The weather was bright, though cool, the day I met Robert, and a lot of people were out. I’d already passed Lycra Santa and Man Who Narrates Events To His Bulldog As They Occur by the time I curved up a long sunken lane leading away from the south side of Totnes. ‘It’s cold, isn’t it?’ I had overheard Man Who Narrates Events To His Bulldog As They Occur saying to his bulldog. ‘I bet you wish you had warm clothes. We’re going to the supermarket soon, then we’re going to John’s house. This tree just here is weird.’ But by the time I was in the long sunken lane I was very much alone, protected by its quiet green banks from the clanking of the industrial estate half a mile away and the slick gravelly zip of traffic along the Newton Abbot road. I passed a tall ivy-fringed stone trough in the hedged bank that always looked like a risky promise of an alternate dimension, then made my way over the brow of the hill down to where the walls of the holloway get more rocky and subterranean and turn a dreamlike dark green. A man walking in the opposite direction stopped in my path, grinning. Seeing that there were fewer than eleven visible buildings nearby, I said hello and he returned my greeting. In my early days as a countryside rambler I’d be tentative about saying hello to strangers – I’d try to assess them first, see if they were ‘Hello!’ kind of people. Now I tend to say it to everyone as it makes life simpler and less angst-ridden. Most people will say it back, and if they don’t they’re probably a serial killer, and you’ll be dead soon anyway. The exception to this rule is if you’re in an area where there are more than eleven visible buildings nearby: the time in 2011, for example, when I walked past another lone man in his thirties on a walk on the outskirts of Long Stratton in Norfolk, and the two of us couldn’t quite work out if we were in a countryish enough area to say ‘Hello!’ so mumbled a half ‘Hi!’ to one another, then shambled off, saturated in an awkwardness that would probably still be with us, in some small but significant way, for the rest of our lives.
The man on the sunken lane, fiftyish and dressed in very colourful and expensive-looking branded outdoor clothing, seemed keen not only to say hello but to stop and chat. He introduced himself as Robert. ‘I saw you over on the other side of the river earlier,’ he told me. ‘I said to myself, He’s not a walker, dressed in that duffel coat, but . . . you are! Look at you.’
I followed his instructions and looked at me. I didn’t wear my duffel coat all that often while out on hikes but had never viewed it as a serious impediment to getting about in the countryside on foot. To Robert the fact that someone should be able to negotiate hills, stiles and footpaths wearing such a garment was clearly a small miracle. He shook his head and gasped, like a man who’d seen a deer in a skirt. We talked a little about routes we’d enjoyed in the area and he asked me what I did for a living and I tried my best to tell him. He explained that he had made a lot of money from property development, taken early retirement, and his expensive walking equipment was part of his way of spending the inheritance of his offspring, who no longer spoke to him and, in his words, ‘didn’t deserve it’. As if to compound this abrupt, unexpectedly uncomfortable turn the conversation had taken, another walker passed us – a woman in her late twenties clad in a long thick cardigan and bobble hat – and Robert immediately began shouting across to her about my ‘great job’, which I’d in fact just told him was my old job, which I’d emphatically and with a considerable amount of relief quit the year previously. He then instructed her: ‘You need to get with this guy!’ Considering the fact he’d clearly never met her before, what he was saying and the various assumptions it betrayed, her response – to smile awkwardly and step up her pace just marginally as she passed us – was an impressively restrained one. I offered her an awkward smile of my own, which I hoped communicated I do not know this man and am very sorry about the words that keep coming out of his mouth, then made my excuses to Robert and walked on, passing beneath a railway bridge on whose roof grew lichen that looked halfway between stalactites and loft insulation, then up a steep lane to a spot where, the previous year, I’d seen a small, pristine, black rabbit run across the tarmac in my path.
Is there a proper way to be a walker? Apart from showing the fitting amount of consideration to your environment and your fellow humans, I don’t believe there is, and that’s something I like about it. Walking tends to be goal-free in any official sense, yet can be associated with any number of small unofficial personal goals. Some clothes are more practical for it, without doubt, but it’s entirely up to you what you wear. Something that changed about my walking habits between 2015 and 2016 was that I became a bit better at watching and listening, but I don’t think even this represents the ‘right’ way to walk; it’s just something I wanted to try. I wasn’t watching or listening too well the day on the hillside overlooking my house in 2015 when I almost trod on the young badger, or when I saw the back end
