The Lure of the Long-Distance Trail
The four of us were out on Ivinghoe Beacon last autumn, enjoying what was likely to be the last picnic-able day of the year, when we came across a signpost pointing in both directions along the Icknield Way Trail. My daughter asked what it was, and immediately after I explained that it was a walking trail about two-hundred miles long, she proclaimed with enthusiasm that she wanted to do it. And, in that moment, I felt the call of the signpost too.
What is it about a signpost for a long distance footpath which is so alluring? Is it the adventurousness of following a path which stretches for the horizon and, when it gets there, keeps going? The idea of stepping into a simpler life, where all you have to do are follow the signs, eat and sleep? Participating in an experience which is simultaneously private and shared everyone else who has walked and will walk the trail, which in the case of the Icknield Way goes back many hundreds and possibly several thousand years? Is it just the faith that a trail worth naming must be worth walking?
Over the winter I watched a couple of films about people who find themselves lured into a long-distance trail. The first was The Way (2010), in which Martin Sheen plays an American ophthalmologist following the Camino de Santiago, having initially flown to Europe only to identify and collect the body of his son, who had died during his own attempt to walk that route.
The second was A Walk in the Woods (2015), in which Robert Redford plays Bill Bryson, the author of the book by the same name, making an attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail - a route of over two thousand miles through the Eastern United States.
They are both very enjoyable films which celebrate the gentle joy, the self-discovery, and the relationships that can be found on a long-distance trail.
In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson is inspired by a an Appalachian Trail signpost which he comes across while taking just a short stroll from his house. The signpost seems to a similar effect on him to how the Icknield Way affected my daughter and me - these signposts call you in!
Starting small...
The Icknield Way may be one for the future, but there is another trail which passes through our village - we see its signposts whenever we go for a walk in our local woods. It is called The Greensand Ridge Walk. At forty miles, I’m not sure it can be called a long-distance path, but it is long enough to be a bit of a challenge, and, being very local, we could to do it in stages whenever we chose.
I put the idea of taking on the Greensand Ridge to the kids, with a slight modification inspired by Alastair Humphreys. In his 2024 book, Local. In that book, Alastair describes how he set himself the challenge of exploring the land defined by an Ordnance Survey map based on his house, one grid square at a time. It is a fabulous example in finding adventure in the mundane, beauty in the everyday, and deeper connection with the place you live than you have ever had before.
We have a similar Ordnance Survey map, centred on our house, hanging in our hallway. The Greensand Ridge Walk crosses the map from roughly the bottom left to top right corners. Our challenge would be to walk, in stages, the entire length of the Greensand Ridge Walk which appears on that map - probably about twenty-five miles.
The kids loved the idea - the enchantment of the long-distance trail again seeming to work its magic, elevating a series of shortish which really were nothing more than modest strolls in the Bedfordshire countryside into our own epic adventure.
Would this enthusiasm endure for the whole challenge? I will report back in another blog soon!
Alastair Humphreys was the guest for my fourth podcast episode. I am hugely grateful to Alastair for the support he has given to this project - he has not only helped by being a podcast guest, but he allowed me to use his blog ‘The World Tour of Yorkshire’ as one of the stories for the Look Near First website, and has freely given advice on starting this project up.
I hope you enjoy the conversation I recorded with him last December.
