Welch - Out on your feet: the hallucinatory world of hundred-mile walking

The Hallucinatory World of
Hundred-Mile Walking

JULIE WELCH

First published in 2009

by Aurum Press Ltd, 7477 White Lion Street, London N1 9PF

London NW1 0ND

www.aurumpress.co.uk

This eBook edition first published in 2014

Copyright 2014 Julie Welch

Julie Welch has asserted his/her/their moral right to be identified as the Author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

eBook conversion by Quayside Publishing Group

Digital edition: 978-1-78131-220-9
Softcover edition: 978-1-84513-427-3

The most fulfilling human projects appeared inseparable from a degree of torment, the sources of our greatest joys lying awkwardly close to those of our greatest pains

ALAIN DE BOTTON

Exercise should be savage and rude

MAO ZEDONG

If only the whole world was like the LDWA

JUNE COLE

I HAVE RECEIVED A GREAT DEAL OF HELP from LDWA members, many of whom appear in these pages. I am grateful to them all, as I am to Lesley Sparshatt and Lucy Morrill for their hospitality and to Peter Wood, of West Yorkshire LDWA and The Irregulars, who wrote such an excellent route description for the Yoredale Hundred. Essential background information was provided by Geoff Saunders and Paul Lawrence, and Sue Newman provided invaluable documents in the form of LDWA Newsletters, numbers 1 to 8.

This book would not have come about had it not been for the late Pat Kavanagh, who first had the idea that all those mad walks I told her about deserved chronicling, and I should also like to thank Graham Coster, who believed her. Without Avril Stapletons help and encouragement, I would never have done the Hundred. Most of all, though, I would like to salute all the Hundred-ers past, present and future. They really are a special breed, and it was a great moment when I became one of their number.

THIS IS THE MADDEST THING YOU CAN DO to yourself, ever. Except maybe throwing yourself off the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and even that would be over quickly. This goes on practically for eternity, and youre not even halfway. It turns your feet into bleeding stumps, your muscles into concrete and your brain into oatmeal. In the last five minutes, youve pictured yourself in a taxi, just to torture yourself; in your minds eye, youre having a hot shower and someone is waiting to hand you a fluffy towel and a pair of cashmere socks.

You have been on the hills for eleven hours, clutching your route description, nineteen pages of dampening A4, heading for places with League of Gentlemen names like Fang and Drool; whether you get to find them is another matter, because the instructions are written in a language analogous to English. Heres an example: Go thru to X field by fence on Lt to field corner and enter overgrown sunken Trk (B070) to keep AH for 600m thru several Gts (Trk becomes well used after 1st rusty Gt).

You were able to understand this at ten in the morning, when you were fresh. But as time wears on, now youve been climbing all day and youre suffering from the incremental fuckwittedness caused by the drip-drip-drip of fatigue and cold, its all too easy to go wrong. And then you have to double back, trying to remember which way you came from, worryingly aware that times getting short. So when youre back on track you force yourself to run with increasingly stiff and painful strides to make sure you reach the next checkpoint before it closes.

Run. What a nostalgic memory that evokes, like comfortable and really enjoying this. You ran the first eleven miles and after that, as the climbs got steeper and you had to start walking, you were still walking bloody quickly. Youre still walking now, but with 35 miles under your feet youre down to a plod. And theres another 65 to go.

The batteries of your iPod have just died, so you can no longer listen to its motivating cargo of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik for the long distance walker: Death Cab for Cuties I Will Follow You into the Dark; The Proclaimers 500 Miles; Dancing in the Dark (dancing. Ha. Ha. Ha). Youre dawdling along, self-pityingly prodding the controls to see if you can wring any more life out if it, when theres a flash of colour, and a woman of about twenty-five in a bright red fleece goes belting by, followed by two lads in hiking gear. None of them see you because to them youre completely static, in a boring way like a bin or a pile of builders old rubble.

Old. Thats how you feel. With grating joints and bent shoulders, and a sharp pain in one instep, and big blue veins standing out on your hands.

Oh, get a grip. Its not as though youre past it. For a long distance walker, youve yet to reach your prime. Boyd Millen was 59 when he started his international racewalking career. He walked a hundred miles over the Pennines to mark his sixtieth birthday. In snow. Wearing trainers without any socks. Henry Bridge of Soham still at it past eighty. Some of these people dont take up the sport till theyve qualified for the winter fuel allowance.

And here come a horde of rusty old gits, whizzing past like Coe and Ovett in their heyday. One of them slows down long enough to hand you a strip of ibuprofen as you wince at the pain suddenly afflicting your left knee. Take a couple of these, he advises. Drugs are widespread!

Why does he have to sound so cheerful? Bastard.

But you plod on, thinking of where youd be if you werent out here.

In a line of stationary traffic waiting to go through the Blackwall Tunnel.

Or staring at a computer screen, trying to renew your Norton Internet Security software without signing up by mistake to a different package at nearly three times the price.

Or riding on a Network Southeast train full of drunks eating KFCs.

Its no contest, is it?

CHECKPOINT 7. Bedlam. Only 38 miles into the route, and outside it people are already grabbing the door handles of the death cab, trying to get in. More than fifty of the five hundred starters have already dropped out. With 9,000ft of ascent on the first day alone, its the toughest Hundred anyone can remember.

But then, they say that every year. Anyway, youre not giving up now. You cant. For months, the Hundred and you have been trapped in a love-hate relationship. Youve gone on training walks together. Thirties, forties, fifties: youve fought your way through them all. Its beaten you up and reduced you to tears, yet you still keep coming back. A couple of days is all it takes, and youll forget the bad bits, the sore feet and bramble gouges and liquid cowshit flooding your trainers, and think only of the good things: banter, mates, the feeling of shared suffering and endeavour, the way grass turns pale green by the light of the moon.

Tuna bap. Fistful of raisins from a Tupperware container. Then its head torch on, and out into the twilight. Now your lucks in. You get picked up by Sally, an accountant from Worcester, and her partner Rob. Theyve done a Hundred every year for the last ten, they know the ropes. Its lovely having friends to chat to in the dark; makes you start to feel quite larky. And now heres another bunch of people. Jim is wearing a Newcastle shirt. Youre a Spurs fan, so you bond over a discussion about what it is to support delusion-inducing football clubs. Benita, possibly released into the community but somehow fascinating, is kitted out in dangly earrings, Doc Martens and what appear to be baby doll pyjamas. David, a first-timer, is a genial puffed-out ultra runner in Madras check beach shorts worn with a Berghaus fleece, and Stanley is a magnificent bearded