The Lazy Cherub Enigma: It's all Downhill From Here

Now begins the final days of the journey. It didn’t feel “right” to lay it out like all the other days as a daily log. These last 2 days had a mind and spirit all their own. It has been difficult putting that into words. Perhaps it is because no words can ever really describe what happens when you walk in nature for a very long time. It changes you. Life becomes less about the telling and more about the living.

As we began the leg from Blakey Ridge to Egton Bridge (20.0 km), our first task was to visit “Fat Betty,” a large white marker in the middle of the moors. The ritual is you leave something to eat and take something to eat courtesy of the abundance and generosity of other walkers. I had the fortune to get almond butter in return for a handful of Werthers and Ken a "Fruesli" bar. And with these small noshible tokens we headed off to Egton Bridge. By now you know what to expect from the weather and scenery. So I will share instead what you might not expect and perhaps, what you have to look forward to if you choose to slow down.

Walking slackens time. Sixteen days feels like a lifetime and walking all day has you feeling like you have traversed the world. What you begin to realize is how everything you need is a lot closer than you think. In only requires some effort to attain it. Life has a way of happening on a walk that makes everything succinct. Along the way you realize there is respite and a bit of warmth. There is dependability and a connectedness that exists between the people and with nature. It seems trite to say “everything is as it should be” but it is. It doesn’t get much simpler than walking. There are easier ways to get from A to B but simplicity is far more elegant in design. With that elegance comes a refreshing sense of knowing that you are designed to be all you need to be. You are your best resource.

On this day we talked a lot about how this journey was about to end. We were now in a steady routine of blissful solitude and fresh air. It was unsettling to think that we would soon leave that all behind. The acceptance that we would no longer just walk and talk and meet like-minded people every day was a hard pill to swallow. The real world was creeping up as the kilometers counted down. Like belligerent children we denied reality for as long as we could. Our first dose of it being the realization that the people we met in the beginning would not be there at the end. Practicalities being they split the last few days up to make the walk less arduous. Emotionally it struck us all a blow since we all assumed we were going the same way together. But life is like that. People come and people go. And truth be told, we never say good-bye on our own terms. Those words and moments are divined by forces far greater than us. The hero’s journey begins and ends alone but richer in wisdom and fuller from those who shared the path.

There was a moment when we reached Glaisdale that I thought this might be where the journey should end. There, for sale, was the old railway station house now converted into an artist’s utopia and a gardener’s dream. I should be living here, I thought. Right here on the old steam rail line across from the Lover’s Bridge. I have no idea why someone would want to sell paradise. Perhaps it was time to pass the torch to another wayward soul. This may have been my Excalibur but I never lingered long enough to reach for it. Life, as they say, must move on!

Our final day was Egton Bridge to Robin Hoods Bay. It would also be our biggest walking day yet – a whopping 31.2 km and no, we were not any more ready for it now than we were at the beginning. There is a reason villages in England are only around 15 km apart from one another. The human body likes to put its feet up after 6 hrs. of continual movement. Any more than that and you loose the spiritual gain and become mired in the physical pain. Awareness of one’s limits need never be about pushing the boundaries of suffering. Suffering comes to us enough as it is. I’ve never seen the point in self inflicted misery to prove I am alive. I would rather enjoy a day well spent moving through the world on my own two feet than prove that I can do it faster/harder than anyone else. That awareness of needing to prove – or not – stayed with me on this last day. This entire walk began as something to prove. For me, just simply that I could do it. I don’t think I doubted that I could not. What I doubted was if I would be able to glean any of the magic Wainwright felt all those times he walked these same paths. This was more than just a walk for him. It was his calling. It was his healing salve. It was his purpose. It also consumed him and that had a profound effect on those around him – not always good. In the end, Wainwright regretted he ever developed this route. What appealed to him was the solitude and the discovery. Now that he had shared it it was no longer his anymore. So had I added to the magic or was I bleeding it dry? Ken and I talked the night before of the sadness we felt that this was our last day. We had wanted the walk to magically last forever. By the time we reached the coast and saw the sea again, we felt somewhat ashamed that we were aching for it to end. This last stretch was difficult to navigate and as a consequence, we had added more kilometers than our feet were willing to allow. I somehow felt that his was Wainwright’s reminder that journeys taken to awaken oneself also mean paying attention to the little things – particularly those things you think are of no consequence. He peppered that nicely with “the most obvious choice is often the right one.” There was a reprieve at Falling Foss Waterfall where, over coffee and cola, Ken and I remarked how this felt a bit like Machu Picchu. After days of hiking to that glorious city in the clouds, we crested the top and were swarmed by day-trippers fresh and well heeled from the bus trip up. Well – no one has ever accused us of taking the easy road well travelled!

And then we were here – Robin Hoods Bay. We began the slow painful decent through the town down ancient cobble stoned streets with grossly mis-matched stairs. For anyone else this would be an exciting walk through time. For us every step was a painful reminder that we never should have done this walk without good gel insoles. At the end of the street is the Bay Hotel – official end point of the Wainwright Coast to Coast. It is here you walk another painful kilometer out to the North Sea (tides out!) and dip your toes and toss you pebble from St. Bees. This we did and then headed back to the hotel to sign the registry and have a drink. I don’t know what I expected the Bay Hotel to be but it wasn’t a Goth bar. For all the hype around Wainwright’s Coast to Coast you never hear how Robin Hoods bay is a mecca for Goths and Goth Festivals. This, our epiphanic moment, shared with some of steam punks finest and most probably a few drug smugglers waiting for the midnight tide to roll back in. It doesn’t get much better than that – expectation tossed on its head and concussed into your wildest dream. My feet ache. My heart is full. And tomorrow I will take AW’s sage advice and find another adventure.

Me, my cider, my aching feet and my sheep at The Bay Hotel