The Path Is Made By Walking

Walking, hiking, tramping, yomping…  It's the oldest form of human transport, the most accessible, and the one that can still offer us the easiest escape from our busy lives.  It's remarkable how the further you walk away from the nearest car park the fewer people you see.  You don't have to walk very far at all, but modern society is so bound to four wheels, itineraries and mobile phone reception that very few people take those extra few steps and leave the crowds behind.

My Dad had been trying to give me a new pair of walking boots for my birthday for years, but I always asked if he could please give me something more immediately useful.  How little did I know?  I was making do with a pair of his old boots (treads that had done about 1600 miles in the two years that he wore them before passing them on to me - my old man walks a lot) until last summer I relented and he took me to be fitted for a "proper" pair of walking boots.  Little did I realise that he wasn't just giving me a pair of walking boots for my birthday; he was giving me a little bit of freedom, an easy escape and an open ticket to the entire 630 miles of the South West Coast Path (which runs right past my door) as well as any headland or hilltop that I fancied enjoying the view from the top of.  It's as easy as putting one foot in front of the other and letting your body follow along behind, but you'll be amazed at where it can take you.

Fun Is Free: Swim In The Sea

It's summer here in the Northern Hemisphere and there can't be anything much more refreshing than swimming in the sea.  In fact, it doesn't even have to be swimming in the sea - wading in and ducking your head under or floating on your back for a few minutes can achieve the desired effect just as easily. I've banged on about the positive psychological impact of negative ions before, but swimming in the sea in summer serves more than one purpose:  refreshing, cooling, relaxing and washing, all for free.  Here's the rules though - you have to dunk your head under the water and you can't wear a wetsuit.  You heard - swimming trunks or boardshorts are acceptable, but for it to have to have the maximum positive impact upon your day it really ought to be unplanned and therefore necessitate you swimming in your smalls, or if there's nobody around to take any offence, the raw.  Putting on a wetsuit implies that you're training for a triathalon, whereas swimming in the sea in your pants implies that it's summer and you know what's good for you.

Summer Follows (and Trumps) Winter

The sun's out and winter seems so long ago all of a sudden.  Time for the photos to do the talking, but may I suggest taking the next available opportunity available to you to take a walk across fields, scramble around the rocks, play in the sea, eat burnt food straight off the fire with your fingers, drink a beer whilst the sun's still up, catch your own dinner, sleep in a tent and enjoy being outside whilst the weather's so agreeable.

Oh, and if you happen to pick a copy of this month's Coast magazine off the shelf at your local newsagent, I was lucky enough to score the cover shot and provided photography for an article written by Alex Wade about the "build-your-own" wooden surfboard workshops that my friend James Otter runs.  What a nice start to summer!

Get 'em Started Young

Just imagine if, from the very moment that you could put one foot in front of the other and call it walking rather than falling over, you had been getting in the sea.  And if your Dad and all of his friends surfed and some of them were pretty well renowned surf coaches?  The odds would be fairly good that you'd grow up feeling comfortable in waves I suppose, to say the least.  


Theo, you'd better let us all get some waves in a few years time...




DISCLAIMER:  If any of you are concerned for young Theo's well being, I'll put your mind at ease.  He was laughing and having the best time when this image was taken, and Mum and Dad were stood just out of shot.  From what I hear, since this occasion he now asks to fly to the sea rather than walk.

Short Term Pain: Long Term Gain

 Matt's midwinter training regime in the Matt Cave.

 Look carefully and you can see bloody finger smears above each hand hold, as well as all of the rubber toe scuffs on the foot nuggets.

Summer evening sessions, with Si racking up for some "outdoors" climbing the following day. 

For years, at about this time of year, my Mum would repeat the same phrase to me in an effort to get me to knuckle down to some exam revision:  "Short term sacrifice: Long term gain".
This phrase has mutated in my head to a slightly catchier rhyme which gets bounced around our house a fair bit:


"Short Term Pain:  Long Term Gain"


It's also around this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere when the evenings start to really stretch out and the sun (sometimes, like this evening) makes an appearance, allowing us all to get out and do what we'd rather be doing an awful lot more often.  So it's now that all of the training pays off.
Matt and Si built the bouldering wall into the back of the garage used to store all of the Cornish Rock Tors equipment so that they could train for climbing trips, particularly through the winter when rain and short days might otherwise hamper their vertical pursuits.  It's at a 20 degree overhang with a couple of different routes traversing it, going up and down, side to side with little bits of numbered masking tape peppering the plywood.  My other housemate Benny and I also started training on it, but Matt and Si had built it for themselves so for me it was a bit like learning to drive in an F1 car; lots of stalling and crashes but with perseverance comes skill, strength and some solid technique.  Between the lot of us, there's been a lot of howls and growling on the wall, blisters, callouses and some blood smears from brutalised and bandaged fingers.
All infinitely worth it when the sun comes out and you've got long sunny evenings to put all the training to good use and being back on the rock isn't half as tough as you expected it to be.

 Where all of the effort pays off; I don't know what this climb was called, but I labelled this image "The Towers of Pain".  Matt Wheadon reaching on up.

Easter time lunch stop under a crag called "Easter Island" in Cheddar Gorge with my housemate's Ben and Matt (who both run Cornish Rock Tors), and Matt's brother Sam eyeballing our next route in the background.

BST

It's over. Officially. Done for another year.

It's a bitter-sweet weekend here in the UK and France. Yeah you get an extra hour in bed but the clocks going back by an hour signals the end of British Summer Time and the reality hits in that winter is on its way, despite the fact that it's been pretty darn autumnal here for the past month odd at least.

So just take a few moments to cast your memory back over the summer that's just been on the north side, or if you're the other side of the equator, maybe just envision the good times to come.

I took these photos in early September in and around the fishing town come artists community of St Ives. No it ain't an "app", they're the real deal shot on a thirty odd year old Kodak 127 camera on out of date cartridge film. The camera's getting temperamental in its old age, missing exposures when I wind it on and periodically the shutter won't release. Having taken it in to be repaired the advice I got was just to give it a good whack whenever it won't play ball, and sure enough that seems to solve most of its problems.
They look like my memories of summer in Cornwall when I was really young.