Saturday, 18 July 2015

Celebrating the unexpected

Walk designers invariably fall prey to the urge to make walks interesting. Here is a notable church, they inform us, there an unusual rock formation. I plead guilty to this myself although I try to leaven my walk commentaries with humour which is better received than leaden facts obviously culled from Wikipedia. We should resist the urge to justify walking by ornamenting the activity with incidental attributes. For the true adherent, walking is an end in itself. The simple act of repeatedly placing one foot in front of the other in a gentle rhythm facilitates the detachment of mind from body which is so prized by ascetics and yogis. Sullying this higher state with historical trivia or geological statistics is unnecessary and counterproductive. And in any case, the most memorable observations and incidents encountered on walks are generally neither planned nor repeatable. The routes of final three days walks during the Dales holiday were replete with rivers, gullies and caves, none of which, even at only a week's remove, I can recall. Instead there were the unscheduled curiosities. Returning to a National Trust car park to meet the coach at the end of one walk, we were confronted by a single chicken, loose on the verge and quite unfazed by the surrounding 4x4s and camper vans and pecking methodically across the dusty grass, hoovering the crumbs drizzled from visitors' sandwiches. This bizarre sight was was made even more remarkable by the complete lack of attention it received from passers by. One child yanked its parent's arm to draw attention to this displaced fowl but the adult took no notice, as though the presence of farmyard animals in a public car park were quite to be expected and no more worthy of note than a parking meter. I wondered what wrinkle in the fabric of normality would have been sufficient to merit remark, a python dangling from a tree perhaps. The Dales are tricked out with a bounteous supply of waterfalls but my Iceland experience has inured me to their charms so the prospect of a picnic by one of these watery wonders did not particularly thrill, especially as the day was hot and there was no shade to be had. But our lunch was unexpectedly enlivened by the presence of four teenagers skiving from school who were apparently engaged in a race to determine who would drown first. A long rope had been hung from a tree on the far side of the river from their encampment. Taking it in turn, the boys waded across the head of the waterfall - itself no mean feat given the ferocity of the torrent - climbed the slippery limestone rocks on the far side and, grasping a short stick tied to the rope, launched themselves from the bank, letting go at the furthermost point of the arc to plummet into the deep pool at the bottom of the falls. The drop was only six or seven meters so the main hazard was ensuring that they gave the rope enough wellie to reach the safety of the pool, since the alternative to plunging into the icy water was being dashed against the rocks when the rope swung back. Tiring of this game, one couple made their way across the river and climbed the bank, preparing to launch themselves into the pool without the rope. It was a daunting precipice and the boy teetered on the edge for several minutes before jumping. In midair, arms flailing he yelled 'Alleluia' a curiously inappropriate cry, I thought. 'Geronimo' would have been my choice, but perhaps the possibility of imminent death inspired a final appeal to the Almighty. He surfaced successful but entreaties to his girlfriend to follow his example failed; possibly she had less faith in the redemptive powers of biblical exhortations, and she paddled back across the river. Our group watched this bravura display with a mixture of awe and disapproval and I wondered what the reaction would be if one of the daredevils encountered subsurface rocks with grisly consequences.

© David Thompson 2015

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