I wondered how the Knight, the Wife of Bath and all the other characters that Geoffrey Chaucer described in his ‘Canterbury Tales’ felt as they stepped back on to the long road. Did they feel that their prayers had been answered or were they left with nagging doubts? I know that I was still bemused.

I had expected to come to some kind of crescendo while walking around England. I expected a peak at some point. It would have given the kaleidoscope of feelings and thoughts that struck me all Summer a sense of order. Instead I found myself reaching a dynamic equilibrium. The more I walked the more I saw. The more I saw the more I realised that I did not stand a chance of taking everything in. By Canterbury I had reached the point of diminishing returns. The more I walked the less I knew for certain. I found myself on Escher’s stairs, in an exercise of constantly altering perspective. Sussex became Kent, Kent became London. The stairs kept coming, and stairs went nowhere. Bits of the walk had joined my dreams. The seamless success of memory moved deeper under the onslaught of the present. I now re-lived Essex and the Fens.

I was experiencing a gradual urbanisation as I walked further and further through Kent towards London. This was the country that was once called the garden of England. A garden that has been now been concreted and turned into a drive.

At the outskirts of Canterbury I picked up the line of the North Downs Way again and headed off into the wooded countryside at the edge of the city. I found myself confused by the countryside at first. Despite the fields the countryside had a suburban feel to it. I passed Oast Houses that were owned now by commuters, passed the stables of weekenders’ horses. I only really felt that I was in Kent when I strolled on into acres of orchards filled with lines of apple trees. Even here I was not completely sure.

Something funny is happening to the apple trees of Kent. They are slowly getting smaller. In the past apples grew on trees, now they grow on pregnant walking sticks. If Isaac Newton was alive today he would have to train as a limbo dancer to get his head into a position where it could be struck by a commercially grown apple. I knew how the apple trees felt. I found myself distorting as I kept on walking. I was diminishing. I was draining away.

One of my clearest memories of school was the first time that I ran in the schools sports - the eight hundred metres. At eleven, two laps of the track was a long distance race, with plenty of time for things to go wrong. Still, I was the fastest in my class, the fastest in my year and I was confident as I lined up on the start. My Dad had come to watch and to cheer me on.

I went off fast. I went off very fast. I enjoyed running the back straight with no one beside me. I liked the feeling of being alone. As I came around past the grandstand for the first time I had a whole crowd watching me and took the bell increasing my pace. On the next corner of the track it went quiet. I then faced the long back straight.

I began to tie up. I headed in to the final corner constantly looking over my shoulder. I started to hear footfalls and huffing train of the other boys breathing. Now I was the hunted. Now I panicked.

My Dad had positioned himself on the inside of the track at the very end of the last corner. He roared in my ear as I came by and I put a kick into my stride trying to win for him. Ten metres later I went back to looking over my shoulder. The finishing line kept backing away from me.

The breathing came closer. I was convinced that I was lost. I closed my eyes just for a second. I failed myself. When I opened my eyes again the first boy passed me.

I think I came third on that occasion. I honestly don’t remember. I learnt the hard way about running the whole race. I learnt that the last lap is a battle with yourself.

On Otford Mount at the end of my second day out of Canterbury I stopped at the edge of the trees and looked down into the gap in the line of the Downs. I could see below me Otford’s old church, the green and the smart gardens of this rather fashionable village nestling in the low valley occupied by the River Darent. In a picture this would have been a pleasant view looking over the village to the hills, but with wind from the West carrying the thunder of the traffic I felt like I had walked into a factory.

Time had not been kind to the North Downs Way. The Way was planned as a National Trail when the Downs had been an oasis of quiet. A band of green trees hemming in South London. Now the North Downs afford the walker an excellent view of a whole range of motorways. The M2, the M26 and the mighty M25.

I grew up around the endless planning rows about the route of the M25. Traditional walks in the Chilterns suddenly terminated by piles of churned earth. County cross country races were moved to make way for the earth moving tractors. It was coming. It was coming, was always the message.The M25. The monster. The Road to Nowhere.

It is hard to imagine what life would be like without it. It is a remarkable structure. An icon of the revolution that has nearly swept away England. I tried to find someway to cherish it. Some way to avoid the conclusion that this road, and the ones being built to join it are not a disaster that made England incredibly ugly. I remembered the times just after I had learnt to drive.

It was in my Cabriolet days that I first took to circumnavigating London in the middle of the night. Top down in the rushing darkness I heard nothing above the roar of the engine. It seemed impossible that I could encompass something so large as London. So I drove and I drove. The empty tarmac seemed a challenge. Challenge? At this point of the walk I found the word challenge over-rated.

My brother Malcolm dropped me off at Otford the next morning so that I could complete the 30 mile length of the North Downs Way that runs right under London. It seemed appropriate that after dropping me off he would join the M25 and drive off into the spinning wheels of the rush hour. I slipped off across some farm land and watched the Eurostar express limp its way slowly out across Kent heading towards Paris.

I had deliberately set myself a hard day’s work. I wanted one last physical hurdle. One last moment of adrenaline. I slipped into woods on the top of the Downs escarpment and moved into the quiet under the trees.

I ended the day at Box Hill looking south into the collecting gloom. According to my guide I was looking across the Weald towards Ditchling Beacon on the South Downs. It was unreasonable on a rainy evening to be looking so far away. I should have been looking down into the rush hour traffic and thinking about what I was going to do next. I reminded myself of the boy who looked back and lost the race when it was there to be taken.

I could not resist looking further that evening as I sat waiting for Pauline. I looked for Winchester Cathedral and back along my tracks to the hilltop forts of Dorset. I looked for the sea and the sunny days of flight on the red cliffs of Devon. I looked for the Pennines and the view of Scafell that never appeared out of that June storm in the Lakes. I looked for myself - a tiny figure in a field on a cold May morning. I could have kept going back into time. The endless me’s of the past moved over the mist in cameos, merging and emerging in a formless mass of contradictory impressions.

I knew now that the walk was coming to an end. Out there in the unexpected gloom I saw my future amongst the rose coloured brake lights. I saw that there was a place in the line of traffic for me. I was reminded of an old Irish blessing - May your road rise to meet you.

It was on Box Hill that I promised myself to run a marathon, that I would try to walk around Wales one day. It was on Box Hill I promised myself I would do a thousand things. Only then would I look back on my walk. I would not let my memories hunt me until I got home.

I was not going to die in this closing straight.