Guest column: Stuart Heritage
‘Mum was always half a step ahead.’
IN LIFE, IT’S important to know your limits. And now I know mine. My limit is exactly 20 miles. If I try walking any further than that, everything goes haywire. My fingers swell up. My mood plummets. I will burst into tears at the slightest provocation. Every second I spend walking over 20 miles becomes a battle between the part of my brain that wants to complete the route and the part of my brain that just wants to find the nearest road, flag down a car and get a lift home. If I walk 19.9 miles, I’m a happy boy. But 20.1 miles? A full-blown miseryguts.
And this is troubling because I’ve got to walk 65 miles soon, all the way around the Isle of Wight. I’ll start at 7am, and I won’t stop until 7am the next day. By my calculations, 65 miles is more than 20 miles. Will I cope? I haven’t a clue.
But it’s important that I do it. My mum died last year, and walking has become a way for me to remember her. She was a walker too, although never for leisure. Mum was always staunchly utilitarian. She only walked to get somewhere – to work, to the shops, to my school – and always at a clip. She slowed for nobody, and her pace was always slightly beyond anyone else’s.
Mum’s terminal diagnosis had been a terrible shock, but in retrospect the worst moment of her illness came when the cancer paralysed her. It took away her independence. It’s what made her reliant on other people for mobility. My mum, the woman who never asked for help, was robbed of the thing she prized over all else. Losing the use of her legs nearly extinguished her spirit. It broke my heart.
So this is why I’m walking, to raise money for a cancer charity. But along the way I’m learning plenty. I’m learning that I prefer The Stour Valley Walk to the North Downs Way; partly because The Stour Valley Walk passes along Canterbury High Street (so I can buy a Burger King) and partly because it doesn’t end in Dover (a town I’m not too fond of). I’m learning that I can only listen to podcasts for four hours at a time. And, weirdly, I’m learning that I don’t enjoy solitude as much as I thought.
When I signed up for the walk, it was because I wanted to be alone. It was the day after Mum died. I was crippled with grief, and I wanted to force myself through the process alone. But as my training walks grow longer – they now begin before sunrise and end after sunset – I find myself becoming lonelier and lonelier. Especially during the lowest points, when the hills get steeper and my feet start screaming and the finish line is still an eternity away, I miss my wife and kids impossibly. They’re the ones who helped me through my grief, and now I’m spending days away from them. It feels like such a stupid, selfish thing to do. But then, when it’s over, something pulls me back. Walking can be awful, but few other things are quite as satisfying. I’m starting to enjoy the rituals: taping up my feet before I set out, stopping at one specific Co-Op for supplies. The rhythm of boot on track that becomes soothing, then meditative. The way it balances out in the end; the way the misery of the climb is always followed by the elation of the view. Something is driving me on. It might just be the simple joy of exploration, but I think it’s more than that. It’s my mum, or at least my memory of her. She’s still walking everywhere, and she’s still half a step out of reach. Maybe, if I keep my faith and continue to walk once my challenge ends, I’ll be able to catch up with her. But only 20 miles at a time. This isn’t worth killing myself over.