“My favourite place on the walk was Apple Cross Peninsular. I’d crossed the cattle pass, which was 2½ thousand feet above sea level. I hadn’t been intending to, but someone had told me – you need to go to Apple Cross!
“I took the mountain pass up, which was like the scene at the start of The Italian Job. At the top, I was shin-deep in snow, thinking, this was a bad move. But the view from the top was like being on the moon! You could see the Isle of Skye on the other side, across beautiful seas, with unspoilt land all around me.” This was like a pinnacle of the trip, and after that, it took a lot to impress him! Other places that stood out though included Cape Wrath and Wells Next-the-Sea. Here, as he recalls, “I had some company, some fish and chips, and I stayed the night on a boat. I was watching a Romany Gypsy band, with a pint of cider watching the sun coming up, and I realised I could be doing something a lot worse!”
Dave walked a staggering average of 35 miles every day, never straying from the coast itself by more than 8 miles. The longest he walked in one day was 52 miles across the North Coast of Scotland from about 4am to 4am! After not being able to sleep the night before, he had just set off, and as it was so cold, he told me he couldn’t have slept anyway, so he just kept going until he was so tired, he knew he could sleep despite the cold, upon which point he set up his tent, and wrapped himself in silver foil! The more Dave told me, the more I was amazed at what I was hearing!
Generally, Dave preferred it when it was cold and wet, because at least then he could put his waterproofs on, whereas when it was hot, walking was a lot more difficult. Every day, and particularly towards the end, it was difficult getting up. “It was like being near a loo – you always need the loo more when you’re near it, because you know the end is in sight!”
Although he does not write much poetry himself, Dave told me he had been inspired by writers on the walk. “I felt a bit like Kerouac or Bukowski. I stopped at a church on the Isle of Wight where Keats went, and Defoe’s walk across Britain was also an inspiration.”
Dave celebrated his 100th day on the longest day of the year, which happened to be Father’s day, which was particularly apt as he’d set off on Mother’s day! And the pub he chose for this celebration? The Square and Compass at the Perfect Peninsular in Dorset! Here they served beautiful pasties, which were much better than Cornish pasties, he told me, and two types of cider, which were both around 8%. Like much of Dave’s trip, even this had been unplanned though. Someone had asked him if he had been looking for the pub. “To be honest with you, I wasn’t looking for the pub,” Dave told me, “But as soon as they said that, of course I was!” While he was at this pub, a massive swarm of bees descended on the place, but this was swiftly dealt with by the landlord, before business continued as before.
Dave saw quite a few unusual sights on the trip. In St Ives, he saw kids throwing chips into the hood of someone’s parker coat, who was then attacked by seagulls. In the village of Doris near Inverness, where Dave was staying at a campsite in -8° temperatures, Dave “adopted” a duck, who he invited into his tent, fed some crackers – part of his own staple diet – and let stay with him for 2 hours. Dave named the duck Pedro, and he tried to give the duck a cwtch, but the duck was having none of it.
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