Walking Loops
My gap year wasn’t a nasal-irrigation-in-the-Ganges, finding-myself type of gap year.
My gap year wasn’t a nasal-irrigation-in-the-Ganges, finding-myself type of gap year. It was more losing myself to instant coffee and late-night 4OD binges on the gigantic family desktop, surrounded by creaking stacks of furniture, towers of pots and pans, loose cutlery and assorted ancient foodstuffs – tinned soups, fruits and custard – dug out from the darkest depths of the cupboards (my parents were having the kitchen done).
I’d decided last minute not to take my place on Lancaster uni’s journalism course, preferring blue-lit nights and unearned lie-ins to shorthand and interview techniques. Besides from the “job” my sister had begrudgingly secured for me on my parents’ orders – covering reception between three and five at a now dearly departed payroll company – I didn’t do anything. I’d sleepwalked through the final years of secondary school and I wanted to continue the trend.
But, after a few months, something changed – there’s only so many times you can watch The IT Crowd. My friends were gone, my parents’ smiles were growing increasingly fraught, and the loafer lifestyle had made me fat. Something had to give. And it did: I started walking
I walked at night, every night – rarely seeing a soul. I got to know in great detail the roads and alleys and pathways that made up my hometown, the locations and severity of potholes, the little slopes up and down where cars accessed drives, the places where moss grew and where it didn’t. After a few weeks, these meanderings settled into a route, which took me – dawdling with headphones – about an hour and a half to complete.
Since then, I’ve never stopped walking loops. I’m a hiker and a runner, and enjoy expeditions and adventures as much as anyone – maps, plans and snacks. But walking loops is different. It’s repetition and contemplation. It’s learning a place by rote, seeing its differences day to day, month to month, year to year. It’s rhythm and borders – where you are, not where you’re going.
Everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve established a loop: a walk I do frequently, which doesn’t change. When I finally made it to uni, I carried on walking at night, electronic music in my ear – Cathays to town and back again, rounding the beautiful plaza. Then it was Bute Park, across the weir and into the massive expanse of Pontcanna Fields. Then it was the Dhoor, through crops and hay bales, with the hills behind. Then it was dusty Tooting Common. Then, the banks of the Wandle, where I saw two terrapins swimming (on different occasions) and a kingfisher nearly flew into the back of my head. Then, Sulby, which really is a loop, since there’s only one way round. Now, it’s Onchan, at lunchtime, and around Peel castle at night – I’m lucky enough to have two. And I’m about to set off on one.