I was waiting for a train to take me to some inglorious windswept Northern town, from which I would escape into the even bleaker surrounds of the higher moors by way of a dispiriting pull up a seemingly endless hill – and I call this fun, you know, a hobby no less - when I noticed that one of my bootlaces had come undone. Inevitably, when I tried to pull it tight it snapped. A thought briefly occurred to me just then, namely that you never break a shoelace in an accident or have one that just comes loose and slithers out of the holes and down a drain before you can catch it. You only break a shoelace when you need them, and you almost certainly never carry spares.
At that point I remembered that I had a spare pair of bootlaces in my rucksack. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The only people I even vaguely suspect might carry spare shoelaces are the sort of people who will also never be caught out without a biro, a back-up biro, a tiny penknife (with a corkscrew attachment), paracetamol, tissues and a sticking plaster.
Suddenly worried, I performed a rapid inventory of my rucksack, giving a dispirited little wail with each sensible item that I pulled out. I had all of the above, plus a little torch with spare batteries as well as some notepaper and five postage stamps. I was only going to Keithley. The knife would have been enough.
At least there wasn’t a cheese grater in there, I thought as I piled everything back into the rucksack and headed for the train. The walking apprentice carries a small cheese grater in her bag. I tried to explain that, for all the possible dangers we faced out there in the wilds of darkest Yorkshire, some kind of solid cheese emergency was the least likely. She then assured me that the cheese grater was actually a vanity aid, and we wisely agreed not to discuss it in more detail. Frankly it’s not the kind of girl-related image I wish to hold onto. Whenever I imagine a woman performing those secret ablutions and mysterious beautifying rituals, I think of Cleopatra pouring luxuriant ass's milk over her silky skin, or a dusky maiden washing her hair beneath a torrent of sparkling mountain water. Girls rubbing energetically at their feet with kitchen utensils, tongues clenched between their teeth, flakes of dead skin erupting around them like volcanic ash, don't usually get a look in.
So I haven’t walked on my own for a while now. Walking alone can be a mixed blessing for an introspective soul such as me. On one hand, if you have a mind of worries heavier than your rucksack, the poignant loneliness of the landscape can get a bit scary. Suddenly all that sky unfolds above you like a parachute, the empty moors spread out like ripples, and you can feel exactly ninety-three million miles from the sun.
On the other hand – and luckily this is the mood that accompanied me the 14 miles or so on my chosen route from Ilkley to Saltaire - if you have nothing really urgent on your mind, for instance just a jumble of mundane stuff to arrange into an order of importance, the wide open spaces of the moors and hills around here can be a great help in clearing your head. You can just put on your walkman, snap some photographs, and leave your thoughts to drip out quite naturally, like drying a cup on the draining board.
