tramp verb[ I usually + adv/prep, T ]
to walk, especially long distances or with heavy steps:
Cambridge Dictionary
I began walking The Monarch’s Way as a lockdown project in January 2021 when we were all told to stay at home. For someone who loves to explore this at first seemed like a challenge but it just meant a readjustment where I would have to explore my near world and look closer, walk slower while still appreciating what I came across. If you look hard enough there’s always something worth seeing. I joined the way near where it winds through North Bristol and crosses Brunel’s bridge not far from where I live in Clifton. I only knew it as a name and it was only when I looked it up I discovered it roughly follows the route that Charles II had to take to evade Oliver Cromwell’s parliamentarians after The Battle of Worcester. He was on the run between September 3rd and October 15th 1651. He went roughly south to Charmouth in Dorset and then to Shoreham from where he sailed to France. As well as my immersion in landscape I would now have a great story that could provide context to my walking: retracing the steps of a young King on the run with only the help of a few renegade – and often hopelessly disorganised – folowers and friends and revisiting one of the craziest stories in the history of the English monarchy.
For all my garndiose aspirations the plan was simple. In fact there was no plan. Follow a path to the sea and then…Who knows? None of us knew what would happen next so planning for the future had become a redundant concept. Walking like this fitted perfectly with the times and my carefree attitude to adventures. The key was simplicity. I had a small Overboard rucksack with a camping matt and a cold weather sleeping bag. I had a battered metal water bottle and a waterproof.
The idea was and still is to be wrapped up in nature. In the moment. I simply walk and follow the way. I eat dinner in a pub and then walk til dusk. I find somewhere flat and soft and out of the wind. I fall asleep as the first stars appear and it’s not quite dark. I wake up as it’s not quite light. And here I record what I find out there but also inside me.
In Stephen Graham’s 1926 book ‘The Gentle Art of Tramping’ the writer ‘gives guidance on walking, being open to discovery and being kind – advice as relevant now as it was then.’ (as written in the blurb on the new Bloomsbury edition). Graham himself describes the adventure of walking as: ‘The adventure is not the getting there, it is the on-the-way. It is not the expected; it is the surprise..’ And that is as good a mantra as I can find for this project.
The Slow Walker 