Recorded on 23 June 2016
Assembled from six files recorded over 5 miles of walking, a few swigs of sloe gin, and having drunk too little water.
Three walks in Kyoto
Notes for a bit of writing about three walks in Kyoto…
1. Ginkaku-ji to Nanzen-ji
Bus in the drizzle, kite on the wires, up the hill, red leaves, first temple, so many views, cameras, sand sculpture, glistening moss, trickle of water, potatornado, walking the walk, fish, ducks, midges, sitting and writing, quaint houses and memories of FLCL, children, bridges, cobbles, Udon, zoo, canal birds, railway, crab, temple in the gloom, quiet temple, the cemetery, the monument, tample in the hills, screeching, shower, shock, smiles, another crab, a final shrine, dusk.
2. Bamboo Grove to monkey mountain
Early risers, to ourselves, photoshoot, trains and FLCL (again), another temple complex, sitting and looking at gravel, peace and tourists, walk in the park, the toilet graphic, the river, Marshmallow and a sit down, Cormorants, heron, egrets, busy bridge, dippers, the walk up moneky mountain, overlooking the city, being in the cage, bared teeth, wood being pecked, napping monkeys, sad monkey, the walk down, tiredness, shin.
3. Kibune to Karuma
Kites vs crows, the train, maple tunnel, upriver, lanterns, objects in the water, walking against the flow uphill, several sunsets, gnarly roots, sitting in temples, going over the top, down to the complex, no railway, buckling legs, confusing toilets, another waterfall, into town, up to the onsen, sunset in the water.
Amberley to Buriton
24 miles, 15th October 2015
Reeds, dogs, starting pace, hard notebook, teeming farm, trio of kites, West sussex :(, woods change everything, therapy – one thing, woods transform the way, deer, crow vs kestrel, crow vs kite
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Nothing’s made me hate West Sussex quite like the the South Downs Way. Miles of exposed ridgeway, cold in any season, enlivened only by nature scrambling around it.
Thank god I’ve almost hit Hampshire.
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The walk starts by the bridge near Amberley. It’s a rare glimpse of water – the way takes me from the valley up and away over the ridgeway, as it has every leg, and I have to admit I miss the peace of water.
My starting pace is always hard, around 4 miles an hour up those first hills, and while I know it’ll drop by a chunk over several hours the satisfaction from that start lingers.
But it leaves me thinking about walking. I read something on the internet, no idea where, about how walking with a destination in mind means you think about the destination rather than think about nothing. Which I buy. I also end up playing over things – not really thinking about them from new angles or anything, just winding through them – in many cases for the last time, before the hills and the tread bludgeon them from my mind
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Woods change everything. Getting closer to Hampshire the amount of trees and woodland explodes. Getting further from the south coast, further from the sea-salt wind, putting more hills between me and the glimmer of the Solent. Thank fuck. The last ten miles get more and more varied, as I amble through autumn foliage tottering over roads and watch teeming, managed forests peek at me.
At one point, a deer and I lock eyes as I walk along. It’s tucked under a trees about ten meters from me. No photo, no sudden moves. It bolts as my foot snaps a twig. It’s a lovely moment, impossible five miles ago.
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Where I’d been elated to spot a pair of kites before I now realise this is their ground. I spot three groups of them over the day.
One harries a crow’s nest, and the black birds get angry – taking to the sky to chase it off. I watch another crow do the same to a kestrel. No-one seems to win.
Magpies are sparing. But when they do show up it’s just when I need them. The miles get too much, the route gets uncertain, and my eyes flit around for support… there they are.
If I was a different person maybe I’d have noticed more of this on the Way. But, you know, it feels like I’ve noticed enough. I haven’t “missed out” on nature taking it at this pace.
The first cone is a couple of blocks away. We’re out of the Airbnb a few minutes after the host leaves, and we find the new gelateria on a main road into the old town. It’s cold and clean, which is a relief in Rome’s 30+ degree afternoon. The set-up is confusing, the flavours difficult to decipher, and the staff rude. But when the cone is served it is rich and delicious and fresh and unexpected. It is a delight.
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The second cone is later that night. We’ve walked half an hour in the sunset to the Spanish Steps, watching bats flit about the city as the sky turns orange. As we start to weave between the old streets the horizon starts to turn a magnificent blue, fading to an inky black before we make it to the river. Along the way we find the place, a chocolate chain serving ice cream that - though delicious - sits in our bellies like lead and starts to slow us down. It makes us silly. The ruins and history around us become unstuck, and we start lying about who built things. We displace ruins by centuries, and laugh a lot.
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The third cone is a new day. The salted caramel is among the most delicious things I have ever tasted. I don’t say it, but it reminds me of what I think butterscotch angel delight tastes of. I know butterscotch angel delight doesn’t taste like this - it tastes of powder and ruin - but in the decades since Mum made it for pudding I’ve started to lie to myself about the flavour. Anyway, this ice cream sets a new benchmark for all food, and it makes our journey to the Coliseum an adventure. Our metro passes become keys to the city, and the sheer size of the thing stuns us. I’m getting used to sandals by now, and while the mosquito bites rankle I feel like I could walk forever. This is not true. In a few hours the sun will get the better of me, and Ann will have to rescue us as I run out of steam.
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The sun’s blaring down the streets, and we cling to the curb to stay in the shade as best we can. The buildings are tall - way taller than I’d expected and almost uniformly so. We keep our pace gentle, even though we’re late, and gawp at fountains, gnarled doors and random graffiti tags. When we get to the courtyard outside the gelateria my sister and her friend are waiting. They’re fine with our apologies, and we get on with ordering cone four. I’m ecstatic about this one. It’s light, tangy, and it doesn’t sink in me over the next hour. It’s not as delicious as cone three, nor as well presented as cone one, but it’s a nice way of staring at the blue skies and catching up with family. I splash my face in the fountain before we set off.
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Cone five comes late. We’re full of delicious pizza, and buzzing from the contact high of skirting the Pope’s police escort in a bus. The server’s a little threatening though, brusque and disinterested. I go for the house favourites and I don’t much like them. There’s tiredness in my eyes and my legs are pinging in the cold air from another long day of walking. I finish the cone, though throwing it in the bin seems like an extremely appealing prospect.
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The sixth cone comes at lunchtime. North, out of the centre, in a faded pocket of town that’s suffering in the August heat. The place looks changed, as if the owner had recently swapped and a new broom’s been taken to the fixtures and fittings. We’re the only customers, among the first of the day, tired of the heat, sore with walking and, basically, a bit bored of ice cream. But it’s delicious all the same and the setting is a relief in the hottest sun of our trip. Leaving the comfort of the air conditioning, Ann remarks that this will be it, this will be the street our liquified bodies will be found, this is where we’ll melt. But we make it to the art all the same and begin to wander.
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We do not have an ice cream at the airport.
Red Kite
Twelve days after the walk. Processing photos – of which there are many – and I remember the hawks. They’d taken up as I started on a slightly bushier stretch of the way towards Amberley, wheeling above as I tramped along and scared littler creatures out and into the fields.
I’d assumed they were buzzards. But they seemed more colourful than they ought to for that. And it’s nice to check these things out. So I jumped on the RSPB site and started poking around the hawks subsection. Straight off the bat the Red Kite feels the right call… but I poke around a little longer, play with the exposure on the image, and then start yipping that, yep, I spotted a pair of them.
The moment with them on the downs was beautiful. The moment almost two weeks later was remarkable. It’s been ages since I’ve been that excited and satisfied with something I’ve done (spotting, noticing, identifying, photographing, researching, in this instance). I’m very bad at celebrating my successes, and savouring my achievements.
With my day job, with my personal projects, with the South Downs Way itself, I’ll finish a bit, feel it wasn’t as good as it could have been, plough on to the next thing. The bad feelings stack up, slowing down that ‘doing the next thing’ bit. And the gaps between things get bigger. And then I do nothing. I get so bored of doing nothing that I can’t do anything.
And the kite was the opposite of that.
Buzzard, probably
The first shriek comes as we squeeze through another kissing gate, but we don’t notice it except as a background. There’s another a few moments later, and then this huge shape takes off out from the tree.
Before long there are three silhouettes circling the quad of turned-over fields. We keep swapping the binoculars between us, but they move quickly and neither of us quite guesses right where they’ll emerge again.
Eventually one lands in a tree over the farmhouse. It’s big, preening itself like a cat. It ruffles up a clump of feathers to pull out strays, before shuffling them back into place. Its outline is chopped up by the branches around it, but it still looks magnificent.
We wait for a group to pass us – a family with a dog – and watch for a while. As we set off we hear the shriek again. As we go up the path the birds begin to circle again.
51.220861, -0.622983, Farnham – Guildford, North Downs Way
Jay
We’ve fallen roughly in step with two older women walking the route. They’re working off a map, while we have a low-resolution iPhone. We know where we are but not quite where the trails are, while they know the opposite. When they ask for help I steer them wrong twice.
On one stretch, about ten miles in, we end up taking a path parallel to the one we’re supposed to take. It puts us in a long copse running alongside farmland, between twin runs of old trees. It’s crunchy and dry and very very quiet.
A brown and blue blur shoots across the path. While I point it out to Ann it take the time to wait and preen. She see it. We start forwards again. Whenever we get within twenty feet of it it launches forwards along the path to the next big perch. Our tiny scout.
I think Jays are beautiful. The blue and white and the brown are the colours of the home I have in my head. Their call though… like a baby throwing up. This nasty hack that starts at the back of the throat and never gets further than that.
This one’s a little lumpy, and plops onto the branches with a thump, but in the air she’s a graceful, wide-winged blur.
51.220389, -0.606616, Farnham – Guildford, North Downs Way
The faded place
There’s a high pitched wail drawing wind through this place. Orange sprites whip along, none of them close enough to touch, some of them a million miles distant. The sun has burned the sand golden and it blows through the empty streets in clumps.
I pass by an empty reading room, the books musty in the heat, shelves loaded with meaning by some alien whim. I sit inside for a moment, before that discomforting wail creeps inside my helmet again.
The temple of burning rain echoes with the sound of its lone monk. He wheezes under the heat of the sun. Neither shielded from it nor, seemingly, much bothered by the blistering floor sizzling underfoot.
On Frances’s suggestion I’ve started playing Elegy for a Dead World. Might try it once a day for a week or so, just to get out of the creative slump I’m in right now.
A short story about a walk, told in a random order. Based on drafts from this blog.
A week before her father’s funeral Ann shares with me a collection of photos her parents had taken in the peaks. They’re almost forty years younger, a beautiful couple flush from walking, smiling for photos of places they’ve discovered together.