Path People - Mads With A Bag

Mads with a bag

Words by Madeleine Issitt

Follow Stephie on Instagram @madswithabag I n the depths of our summer heatwave I stumbled into Minehead Wetherspoons, just 10 minutes after getting off the beach-front bus stop. I had arrived at the starting line and had the entire length of the South West Coast Path ahead of me. I heaved my backpack onto my seat (“Audrey” as I came to know and love her by), puffing to the degree that the bloke on the table next to me put down his paper and said, “Gosh, where have you walked from?”. I swallowed my mortification as I told him that I had only just strolled from the beach and was, in fact, starting tomorrow.

Mid lockdown 3.0, I decided that I would thru-hike the 630 miles of the South West Coast Path on my own in 44 days, camping and carrying all my gear. I had never done anything of this magnitude before and spent months begging and borrowing my way to a full bag of equipment that I had no idea how to use. I attempted to explain to those around me how and why I was going. The most profound summary of all came from the 5-year-old I was looking after at the time. Whilst I felt my garbled explanation was going straight over her head, she simply told me: “It’s a thinking walk, isn’t it?”. I later worked out this was a line from Elmer, but it was perfect nonetheless.

With each staggering hill on the path and Audrey weighing me down, my fitness improved rapidly. By day 5, I noticed my leg muscles appearing; after 2 weeks, I was walking 25 mile days, and by the time I strode down Studland beach towards that finish marker, I swore I could have walked it all, all over again.

My most unexpected hike challenge came 18 days in, when at 7am on a clifftop near Land’s End, I took a lateral flow test and tested positive for coronavirus. Heartbroken and sick, I set about working out what on earth I was going to do. I staggered to the next village, and with my 2% battery, I called the only person I could think of; Mum. Driving back to London was long and miserable as my head whirred with what had happened, the nature in which I was leaving… and how quickly I could get back. One week of isolating in the four walls of my room couldn’t have felt further from the rough winds of independence I’d been riding along the coast. Seven days later, with re-waterproofed boots, adjustments to my gear and the addition of a homemade bum pad (I’ll never go anywhere without that, again), I found my way back to that dreaded lighthouse where I had sat on a boulder and wept down the phone that it was all over… and I carried on. >

While the rugged north coast brought battering winds and boulder-stacked paths, the south threw at me the organisational mind field of endless river crossings. This was how I found myself crossing the River Erme in the small dingy of a man called Gary, who had labelled every item in his boat with his name in block capitals like Andy in Toy Story. A few hours later, I had no choice but to get my bikini on and swim after my backpack across the next one, which I had persuaded a paddleboarder to take across.

It was also the profound generosity of strangers that led to the best meal I had on the entire hike. Knackered and rejected at a village’s only pub, a family sitting in their doorway asked me how long I’d been walking for. Before long, they were thrusting into my hands a jar of pesto, pasta, bacon and a salami platter, only apologising they didn’t have more. I felt tearful with gratitude. Inhaling that meal in a ruin with a broken spork and wet hair a couple of hours later, I had never felt so rich.

Each campsite brought a whole new host of characters, whether wild horses, a herd of cows or a bizarre man who’d built a homemade brewery in an old milking shed and persuaded me to taste the cider. Another evening, at a pub in Dorset, an entire family began asking me where myself and my gigantic backpack were heading. They bought drinks and dinner all round, and when I mentioned the charity I was raising money for, each cousin, auntie, niece and nephew of the group held £20 aloft. Notes thrust into my hands, their children ran up to me, asking me questions about where I slept, what I ate and if I had to walk all the way home too.

The coast path was the most all-consuming experience of nature I have had. Each night spent under the stars by the sea, away from the pots and pans orchestra of a family campsite, seemed like a gift. Each night without rain, each crystal clear swim after a brutal day’s hike, each flat patch of grass nestled behind a dune, a gift. Picking up the path after recovering from Covid, I worried if it could match the 18 days of adventure I’d already had. And yet, to meet another solo walker on my first evening back and share three feral weeks together...again, a gift.

Whilst Poole was always the goal on paper, it was the victories in each day that made me proudest. I found that nothing compares to the feeling of finding the perfect, wild camping spot or getting your tent up in time to watch the sunset. The glorious relief of zipping yourself into the cocoon of your smelly sleeping bag and telling yourself that now, now, you can rest. I am proud to have completed the challenge – not on my own after all, but with the hands of so many; this is a letter to them. To the women who dropped everything to join me (and do it all again when I got Covid). To the souls who welcomed me into their homes, fed me and cared for me when I was at most a loose link of a remote name. To the strangers on the path who cheered me on and inspired me to walk even further next time. To the women we raised almost £2000 to support through Solace Women’s Aid, those who aren’t as lucky to have the freedom the rest of us do. And to one little woman who might one day take on a ‘thinking walk’ of her own. May the path be long, the skies clear, and the water blue for them, too.