I went for a walk with two of my sisters last week. For differing reasons, we had each decided to do more of it this year. My younger sister wants to walk the Inca Trail in a couple of years. The middle one to fill her time while the kids are with their dad. My incentive came after I asked my husband to walk the Cape Wrath Trail with me and he laughed.
The trail, from Fort William in Scotland to the northwestern most point of mainland Britain, is 230 miles long and takes around 3-weeks to walk. It is an unmarked route, described as: “a superb route for very experienced long-distance backpackers”. Hence the laugh. Whilst I have taken to walking more in recent years, especially during that undiagnosed perimenopause period when I struggled to exercise with any level of intensity, I rarely do more than an hour around our local country park.
Just do it!
In the past, walking would not have been considered enough of a training session for me. Unless I was breathless from some kind of high intensity exercise, or unable to walk because of DOMS, I wasn’t doing it right. But, walking offered me sanity when it was all I could manage. Then it became the thing that I did with my husband every morning, providing connection before we each began our busy day. But he rightly knew that a quick jaunt around the block, or even an hour in the park, was very different to a long distance walk carrying a pack.
I blame Raynor Winn. I got the idea after hearing her speak about her own Cape Wrath adventure on Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast. Intrigued, I picked up The Salt Path, her first book about an earlier walk she and her husband had done through Cornwall. Despite the fact that Winn’s homelessness had prompted the walk, and even though she wrote in depth about their many trials and tribulations, I was sold. This is typical of our marriage. While I see the positive in a situation and want to jump right in, my husband will point out every flaw in my plan. In his defence, he did have a point. I hadn’t even liked walking until recently. There’s a good chance that I might hate it.
I’ll show him
So, as usual, I decided to prove him wrong. The walk last week was just the start of many to come I decided. And, if need be, maybe I’d go to Scotland without him.
We loved it. Granted, we were the only people carrying day packs. And we had more food than we needed for the 2-hour walk. No, we didn’t have all the right gear. And it was bloody freezing. But, we were exhilarated by the end of it. And well deserving of the giant slice of cake we rewarded ourselves with afterwards.
Then, by coincidence, I was in London for an event. Just an overnight stay for which I needed to take a backpack. There was a tube strike and so we walked the 40 minutes to our hotel, the weight of the pack making it feel much further. I couldn’t understand why that night, every part of me ached – including my forearms. I didn’t know that forearms could even ache. It was only on the return walk to the station, as I used my thumbs to ease the pack straps away from my shoulders that I understood. My forearms were screaming as a result of this previously unused action.
I don’t say this lightly, or often, but my husband may be right. Perhaps I should put a bit more thought into the long distance walking. Or try harder to talk him into coming. He’s a big guy, I’m sure he could carry both packs.
