‘We need to walk in bad weather. It can change everything.’
Why author Matt Gaw set out to go walking in the worst of weathers – and the surprising things he learned along the way.
SOME MIGHT CALL Matt Gaw a glutton for punishment. For his latest book, nature writer Matt embarked on a quest to front up bad weather. But not to make himself miserable; instead to enjoy the experience to the hilt. The book is called In All Weathers, and it tells the story of his walks in rain, wind, fog, ice ‘and everything in between’ in captivating prose.
He discovers the enthralling wonders of fog in the Suffolk village of Great Livermere, where the author MR James (famous for his ghost stories) once lived. He encounters the softness and subtleties of wind at Neist Point on Skye, at Wrabness in Essex and on Haworth Moor in Yorkshire. He immerses himself in the transformative powers of snow and the enchantment of ice as he meets ice skaters on the fens of East Anglia and experiences a Christmas swim on the coast of Skye.
But to give you a flavour of the story, here’s one of his encounters with rain, as he sets out on a walk in the Lake District on the wettest day he could find…
SEATHWAITE, OCTOBER 22
The peak of Seathwaite Fell has been reduced to a pale ghost. The clouds that have tracked up its seaward side are now beginning their descent, as though they are re-enacting the scouring slide of long-ago glaciers that once formed the Borrowdale valley. In an hour, maybe less, this valley, walled in by its sharp crags, veined with milk-white gills and gullies, is in for a proper soaking.
The hamlet of Seathwaite is no stranger to getting wet. Seathwaite’s average yearly rainfall is 3,552 millimetres, making it the most rain-soaked habitation in the UK – well in excess of the UK average of 1,163 millimetres.
That is why I had to come here. It’s one thing to enjoy the rain when it comes after the heat and sweat of a long summer but I wanted to immerse myself in real rain, to be in the wettest place I could find; a place rain calls home.
The volume of water is due largely to the hamlet’s location. Weather is specific to place; it is
tethered to it. When moisture-laden air comes in from the Atlantic, it is forced up and over a volcanic ridge that includes England’s highest peak, Scafell Pike. The air cools as it rises and condenses into rain. And what rain. When it comes down on the lee side, it does so with biblical fury. It fills rain gauges. It fills rivers. It fills roads and fields. It, as they say round these parts, hosses it down.
I follow the sign that says Sty Head and walk onto a track that wends into the valley. It is the wind I notice first. The south-westerly is gusting hard. There are times when it holds you midfootstep, snatches at clothes, before shouldering past and down the fell.
The fizz of rain is in the air, the excitement rubbing off on me. I realise how glad I am to be out. To be opening my legs out. To feel foot against rock.
I wonder if weather can be a way back in. A model of how we should experience the world. If we can just notice how it feels to move through rain, the way the wind sings off objects around us, maybe we can start to notice, well, everything else. Perhaps our weather can, in some small way, teach us to see again.
The rain is slipping down the fell in sheets. Greasy ribbons. Undulating. Curving. Rippling. Bands of light and dark. Striped like mackerel. Moving in roving, quick-eyed, hungrymouthed shoals. Closer. Closer.
It’s hard not to give the movements of weather intentionality. Perhaps in part it’s a way to avoid being overwhelmed by the sublime scales of weather. By telling ourselves it is directed at us, it is coming for us, we give ourselves a sense of importance in the world.
The rain is beginning to form its own pathways down the fell. The sound of the rain is meshing with the larger flows of water: the falls, the gullies, the gills. I am walking in both old rain and new.
The going gets tougher as I continue up. The rocks now are slick with water. I worry about slipping, falling, about twisting something vital and getting stuck. At the bridge where Grains Gill joins Ruddy Gill, I decide it’s probably time to turn back. But, I argue against myself, I wanted rain, I’ve found it. I keep going, following the path around to Sprinkling Tarn.
And here I finally decide to turn back. I want to see how the landscape has changed in the rain.
If anything, it is slower going on the way down. The paths aren’t just wet, they are now overflowing with water. Everywhere you look is water, all heading down, all looking for the least resistance, all moving as quickly as it can. Even my boots are running with water.
The rain is still falling, but the urgency has gone now. There is more space between the drops; the pressure is easing. I know that this is a transition that I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I was inside. It is a change that makes me want to fill my lungs and makes me sad my family isn’t here to move through this air, to be touched by this rain, to hear that sound of water on rock and tree and skin.
I will think about this feeling later on as I’m driving back home. For days after this trip, every time I get in the car the memory of this experience of rain will hit me again. The dampness will linger like a weather ghost. A mist on the windscreen. The smell of old rain on the seats. Until I finally find a sodden hat that slipped under a seat.
Abridged from In All Weathers: A Journey through Rain, Fog, Wind, Ice and Everything in Between, by Matt Gaw. Published by Elliott & Thompson (£17) – and well worth a read.