Something to think about at brekka time on Essex Day .. October 26
Let’s talk ‘dish for the day’ and ponder too the difference of a yesterday evening with that delight of the setting sun backlighting golds and browns, those leaves once green. Just a nip in the breeze confirmed this was three weeks into October, yet come this next morning it is dripping wet, storms making for it dark too. Got room lighting on at a bit after 09.00hrs.
These words, yesterday I’d written – presently I’m now three parts through a first day where clocks gave us and hour and I slept my bonus ! Yet let’s not go there though, better to be reading what our chum of outdoors Chris Townsend wrote this week about getting rain down his neck in the Cairngorms. His weathering it well ought inspire us that the in-tent habit is something that benefits our inner self.
That recall I have similarly, even when nowadays mostly I’ll do my back2packing with a tin tent on the hook. No pegging out in a gale for me, and quite the probability there’s a Lakeland that’s a snug for readying if I forgot to layer up, wear a beanie even. The tourer caravan isn’t a new idea, by the way: that came to me as 1970s dawned and I started out with a Mini Glen. I’ve had tents bigger!
That fleece throw of a wrap thing though is just so adaptable. It gets you warmed easily, mine gets thrift-fully powered in Frogmobile by a Jackery battery box of tricks. That’s something quite unlike what Chris takes on trips. Yet then he isn’t towing a caravan through the Lairig Ghru,.
Not that this is something I have a mind to do albeit that’s what travellers were doing time way back. Them-days this was a main road between Braemar and Coylumbridge mountain pass for traders and cattle herders when plying their lot. A few smugglers liked it too, according to some.
Backpackers of the Chris ilk do it with in-tent, seemingly even when it comes all galed, the wind-tunnel of a place when you get weather all gone wrong..
That’s the journey, isn’t it though: we do the trip planning and trust weather-gods are on side. I found they were in autumn time now passing through, me noticing how incredibly green has stayed the treeline. Found that on journeying Tyneside to that sweep of Wales’ largest bay washed by the Irish Sea. This stretch enticed as October opened, the Llyn to Strumble Head pathway being ideal for a sea-side wander in a Ceredigion which has so much tourist delight.
That’s how I’ve now got drawn to writings that have helped, still do, draw out the mystery from a place, linking characters and emotions of things met on travels. With living in an own home from home caravan you are towing lifestyle is five star dream ticket travel. Around you the backdrop of trees getting golden, rose hips ripening, blackberries just about gone though, and with the bracken browning, all just by the window. You’ll notices plants still blooming bright and that yellow still on the broom, something to spot.
That was the title of the book from Betsy Whyte, with her so much about Perthshire travelling that takes you right back. Something of a coincidence probably that I’ve also just noticed a significant “Quote of the Day” is from that writer walked-to with his “Travels with a Donkey” book: he wrote “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”
Robert Louis Stevenson as a lad played games and imagined islands in southern seas when still an uncle’s boy getting salty sand in his shoes, across there on the far coast where the Firth of Forth froths to shorelines.
Writers do tempt us, help us wander, don’t they. And I guess you have a favourite.
Let me throw one man’s hat in the ring, a guy possibly quite un-beknowing that he’d set something of a trend in long distance bike travels: Walter Stolle. He rode himself into a book truly worth the read, it’s one that links an Essex of then, right up to now really. I get that when of a mind to reflect on peer clubmen and top riders of the bicycle race scene I recall from my Crouch Cycling Club days. Dave Bedwell, Vin Denson, are amongst the names. More recently there’s the speed merchant who put Steeple on the map, Alex Dowsett opening his race palmares at teen age with MADcc. Then of Romford, thirty miles or so up the road a bit towards London there was Walter Stolle. You do remember him?
In 1953 he raced with Becontree Wheelers, was a record maker in 12hrs and 24hrs time trials. Moving to the slow lane he began to record the travel notes that’d be the story of that long ride taking him around the world at far under snail pace. Even he found it something to apologise for that he manages to return home just under fifteen years – years! not minutes – late for an important lunch date with his lady.
Taking all the rush and bustle of record breaking spins around the globe, for certain how the modern day wheeling types tell it, shows they’re just missing out on having fun. The book “The World beneath My Bicycle Wheels” tells the story of his 400,000 miles ride when he wore out six bikes, had another five stolen, was robbed – ‘only’, he reckons, – 231 times. Daily Mail writer John Dale was editorial co-writer of the book so go find yourself a copy (Pelham Books published, in 1978). It tells you what the bicycle can do if you let it loose then don’t stop pedalling till back home.
No fictional character was Walter Stolle, what the bike did for him is wheel life being lived: and didn’t he, too, have the dickens of a time. So there, a story to relish on Essex Day – October 26. It is the feast day too of St Cedd, who took to building places and doing things that link Lindisfarne to Essex. Take your pick on where you’ll be this Monday of the year, Lastingham is sorta halfway up country if you want to celebrate it in Yorkshire. Those in the know about my ‘Living’ realise there’s a book in it, perhaps even four when it’s a partwork.
