I went for a walk the other day. I wasn't just walking for the sake of it: I had a mission to fulfil and I had to get from A to B and back again. There were only a few days to go to the winter solstice so, even though I set out not long after lunch, the light was beginning to fail.
It had snowed a day or two before. It had rained since, but, since the temperature had hardly crept above zero, it hadn't melted the snow. Instead, the rain had frozen on top of it and the ground was now covered with a slippery, two inch-thick layer of snow and ice which crackled as you walked across it.
My destination lay in the next village. I could've taken the road, but there's hardly any verge, let alone a footpath to walk on. Added to that, the road's quite hilly. I didn't want to risk getting knocked down if any cars lost control and started sliding about.
The path I took instead lay across the fields. There's a farm round the corner from where we live and, just to one side of the farm buildings, there's a gap in the wall and the usual public footpath sign. It took me round the edge of the farmyard, which was deserted save for a few cows stood about in an open-sided steel shed. I met a couple of people coming the other way, one of them picking their way gingerly over the icy ups and downs with a pair of walking poles.
Beyond the farmyard, the path goes off along the edge of first one field and then another. The farmer has helpfully spray painted an arrow on an old board, telling you which way to go, but in this weather it's unnecessary: so long as it's light, all you need do is follow the densely-overlaid trail of frozen footprints. Locals use this path a lot.
At the end of the second field you come to a stile. The path crosses a minor road. It's long, straight and disappears into the distance. The path resumes on the far side, crosses a boggy (now icy) stream before hugging the edge of another field. I found myself walking through a small group of sheep, doing their best to find something to chew under the snow. To my left lay what was once probably a farm but which is now more a caravan site. I could see that the field where the vans usually park was, predictably, empty.
I imagined what it must be like to come here on holiday. I was a child of about ten, staying here in a caravan. I imagined walking down this path with my family, perhaps on the way to eat at the village pub. It struck me how exciting it would seem, especially if I lived in a town and hadn't spent time in the country before. Walking down this path into the unknown, in this weather and at this time of day (my imaginary ten-year-old, it seems, was on an improbable late-December break) would be like climbing some wild mountain. The memory of it would stick with them. They might even come back as an adult to retrace their steps. Do you remember the time when...? Strange, the different views people can take of the same thing. To me, if I go out for a walk, just for the pleasure of walking, this would be the last route I'd take, I thought. This is the rural equivalent of the pavement between home and the corner shop: pleasant enough, but hardly a voyage of discovery. Thinking these thoughts, I immediately found myself questioning them. Perhaps my imaginary ten-year-old was right and I was wrong. Why shouldn't you have an adventure on the way to the corner-shop?
Beyond the caravan site, the path struck out right across the middle of a large field, known locally as the 'show field', as this is where the local agricultural show is held every year. On a late afternoon in December, it's merely a bleak expanse, its edges indistinct. The whole area is criss-crossed with the tyre marks of tractors, any of which can deceive you, in the gloom, into thinking you're following a path that might lead somewhere. As I crossed it, I kept turning round to look at the lie of the land behind me, looking for any feature that might help me if, on the return journey, I found myself crossing it in the dark.
By the time I was making my way back from B to A, the sun had set but, although I'd put on my head-torch, I never needed to switch it on: the light held, just, until I got home. The sheep were still picking their way round the field. The long straight road I had to cross now disappeared into the gloom. At the farm, a brightly-lit tractor was roaring up a track into the farmyard: the cows in the shed were being fed.
