LEJOG Day 28: Monmouth to Pandy

Weather: Heavy rain at times with thunder

Distance covered today: 17.7km (11.1mi)

Last night's B&B: The Grange (£50)

Cumulative distance: 535.0km (332.4mi)/ % Complete: 30.4%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 28 (click!)

The screen transplant was an unqualified success!!  Now, I can actually see the programmes along the lower edge of the netbook screen and the bloody gash along the crack in its face is no more. Not only did she bring the new screen, but Veronica brought a small amount of whiskey and a change of clothes – two extraordinarily thoughtful items which helped to transform my weekend!  The time raced by and she swept off this morning, thoughtfully carrying with her in the car some of the contents of my backpack to the next B&B, so that my aching shoulders could have an extra day off, before resuming the battle of the backpack tomorrow.

 It seems my needs are moving ever lower in Mazlov’s triangle, not helped by the fact that Veronica’s place has been taken by my good friend John, who will be with me for three days, if he can stand it that long! John is unfortunately an Englishman, so predictably, the heavens opened this morning and not content with an initial shower, we climbed at last into a drenching thunderstorm which only relented as we approached tonight’s B&B.  All I want now is a beer, dry clothes and something to eat. By next week, even the beer will seem optional!

That said, I have been thinking ahead with sobering consequences. In planning terms I am now considering my options for the top of the Penine Way and I have just come across a day where the minimum distance between two B&Bs is 20miles (32km). I have only walked that distance in a day once before, and thereby hangs an inevitable tale, but it seems I will have little choice. I keep saying to myself that by the time I get there, I will have toughened up sufficiently, but I do have my doubts. I haven’t actually booked the B&B yet – I’m still getting up the courage!

Some fifty years ago, my good friend Tom and I set out from our home town as members of the local Boy Scout group to hike to a town about 30 miles away.  I doubt whether “ ‘elf and safety” would allow such a thing for youngsters in this day and age, and I wonder how sensible it was then, but anyway, off we set. Tom, who is now a very busy business-school professor and therefore a rather transitory and distracted viewer of this blog, said he knew a short-cut through a peri-urban area on the edge of town. We wandered along dirt roads in roughly the right direction for hours, until it became clear that this was no short cut. We were both a bit discouraged and eventually asked a passer-by whether he knew the way to the town that was our objective. I will always remember his answer: “Do you see those blue mountains over there on the horizon? The town is on the other side of those mountains!”

A rather dejected duo set out for the blue mountains which seemed to stay firmly fixed to the horizon. We did though find the main road and there discovered a gaggle of similarly dispirited young scouts all struggling towards the mountains. In the end I’m not sure if any of us made it to the town. We did eventually get to the blue mountains but there, as I was about to drop, I remember being collected by someone in a small bus and being delivered home, feeling as if I had failed, but enjoying the hot bath as if it was the first one I had ever had. It is some consolation that I must have walked at least 25 miles that day, so if I did it then, I can do it again!!

Better now though to concentrate on the present. Even as it rained on us today, John and I were seldom silent. We have a history of regarding each other as worth listening to, though whenever we are together, it seems we struggle to get a word in edgeways.  Today the conversation ranged over many issues, but I suppose the one that occupied us for some considerable time was the question of whether the world is headed for an insoluble resource problem that will lead to a disastrous discontinuity, a theory that I have been gloomily exploring for some time and was recently reminded of by my good friend Peter.  My point, and one that the environmental journalist, George Mombiot, has made much more eloquently, is that we have become obsessed with exponential growth and that in a finite world, this can only lead to a disaster. A small increase in world GDP today is equivalent to the entire world’s GDP not very long ago. Project that forward and the inevitable consequence is apparent.

John’s point was that my Malthusian view was too pessimistic (though he didn’t mention Malthus). He says that the people have always evolved technological answers to resource shortage issues and there is no limit to ingenuity and innovation. There is no reason why the world cannot go on innovating its way out of resource crises until everyone has an acceptable standard of living. My riposte was that just because this has always happened in the past doesn’t mean that there is some natural law in operation. It might just stop happening. I did though, have to remind myself that I was once an avid fan of a publication called “The Limits to Growth” which was published in the Seventies by the Club of Rome, which drew Malthusian conclusions and predicted disaster based on computer predictions of the interactions of resource constraints. Hardly was the report published than the world embarked on a period of unprecedented growth, contradicting all the projections, and the report is now largely forgotten.  I just don’t think this can go on happening forever….

Tonight our conversation turned to deeper issues, most prominent of which had to do with whether life has to have a purpose; something to which one has to strive. John’s view was that the ultimate fulfilment is to be had through an open-minded and open-ended experience of the present, with one’s senses fully opened to experience and sensation in the instant. In an important sense, my journey does have a purpose (though it is true that I don’t know what it is, except to say that it is not getting to the end).  John didn’t seem to feel that my lack of understanding of my purpose negated my experience, which is, I suppose, quite heartening, especially from someone with his perspective.

I find that interesting, but not intimidating. I am much more threatened by Veronica’s comment that if I had better “find myself” on this journey, because I’m not having another one!

Veronica at the White Castle

John at the white castle

Me at the white castle

The view from the white castle (clearly not much else to photograph today!)

A Jacobean Farmhouse. Where does that come from? To be researched!