Walking The Walk , livre ebook

Brown Dog Books - Steve Athawes

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135 pages

English

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Undaunted by a distinct lack of backpacking experience, an impending 60th birthday, and a recently replaced hip, Steve Athawes decides to quit his job and sets off to fulfil a 30-year ambition to walk the length and breadth of the UK in lone, unsupported single trips.This is an account of his trek across England in 2015 and his 1,200-mile, life-enhancing and unforgettable journey from Land's End to John o'Groats in 2017.In an extraordinary year in which our enjoyment of the great outdoors, and particularly the great British pub, has been seriously curtailed, take comfort and hopefully inspiration from one man's appreciation of our rich and fascinating history, and the awesome scenery and delicious beers of mainland Britain.

Informations

Publié par	Brown Dog Books
Date de parution	22 octobre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839522130
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published 2020
Copyright © Steve Athawes 2020
The right of Steve Athawes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and The Self-Publishing Partnership, 7 Green Park Station, Bath BA1 1JB
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk

ISBN printed book: 978-1-83952-212-3
ISBN e-book: 978-1-83952-213-0
Cover design by Becky James
Internal design by Andrew Easton
Printed and bound in the UK
This book is printed on FSC certified paper

Dedicated to the memory of my late parents and to my long-suffering wife, without whose support and understanding this would not have been possible.
Thanks also to Frances and the team at SPP for their valued assistance in the production of this book.
“One should always have a definite objective, in a walk as in life – it is so much more satisfying to reach a target by personal effort than to wander aimlessly. An objective is an ambition, and life without ambition is, well....... aimless wandering.”
Alfred Wainwright (“AW”) – author, artist and fell walker
(1907–91)
Contents
Foreword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Foreword
For over 130 years, SSAFA – the Armed Forces charity, have existed to relieve need, suffering and distress amongst personnel from all branches of our Armed Forces, veterans, and their families. We are committed to ensuring that they get the best possible help and support when they need it. That support can be lifelong and take many forms, though our focus is on providing direct support to individuals in need of physical or emotional care.
Addiction, relationship breakdown, debt, homelessness, post-traumatic stress, depression and disability are all issues that can affect members of our Armed Forces community. Many of these problems only become apparent when an individual leaves the Forces to join ‘Civvy Street’, and SSAFA is committed to helping our brave men and women overcome these problems and rebuild their lives.
The needs of service personnel and veterans are becoming more diverse as the world and military landscape changes. What makes SSAFA unique is that, working in partnership with other military charities and specialist organisations, we work hard to make sure our services are flexible – constantly tailoring and adapting them to fit with the people we support. We do this via a volunteer network which reaches into every county in the UK and 11 countries around the world. Our work is financed, to a large degree, by generous donations from members of the public. This relies on the dedication and generosity of our supporters, without whom we would not be able to provide such comprehensive support to our Armed Forces community.
One of these supporters is Steve Athawes, who undertook a 1,200-mile, unsupported, solo walk from Land’s End to John o’ Groats to raise funds for SSAFA. I met Steve at a reception in London in 2018 and was very interested to hear about his journey and the challenges he faced. Steve has now written this book about his walk, which includes an account of his earlier hike across England. I hope you enjoy reading this inspirational and informative account of a journey which Steve himself described as life-enhancing.
Sir Andrew Gregory KBE, CB Controller/Chief Executive (SSAFA)
Chapter One
It has been said that everybody has a book in them. Well, this is mine. It’s not War & Peace and I doubt it’ll win any literary prizes, but I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed the adventures, challenges and experiences that inspired it.
I think it was December 1989 when I first had the crazy notion of walking from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. I’d watched a TV movie called First and Last about a shy man in his sixties, coincidentally also from my birth town of Carshalton, who, despite never having walked more than a dozen miles in his life, decides to fulfil a lifelong ambition and walk the length of Britain. The central character is Alan Holly, played by Joss Ackland, and the film centres around his discovery of himself, the relationship with his wife and family, who are clearly unsure of his reasons for undertaking this epic walk, and the colourful and not so colourful characters he meets on his travels. Like Alan Holly, I wanted to ‘do something’, to journey forth at least once on an adventure which might prove an inspiration to others. To use his words, “I thought I’d go out and look at the land I’d spent my life in. Feel it under my feet. Get the measure of it.” Like him, I was never going to climb Mount Everest or sail single-handed round the world but watching this movie I thought, I could do that.
For the next 25 years or so, the flame that was lit that day became more of a pilot light as family and work commitments naturally took precedence. It was reignited in 2012 and that year was to prove pivotal for several reasons. I’d been working at the BBC since 2004 and in fairness I’d let myself go a bit. I was considerably overweight with high cholesterol and high blood pressure, and I was starting to experience problems with my joints. It was fair to say I was not in the best of health.
To put it into context, on 1 st January 2012 I weighed in at just short of 21 stone and at that point I realised I needed to take myself seriously in hand. 2012 was the year of the London Olympics and as the BBC was the designated ‘Olympic broadcaster’, much talk was of the forthcoming games and the focus was very much on all things healthy. It was also the year of my 30 th wedding anniversary and having booked a surprise Aegean cruise for that summer, I had no intention of embarrassing my poor wife by resembling a whale that had been heaved up onto the deck of the ship!
Combined with sensible eating, I needed an exercise regime but something low-impact so as not to put too much pressure on the old knee joints. Walking fit the bill and seemed the perfect solution. The health benefits of walking have long been appreciated: indeed the historian G. M. Trevelyan once observed that he had ‘two doctors; my left leg and my right’. I started off gently enough, a mile or two here and there, and through the wonders of internet route-finding sites I was soon able to assemble a library of circuitous routes from home, ranging from one to ten miles from which I put together a schedule of walks for each day of the week. For the next twelve months or so I dragged myself out of bed at around 4.15am and hit the streets for an hour, which equated to about four miles at a smart pace, before returning home to carry out my ablutions, take my wife her tea and biscuits and head off to work. I quite often repeated the day’s route in the evening as well, clocking up around 50 miles a week. At weekends, I opted for a slightly later start and followed a 5-mile route, taking in Nonsuch Park. This 250-acre open space is the nearest worthwhile expanse of green to our house and for over thirty years has been a frequent haunt when I feel the need for the restorative power of nature. Town living has its merits, but it would be unbearable without those little moments.
By the summer of 2012 I’d managed to shed over four stone through a combination of walking and a much-improved diet. I felt healthier than I had done for years and the interesting thing was that the more I walked, the more I wanted to walk. This, I’m reliably informed, is down to endorphins, our own private narcotic which occurs naturally in the body triggering the ‘rush’ that exercise sometimes prompts.
Having got myself back into some kind of shape, I decided I was ready to push myself a bit, so, after spotting an advertisement in a local newspaper, I signed up to take part in the London 2 Brighton Challenge in May 2013. This 62-mile, 24-hour endurance trek set off from the Thames at Richmond and wound its way through some fabulous countryside, crossing both the North and South Downs, to the finish line at Brighton Racecourse. I was joined by my brother and nephew who, unfortunately, was forced to drop out at around the 17-mile mark through injury. Between us, we managed to raise almost £2,000 for our chosen charity, The Royal Marines Charitable Trust Fund.
Despite the aching limbs in the immediate aftermath of the walk, it proved to be a most elevating experience and I felt compelled to take on the Thames Path Challenge in September that same year, another 62-mile stroll between Putney Bridge and Henley-on-Thames. During the course of that walk I learned of the Isle of Wight Challenge , scheduled to take place over August bank holiday weekend 2014, and immediately signed up for that one as well. Talk about glutton for punishment!
I’ve always loved the Isle of Wight. As a boy we spent our family summer holidays at Nodes Point Holiday Camp near Bembridge and I was really looking forward to this 66-mile circular trek around the coastal path of the island. Being a nostalgic old so and so, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and booked a family holiday for the week immediately following the walk – once more at Nodes Point, still going strong after all these years, although with more emphasis on caravans and camping now rather than the chalets of old. My brother would be joining me on this walk once again, along with my son, himself a serving member of the British Army. We would again be raising money for forces charities, this time SSAFA - the Armed Forces charity and BLE