I wake up thinking I’m in bed but feel a dull ache in my shoulder which can only be from lying on the ground. Then I hear the cacophony of birdsong: jackdaws, pigeons, blue tits and blackbirds. A great enthusiastic greeting to the morning.
And then the roar of a lorry.
I’m next to a dry stone wall in a meadow. From under my eye mask I can see buttercups and elderflower, nettles and dried cow pats. Cows stroll past impossibly slowly. It’s like they’re floating in some strange meadow dreamworld.
In the middle of this otherwise bucolic scene a low bridge carries the A35 just as it arrives at (or leaves) Bridport. A lorry with ‘Yang Ming Solent’ emblazoned on the side goes by and then a bus with its electric sign displaying ‘OUT OF SERVICE’. It’s about 5.30, always the time I wake up when sleeping out, normally woken by the dawn chorus. It’s the same today but the feathered choir has been joined by the altos and baritones of HGVs and public buses.
I met a couple last night having dinner next to me at Rise in West Bay who were celebrating what they called their ‘mini moon’. I had never heard of it. ‘A mini honeymoon’ they explained. People always seem interested and surprised at me sleeping outside in a field. Sarah was South African. ‘Oh, it’s like Jim Broadbent in that film where he walks to see a friend who is dying. He sleeps rough’, she tells me. Later I realise she’s talking about The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. The other story people often refer to when I tell them about my walks is The Salt Path. Again a story about old people, terminal illness and sleeping out. I have to admit I listened to the audiobook when Dad was dying and found it too self indulgent in its self sympathy. He survived. Dad didn’t. Do I sound angry? Maybe I was at the time.
Not long ago it would be quite common to see people sleeping on the side of the road or in fields in the countryside in England. A hundred years ago it wouldn’t have been unusual to see a man lying prostrate under a hedge: a travelling salesman, an itinerant farm worker or a tramp. Or someone who’d had a skinful at the local pub and passed out on the way home. Although the comparison isn’t wholly accurate – I am in a sleeping bag and bivvy bag and do it out of choice. As it is today, for some people it is because they have no alternative.
Apparently sleeping out in a sleeping bag and no tent now has a name: bivvying. It’s another bit of language that is new to me.
When I turn my back on the road, I could be looking at a scene from an oil painting. If John Constable were here I think he might check his step and think about reproducing it. A little whitewashed house with cottage garden roses looks across a buttercup meadow while a chalk path bends gently to join it at its side. And behind me the A35 traffic carries on regardless.
Yesterday I started from where I left off just east of Golden Cap. I left the car at Chideock and crossed fields in blazing sunshine to get to the wooden sign where I was two weeks ago. It was a beautiful day. I went for a swim at Seatown. I climbed Thorncombe Beacon. I admired views of Portland Bill while the wind blew through me. But I wasn’t feeling it. I trudged on and took no notes. Funny how that happens sometimes.
Today, although I haven’t had much sleep and my legs are stinging from an accidental encounter with some nettles when I went for a pee in the night, I feel brand new.
I brush my teeth, spitting out bright white splashes onto the offending nettles from the night before. And 5 minutes later I’m hoicking my rucksack on and crunching along the white path towards the cottage smiling at the self sufficiency of just being alone with my bed in a bag and and the continued rhythm of walking for miles and miles and miles with only the path and my footsteps to think about.
The Slow Walker 