Getting Beyond the Familiar #2: We Begin Walking Part D

I am in the dining room of the Swan Hotel at 7:30, opening time, though my preference is to be on the trail by now. I am the first one seated. Soon, an elderly couple strides in, and they sit near the window. They discuss having eggs. Moments later a young American couple enters. From the looks of it--haircut and tattoos--the man is in the military. They look at their copy of the same guidebook I have, and I hear them say that their destination that day is Old Sodbury--where I am headed.

Continuing with my habit, I wrap bacon and ham in a napkin so that I can eat it for lunch later. And soon enough I am walking again--a 13-mile hike, which seems short compared to yesterday's 17 miles. Leaving town, this section of the walk takes me by St. Mary the Virgin church, erected in the 13th century.  The church looks like this:

It is not long until I am in the countryside again: bucolic, verdant. I try to figure my pace, knowing that I have at least 13 miles to hike. I keep telling myself to stop and enjoy the view. Often while backpacking I find that I need at least 3 days to leave the noise and speed of society behind, to not worry about the time of day. I think: stop when you are tired; eat when you are hungry. But I persist. And soon I come across a small waterfall, which looks like this:

The weather is good all day--even a bit too warm. Hours later I follow the Cotswold Way signposts through another churchyard, St. John the Baptist, this one close to my destination of the Old Sodbury House. The churchyard looks like this:

I am tired and sweaty. I can hear people singing. I have stopped to take photographs, and a woman comes out of the church and smiles at me. I am aware of how I must look. "Hello," she says, and I reply the same. "We're just rehearsing. Feel free to come inside. We'll be serving refreshments afterward, and you're more than welcome to join us." I think I misquote the bible: "That's where the joyous noise is coming from." She laughs.

I remove my hat. I take a chance and step into the church, finding a pew toward the back. I am aware of how I must look, that old-man-hiking kind of thing. My legs are tired. Thankful for the respite, I listen to a couple of songs and then gather hat and backpack and sneak out as quietly as I can. I orient my map and head downhill, where I encounter a young woman. "Where's the trail?" she asks. I point the way that I am going, and she strides quickly ahead. The path is not far from the Old Sodbury House, and not much later I greet the hosts, a husband-and-wife team about my age. They are cheerful and welcoming. They mention that I am only a mile or so from Chipping Sodbury, and old market town. "You've walked so far already today, another couple of miles won't matter," I am told.

I relax in my room for a while. I shower away as much old age as I can. Outside again, I head in the direction of Chipping Sodbury, a place that I think I would like to spend more time. I stop in a pub and ask if they are serving food, and I am told that they are not. Down the rode I try my luck again, but I am told the same thing. So, I settle for a pint of beer, a good chair, and a soccer game on the large TV. Back near the Old Sodbury House is the Dog Inn, which my guidebook recommends for food. I am happy to find that food is, indeed, available. I sit at a small table, another pint of beer in front of me as I wait for my food. I watch people interact. Dinners by myself have gotten lonely, but that is what one gets during solo travel.

My legs are quite tired. I have walked many miles today.

Getting Beyond the Familiar #2: We Begin Walking Part C

After about 17 miles of hiking on a day that is supposed to be 15 miles but involves a bit of getting lost and backtracking, I arrive at the Swan Hotel in Wotton-Under-Edge. I left the Elmond House early, though some might think that I cheated a bit at the start: Rather than backtrack through town to where I'd left the trail yesterday afternoon to make my way to the B&B, I accepted a ride to the top of the hill I would've had to climb. Maggie, the woman in charge of the Elmond House, asked if I were "a purist," if I would feel somehow deprived if I cut out a section of the trail and avoided that backtracking I assured her that I am far from pure in anything in my life, and what would've been a 2-hour hike was replaced by a 5-minute car ride. 

The weather is wonderful. The topography is wonderful. Some things I see look like this:

More than once, somehow, I lose the trail along the way and have to retrace my steps to find my way. Imagine my glee, though. Like most trips, navigation becomes an effort in problem solving, and I solve each problem with only a small bit of frustration. Approaching the town of Dursley, I walk along a ridge and see the town below. The views look like this:

I am looking forward to finding a place to stop for a snack of some sort, a place of respite. In the town, though, I struggle to find the trail markers, and at one point stop in the shade of an old building, comparing my surroundings to the map and guidebook. A woman at least 25 years my senior walks by, and she asks if I needed help. I tell her I do. She points me in the right direction, tells me that she'd walked the Cotswold Way when she was younger, and wishes me luck. I head up a steep road that led to a steeper dirt path, and at a trail junction find the a signpost lying on the ground, one of its signs with an arrow showing the direction of the Cotswold Way. The way the sign is situated, though, I can not be sure of which path to follow. According to the guidebook, I am supposed to walk along a golf course, which I can see at the top of the hill. Small problems resolved again.

I am hot, tired, and sweaty when I reach the town of Wotton-Under-Edge. I manage to find the Swan Hotel, and inside am greeted by a man who says, "Are you alright?" I think first that perhaps he knows the older woman I saw in Dursley who asked if I need help. I tell him who I am. He shows me around--the bar, the dining area--then shows me to my room which is bright and cool. He tells me when the dining room opens for dinner, when it opens for breakfast. Alone, I lie on the bed and rest. My legs are tired. I am hungry. I probably stink. I wash a shirt in the sink and hang it in front of an open window.  And it is not long, until I force myself to move, to clean up a bit (showers seem so welcome at the end of the day!) and to explore the town. Most of the shops are closed for the evening, but I scout around a bit to see where I'll be starting tomorrow. I return to the Swan Hotel, which looks like this:

I have a beer, and then I have another. I eat dinner. When it is dark outside, I head up to my room and read my map and guidebook in preparation for another long day.

Getting Beyond the Familiar #2: We Begin Walking Part B

The first bed and breakfast, in the town of Leonard Stanley, is a welcome site after a long day on the trail, a day filled with general confusion and disorientation. The place is run by Maggie, whom I meet right away, and James, whom I will meet later. Again, I am the only guest. The building is old, as in several hundred years old. It is near an old church. I sit at a table with Maggie, and we exchange pleasantries while we drink tea she has prepared. She likes birds, and we look at the many in the trees around us. When James arrive, we discuss hiking. We discuss our careers and jobs. He is a "social mediator" and that night will be meeting with families who have been in conflict that started because of one post or another through one type of social media or another. This is their third and final meeting, and James will be mediating some kind of negotiated settlement along the lines of "quit calling us names" or something. I listen to him talk (or, perhaps hear him talk), and I think, Three meetings to settle this? He is also taking food that Maggie is preparing because he says that people always do better when there is food to be eaten.

Later, I head toward the old church to look around, and then to a local pub, The White Hart, that Maggie has recommended. In the pub, I drink a couple of beers and watch a football match on the large TV across the room. Some locals begin playing darts, but soon enough lay their darts on the pool table and vanish. I am sitting at the bar, and if anyone started a conversation, I have already decided to be brave and engage with someone. Nobody says anything, however, so I have no obligations.

I pass by the church again. The church looks like this.

Back in my room, I watch one channel or another of the BBC, then turn out the lights and go to sleep.

Getting Beyond the Familiar #2: We Begin Walking Part A

I wake up earlier than I need to, both eager for the walk to begin and anxious that it is going to. I walk down to the dining area at 8:30, the time my host and I agreed upon the day before. I sit alone at the table, and I am served this:

The plate has more food than I usually eat for two meals, but because I do not want to insult my host, I clean my plate thoroughly. Soon, the host, her husband, and I are discussing what lies in front of me for the day. We also continue some discussion of politics and the non-husband host says that, really, "the Germans are waging World War III, this time with money." When they are in the kitchen together, away from my, the husband says this is the first day in many that he has felt "almost human." She does not hear him, so he repeats it. I am stuck on "almost human" because it is the name of a small literary publication the writing group I was a part of many years ago produced. It was great fun. We were a creative bunch in a literary way.

Half an hour later, I am out the door and in search of The Cotswold Way. According to my itinerary, my hike today is just 10 miles, though I know that 10 miles into the unfamiliar can seem, and even be, much longer. I see a group of hikers down the street, so I follow them. Though they disappear, I find the first marker, walk through a gate, and start through the field. Not long later, I see this:

This shows that I am on the correct path, and that my final destination is only 55 miles away.

The hiking, overall, is relatively easy, though anything approached with a beginner's mind is. During the day, I will see things like these:

At one point not long into the morning, I encounter a three women from the Seattle area. They are much older than I, and they have already walked the northern half of the Cotswold Way. We pass each other at various times, and at one point I see them in the distance and, as I did at the start of the day, chose to follow someone. From a rise, just before I descend to where they are, I see them stop and consult their maps and guidebooks. When I reach them, they let me know that that (we) have gone the wrong way, and that I am the second man they have led astray during their trip. I, too, consult my map and guidebook, and we use my compass to orient ourselves, figuring out that we're just a bit off trail. They say that at some point the trail will pass by many cows, which they want to avoid because one of the women has heard that one hiker each year is killed by cows. They decide to stop for lunch; I decide to keep walking. We say our goodbyes.

An hour later I sit down on a stack of logs and eat lunch. My shoes and socks are off of my feet, and we area all enjoying a cool-down. And older man and his dog approach, and we greet each other. "Are you from the southern hemisphere?" he asks, and I am able to answer this question easily. I never know why he asks, but I assume it is because of my wide-brimmed hat. We talk about his travels to the U.S. when he worked for General Electric. We talk about his dog, Jack, which is a fine English Setter but is unfit for breeding because of an underbite. When the man and his dog are gone, I prepare myself to walk, and then do. I pass through "round barrows" and "long barrows," which are graves of people who lived here many thousands of years ago. I think of those people, how they walked this hills, too. And then, 30 minutes later, I miss a sign post; 30 minutes after that I realize that I am lost. Backtracking, I find the sign I missed concealed by bushes and brambles. Not long afterward, I pass through a gate but cannot make out where the trail goes. The field in front of me is full of cows that seem to be moving from one pasture to another. Some of the cows look at me as though they are full of bovine hatred, as though they have read The Jungle and Fast Food Nation. I let the cows pass. I hear other hikers behind me, so I let them pass and hope they will lead to the correct path. Another group joins them: the women from Seattle. They ask how I managed to get behind them again, and I tell them that I rested a few times, plus I got lost.

We hike as a large group for a while, until we reach part of a small town and part of a busy road. The women and I are confused: they are supposed to head one way, and I am supposed to head another. This is, predictably enough, the point where I anticipated confusion as I reviewed maps in the preceding weeks: the directions and diagrams were not clear to someone who is not familiar with the area. The women go on their way, and I make a guess: up this path, then backtrack; up this road, then backtrack; up that path again, this time farther, then backtrack. Finally, I choose the road, eventually see some landmarks mentioned in the guidebook, and keep walking until I find my bed and breakfast.