It isn’t always easy to find two clear days when both you and your walking companion are free to disappear on a long-distance walk. So, having not done one for a couple of years, this summer I grabbed the only weekend that Emma and I could both manage, booked what appeared to be the last available room in Battle and pencilled in a plan to walk the 1066 Country Walk.
At around 50 kilometres, it is by no means the longest long-distance walk I’ve done. But 50 kilometres is still chunky enough. Long enough for your feet to hurt, your shoulders to ache, the weather to misbehave and for things to go wrong. And no sooner had we set off across the Pevensey Levels on a damp late-August morning than I remembered all the reasons I love putting what I need on my back, pointing myself towards somewhere a very long way away and simply starting to walk.
That first fingerpost
There’s a particular excitement to the beginning of a long-distance trail. Many start in towns and there’s something about navigating your way out through the everyday until you find that first fingerpost bearing the name of your trail. Pevensey was easy but I remember Winchester, at the start of the South Downs Way, being rather more complicated. But the feeling is the same. You see the name you’ve been looking for and there’s a little internal flicker of excitement.
I’m off
We soon spotted two walkers ahead of us on the Pevensey Levels. Even from a distance I recognised their dog: a Leonberger, the same rather distinctive breed as mine. We caught them up and conversation flowed almost immediately. They needed directions; I had a map. We talked about the dog, where we came from, where we were going and discovered connections with Haywards Heath and Horsham. They lived in Pevensey and did Tudor re-enactments. Within minutes, complete strangers had found common ground. The dog helped, certainly. But the real thread connecting us was Sussex.
Eating the landscape
The Levels were bleak but beautiful beneath increasingly threatening skies, but they were also astonishingly abundant. The hedgerows were groaning with blackberries, damsons, sloes, elderberries, hawthorn and wild fruit. We stopped to pick some, not purely out of romantic notions of foraging our way across Sussex, but because we were walking 50 kilometres and a sweet blackberry or damson delivers a very welcome little hit of sugar. We even found wild hops.
They were growing in extraordinary abundance, tumbling over a canal and later entwining themselves around a fingerpost. I don’t know why they delighted me quite so much. Perhaps because they were such a tangible connection with the landscape’s past. We hadn’t even reached the first oast houses yet, but here was a reminder that we were walking into what had once been hop country. Walking does that. It gives you time to notice.
Shelter from the storm
By Herstmonceux, the drizzle had become proper rain. We headed for the church, hoping to shelter inside, only to find the door locked. Instead, we found a bench beneath a tree and sat eating our sandwiches while rain dripped around us, looking back across the Pevensey Levels. There was something timeless about it. For thousands of years travellers have sought shelter in churches and beneath trees. And here we were, doing exactly the same thing.
The rain got worse. By the time we reached Boreham Street, I was cold and soaked through. My phone was wet and struggling, my glasses were fogged up and operating the map had become increasingly difficult. I wanted something hot. Then we turned onto the road and, through the grey and pouring rain, saw the warm glow of the Bull’s Head ahead. It was one of those ridiculously simple moments that becomes disproportionately wonderful when you’re walking.
We dripped our way inside just as they were opening and received the warmest of welcomes. There was coffee, followed by hot chocolate and food. We were given tissues to dry our glasses and phones. Locals drifted in. Then other wet walkers arrived. And suddenly I remembered another fundamental truth about long-distance walking. You become obsessed with food.
Chewing the cud
Food becomes one of your great conversational themes. What are we eating? Where are we eating? How far until we eat? I wanted soup. Soup, I decided, was exactly what a wet walker required. If soup wasn’t available, I wanted a burger because a burger contained protein, carbohydrates, sugar and presumably everything else required to propel me towards Battle. This led naturally to a discussion about what constitutes the perfect burger.
And this is another thing I love about walking: chewing the cud. You put one foot in front of another and talk about everything and nothing. A building appears in the distance. What’s that? Ashburnham Place. Well, do you know the story about Ashburnham Place? What’s that hill? What’s growing in that field? Emma is a farmer’s wife, so we talked about the brutally hot summer, lost crops and the impact on farming. We talked about people we knew and stories from our past. Then we talked about food, again.
Meanwhile, the landscape kept changing beneath our feet. A narrow wooded track became an open valley. Marshland became pasture. We climbed a hill, followed a country lane and disappeared back into woodland. It’s something we rarely allow ourselves to do in everyday life: simply pay attention.
People are nice
There’s also an instant camaraderie between long-distance walkers. The backpack gives you away when you meet. Conversation follows a familiar pattern: Where have you come from? Where are you going? Where are you staying tonight?
You part with a cheerful, “See you later,” knowing that quite probably you will. And we did. In Rye, we found ourselves saying goodbye to people we’d met along the trail. But it wasn’t only fellow walkers. On a tiny country lane, a man in a van stopped because he thought we were lost and offered directions. People asked where we were going, expressed sympathy about the weather and wished us luck. Every pub welcomed us, however wet and muddy we were.
The world seems to shrink when you’re travelling through it on foot. Connections form quickly. People are interested, supportive, encouraging and kind.
When it all goes wrong
And then, inevitably, things go wrong. I had completely underestimated the rain and we weren’t properly dressed for it. We got lost twice, once scrambling through undergrowth to regain the path (rather than retrace our steps) and another time climbing inelegantly over a fence.
Our hotel was abysmal. Damp walls, a filthy bathroom, a questionable electrical socket and shouting in the night. There was no breakfast. I won’t name and shame it publicly but feel free to message me and ask which one it was. So early next morning we set off with the remains of the previous day’s provisions: boiled eggs, a chunk of cheese and a protein bar, dividing our rations as we walked until we could find proper food. But there is something wonderful about sharing a protein bar for breakfast perched on a log on the edge of a wood at dawn. Honest! You should try it.
The bits you remember
The disasters become the stories. I’ve learnt this on other long-distance walks. The rain that seemed miserable at the time becomes funny. The terrible hotel becomes legendary. The wrong turn becomes an adventure.
And then you arrive
The final few kilometres of a long walk are peculiar. You’re physically tired, sometimes very tired. There are aching legs and sore feet and, inevitably, one last hill that feels considerably steeper than it really is. But there’s something deeply satisfying about that tiredness. You’ve carried what you needed. You’ve battled the elements (admittedly only British weather but it can feel epic), navigated your way across the landscape, climbed the hills and kept putting one foot in front of another when stopping would have been considerably easier.
And then suddenly you’re there. We walked into Rye tired, fulfilled, satisfied and slightly euphoric. We’d done it. We’d conquered the trail.
Perhaps that’s why I love long-distance walking. Life becomes incredibly simple for a while. Food, shelter, warmth, companionship and getting to where you need to be are what matter. You notice things. You talk. You meet people. Things go wrong. You keep going. I don’t do long-distance walks nearly often enough. There never seems to be enough time.
Perhaps that’s the point. Sometimes you have to make time you don’t have, put what you need on your back and start walking.
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