Rape is an awesome plant when it is fully grown. It stands taller than a man and is a sticky mass of tangled tendrils. The danger to a walker is that not only will these triffids blot out the line of a footpath as they grow ever outwards into the available space but they will also re-close the gap behind you when you have just spent an hour pushing your way through. It makes a simple map reading error turn into a claustrophobic nightmare. Amongst the possessions that I did not include in my walk kit around England was a machete. I was forced to spend an hour hacking my way out of this jungle using the three inch blade of my Swiss army knife.

Throughout my walk I noticed the upkeep and access to footpaths was extremely variable. On this occasion the whole spirit of access had been destroyed. A disaster not only for the walker but for the farmer as well, as I was forced to stamp around his field damaging his crop while I searched for the way out.

Obviously footpaths are sometimes contentious. They are a right in law to cross what is often valuable private land. However they are a good convention, balancing the needs of the public with the profit of the farmer. By and large I think most people who work the land appreciate this need for compromise. Only on one occasion did I come across that legend of the countryside, the psychotic landowner and I was so full of my ambitions for the walk that I actually faced down someone carrying a gun on that occasion. Most people I met were extremely courteous and directed me back to a path even when I had strayed almost into their homes.

It is neglect that is killing the right to access. Slowly but surely the small capillaries of the countryside, the local footpaths, are being blocked up by stinging nettles, brambles and the occasion sly individual who knocks over the footpath sign when no one is looking. The very paths I love best are threatened with extinction.

I had arranged to meet Pauline at a village called Aston near to the line of the Llangollen Branch of the Shropshire Union Canal, which I intended to take as a good through route all the way to the Welsh Border at Chirk. All morning however my navigation skills were letting me down. I was following a guide book called the South Cheshire Way but kept on missing the tiny finger board signs that marked where one or another small footpaths came off the road.

I found walking across low land Cheshire frustrating because of the endless barriers, the hedges and the gates and that most entertaining of agricultural inventions, the electric fence.

When I first came across a modern electric fence it seemed amazing to me that such a flimsy thing could contain cattle. However, when I was on the Cleveland Way I had seen one in action when a holiday maker deliberately laid her hand on the wire and got most of her hair to stand on end. Since then I had always made sure that I gave them the respect they obviously require.

Already on the walk I had been treated for a lashing I had received from a rusty piece of barbed wire and had got a couple of large splinters from a fence post in my buttocular region. But I have to say that that is nothing compared to what an electric fence and a well meaning stranger can do to you.

I had reached a point on a small footpath where it was blocked by a temporary electric fence when I met a chatty older lady out walking her dog. After allowing her to cross by weighing down the fence with my rucksack we stood and talked about the footpaths in the area. After a while I got ready to go and carefully put one leg over the wire while tightening my rucksack straps. I don’t know why but at that point she decided to lift up the wire to let her dog get under it.

I went down. Pole axed by an explosion in my private parts and I writhed around on the ground for a bit. The most frustrating thing about the whole experience was that the politeness of strangers did not allow me to explain to the dog walker what had actually happened.

Now I could really enjoy my afternoon’s walking, I told myself. I had given my heavy rucksack to Pauline and I did not even need to look at the map. The canal towpath took me to where we were going to camp at Grindlay Brook.

The Llangollen Branch is a more delicate structure than the Grand Union that I am used to. Narrower, with a series of petite bridges, it looked as if it had been designed by an engineer who had got the dimensions wrong. It was, however, excellent for walking. I found myself enjoying the fact that I was out in the fields of corn without having to actually struggle through them.The occasional group of trees provided a little shade and when the wind lifted the smell of water off of the canal it did not stink of the mixture of diesel and decay that I associate with large urban canals.

I found myself beginning to enjoy life after the aggravations of the morning. I slowed down and took in what was around me. The tribulations of Cheshire were not over though as I found out next morning back on the canal to Wales.

The red plain of Cheshire had once been a desert. The distinctive red colouring of the rock was fixed in a fiery furnace, the colour being caused by the oxidation of the iron in the hot dry climate that fried this part of Cheshire some 220 million years ago. Considering the heavy weather I made of crossing the flat fields of the plain, you would have thought I had been transported back into the dunes of all those years ago.

I was walking on an easy section alongside the canal, noting the hedgerows stuffed full of colourful wild flowers when something overwhelmed me and my eyes started streaming like Gazza’s during the last World Cup. I had noticed for the last few days that I had been sniffing a bit but did not put much importance on it. My breathing apparatus was probably disposing of the last bits of soot that had been in there since leaving work. After all, I had been landfilling my lungs with city air for the last decade. I noticed, however, that my eyes had become itchy. Finally my sinuses filled up with horrible gunk which gave me a head ache that was almost as painful as my run in with the electric fence. I sat down and found it hard to get up again. < a href="http://www.medicalonline.com.au/medical/disease_index/summer/hayfever.htm">Hayfever had struck. Fortunately for me Pauline was able to get some medicine very quickly and I could continue with only a running nose to give me away.

Having hayfever is a bit like having a small child - you join a club and people who would not ordinarily stop and talk were willing to chat and tell of their own symptoms and compare notes on treatments. What struck me forcibly during these conversations was that so many people suffer from respiratory complaints: hayfever and, more seriously, asthma.

As a child I can remember one child at school who had asthma. He suffered in silence and was excused PE when he needed to be. Now it seems that a lot of parents are having to face up to the fact that their children have a serious complaint. Those puffer things are as common a sight in children’s hands as ice cream.

I hoped that whatever plant was irritating my sinuses with its pollen would curtail its sex life as soon as possible.

I had been evolving as I walked.

The cold determination that I had developed on the East Coast had melted away in the heat of the hills. I had got away from the idea of mechanically tramping from place to place, sticking to a schedule, taking in the sights. I did not need a guide book to tell me I was enjoying myself. I was becoming a romantic spirit. I was even able to ignore my hay-fever.

Now as I walked towards evening I sang ‘Summertime’ instead of mumbling the ‘Weary-man Blues’. It was only in my dreams that I was still troubled.

Ever since I had set out from Aylesbury my subconscious had held a party in my head every night. At first I was pleased as I had not remembered a dream for years and I enjoyed the vivid images like rides at a theme park. Mostly what I recalled in my night time show was a jumble of unconnected cartoons. My head channel-hopped like a bored Californian. Recently however, it had returned to one recurring image.

I kept returning to the summer of 1983. To a poem I wrote as I convalesced in my parents garden surrounded by the debris of my 21st birthday.

"The Broken Thing lies on a beach.
Dreams of sand and of golden hair...."
It struck me as I lay there getting a bit of sun on my latest scar that Pauline had gone. I felt sickened by my sense of loss.

All through 1982 I had driven myself mad, chasing after freedom, chasing after girls, chasing after what I thought I had missed out on while I had been sick. Somewhere in my mad scramble to accumulate experience I lost sight of reality. ‘I want’ became my most favoured expression. I constantly demanded more. Pauline was one of the many things that I had kicked away from. Now we had split-up and she’d gone for the summer to Australia while I had gone to hospital once again.

"The Broken Thing lies on a beach.
Dreams of sand and of golden hair...."

This was the first poem I did not bother to finish. As the next year went by there were many more I did not bother to start. I started a long period of feeling disgusted with myself. I had decided it was time not to bother with words.

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© Gavin Stewart 1996-2004