My Midsummer Morning

I had loved Sarah for years before pedalling off in tears. I was sad to go but too restless to remain, convinced that there must be more in the world than I could find at home. Sarah didn’t want to come with me: a decent job and a hectic social life sounded better than banana sandwiches, a tiny tent and endless bloody cycling. After four years apart, I threw my frayed cycling clothes in the bin, put my penknife into the cutlery drawer and moved in with Sarah.

We were very different, but our worlds sat together comfortably. Sarah wore a suit, went out to work for a big firm of accountants and then came home to relax in her pyjamas with DIY and soppy TV shows that made her cry. Uncertain what my future held, I wrote my first book, sitting at home all day in my underpants. I gave talks at schools (fully dressed) and trained for a marathon. I needed Sarah’s cheerful confidence and competence, her poised assurance that life was mapped out and under control. I’m not sure what was in it for her. Sarah is not interested in the things I love: expeditions or books or exercise. Corporate tax is not my strong point. So we helped each other keep things in perspective. Opposites fit snugly in a jigsaw.

I was halfway through a 20-mile run on a cold autumn morning when I decided to ask Sarah to marry me, slipping and sliding along a muddy footpath by the Thames. Rain lashed my face. I love running in weather like this. As I ran, I imagined two routes in life. I was sorry I could not travel both. One was the open road, with all the world to explore, and the joys and struggles and lessons that would unfold. It was selfish, feral and solitary, but tempting as ever. The alternative was unknown: marriage, children, a different search for fulfilment. A family, and all our joys and struggles and lessons together. Without these connections, I feared I would become a rootless drifter.

A cracking story is not a life. Knowing how way leads on to way, I made my choice. I was still eager to explore the world, to keep pushing myself hard and to make the most of life. But I looked forward now to sharing that with Sarah.

I jumped into the river to confirm that I was thinking straight and hadn’t gone mad, then ran back home to ask Sarah if she would like us to spend the rest of our lives together.

‘I take thee, Sarah, to be my wedded wife … from this day forward, for better or for worse.’

‘With this ring, I thee wed.’

We left our wedding reception riding a red tandem – tricky for a bride in a long white dress – with fireworks bursting overhead. As our honeymoon plane curved its great circular route over the Arctic, Sarah slept, her head against my shoulder. Her blonde curls covered her face, and I gazed out of the window at the endless expanse of ice below.

My wife and I clinked bottles and sipped cold Big Wave beer in the Hawaiian sunshine. The sound of the ocean carried to us on the warm breeze. But that beguiling Arctic ice lingered in my mind. To my surprise, I sensed that my tide of post-cycling exhaustion had finally receded. Were those years of yearning for stillness and community being pushed aside again by the clamour of restlessness and ambition? Polar literature had always entranced me, and I pondered the enormity of Antarctica. Endeavour, endurance, discovery: could I hack it there? The prospect was both terrifying and thrilling.

I despised being a one-trick pony, that guy who had once done something interesting and never stops talking about it. I have had a fortunate life and the only challenges I’ve faced are those that I have set myself. My ego, and my desire to be acknowledged as a serious adventurer, demanded a new trip. I had become beguiled by the macho lure that bigger is better, that expeditions were a way of sorting the strong from the weak. (Laurie wasn’t immune to this either. Long after walking across Spain, he admitted that part of his motivation had been to show off to girlfriends.) I was, to borrow from Robert Macfarlane writing about mountaineers, ‘half in love with myself, and half in love with oblivion’.

Feeling a little guilty, I put down my beer bottle and sloped away from the poolside to email a friend.

Hi Ben,

Having a wonderful time in Hawaii – been out whale-watching and running this morning.

But I can’t stop thinking about my future expeditions. So I decided to write and ask in all seriousness if I can join your South Pole expedition? I am writing because I will regret it if I do not, but also because you know me well enough to be able to say ‘No!’ without embarrassment or worry …!

Look forward to chatting in the New Year when I get home. Hope you have a warm, sunny Christmas, like me,

Al

There were already three of us competing in this marriage: Sarah, me and adventure.

Dawn

I STIRRED IN THE silent hues of dawn, shivering. Too cold to sleep, too cold to get up. I lay uncomfortably for a while before conceding that I would not fall back to sleep and the morning might as well begin. The hills of Galicia were colder than I had expected for the summertime. I stood, stretched and dressed. My sleeping bag was dew-damp as I stuffed it into the rucksack. Yawn, blink, pack, leave. Into the distinctive moist-earth smell of the early hours, the air raw in my nostrils. It was still dark, but there was enough moonlight to walk without a torch. I padded through villages, the only soul astir. Valeixe, Vilar, Crecente … It was hard to keep heading east on roads that hairpinned and looped as they hugged the contours of the hilly landscape. This early, I was content to walk along country lanes to speed my progress. When the world woke and cars returned, I would return to the fields and footpaths.

The road was a single lane of potholed tarmac, crumbling at the edges, among smallholdings of corn and grapevines. A white dog pricked its ears as I filled my bottles at a village fountain, but it offered only a couple of sleepy barks of protest. The water glinted as it splashed, and sounded loud in the stillness. A solitary streetlight darkened the dawn sky around it. Barns and dry-stone walls were built from blocks of lichen-mottled stone. I ran my fingers along their gritty surface and sprouting clumps of soft moss. A rose bush spilled over a garden wall, and even this early the scent was strong. As the moon set in the purpling west, colour crept back into the world. Morning had returned.

Then the rising dust as the dew dried, the coming of heat and the yeasty presence of farm animals. A pair of blackbirds hurtled across the lane at ankle height, pouring torrents of noise at each other. In the passing blur I could not tell if they were courting or scrapping. A common confusion. My shirt, damp from yesterday’s sweat, steamed with my body heat in the early light. A church bell and the distant jangle of sheep bells amplified the quiet. It was many hours before I spoke to anyone. I reached into my pocket for some bread. It was so stale that I had to use my molars to tear off lumps. I didn’t mind, for it made the enjoyable act of eating last longer. I set a brisk pace as there was a village on my map that I hoped to reach in time for a lunchtime busk.

The first time Laurie played his violin in Spain he was frazzled from the sun, and a glass of wine had gone to his head. He ‘tore drunkenly into an Irish reel. They listened, open-mouthed, unable to make head or tail of it.’ Then he tried a fandango and ‘comprehension jerked them to life’. An old man danced ‘as if his life was at stake’ and afterwards ‘retired gasping to the safety of the walls’. Laurie went on to play in markets, inns, cafés and the occasional brothel along his journey. His instrument became ‘a passport of friendship’. I hoped that might hold true for me. But I was certainly never going to be allowed to perform in a café, never mind anywhere more exotic.

My prompt start got me to the village in good time. The school playground was lively and noisy and I hoped the same would be true of the plaza. My timing was good: the café was busy and customers were walking in and out of the bakery, the bank and the small grocery. I rested on a bench for a few minutes, drank some water and ate a carrot. Then it was time to busk.

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