Shared experience
DESPITE what the famous Merseysideadopted anthem will tell you, walking alone has its merits.
Roaming alone for a day or two can be a powerful antidote to the stresses and strains of workaday life, and longer solo journeys can be hugely empowering experiences. The features we carry on these pages are often of the solo sort, too, with our contributors drawing on the introspective insight which comes from journeying alone (if you missed Ursula Martin’s feature on her walk through pandemic-hit Europe in the last [July] issue, for example, stop whatever you’re doing and order a back issue now!)
But in this issue, we celebrate the communal dimension of the outdoor experience. We all know what a long and lonely slog the last year and a half has been, but in the pages of this edition, at least, we’ve aimed to give you a dose of some of things we’ve been missing: camaraderie, companionship, community, connection and friendship.
Many people enjoy the outdoors primarily or in part through walking groups, hiking clubs, or groups of friends, and even diehard loners often draw on a larger community for advice and inspiration. Voluntary organisations like Mountain Rescue are founded on a sense of shared experience; the understanding that we’re all in together when we go into wild places, and no one should be left behind.
The perennially popular Lake District is emblazoned in big letters on the front cover, and James Forrest’s feature on p34 (illustrated with some great photography by Jessie Leong) certainly does a wonderful job of conjuring that beguiling Lakeland atmosphere – but it’s also a celebration of the simple joy of walking, camping, joking and laughing with a group of friends in a beautiful place.
Elsewhere, Pete Macfarlane heads to the Arrochar Alps to take a friend wild camping in the mountains for the first time (p42), and Peter Elia uses a horseback journey through the spectacular mountain of Kyrgyzstan to look back at the truly life-changing consequences of joining a walking group. Jessie Leong appears again to describe a backpacking trip with friends to the northwesterly tip of Iceland, while Hanna Lindon delves into the wonderful diversity of modern hiking clubs (p12).
There’s lots more, of course: we kick off a new ‘Route of the month’ feature with an in-depth profile of Tryfan (p16), test GPS watches (p80), delve into declining biodiversity in national parks (p18) and give our usual round-up of mapped walking routes across the UK (p86) to name just a few of the other goodies you’ll find in these pages. Have fun!