Today took me along the Thames again, and through the posh and popular riverside town of Henley-on-Thames.
There were quite a lot of people out walking near the town, and I ended up chatting with a few of them. One of the first questions I always get is where I am going, and the inevitable follow-up question is “why?”. My usual answer is to the effect that I wanted a project, which generally seems to satisfy people, but it did get me thinking about my motivations for this walk.
It is not a religious journey for me – I have always described the walk as “following a pilgrimage route”, rather than “going on a pilgrimage”. I have wanted for years to do a long walk in Europe. When I found out about the Via Francigena it seemed to be a good fit in a number of ways: it was long, it was through countries that I have enjoyed walking in, it had a unifying historical theme, and unlike the Camino del Santiago in Spain it was relatively unknown and so attracted few walkers. Adding the walk from my own home to Canterbury only seemed logical: it seemed incongruous to take a train to the start of a long walk, and walking would let me see parts of England that would be new to me.
But why a long walk at all? I enjoy long walks, particularly in the countryside: getting outside, being active, experiencing new places and revisiting familiar ones, dealing with the practicalities of navigation and the constraints of weather, terrain, and time. And there is something particularly satisfying about a long walk, where you can see footfalls on the ground turn into progress through the landscape – updating the map on the front page of this blog is always one of the high points of my day. There is satisfaction, too, in facing the challenges of a tired body and aching feet and simply carrying on, mile after mile, hour after hour, day after day.
Ultimately, I suppose it comes down to challenge: setting an ambitious goal, seeing if I can achieve it, and learning about myself in the process.
Day 23 Route: Reading to Marlow via Thames Path. Terrain: riverside paths. Weather: sunny and warm to start, clouding over later. Daily distance: 29.6 km/18.4 miles. Cumulative distance: 559.4 km/346.8 miles. Accommodation: National Sports Centre, Bisham Abbey.
Come Wind, Come Weather 