The C2C Trail, Part 3: The Human Luggage Chapter

Adventures like walking the C2C never truly go to plan. 

When the unexpected strikes, you can find yourself doing some quick pivoting, stoical adapting, solitary weeping, or just putting up with plain, melancholy suffering. I’ve decided these moments arrive in two distinct flavours, the first being what I’ll fondly call the, “this has gone surprisingly awry!” flavour (more on that in the next installment).

The second variety is not as desirable to show off as the first (which by nature, has the makings of a good yarn). No, indeed. The second not-going-to-plan flavour is what I have come to call the, “I’m pretty sure I’m just a big failure” flavour. 

This is the kind of unexpected moment that halts you in your tracks (in my case, literally), feels like a substantial blow to your ego, or leaves you feeling ashamed and embarrassed. Less a fun adventure tale, and more an event that makes you carefully reconstruct your story to leave that part out. 

Maybe it’s because you feel like you didn’t handle yourself very well, or you acted in a way that feels opposite from your usual character, or the way you sell yourself to both others and yourself. Maybe it’s because you made a big mistake or felt like you acted weak in the face of a challenge. Regardless of why you want to strike it off the record, it’s a difficult moment to process.

After some waffling, I’ve decided to talk about my “I’m pretty sure I’m just a big failure” event. I realized I can’t tell my whole story without it, despite wanting to, to some extent. It marked a big turning point in my journey – yes, in the literal sense, but even more in the internal one.

The Trials and Woes of Brittany the Blister

If you’ve been following along, you’re probably aware by this point that my blisters stole the show of this walk. So much so that my trail friend Julie dubbed me “Brittany the Blister”, a title I bore honourably for the rest of the journey. You know, like Alexander the Great. Or Vlad the Impaler.

Honestly, at the outset of this journey, I was far more concerned about my surgically-repaired knee, which I chose to wrap in a cheap drugstore brace and hope for the best. The knee was absolutely fine. But the blisters, I did not see coming.

It didn’t take long for me to realize my feet were going to be a problem. By the end of Day 3, as I descended gingerly into quaint Grasmere, my feet were throbbing in a general sense – pulverized by a combination of the unusual amount of weight on my back and the many miles up and down steep gradients. 

By Day 5, as I was leaving the Lake District and skirting along Haweswater on my way to Shap in a light drizzle, I could feel the telltale signs of blister formation.

And of course, by the time I reached Sunbiggin Farm on Day 6, it was pretty bad. When I removed my socks, I was greeted by open, angry, infected wounds at the base of, and between, my toes. I had bandaids, k-tape, and some antiseptic cream, but I quickly realized that no bandaid I had was big enough to cover the blisters that were forming.

So the following morning, war-hero style, I decided to sacrifice a cotton shirt I was going to discard anyway, cutting rough strips off with my camping knife. I cleaned my feet as best I could, dabbed on some ointment, wrapped the shirt strips around the worst parts, taped it all up with k-tape, took some extra strength Tylenol, and got on with it.

It was another stunning, sunny day in the Yorkshire Dales.

I have precious few photos from that stretch, because the only thing more painful than walking was pausing. The landscape featured low, sweeping hills carpeted in dusty purple heather and emerald green grass. The mayday trees and wildflowers were in full bloom, and the air smelled like a garden from beginning to end. It was incredibly peaceful, like the day could drift on forever. I imagined Alice sitting under a nearby tree before stumbling into Wonderland. There was a Roman viaduct, and more sweet lambs, and cheerful birdsong.

I still shake my head at the paradox that existed between the loveliness and calm that surrounded me and the state I was in. I tried to remind myself that pain is temporary, and it’s everything else you remember later – and I was right. It’s strange now to reconcile these positive memories with the fact that I was counting steps in French to keep myself distracted and marching through exquisite pain. 

Let’s see where I’ll be in a hundred steps, I told myself in an overbright, sing-songy voice, like a mother trying to cajole her resentful toddler back to the car. I remember occasionally thinking, I cannot walk like this, while also dimly recognizing that statement couldn’t possibly be true, because I was still walking.

My destination that day was a church that had been converted into a hostel in the market town of Kirkby Stephen, where I ran into a woman named Alice I had met in Patterdale a handful of days earlier (in fact, she could have passed for Alice in Wonderland, if Alice had a Dutch accent). She invited me to dinner with three Americans that she had become close with on the trail, and over beer and lasagna, I confessed to them that I wasn’t sure I could keep walking with my feet in this state. They were in their 60s and 70s, and had done many long walks in their lives. Collectively, they urged me to get a ride to the next destination, a tiny village called Keld.

I was surprised how resistant I was to this idea. Up until that moment, I didn’t realize how rigid my thinking was surrounding what was “successful” and “unsuccessful” on this journey. Simply having assumed I would walk every inch of the trail, I hadn’t given a thought to what it meant not to. I was so uncomfortable with the suggestion that I silently decided that I would put my feet up that night, sleep, recover, and find strength the next morning. I would count to a hundred in Spanish, over and over again, all the next day if I had to. If I put my mind to it, it would be done.

The next morning, it was worse.

I woke up to my right foot tingling in a nervy way. When I dared to expose it to the light, I saw that it was swollen and red. It was hot to the touch – so, definitely infected. I had to face the fact that I was walking nowhere that day.

Before confronting the stinging, disappointing feeling of failure, I had to face a significant logistical complication. Getting a ride to a place like Keld wasn’t so easy. My body had chosen to break down on a stretch I couldn’t traverse by train or bus. There was a taxi service available, but it turned out to be one man who owned a taxi, and the barman the night before had warned me it would cost around £100 to get to Keld through the hilly landscape.

Alice had a genius idea – most people hike the trail with daypacks, she pointed out, hiring a service called Sherpa to carry their luggage from inn to inn. Her thought was that maybe the driver would have room in his van to take me to Keld, which was everyone’s next destination.

And that’s how I met Chris. And became human luggage.

Chris arrived at 8:45am the next morning to collect the luggage, and also, to his considerable surprise, me. But he took it in good stride. I expressed that I was happy to see him, but also a little disappointed he was this early, because I had been hoping to hobble depressingly to the pharmacy at 9am to pick up some much-needed medical supplies. He offered to drive me to the pharmacy and suggested I just knock on the window to see if they would let me in.

I thought that was a novel idea, and there was certainly no pharmacy in Keld, so I convinced the pharmacist to let me in and loaded up on all kinds of blister pads, drug concoctions, and creams. I had a few moments of silence in the van while Chris sorted out his planned drop-off points for the day to convince myself that I had messed up this walk, and that I could never truly claim I walked The Coast to Coast trail now.

But it turns out I was lucky to have a driver like him. He brightened when he learned I was from Canada – he was a Yorkshire man, but had spent a year as a firefighter in Toronto, and his son now lived in Whistler, BC. He was doing the Sherpa job in his semi-retirement as a way to pay for he and his wife’s annual trips to BC. We took a short detour to drive past his adorable house, an old stone cottage that looked like it would be exceedingly cozy on a rainy day.

He told me about the array of dialects in the area, some of which he admitted he struggled to understand, and taught me some of the nuances of his own Geordie dialect. He shared his knowledge of Viking history that still lives on in the names of locations in the area – Uldale, Outhgill, Aisgill, Skelsmergh, Scalthwaiterigg. We drove up and down foggy hills, along threateningly windy roads that hugged the edge of cliffs, stopping to drop off and pick up luggage in villages and hamlets I never would have seen had I walked.

We were in James Herriot territory now. I recalled reading my mom’s 1960s edition of All Things Bright and Beautiful as a child, and could suddenly understand the trials, tribulations, and glory of being a veterinarian in a clapped-out 1938 Austin Seven, trundling along these narrow, hair-brained roads to far-flung properties in the middle of the night.

It was a very good conversation, and a needed balm for my sharp sense of disappointment in myself. Chris dropped me off at a tea shop in Keld, which consisted of a handful of homes and a couple of inns, to wait until 1pm when I could reasonably check into my room. I ordered a pot of tea and a pastry, and sat outside under the shifting clouds, thinking and feeling.

What is real is up to me.

I’m very glad those blisters happened. I’ll probably write more about them as I contemplate them more. But for now, suffice it to say that, thanks to them, I was somewhat forced to reframe my concept of success in a very short period of time.

Over tea, I felt a rush of gratitude wash over me. First, for Chris, who is a true reflection of the people of Yorkshire, so friendly and quick to not only help me out in a pragmatic way, but to be generous with his kindness, genuine interest, humour, and mutual enjoyment of the time we spent together. He reminded me of my fellow Canadians, and I warmly embraced the simple happiness of our connection.

Secondly, I felt gratitude for the magic of being whisked from one place to another with such speed, and so little effort. After 7 straight days of trudging, most of it in considerable discomfort, flying along these haphazard roads felt like the pinnacle of luxury. I stretched out my legs. I sipped my coffee. I let the motor do the work. It felt like flying.

And finally, a more general gratitude for just being here. For being the kind of person who wants to be, and is, here. For synchronicity, and happenstance, and all the other delicious, decadent, inexpressible delights that make a journey like this exactly, exactly the way it is meant to be, no matter what has happened yesterday and whatever is waiting tomorrow.

I felt a huge sense of release with all of that gratitude welling up inside me. After all the yoga classes, meditation sessions, and journal reflections I’ve done throughout my adult life, this was a moment I’ll always remember as the one where I finally figured out what it meant to release that which I cannot control, and to invite in a strangely mischievous, confident understanding of what I can. And perhaps a deeper recognition of what is worth controlling, and what is ok to send back to the universe; to do what it wishes with me.

I’ll be just fine, I thought. 

And I am.

I will be back on July 12 with my next installment of this journey, Part 4. What could it possibly be about? You’ll just have to wait and see.

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