, almost imperceivable pen-flick of a movement to the south, before it straightens back out.

That was a stile set in a wall that I was supposed to cross 900m ago. And now I’m in the corner of a high-walled field with nowhere to go but east 900m where I had come from, then over the wall as I was supposed to, and then west 900m, adding almost 2km (around 30 minutes of walking) to my day. What an idiot.

What makes it an even harder pill to swallow are my feet, which are in a state of shock that no matter how much pain they send me, I insist on continuing to sabotage them, and the realization that where I will end up in nearly 2km is actually only about 5m away from where I’m currently sitting, on the other side of this massive, cursed wall.

However, what makes the situation feel slightly better is that I have been following a clear path of flattened grass this whole time, which means that at least I’m not the only person who has found themselves in this corner and cursed at the heavens.

There is something deeply comical about being in this situation by yourself. When I started walking on Day 1, I felt abundantly free to do as I wished, but equally jealous of people who had a partner to walk with, or a group of friends to share such beautiful sights, problem-solve, boost morale, and pass the time together.

Alone, if you end up off the trail, there’s no one to blame but yourself. There’s also no one around who has a better attitude than you in that moment; no one to offer you a hand back to your feet, brush you off, and cheerfully lead the way 900m back in the wrong direction. There’s no one to suggest stopping for lunch, no one to laugh with, and no one to share a moment of awe.

A few days into this journey, when I had relaxed a bit and wasn’t so hyper-vigilant, I had a fleeting thought that doing this journey reminded me a bit of running my business, where I am the CEO, accountant, HR department, data entry clerk, and skilled professional all rolled into one. There are downsides, but also upsides.

One of the upsides I discovered on the trail is that I more easily got myself through hardship in a way I don’t in the company of others. 

As I walked, I often recognized how, if S. was there, I may have maintained a stormy mood in bad weather or after a navigational bumble. I would have been tempted to use his dogged determination as a crutch, and point to his long strides and quick pace as part of the reason for my ongoing suffering. Obviously, I couldn’t rely on these tactics alone, because I was setting my own pace and making my own blunders. For the first time in my life, I recognized this behaviour in myself in an objective, rather than self-judgemental, way. Just a curiosity to put on a shelf and observe, more than anything else.

My emotions also felt more like temporary weather systems than lingering reflections of reality. I learned that you can scream at the sky or complain at length to an audience of expressionless sheep, but at the end of the day, once you’re finished being frustrated, you just have to… stand back up. Put your pack on. Start walking. Be your own source of light when you’re in an internally dark place. The moor doesn’t care about you any more than the rain. My moments of frustration often ended in a crazed giggle. What is there left to do, but laugh?

Another upside is that you meet yourself. You learn how you reason through things. You learn how you approach challenges, new social situations, and moments of confusion.

In times when you would have allowed or asked someone else to step up and figure something out, you just have to do it. And no matter how lowly you think of your capability to face discomfort or adversity right now from the comfort of your home, you find yourself doing just that when you travel. It’s quite refreshing.

Later that day, after staggering through glorious field after glorious field, I stumbled across a welcome sign for Sunbiggin Farm, which was my planned destination. When I found the place online a few months before, the website offered a flat patch of grass for £10 to pitch a tent, and some kind of kitchen situation. And here it was at last – a beautiful whitewashed house, a cobblestoned yard, a barn, a pasture filled with bouncing lambs, and a further pasture that housed a herd of beautiful, athletic-looking horses.

However, the place was completely vacant. I wandered around (a painful endeavour) for a while, trying to spot evidence of humanity, but nothing. So I had a snack and sat at a picnic table on the property for a while. Still no one showed themselves. I wandered around again, and this time spotted a small sign that offered a phone number for someone named Andrew.

I have to be clear – if S. had been there, he would have immediately investigated the property, announced there was no one there, and discovered the sign. He would have called Andrew without hesitation while I lay groaning in the grass. S. just has more get-up-and-go energy than me. So, I have to admit that it took me a lot longer to get to the stage of communication than S. would have.

Maybe if I wait another few minutes, Andrew will show up and I don’t have to call him, I thought. A few minutes later, I took out my phone and gazed at it. A few minutes after that, I had to pee. When there were enough reasons to call Andrew, I finally did.

Andrew answered the phone right away, and was excited to hear from me. He apologized for “not receiving me in the proper manner”, his accent as broad and charming as the hills surrounding his home. “I’m out at present,” he said, “But pitch up in Tommy’s Garth round back of the house. I just mowed it this morning, in fact.” He directed me to the common room, where tea, snacks, a flushing toilet, and laundry machines were available. “There’s an honesty box in the corner near the kettle,” he explained. “Just pop a few quid in there.”

Tommy’s Garth was a small stretch of grass, fenced to keep the sheep out. The common room was a cozy, cluttered, well-used place where I gratefully did my laundry (nothing had been washed for eight days) and stretched out on the bench at the table, sipping a well-deserved cup of tea.

I met Andrew a couple of hours later, and we talked over the fence about the demise of fox hunting in Britain, his horses (which were thoroughbreds trained for racing and jumping), and the joys and woes of walking. His sheep got the zoomies as the sun began to set and I watched them gallop in and out of sight. 

By the time the sun was fading over the horizon, my earlier navigational blunder felt like a thing of the distant past, and even the pain in my feet felt unimportant. This is the way of solo walking; riding the waves of elation and distress, beauty and pain, calm and confusion, confidence and embarrassment, humour and frustration, presence and overthinking, as they crash onto your beach and recede, hour after hour.

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