Journey

Near Castleton, Peak District

 If you don't want to be contacted you need to remember to do a lot of things: forward your calls, turn off your voicemail alerts, turn off alerts for email, whatsapp, messaging, any other messenger apps and archive any conversations you'd rather not see.  Or just turn off or dump your phone, but then you need to get a paper map and you won't get traffic alerts and it is astonishing all the things we do use our phones for.  All these occurred to me only one by one.

I wandered across the country with, initially, not much intention of going back. I had no plan greater than staying alive, which itself felt fairly tenuous.

A couple of days later I saw a message from my husband that I had been logged as a missing person. I still don't know if this was true or not. I didn't ask. I guess it doesn't matter now. It is very difficult to not be in contact when you know people are worried about you and that pressure grows the longer you are away.

[Sources: Guardian and Missing People websites]

I felt terrible for my family but couldn't find the words to explain and couldn't promise to go home. I couldn't help mum and I couldn't get anyone to help me help mum. How could I be at home in those circumstances?  It would be like drawing the curtains on her.

Six days after leaving home my mind had finally formulated these thoughts into a letter. I needed time to think. But actually, I still couldn't think - not as far as a solution, because there wasn't one while all the control was held by someone else. I had forced my mind into an explanation of what I had done but it still swerved away from the subject. If I couldn't think then all I could do was wait it out, give things time to settle but I was still constantly worried about mum

When your primary aim - which, in this case, was seeing mum two or three times a week and ensuring she was well-cared for - is not just taken away from you but you are trapped from doing whatever you cam to help, because of someone else's control, you become essentially aimless.  Then it becomes important to have some aim, activity and focus for the day that directs your energy for the whole day otherwise you could find yourself in a dangerous place. At that point the event in Devon was just somewhere to aim for in time and space because most people need a goal that goes beyond a day.

In the meantime I did make a goal for each day: somewhere to end up.  I also tried to find or look out for or make a highlight to each day. 

On the Sunday that Cumberlandia finished, I went to an immaculate, calm, campsite with a fishing pond and a pleasant owner, near York then on to a friendly milonga at the back of a pub. I had a long conversation with the interesting owner of a Colombian cafe, then, returning to my car, dropped into The Angel on the Green in Bishopgate which, as I passed, had superb musicians in the style of Django Rheinhardt. They were distractions from my flight. I was amazed how well I seemed to put on a front to those I met while in the car I went to pieces.

With clothes only for the weekend I wanted to wash and dry mine. Drying clothes entails a washing line, which I had, on a dry day, which they were - and staying somewhere longer than overnight which wasn't the case. I knew that youth hostels had drying rooms and kitchens and that the camping was very cheap. Adrift, now, I didn't want to use our shared account so I only had savings, mostly birthday money from dad, over the years.

 
I camped for a night in the Peak District finding solace in the setting, despite the sheep shit and the mauled dead squirrel, or perhaps rat that glistened gorily in the torchlight as I walked to my tent in the dark.

I stopped at Droitwich and dipped in the beautiful lido which tasted, surprisingly, of saltwater - Droitwich was a spa town. Floating with arms stretched out I let the water lift me. Under that blue sky fringed by trees I let everything go and felt peace and respite for first time in five days.

In Wales, I stayed a night in an orchard near Brecon and had an hour long conversation on the phone with a local tango dancer I knew slightly from years ago.

The next morning, at breakfast, a family told me about a nearby waterfall so in a last minute change of plan I went to have a look, before the drive south, meeting a fellow swimmer from Cornwall at the main falls.

It was a strange, often solitary time. So much beauty around and so much sorrow within.

On the afternoon of the sixth day after leaving Scotland I arrived on the Devon/Cornwall border.