The Wild Rover_ A Blistering Journey Along Britain_s Footpaths - Mike Parker [76]
‘Why, hello there!’ the fella opened with. The barmaid grunted in return. ‘Do you have a menu please?’ She handed one over, plastic and sticky, which they read with lots of forcedly enthusiastic little ‘ooh’s’. My toes began to curl in embarrassment for them. It was not going to end happily.
‘I think I’ll have a chicken sandwich,’ the man ventured.
‘Got no chicken,’ replied the barmaid, in a tone that verged on the victorious. ‘No tuna either.’ He opened his mouth to ask for the next option on his list, but the barmaid cut him dead: ‘And duck’s off too. So’s the gammon.’
‘What is the soup of the day?’ enquired his lady wife with a dazzling Iowan smile.
‘Vegetable,’ the barmaid snapped back.
‘Oh. And what sort of vegetable would that be?’
‘Mixed.’
I met the American couple a little later along the trail, and felt obliged to apologise on behalf of the entire nation for the terrible pub where we’d all suffered lunch in musty silence. They laughed, and told me that it had not been the worst they’d experienced on their British holiday. We got talking about accommodation, and it transpired that they’d booked all of theirs for the entire two weeks of the walk some four months earlier, back in January, and that even then, there were many places that were already full. I’d read online that accommodation was very scarce, but that had been posted by one of the ‘sherpa’ companies that not only ferry your luggage between guest houses, but offer a bespoke accommodation booking service, for a fairly hefty fee. I’d presumed therefore that they were trying to scare people into using them rather than have to make a stack of their own calls, but it was beginning to look like a royal battle of tenacity to find accommodation for the rest of the trip. If the rubbish places were full night after night, then what chance finding anywhere half-decent?
And the rubbish places seemed to be doing just fine. When I left the sullen pub in which I’d shared lunch with the Americans, that night’s bag drop, by one of the many CtC sherpa companies, had just taken place. I had to pick my way through the small hallway of the inn, through a garish sea of hold-alls, rucksacks and suitcases, and an owner quietly swearing under his breath at them all. In an instant, I saw a picture of minibuses full of tat weaving their daily way across the country, scattering bags and belongings to the four winds as their owners tramped inch by inch across the landscape, never deviating from the one decreed route and daydreaming about being reunited with their trainers. B&Bs, pubs and hotels that, under the normal influence of market forces, would have gone out of business years ago, were being kept alive by this quotidian transfusion. There was something indefinably depressing, and pointlessly Sisyphean, about the whole thing.
As I crossed into the National Park, I noticed a folded piece of paper on the path in front of me. It was an immaculate CtC itinerary, printed off an elaborate spreadsheet and dropped by someone who’d recently passed this way. I half-marvelled, half-shuddered at the level of organisation it demonstrated. Not only did it detail every night’s accommodation booked, with contact phone numbers and email addresses throughout plus what packed lunch they were or were not supplying, it contained numerous annotated notes, such as the fact that two taxis were booked for 1900 hours next Tuesday to take the happy throng to a pub near Reeth for dinner, and that, on the following Sunday, Trevor, Gordon, Elaine and Terry D had already opted for the lobster at the restaurant in Grosmont, while Peter, Marie and Terry K were having the chicken chasseur.
I didn’t even know where I was sleeping that night, let alone what I’d be having for dinner 11 days hence, and as I bumped along the rocky path above Ennerdale Water, I silently congratulated myself on being smart enough to have stepped off this ghastly