In a few days (as of this writing) I’ll be leaving my lovely home in Portugal and making my way to the wilds of northern England, not-so-coincidentally along the border of Scotland, to begin a two-week walk along Hadrian’s Wall. I’ll be starting in Newcastle upon Tyne, hugging the eastern coast of England along the North Sea. I basically put my feet in the sand, turn west, and start walking. Thing is, I’ve never done anything like this in my life. I don’t do religious pilgrimages, I don’t even participate in charity 5k run/walks. This in no way fits the “John” profile. So just what the #*@(! am I doing?
Good question.
I don’t know when I first heard of it, but I know I first saw Hadrian’s Wall in early May of 2012. It was a sight-seeing stop in the early days of our honeymoon – we were married about a week at the time – and I just loved everything about it. We went to Houseteads, which is probably the best-preserved bit of the entire Wall at this point, and really enjoyed poking around for awhile. And while we were poking around, we noticed that people were approaching the fort from a direction other than that parking area. In fact, they were coming out of what we thought was the wilderness on the other side of the fort! And this is when we heard about the Hadrian’s Wall Path for the first time.
What that is, is a “National Trail” maintained by Great Britain, one of many such trails maintained by the State for the benefit of everyone. I didn’t know much about it at the time beyond the fact of its existence, but something about the hills and the ambiance and… just the romance of the honeymoon maybe?… anyway I said, out loud to my blushing bride, “I’m going to come back here and walk this when I’m 50.”
WHAT??
See, I turned 40 a little more than a week after the wedding. In other words, I would be turning 40 the day after this visit, and I think the whole sense of time passing, life changing etc… just stirred something in me. At the time, it just made sense; set a goal for my 50th year that would require me to maintain some amount of fitness and discipline, plus it would be an adventure worth an iconic anniversary. That being said, the romance of the notion papered over ideas like “I’ve never been particularly fit,” “I’ve never done the least bit of hiking”, and “I have no clue what this would actually encompass.” “I’ve never even walked a 5k.” PHAW, those would be problems for another day. Besides, anybody who knows me knows that I say stupid/whimsical shit all the time! This was no big deal.
The weird thing was, though, that this stuck. Year after year went by, and I would still occasionally think “I’ll be getting ready for the walk in few years.” “I should probably start losing weight if I’m going to make it across England.” That sort of thing. The montage of calendar pages flew past, and I never quite dropped the idea of it. That said, in my 49th year we decided to up and move to Portugal, so spending any energy on the idea of another big project was just ridiculous. There was also this big trip we planned for shortly after we arrived in Portugal as sort of a reward/incentive to ourselves for COVID got in the way of doing this in my actual 50th year, and there was a false start the year after that, but schedules conspired this year so that Lisa and I would be separated at the end of May anyway, so it seemed like the opportunity to do something on my own had presented itself.
And so, a few months ago, I set my pedometer thingy to 10,000 steps. Then, a week later, I set it to 11,000. And every week after that if I succeeded in hitting the goal at least 5 out of 7 days, I added another thousand. Just before we left for Marrakech my benchmark was 24,000 steps a day, which – according to a combination of napkin-backs and the internet – seems to be the median distance I’ll be walking on my chosen route. I’ve done a reasonable amount of research on how to be prepared and have equipped myself appropriately. In a bittersweet turn, my recently deceased father-in-law gifted me a nice set of walking poles many years back when he heard about my hiking goal; an incredibly thoughtful gift, showing that he was paying attention when we spoke. I’ve used them a little on my practice walks and I expect to get good use out of them very soon.
As I finish writing this blog post I am on a train taking me from Leeds (where my flight from Porto landed) to Newcastle, where the beginning of the Hadrian’s Wall path is. Tomorrow morning I’m setting off, to discover if hiking is my new passion or, just possibly, I hate it. Fingers crossed!
