chapter 6 public footpaths

found in the trash

We spend some beautiful days in the Lake district, during the days cycling around and at nights lying in front of the fireplace reading books accompanied by the cats. One day we visited the buddhist temple our driver had told us of, it was my first temple to visit. I was a little disappointed for it´s clean, modern look, but what do I know? The people we talked to seemed very nice. At the café we just sat down and drank tea some other people had left behind and when the waitress came she gave us more tea without charging. We went there by bike. Cycling in the lake district is like this: up and down hill, around pastures seeing millions of sheep, small stone houses, and trees about to turn green. Up and down, up was hard work (for me at least) and cruising down for what seemed minutes long an absolute pleasure, and up again, good exercise. Looking at the hobbit-land, trying to keep left because unconsciously we kept driving right all the time and because of the stone walls the curves were quite dangerous, although there wasn´t much traffic. We went up again, until we saw the lighthouse (is there anything more beautiful than lighthouses?) and the water of the Irish see (or rather sand, as it was low tide) from the top of the hill close to Ulverston.

Unfortunately the weather kept being not so nice, but at least it didn´t actually rain much, it just kept grey and fresh.. we went to the “beach” to take a nap, it was one of the least beautiful beaches I have seen and it was cold to sleep. But we enjoyed it despite. As a kid I always wanted to see quicksand, now I did, it looks just like wet sand. On the way home we tried every dumpster of Ulverston but there was nothing, nothing thrown away and lot of bins locked. We decided to spend some money and bought wine for dinner, (you have to be 25 years old to buy wine!! what? seriously? luckily we had our IDs with us). We ate pasta with tons of the wild garlic that was growing all over the forests. 🙂

One day we decided to go trekking for some days because being lazy and sleeping long, we could do at home, too. We were super lucky as the next morning was the only sunny day of the week.  Sunny mornings make us happy. we started in Ambleside where my friends aunt kindly dropped us off on her way to work, we didn´t have any plan except for a friend that recommended to go either to Langdale, or Coniston if we wanted bigger hills and nice views.

The sun was out, we were happily discovering the small port of Ambleside, eating some seagulled fish and chips, I stopped to buy a postcard for my mom who was turning 60 the next week, the postcard-seller, a man of about a hundred years while asking if the stamps were for overseas kept telling jokes about a girl who didn´t know Australia wasn´t europe as they speak english there. He told the joke to everyone, and was so happy to hear the other postcard I bought was going to Argentina. Now that´s far away isn´t it.

Walking barefoot around the lake we stuck out our thumbs. We had made a cardboard sign saying “Anywhr” (no space for e´s) and started hitching. After 5 minutes a car stopped. They were hiking instructors of our age going to Langdale to practise and get more qualified. Could a day ever be so perfect? The landscape is amazing, and the couple explained us everything. We started walking in a valley and after 30 min we already didn´t find ourselves on the map anymore. At least we had maps! The landscape is very different to the middle-european one as there are no trees on the hills. That makes a really picturesque effect. And it´s so nice to find empty open space. It was already afternoon and we were hoping to find somewhere to camp with wood to make a fire to warm us up at night. Because we didn´t bring food. Each of us thinking the other had the bag of lentils and other things to eat.. and the rest of the wine in their backpack! So we carried only a pan, hoping to find some stinging nettles or anything. It seemed to start raining, soon, but as we crossed a pass on the other side it was sunny still. We enjoyed the sun and the walking and talking, sometimes you have to move your feet to make your mind start working. After an hour or so the path we were following stopped in the middle of nowhere, our feet sank into black mud, hiding below the dry grass. After some orientationless walking with wet socks we came to a street and followed it. Another look at the map and we confirmed being right. Climbing the wrynose pass which was 25% gradient. Even at this altitude there were these old, dry stone walls, the dikes, everywhere, what labor must it have been to build them! At the top we needed a break. Lying on the dry grass in the late afternoon sun we instantly fell asleep. I woke up with my friend continuing to read the book we started to me. Soon we started walking again, trying to find the public footpath marked in our hiking map, which clearly didn´t exist! We gave up, following the road down to the valley instead, starting to think about where to pitch our tent. We tried several paths (flattened grass) going left, soaking our shoes each time, but they all turned out to be no paths and we didn´t want to walk left, crossing the hills completely without any landmarks. So we kept south. We came to a small river with some trees and a house.  It looked like an oasis. They had a sign saying they sold “free range eggs”. I don´t like eggs so much and also I´m trying to be vegan, but we started to get really hungry after half a days walking and being used to move little and eat a lot. So we knocked at the door. A man came out and told us in super angry tone that they barely had enough food for themselves.  Turning our heads down we were about to leave when he came out again and said that he had changed his mind, and sold us 6 eggs. We decided to walk a little further as long as there was light. If we kept close to the small river and the road we couldn´t get lost, also there were trees, that meant we could make fire. We came by some lonely standing houses, one of them being a school outdoor activity center. We asked if they would sell us some food, and the man in charge told us in his Scottish accent they weren´t allowed to. But then when we were discussing if we would search the bins, even if they could see us, he came back out again with some ham-mayonese sandwiches he gave us. People are so nice! Not a good country for vegans, though. We walked on, and after some time decided we had found the perfect place to camp.  It was a sheep pasture by the river with trees and stone walls and rabbits, it was some kind of stone wall semi-circle with 7 pine trees and lots of moss. We pitched the tent, I made fire. Evening mist rose, the sun disappeared, and slowly star after star came out.  We tried to dry our shoes and socks by the fire while lying in our sleeping bags and read the book. And burnt the socks.. We tried to keep the fire small so people in the valley wouldn´t worry. We ate eggs and stinging nettles and drank black tea. We fell asleep really early talking about the story in the book (the kiss of the spider woman, by M. Puig). And as always when I camp out I asked myself why I don´t do it more often. The next morning we awoke by the loudest woodpecker I had ever heard. The tree must have been hollow. We opened the door of the tent and saw sheep and lambs. 🙂  Stumbling outside we saw that it was all misty and wet, our shoes included. We made fire and breakfast, drank tea and ate one hard-boiled egg each. And kept going with the book. Then it started raining, and our mood dropped down, we went back to sleep. Outside the children from the outside education center thing went exploring, they didn´t even notice the rain. We woke up again and it had stopped raining, but it was still cloudy and pretty cold. We packed our stuff and started waking. We still had to find a way to go east, or left. “Public footpath” signs were everywhere but left. When we saw what looked like a path we took it, although it didn´t exist on our map. it let us up a hill, through a forest and down again.  I thought we were more or less going parallel to street except going all up and all down. I kept complaining, feeling like a child that doesn´t want to walk any further. Uphill again, no! Our feet and half of our legs were wet, the landscape looked exactly the same wherever you looked. I felt lost and super exhausted. Poor friend of mine who just kept listening and walking. According to the map there must have been a lake, it just couldn´t be we didn´t see it. We always hoped to see it from the next hilltop. We felt stupid, can´t we even read a map? We came across a waterfall and further down there was a wooden bridge which meant we couldn´t be in the middle of nowhere. Walking on, (I wanted to just sit down and cry) we spotted to men working to repair a stone wall up on a hill. We approached them to ask for the right way and walking up that hill to them made me feel I was using my very last forces. strength is psychological and I hate the cold. They told us, we had to go left and back north a bit (at leat we were right about the rough direction) and that it would have been difficult to cross the big hill (somewhere around “the old man of Coniston”) without any path, so better we went around it, but there was no way to go to the “town” without crossing a big hill. He indicated us the way, if we went down to the valley (we could see farm houses in the distance) there were a tarmac road which then led to a gravel road crossing the hill chain on a smaller hill, it was the longer, but easier way. When we made it through all the mud and the mist and the cold down to the valley we found it on the map, the same road we walked yesterday, just maybe a kilometer or two from where we started in the morning!  What lazy city kids we were! We found the gravel path it said 4, 5 miles to go to Coniston. Yes! That would be easily possible before nightfall. We made a break, resting and my friend started reading our book to me. The novel is about two prisoncell mates talking, taking care of each other and sharing the little food they have. It gave us strength, however stupid this may sound. We started ascending and after a few hundred meters we already were above the mist and humidity so that there was no sun, but sun behind a small layer of clouds. With new energy and taking about what we would cook and eat once we arrived home we climbed higher and higher. Half the way up we lay down on a mossy field (no humidity!) and fell asleep immediately, it was nice and warm and we could have slept the whole day. – “One more chapter, and we keep going, ok?”. Soon an old couple took us over, they were easily over 60 years old and walked by as if it was the easiest thing in the world. We talked to them and they kept eating dried fruit and chocolate in front of our eyes. We were starving but didn´t ask them because they felt pity of us and would have given us some for sure if they had enough. And after all we were 40 years younger. And it was our fault to not have food, by that time we started to think about it as a well deserved punishment and an important experience we could learn from. I don´t know how, but we made it to the top. I really came to my limits, physically, I couldn´t have walked one meter further uphill. There we took another nap. I was exhausted, but happy again. White sheep with black heads and black sheep with white heads waking about. We couldn´t really see far, because of the clouds, but from there it was just going down, we could see Coniston Water already. Must be a nice view when you have nice weather. The way down we were cheerful again, talking on and on about food and about how George Orwell describes hunger in “Down and out in London and Paris”. At about 6 in the evening we reached the parking from where hikers start to climb the Old Man of Coniston. It was just gravel, some parked cars and a puddle with a duck in it. We asked a man who was just starting his car how far it still was to go down to the town and he answered in german that we should jump on the car, he would take us. We went straight to the only supermarket and bought oat cookies, humus and apples and sat down on next bench to eat. It was the best food I have ever eaten in my life! The town of Coniston is really beautiful! We tried all dumpsters, but no luck 😦 Then we stuck out our thumbs and the first car stopped, taking us half the way back home, there again the first car that passed stopped, a butchers car, taking two vegans/vegetarians/freegans. Apparently hitchhiking works in England, but skipping not much. People in the Lake District are so nice! The butcher took us all the way to our aunt´s house although he wasn´t even headed there. Then we ate all we could and slept almost two days. 🙂 Coffee, food, bed, cats, book, wine and outside the rain.    – to be continued –

 

chapter 4 tea time

We woke up in the morning and walked around to discover the Runnymede eco-village. It is set in an abandoned campus the university is currently demolished by a private investor who wants to put expensive apartment houses, but as the terrain is determined to serve for education and not for profit, and has nice old buildings and a beautiful forest, the people occupied it. They have been trying to evict the camp five times so far, but came to an agreement to be let in peace if they retread in the forest for the time the buildings are being demolished. They built their homes, there are wells and fire places, gardens and even a temple, all integrated in the nature and widespread in the forest on the hill. Heathrow is not far, therefore many deep flying planes disturb the quietness. People didn´t even hear them anymore, but we startled every time. From up the hill you could see Windsor castle, the residence of the queen, she apparently wasn´t at home, because when she is the planes take different routes. The community was different from I had expected, there were no rules, no rituals, no hippie-chic-rainbow-people. May of them prefered to live on their own, hardly ever communicating. Some helped each other building houses, taking care of the babies, or cooking. It kept raining for the next three days, only for some hours the sun defeated the clouds. Time passed quickly, we slept, listened to each other telling stories and reading us books. We got up with the sun and got tired with diminishing light. It took us hours to light a fire with the wet wood. The smoke rose between the wet trees where there was little sun coming through in the moments without rain. We got to know our neighbour who offered to show us around and cook dinner. We saw the permaculture garden, the chicken, goose, cats and the common kitchen. People asked us if we came to stay forever or just for some time and seemed disappointed when we replied we had just a couple of days. I never have seen such a nice community, they had no social pressure at all. It was perfectly okay to be alone, eat alone, where you could even wear plastic or leather clothes, eat meat or smoke cigarettes and no one would ever criticise you. We got invited to drink tea by everyone we met.  We asked about the places to go skipping and went to the next villages, searching through the dumpsters of Egham, Ashford and Staines, but unfortunately didn´t find much, only Costa (coffee-chain) sandwiches and some potatoes. We asked in a shop if they were throwing away any vegetables at the end of the day and they gave us a big box of sweets and 10 bags of mixed spices. We also went to the library to get an hour of expensive internet and told our friends and family we´re fine. It kept raining and the small path between the bluebells turned into slippery muddy ways down the hillside, we couldn´t avoid to step on the flowers if we didn´t want to sink to deep in the mud. One night we got lost on our way back to the tent, sliding down the muddy paths, falling every few meters, I´m sure everyone woke up because of our laughing. Everyday we had really interesting conversations with our neighbour while trying to get the fire to live. I really admire them for living there even in winter, it was may and we woke up freezing every night in our 1,5 person tent. People in England are very good at hiding or closing their bins, but in Egham we found a flag, which we adopted and took with us. On our last night we were tired of the rain and the cold so we decided to spent some money on a bottle of wine and then cooked lentils and stinging nettles for dinner in the common kitchen which had a roof, so we could sit by the fireplace and dry our socks. Read a book with the flashlight. In the morning all the squirrels and rabbits woke up and ran around. The only sound came from a big tree falling down, from the birds and the cows on the field. On the margin of the forest there were some big oak trees, then a pasture down the hill were the mist persisted, behind it there was the river Thames and far behind, the skyline of London with the lights going off as the daylight come. England is beautiful. We got up, put on our wet shoes and appreciated the english breakfast, porridge oats, it really warms you and fills the stomach. We left with the promise to return some day (when it´s wamer), it´s not eary to go and leave a community when you still didn´t even meet everyone. In the morning we packed our stuff and left for the Lake district, in a strange mood, expecting a difficult hitchhiking day, because we had to go back towards London on the ring motorway M25 where there´s no service stations, find someone to take our motorway north. We figured to walk towards a roundabout at the exit of Egham and try our luck. We hadn´t had a shower and it was still raining, we looked the wrong way, almost got run over, and got really confused by the clockwise roundabout. When we almost reached the spot, we took another look at the map, wondering if it was a good decision to go there, and where it would probably be best to stand and if it was better to try the M1 or the M40… People had warned us, hitchhiking in England would be hard, and even harder without a sign. When suddenly a woman stopped, we still hadn´t stuck out our thumbs or the sign, she asked us where we where going, and took us on the right highway on a really huge service station. Hitchhiking is easy and people are super nice. 🙂