The Wild Rover_ A Blistering Journey Along Britain_s Footpaths - Mike Parker [72]
I wanted to believe it; I truly did. But the text just became more and more pompous, and the photos – all fully Fuji digital, rather than pinhole – were mainly of people in jeans and anoraks wandering across the marshes of north Kent, or looking terribly pleased with themselves in various pubs. Artist Billy Childish was one of the founder members, but it seems that he’s not much involved these days, and, in an interview in Time Out in February 2010, declared that he was forming a new outfit, the Damp Tweed and Hobnails Walking Association, not that there’s been any mention of it since. I too would have to find my own style, and my own way.
‘All the gear and no idea’ has been a phrase that I’ve bumped up against lots in recent years. I first heard it when interviewing a veteran surfer in Pembrokeshire as he described the urban numpties, whose training mainly consisted of reading the weekend-paper lifestyle sections, and who were turning up in increasing numbers on the beach that he’d surfed for decades. I could see it for myself on a daily basis when they opened up mountain-bike tracks, including a hairy two-mile descent, on the mountain above my house, where I’d walked the dog for years. All too often, the ones being winched off the slopes in a pool of blood and shattered bone were the ones kitted out in the brightest, newest lycra, the flashiest, most aerodynamic helmets and on bikes that cost way more than I’d ever paid for a car.
Popping out for a few essentials for my walk along the Ridgeway, I was soon a good 500 quid down. I say popping out, but in fact it was a highly stressful two-day canter around mid-Wales and the Borders, a breathless race against the clock to snap up that all-important last pair of gloves with essential ThermaLite® technology. I started as I meant to continue, in an old-fashioned gentlemen’s outfitters in Ludlow, being soothed by the sound of the ticking clock and the calm tones of the solicitous assistant. In an ideal world, they would have kitted me out from head to foot, like a Victorian explorer heading off to the Tropics, but it quickly became apparent that, for all their tweedy loveliness, it wasn’t going to suffice. As the clock ticked down to retail closing time, I screeched into Shrewsbury and shuttled frantically between the town’s two main outdoor supplies shops.
They are the two chains that you’ll find in most mediumsized British towns: Millets and Blacks. They are also owned by the same company, and appear to be run in artificial competition with each other, even, as I discovered in Shrewsbury, to the point where the branches of each are just yards apart on the same street – all part of the illusion of choice. Blacks like to aim themselves at the more aspirational outdoorsy type, the serious sort who truly believes that he’ll be bivouacking through the Pyrenees, even if all the pricey gear he buys in readiness only ever makes it as far as the camping field behind a pub in the Malverns. They are big on rugged, ballsy euphemism: a water bottle is a Complete Integrated Hydration System, and you’ll get withering looks if you’re not sure of the difference between a daysack, a backpack, a rucksack, a ramblesack, a belt pack or a compression sack. They’re big too on must-have, trademarked technology that you’d never heard of three seconds earlier: don’t even think of buying poles without an integral AntiShock® system, a GPS with no HotFix™ satellite technology, or a pack that’s lacking an Excel® 300D Ripstop polyester contrast, let alone a Self Adjust carry system and Bi-Radial® chassis. I have made none of those up. Looking you straight in the eye while they reel off these fantastical technologies will be earnest young men in branded fleeces and bum-fluff beards, who promise you that that particular bit of kit saved their bacon last year when they were yomping across the Faroe Islands. Cowed