He wants to do a podcast to be called something like ‘Walking In The UK.’ He’s based in the States in New Hampshire, and his line is that British walking culture is very different from any other in the world. I’ve been pondering whether and how this is true, and naturally I dug out a few volumes from the Nicholson Pedestrian Library to see what others had had to say on the subject. The one that seemed most on the money was The Magic of Walking by Aaron Sussman and Ruth Goode, in which there’s a section titled ‘Walking, British Style.’
Part of it runs, ‘Wherever we may set foot (in Britain), some eighteenth-century essayist or nineteenth-century poet walked there before us. When Thomas Gray whose ‘Elegy written in a country churchyard’ we all read in school, walked the Lake District in 1769, after a long day’s walking he found the inn’s best bedroom dark and damp, and went sturdily on for another 14 miles to Kendal and another inn that pleased him more, before he stopped for the night.’
I’m not sure that this is especially British, and it does seem a bit like showing off.
Stefan is particularly fascinated by our system of Public Footpaths. He’s thrilled by the idea that you see a sign that says Public Footpath and you know you can walk freely there, across or through other people’s land, and who knows where you’ll end up. That part I absolutely agree with. I have quite a collection of photographs I’ve taken of Public Footpath signs; this kind of thing:
And when I see one pointing to a footpath like this, I often feel compelled to go down it.
I was able, to a limited extent, to explore this further last week when a mixed group of fellow trudgers came to Manningtree; 3 from London, one from lower Essex, one from Brazil, to do the somewhat familiar walk to Dedham, in Constable Country. Here we are looking like a little-known but still surviving prog-rock band.
There was one woman in the group, who took the above picture. She looked like this, while admiring a mound of sheep’s wool.
We didn’t have any great sense of urgency or purpose in our walk, and even with detours and meanders we probably only covered about 7 miles: Thomas Gray would have laughed at us, but we passed a considerable number of Public Footpath signs in their various forms:
And at my instigation we did discuss British notions of walking versus hiking versus trekking, and how these might be different elsewhere in the world. We found the ‘rambling’ especially interesting. The British Ramblers Association has been around since been around since 1935. Looks like it was a great way to meet babes.
And we certainly discussed how different English rambling is from American rambling. I’m still singing the Allman Brothers’ ‘Ramblin’ Man,’ not least because of its lines
My father was a gambler down in Georgia
And he wound up on the wrong end of a gun.
As Stefan and I had discussed, if you stray from a footpath in Britain you might possibly get yelled at by an angry farmer, but in general you’re unlikely to get shot. In America it can be a little different.
I suspect the Allman Brothers weren't great walkers.
