Meet the TIME TRAVELLER
3500 miles. 5000 years. Hats off to Jane Batchelor, who has just walked the timeline of the British Isles…
I wanted to walk 4000 miles.
I’ve been hiking since I was six and travelling since I was 21. I’m 38 now and I wanted to do something really massive and immersive; 4000 sounded like a good number! My first thought was to go abroad. But then I realised that what I really wanted to do was to learn about the history of a place, not just walk through it. So why leave our shores when there was so much to learn here?
So it became the timeline of Britain.
I could start in the Shetlands with the stone age and follow a course through as many eras of our history as possible, ending up in London as ‘the modern world’. So I saved up for two years doing four different jobs – then I went for it.
I started on May 8th 2017.
Shetland and Orkney took me through the Stone Age; the Hebrides and Highlands for the bronze age, down to Edinburgh. Hadrian’s Wall for the Romans; East Yorkshire and the Isle of Man for the Vikings; Liverpool for the Normans; North Wales for Edward I and Owain Glyndŵr. Pembrokeshire for Henry Tudor; Somerset, Devon and Cornwall for the Civil War. Then Wiltshire, Sussex, Kent, and Surrey for women’s roles in the two World Wars. I finished on May 19th 2018 – just over a year after I started.
It wasn’t a straight line.
Beyond knowing the basic idea, I never planned my daily routes. I wanted to learn as I went. People would tell me interesting places that would help me with the timeline, and I’d divert to them. So the line is a massive squiggle!
I never had rules.
No mileages, no destinations. It wasn’t about endurance. Some days I’d walk 20 miles, some days three. Sometimes I’d spend three days researching things in a library. I mostly stealth-camped: quietly and unobtrusively in woodland. But I met a lot of exceptionally kind people who would take me in for a night or two.
The Welsh border is confusing. Most of the time I wasn’t sure if I was in England or Wales. I took my cues from the signposts; if there were no vowels, it was probably Wales. I had a buggy made for me.
I got through the Highlands with my rucksack, but I realised my knees just wouldn’t take the pounding all the way. So I went to a buggy shop in Edinburgh and persuaded a nice chap called Graeme to build a frame with wheels for me. I strapped the rucksack to the buggy and never looked back – even when I had to throw it over stiles. It started so many conversations with people. It’s a bit like a pet!
I finished at the Royal Wedding.
It wasn’t the plan, but as I got closer to London I realised it was happening and would make the perfect symbol of modern Britain. So I ended up in Windsor among the crowds for Harry and Meghan eating a cream tea and waving a flag. I’m guessing I was the only person to walk 3500 miles to get to it!
Oddly, it doesn’t feel like an achievement.
It just feels like my life. I remember feeling really proud in Glasgow after 550 miles through the Highlands and Islands, and after that I just thought, right, I can do this now; carry on. But I do feel like I know where we came from. And I know how fantastically kind, helpful and informative people can be.
Number one lesson?
Pay good money for good kit. I spent a lot