Steve Blease - End to End

Steve Blease is a Mancunian. He spent over 30 years working in international insurance, with periods of residence in Europe, New Zealand and the Middle East. In 2006 he took a gap year and walked from Lands End to John OGroats. He is married with three grown up children and lives in Norwich.

END TO END

Steve Blease

Book Guild Publishing

Sussex, England

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by

The Book Guild Ltd

The Werks

45 Church Road

Hove, BN3 2BE

Copyright Steve Blease 2008

Second printing 2013

The right of Steve Blease to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Typesetting in Times by

YHT Ltd, London Printed

in Great Britain by

4edge Ltd, Hockley, Essex

A catalogue record for this book is available from

The British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84624 201 4
ePub ISBN 978 1 90998 447 9
Mobi ISBN 978 1 90998 448 6

For Jane

Contents

The End to End Route

It was on the way down from Bristol that I finally began to grasp the enormity of what Id taken on. The train had left Bristol Temple Meads at around 1.15 that afternoon, and nearly four hours later we were still on the move. It seemed that every time I looked out of the window my mind would return, almost obsessively, to the fact that if I was going to do what Id set out to do, I was going to have to walk back every single mile the train had covered. And if I managed that, Id still only be about 20 per cent of the way towards my ultimate objective. It wasnt actually a bad feeling. Sure, there was a heavy element of self-doubt there but my main feeling, as I sat comfortably in the middle of a troupe of chattering Japanese schoolchildren, was one of quiet exhilaration. I tried to savour it and fix it in my memory. Its not every day you contemplate a walk from Lands End to John OGroats.

An unbroken journey from one end of Great Britain to the other is a major challenge, whatever the chosen mode of transport. Its a hell of a long way. But the distance from end to end is still within the compass of peoples imagination, and, given a modicum of luck and stamina, getting there is not insuperable. The stretching but achievable nature of a Lands End to John OGroats walk has made it an enduring target for generations of adventurers, fundraisers and athletes (not to mention the occasional lunatic). And its not the exclusive preserve of walkers and cyclists. Theres the guy with cerebral palsy who did it in his wheelchair and a man called Steve Fagan who took nine days to make the journey on roller skates. If his website was to be believed, someone called Petedangerous was working towards a Lands End to John OGroats stilt walk in the spring of 2007.

And then there are the real eccentrics. The best known is surely Steve Gough, the Naked Rambler, whose end-to-end walk lasted from June 2003 to January 2004. Much of this time, of course, was spent in jail. Mr Goughs avowed rationale for making the journey was to question societys attitude towards the naked body. I lost count of the number of times I was asked whether I was going to provide a repeat performance.

Lands End to John OGroats has a way of firing the imagination. It seems to represent something almost totemic in the British psyche, and a part of it had somehow rubbed off on me. I cant recall the precise moment it happened I think it just gradually crept up on me but at some stage in late 2005 Id resolved to have a crack at it.

My motivation was not entirely clear even, I must confess, to me. Sure, there were one or two sub-plots. For one thing, it would be good to see more of Britain. It had, for instance, been over 40 years since Id made my one and only trip to Cornwall, and almost as long since Id been to the Lake District. Id never ventured north of Inverness. And Id no idea what a Cotswold looked like. The trip would also (although I didnt want to place too much stress on this, at least publicly) fulfil a long-standing personal ambition to taste as many different local beers as possible.

But if Im brutally honest Id have to admit that there was a more substantial motivating force at work. This, Im ashamed to say, was nothing more than a compulsive urge to show off. Im not a walker never have been but as weve got older, and disencumbered ourselves of mutinous teenage children, my wife and I have bought ourselves some walking boots and done the occasional country walk. No doubt well do more in future as a way of keeping fit. We have friends and acquaintances who are into walking in a big way. Wouldnt it be great, when the conversation turned to walking, to be able to give a quiet, laconic response, Clint Eastwood style, with a steely glint in the eye, that, actually, Id done End-to-End? Id have to work on the steely glint a little but I was sure that it would improve with a little practice.

But the final, clinching factor was the beguiling prospect of simply taking off. Putting a few things in a rucksack and just disappearing. No worries, no responsibilities. After more than 30 years behind a desk it was very enticing. I was lucky too, because my working life had reached a point where I could afford the time to do this crazy thing.

And now Id actually committed myself by going and telling everyone what I was going to do. I had a choice. I could stay on the train and (gulp) push off from Lands End tomorrow morning. Alternatively, I could quietly rent a cottage in Cornwall, go underground and return home claiming triumphant success in a couple of months or so. As the train was extending the scale of my task with every passing minute, the latter option began to look increasingly attractive.

But for the moment at least there were more immediate things to think about. The priority now was to fight my way clear of the Japanese schoolchildren, get me and the rucksack off the train at Penzance and then find Dave Dobson.

Im not sure that visiting two pubs constitutes a crawl, but they were the only two pubs in Lands End, and Dave and I visited them both in rapid succession. Dave and I played cricket together for several decades before we both had to concede defeat to Father Time and retire from the game, thereby sparing our bodies further punishment and our souls further embarrassment. Dave was holidaying in Cornwall and had offered to transport me the ten or so miles from the railway station at Penzance to the Lands End Hotel. Before I checked in we went to the Success Inn at Sennen Cove, where we introduced ourselves to Sharps Doom Bar, before moving on to the First and Last Pub in England to sample the Cornish Blond beer. I decided that it sounded quite impressive to have started an end-to-end walk with a pub crawl at Lands End, so a crawl is how it will go down in the annals.

After Dave had left I checked in at the Lands End Hotel and was immediately seized by another moment of self-doubt similar to those Id experienced on the train. The moment was triggered by my complete inability to navigate the short distance from the reception desk to my allotted room. Even allowing for the Cornish beer and the eccentric geography of the hotel, this failure can only be ascribed to total, rank incompetence. Whatever the cause, I just couldnt find the room and had to return to reception to seek further directions. An embarrassing moment especially as Id just confided to the woman at the desk that I was hoping to walk to John OGroats. If I couldnt find room 32, she must have dismissed as fantasy my intention of navigating a route to Northern Scotland.