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Warnscale Bottom, Cumbria.

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Hidden Quality.

In 1952 Alfred Wainwright decided to spend the next thirteen years of his life climbing, cataloguing and creating a pictorial reference of his beloved Lake District fells. Over seven books he wrote and sketched in meticulous detail routes and information from a total of two-hundred and fourteen fells, collectively known thereafter as the Wainwright's in the same manner as the Scottish Munro's providing walkers and climbers a checklist to dream about.

Of these two-hundred and fourteen (arranged in order of height), number one is England's tallest peak Scafell Pike, standing above all others at 3209ft and is part of  Wainwright's fourth book The Southern Fells  with the very last fell in the series being Castle Crag at just 950ft within the sixth book The North Western Fells. Prior to Wainwright's death in 1991, he had requested that his ashes be carried and scattered on a fell top of his choosing and interestingly it was not Scafell Pike on which he chose to rest forever and look down across his beloved Lake District, but the fell at number 131 nestling within his seventh book The Central Fells that Wainwright notes ''…...stands unabashed and unashamed in the midst of a circle of much loftier fells, like a shaggy Terrier in the midst of Foxhounds'. The fell that Wainwright chose to rest forever upon is Haystacks.

The collection of stacks and crags named Haystacks squats at the south-west corner of Buttermere, sandwiched between the valleys of Ennerdale and Warnscale Bottom. When standing at the North end of Buttermere your gaze is immediately drawn to the magnificent Fleetwith Pike across the valley, it's sharp profile made even more striking when the afternoon light illuminates it's Western side, the Eastern side remaining in the shade like a portrait sitters nose. Haystacks doesn't have the profile to compete. With it's thick-set stacks and crags the beauty of Haystacks lies hidden from distant view, to appreciate it you have to walk into it.

The first time I walked into Haystacks was with friends. I joined Jeff and Sim to work on what would be the release of Millican's then latest project, a bag to celebrate Alfred Wainwright's dedication and commitment to his beloved Lake District. Over two days and in weather that swung from dense moisture soaked air and clouds slouching low over all the fells, to glorious blue sky and clear tarns we saw some of the magic that entranced Wainwright. 'Here are sharp peaks in profusion, tarns with islands and tarns without islands, crags, scree's, rocks for climbing and rocks not for climbing, heather tracts, marshes, serpentine trails......all these with a background of magnificent landscapes await every visitor to Haystacks but they will be appreciated most by those who go there to linger and explore'

To enjoy the fells as you pass through the valleys looking up at their heights is to appreciate only a tiny part of their beauty, or even to dismiss them. To enjoy and understand them you have to touch your feet to their surface and wander on their tops. You can be no fair-weather friend turning up only for the dry days of summer, take the rain and the cold in equal measure. Alfred Wainwright walked and wandered over every inch of the Lake District fells from the tallest to the smallest, and yet he held this unassuming fell in such regard that he would have it has his last resting place.  'But for beauty, variety and interesting detail, for sheer fascination and unique individuality, the summit-area of Haystacks is supreme. This is in fact the best fell-top of all......And if you, dear reader, should get a bit of grit in your boots as you are crossing Haystacks in the years to come, please treat it with respect. It might be me”

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Finding Wilderness.

“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread” wrote the American author and environmentalist Edward Abbey.

It was Charlie’s idea to try and find wilderness. I don’t say this to point an accusing finger, only to give credit where credit is due. The idea was born as a small mention, a last line in an email — could we find wilderness close to home? If indeed wilderness was a necessity, can we find it from our backdoor? On a golden afternoon last May we closed the door behind us and set off to find it.

The wilderness we went looking for needed no machetes or crampons, no porters or Sherpa’s. This was not some 6 month journey requiring complicated logistics and a team of people. This was just the three of us: Steve, Charlie and myself, the boots on our feet and a small pack on our back. Our location was a couple of hours walk away, and this little adventure was inspired by a man named Julian Hayward.

In 1988 Julian wrote and published ‘Dartmoor 365’. In the book, the entire 365 square miles of the Dartmoor National Park is divvied up into neat 1 square mile portions. The idea being that, for the Munro, Wainwright and Peak baggers, lovers of walking and checklists, here was a way of covering the entire national park over a single year — one square a day. Each of the 365 squares has a unique name and number, and within each square the author describes features and tales of interest. Square T5, The Dewerstone. Square H9, Cut Hill. From remains of buildings to wildlife, tales of heroes to botany, each square has something of note. All except square G7. This square has nothing. It is a void, a lack. Its name? Wilderness. It was here the three of us were headed and here we were to spend a night on the open moor.

Low afternoon light was on our backs as we headed onto the moor. The path was dry, the going level. Walking in a small group is a joy while the afternoon sun is up and sky is blue. Lazy and comfortable, free and easy. These days are not for head down, pushing against time and the elements, but for head up and talking as you go. Charlie had the map and led the way, Steve and I wandered alongside nattering as we went.

Of the handful of times I have visited Dartmoor, I leave with an intense need to return as soon as I can. My childhood playground was the Lancashire hills of the Rossendale Valley, and Dartmoor makes me remember that place. Dartmoor feels wide and old and deep. The vast moorland extends in waves from your vision, pinched and lifted in places by ancient granite Tors. There are heavily wooded rivers and valleys, gentle flowing leats cut into the moor, prickly gorse and bog cotton in scattered patches. It is not to my eyes a dramatic landscape, it is a quiet and gentle giant.

With the last few hours of light we arrived at our place, our square of Wilderness. It did indeed seem featureless, but huge. A wide flat area of ground surrounded by undulating moorland in every distant direction. The lack of physical features and the huge scale made it feel strange. The strongest feature of the place was the vacuum-like silence. We all stopped talking for a few breaths to see if we could hear anything, the air through my nose was all I could. I have never experienced silence as solid.

Charlie and I started to pitch our tents, and Steve announced his accommodation for the night would be a bivvy bag facing the stars. I quietly regretted bringing a tent and admired Steve for the bivvy. Next time. I’d have to come again if only to do that. We ate boil in the bag food and talked in the middle of the silence until the sun fell below the horizon when I wandered to my tent and fell soundly asleep.

My alarm went off at 6:30 am the next morning and I lay on my side with the sleeping bag up to my nose, door-flap pinned back, watching for the sun to rise. The air was cold and dry and sharp, the silence was still there. No animal noises, no wind, no sound. The deep indigo morning sky began to change, a glow of burnt orange and gold wicking upwards. As the sun began to crest, a breath of air washed into my face. I just felt like laughing, really laughing. The author Sarah Maitland writes about her profound experiences with silence. “A fourth sensation very commonly reported by people who have enjoyed the silence they chose (not everyone does) is that they have experiences of great joy, which feel as though they came from ‘outside’ themselves; ……….This feeling of being connected to the universe, and particularly to natural phenomena within it, was central to the sensibility of the Romantic Movement, and appears over and over again in the poetry of the period, nearly always linked to places or experiences of silence in the natural world.”

With the sun came sound at last; distant birds and the gentle breeze. I lay there until the full shape of the sun was showing above the horizon, then clambered out of the tent and peeked round to see Charlie stirring also and Steve rising from the ground like a mummy from its casket. There were grins all round.

The whole experience had left me feeling empty. calm. restored in a way. I didn’t know I needed the experience it before we set off, but with hindsight I now realised I had. I also realised I had to come back again as soon as I could. The square of wilderness we’d gone to find may have been described as featureless, but my experience in that place was far from it. We had found wilderness close to home. We walked off the moor with our long shadows leading the way.

As much as a wilderness is a physical place we need “as vital to our lives as water and good bread”, it’s also a mental one. A place of space, a place of quiet, a place of reflection, interestingly also elements that are part of meditation and mindfulness practices. In his 1976 classic book ‘ The Myth of Freedom’, the Tibetan Buddhist Chögyam Trungpa wrote “Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss or tranquillity, nor is it attempting to become a better person. It is simply the creation of space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self-deceptions”.

I look back to Julian Hayward’s description of his square G7 Wilderness. “A square of empty Wilderness? Look again: there is so much to see”.

There is so much to see. There is. But the view is inwards, not outwards.

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The path to Latrigg, Keswick

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Learning to walk.

‘Know how to walk and you know how to live', suggests the author Stephen Graham in The Gentle Art of tramping. I have tramped, traipsed, bimbled, strolled, hiked, sauntered and wandered for over fourty years.  But with all these years of footing it, do I really know how to walk beyond the simple mechanics of it? Can I learn how to walk better and in turn learn better how to live?

If Forest Gump was going somewhere, he was running. Throughout my early childhood in a car-less family of six, if I was going somewhere, I was walking. From school and back everyday, a 5 mile round trip in every kind of weather, to traipsing into town on a Saturday to help mum with the shopping, bulging Kwik Save bags cutting the circulation in my finger-ends on the trudge home, then Sunday morning was a stroll to Church for early mass with a quick-walk back to catch the last of the morning cartoons, walking was at the centre of family life. I never considered walking as anything other than simply how I traveled anywhere. Some years later the opportunity for my walking, and my relationship with walking, was changed when the family car finally arrived.

I was ten years old when a beige Ford Cortina with faux tiger skin seat covers pulled up outside our house, my grinning mum at the wheel. If a Rolls Royce had turned up instead, I don't think I'd have been any more impressed. During the school holidays that summer, mum and dad filled the car with my sisters and me, a flask and sandwiches for the way and headed North. Two hours later and we arrived at what I now hold as my heaven on earth, my place of retreat, my Shangri-la; the English Lake District. I found there a playground for the wanderer, a place to walk just for the pleasure of it, a place I now appreciate for the space both physically and mentally that being there gives me. I have walked countless memories into the mud, fells and paths that I struggle to stay in the present when wandering ways I have walked for years, the memories return unbidden and thick.

I am still learning how to walk. I am more Tortoise than Hare, a Camel rather than a Horse; in it for the distance, not the dash. I want to take joy in the way itself rather than delay gratification for some peak or place down the path. Henri Cartier Bresson, one of the most important photographers of the 20th century said “To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye, and the heart. It’s a way of life.” I think walking may be the same. Know how to walk, and you know how to live: with your head, your eye and your heart.

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Crossing the bridge to Skye, 2018.

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Spain, 2018.

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A pause along the way.

The American novelist Ursula K. Le Guin wrote 'It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end'. A cliché it might be, the idea that the journey is the thing that matters and not the destination, but that doesn't make it any less true. So when Jeff at Millican rang me with the prospect of a journey through the Scottish Highlands to the Isle of Skye, I laughed and immediately agreed. We were to go by train using Scotland's West Highland railway, the route running for one hundred and sixty four miles North from Glasgow to the fishing port and ferry terminal of Mallaig. During it's five and a quarter hour journey it pulls through sublime and shifting Scottish scenery, a constantly changing view that, a few  years ago, helped award this journey the title of 'Worlds Best Train Journey'.

I like travelling by train. Car travel is, for me at least, often solitary. The train is communal. I have something in common with everybody on the train; we're all travellers, heading in the same direction. I'm free to sit back and experience it slowly, as a passenger. Jeff and I throw our bags in the overhead and nab a table seat as we pull out from Glasgow Station. We were off. Not quick, not racing, just steady. For the five and a quarter hours we had easy chat interrupted only by our regular pointing out of the window at the changing scenery, the steady chi-dum of our carriage on the rails and the welcome snacks trolley pausing by us “any tea's or coffee's?” . “Yes please” I said “a tea would be wonderful.”

The next morning after a quick coffee at our accommodation, we head through town to the ferry port. The sea and sky were mirrored, flat and grey and calm. Hands in pockets we stand gazing seaward waiting to spot the ferry, all the while travellers on their own journeys join us gazing; motorbike groups, camper vans, hikers and locals alike. The ferry arrives, a huge whale lowering its jaw to release a collection of cars, motorbikes and walkers.

I walk on to the ferry. The schoolboy urge to head for top deck forces me up the steel steps. A few rows of bright red plastic seats and a handful of morning passengers mill around. Salty air in my face, a delicate breeze off the sea. A couple lean, their backs to the sea and ships railing, holding and grinning into their phone. The inevitable selfie. If there wasn't a photograph taken, did it actually happen? An old couple sit silent, collars pushed up to their noses while they gaze forward into the wind. I look over the rail into the ship's bowels, motorbikes are dismounted and lashed secure, a traveller leans from his camper van for a quick fag. Fifty lazy, enjoyable minutes later and we walk from the ferry onto the Isle of Skye.

For the next hour, we stroll along the quiet roadside in the general direction of Armadale Castle and it's grounds. Owned by the largest of the Scottish Clans – The Donald's – until 1971, it is surrounded by soft woodland. Through the woods a path winds, easy walking under the green boughs of oak and pine. Fourty minutes later and we reach the highest point, a bare hilltop sitting above the estate and woodland. We sit down in the grass with the Scottish mainland filling the horizon. I can see the tiny ferry cutting through the sea, slowly shuttling to and fro. We take stock of our journey, from Penrith early the day before, and realise we've come all this way, all these hours, to just sit here on this little hill. Yes we did, and I'm really glad we did.

Most of the three days were spent travelling; by train, by ferry and on foot. We spent fourty minutes at our destination high on the hill and a combined fourteen hours travelling. The destination, our little sit down in the grass on the hill, turned out to be just the pause in the larger part of our time spent – the journey itself. Yet was the trip a success? For me, an unquestionable yes.

I'm beginning to believe there are no destinations, just pauses along the path to appreciate the way you came.

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FInding Wilderness // Dartmoor // May 2018.