376 Holly Worton ~ Long Distance Walks: Time and Space to Think and Reflect

Transcript

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 376. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am going to talk about long-distance trails, walking long-distance trails, and how they give us the time and space to think and reflect…just ‘me’ time: I find that walking is as much an inner journey as it is an outer journey.

This episode was inspired by a couple of people, I received an email from a listener with a suggestion to do this topic and then I received another email from another listener asking me if I was going to be podcasting about my Ridgeway walk and I realised I rarely do that, I will go on a walk and I will get back and I will mention it, and I mentioned it last week in the episode with Joanna Hennon, but that was about it. I don’t usually go in-depth into the walk, I just crack on with writing the book and then I put the book out, but of course not everyone who listens to the podcast reads books and not everyone that reads books listens to the podcast, so I think it is worth having this conversation with you in this area, in this place.

Books and Travel Podcast

So before we get into today’s episode I wanted to mention a podcast that I was recently a guest on. I was so thrilled to be a guest on Joanna Penn’s podcast, Books and Travel. Joanna Penn is one of the very first podcasters that I ever listened to back before I started podcasting I think. She has the Creative Penn podcast which is about independent publishing and she also runs the Books and Travel podcast, which is really exciting. She travels a lot for her research for her own books, Joanna writes both fiction and non-fiction and this particular podcast, Books and Travel, is about all the travels that she does for her research and she also has guests where she talks about other writers who are going out and doing travel to research for their books.

So we had a really great conversation about solo long distance walking in England. Joanna lives in Bath, so she is also in England and she is also a fan of long-distance walking, she has done a lot of ultra challenges and she has also inspired me to sign up for two ultra challenges next year and I am really excited about that. So if you head over to https://hollyworton.com/booksandtravel that will redirect to her website, which is actually http://booksandtravel.com. So check that out, we had a great conversation I think you will really enjoy it, and check out her podcasts, particularly the one about travel, because she talks about writing and reading, and travel and I get some great suggestions for other travel books that I really enjoy in there. So that is https://hollyworton.com/booksandtravel and that will redirect to Joanna’s podcast episode.

My Virtual Mission

Another thing that I wanted to mention was something that a reader that wrote in to me about which is the My Virtual Mission and this is something that I have been checking out online but I haven’t really looked at doing for myself but it is a great idea. So if you are the kind of person who does not want to travel long-distance to do long-distance trails, or to walk the Camino, or to have these adventures, you can do a virtual challenge in your own neighbourhood. So if you go to http://MyVirtualMission.com you can create your own fitness challenge. So you can say ‘I want to walk the Camino’, and what it does, it sets you up with a virtual challenge where you would walk the equivalent number of miles or kilometres as if you were doing the Camino. And it has an app, and it shows you, as you walk, and as you enter the amount of miles that you have gone running or walking or cycling or swimming or whatever, you advance along the path as if you were walking that trail. It is very cool. And they actually have medals and things you can get once you complete your challenge. So it is http://MyVirtualMission.com – check it out. If you don’t feel like travelling in these weird times, I certainly don’t feel like travelling internationally, all of my travel is going to be UK-based for the next foreseeable future. So if you feel like travelling in your local area but not travelling abroad to do things like the Camino or long-distance trails, this can give you an idea of what it would be like in terms of the physical challenge and you can split that up however you like. So that is that.

Walking the Ridgeway

So I got back (I think it was last week or the week before, it feels like I have been back for ages), it was the week before last, I got back from the Ridgeway National Trail, which is an 87-mile trail stretching from near Avebury in the West to Ivanhoe Beacon in the East, Southwest to Northeast, it is kind of diagonal looking on the map. And it was fantastic, I really, really, enjoyed walking the Ridgeway again, I did it in one less day than I did it last time, which I liked. I walked it in the opposite direction this time which I loved and all around it was just a great experience. I love walking these long-distance trails and not just because of the physical trails, not just because of the physical challenge, but because of the time and space it gives me to reflect or not reflect (I mean there are long stretches of the walk where I don’t even know what I am thinking about or if I am thinking about anything!).

It is just so relaxing from a mental perspective and I talked a couple of weeks ago about digital detox and walking long-distance trails, that was in episode 374. I wasn’t on my phone a lot, I was just using it for photographs and that kind fo thing and it just really gives me a break from my normal life, it is a complete interruption to routines, instead of sitting at the computer and writing and doing marketing and social media and all that, I am mostly out on the trail doing physical challenges, the physical challenge of walking every day and again, and again, and again. And just the peacefulness of being out on the trail.

So let’s talk about the benefits of having this time and space. Before I get into that I am going to talk a bit about what the trail was like for me. I hinted at this in my episode last week with Joanna Hennon but the intention was that with each day of the walk, and with each step of the walk, I would be more aligned with this new identity of helping people with outdoor adventures and travel and blogging and talking about it here in the podcast and kind of that general idea of personal growth through outdoors adventures and travel, particularly solo outdoor adventures and solo travel.

I was still kind of at the point, before I left, where I loved talking about the inner stuff, I loved talking about mindset, it was kind of disjointed here on the podcast; I would talk about outdoor stuff and then I would talk about mindset stuff and I kind of hadn’t fully integrated the two and I kind of hadn’t really stepped into this new identity even though I have been kind of easing into it over the last year or so. So I feel like I am there now. And, one of the first things that I did when I came back, I did a workcation weekend last weekend, was to update my name that I use to write business mindset books and I have been suspecting that Amazon’s algorithm has been messing up the way my books are presented because I write about disjointed things, my first four books were about business mindset and then I have all this outdoor adventure stuff.

So I have changed my name on those books to be ‘Holly E Worton’ which is my middle initial, rather than just Holly Worton, and I have uploaded those again with new covers and I still need to get the details sorted out with Amazon, so they can update my name, but I really good about that, I feel that that creates more of a distance between the books that I am writing now and the books that I used to write. I won’t be writing about business mindset anymore. I still have to update my final book in that series, which is called Business Intuition, but after that it is done and I won’t be writing about business stuff anymore, unless I decide to pick that up in the future but I don’t know I feel like I am on the right track now and I am not blogging about business anymore and I am not talking about it here on the podcast and I don’t have plans to write books about that. So I feel like that was a big shift, to let go of the past.

Also the whole time I was walking I kept thinking about blog posts that I wanted to write and pictures that I wanted to take for new blogposts and I started thinking about how I could improve my photography and I signed up for this iPhone photography class, because I am not yet willing to get a proper camera because I don’t want to carry that around. I started opening up to the possibility, I don’t want to carry a camera around on my long distance trails, but I might be willing to invest in a proper camera, to do blog posts, to take day trips out to research blog posts.

I also started fantasising about getting a drone to take photographs and videos fo the places that I am going to be visiting for my blog posts. Something that I was thinking about because it is so hard to take pictures of hill forts and I published this blog posts on hill forts along the Ridgeway, because I am really fascinated by iron age hill forts and there are so many of them on the Ridgeway and near the Ridgeway but it is hard to photograph; you just see this ridge as you are walking around it and the ditch to one side, but it doesn’t look very impressive so I was thinking how great it would be to have a drone and to be able to take aerial photographs. I don’t know there may be a drone in my future, I don’t know. They can be so annoying, and I don’t want to annoy people with it but I think I want one, we will see! I will let you know if I get one because I will be super-excited about updating some of my photographs on the website. So drones perhaps, better photography, perhaps and I can certainly tell you that I got a new iPhone this year and the photographs were so much better. So I am super-excited about writing new blog posts, I have already written several with my new photographs from the Ridgeway and it is so nice to have good pictures. So that was the overarching theme of the walk and how it came into play in terms of reality.

As you may know if you have read any of my books on walking I usually draw oracle cards for each day of my walk and sometimes it is easy for me to see how those themes come into play on my walk and sometimes it takes time to see it, so I just spent some time before hitting record on this episode to look at each day of the walk and look at each theme and how it came into reality, in terms of my physical reality in terms of walking the trail and my inner reality.

So the first day I walked form Ivanhoe Beacon to Wendover and the theme for that day was, the card that I chose, was Wild Yam and the theme was intuition, omens, and femininity. This was a day where it was like this fear was set into motion that played its way out over the next couple of days and into my journey. I am not normally paranoid when I walk, and I make a big deal about how important walking alone is on these trails and sometimes I get fearful if I see a strange person, but it doesn’t…I don’t know it really brought stuff up for me on this walk.

So the first day I was walking with my phone in airplane mode which I always would walk with my phone in airplane mode, just to save the battery, and then I disabled it at one point to share a picture to Instagram or something and saw these texts from my husband saying, ‘messages aren’t entering, what is going on? What is wrong? Is your phone turned off? Is everything okay?’, and I said, ‘oh no, I always walk with my phone in airplane mode, you know that’. And he was like, ‘okay, well please don’t from now on’. So I stopped walking with my phone in airplane mode, it is not really necessary because I always carry an extra power bank with me, I did not carry my solar panels on this trip, but I have on previous trips. There was something that triggered this fear that carried on into the next couple of days.

The next day of the walk was from Windermere to Watlington and the card that I chose, well I pulled the card I didn’t consciously choose it, the card that I pulled was multiflora rose, which represents ‘antagonism, conflict and disharmony’. So this was the day, and I talked about this last week with Joanna Hennon, where I was walking down the trail and crossed paths with this guy and about ten minutes later he must have turned around where he crossed paths with me, and he came up behind me and passed me and went up this hill. And it was really unsettling, it was like, ‘why did he turn around?’ And I thought ‘maybe he is turning around and going to his car’. But I was already on edge and it brought up all this paranoia inside me and all this conflict and disharmony and fears and that was what my mind was working through this day.

So I was on hyper alert because of this guy and then I didn’t see him for hours on the trail and then about half-an-hour before I arrived at my destination that evening, I saw him again, again walking towards me, so he had apparently walked all the way down to somewhere and turned around and came back again and I was like ‘what! What is this guy doing? Is he just walking back and forth along the Ridgeway’. And logically, he was probably just having a day walk out where he was walking back and forth along the Ridgeway, but this fear and this mind-crap was bubbling up to the surface and I was getting paranoid and anyway, that was that. And that was the end fo that day. 

And the next day I walked from Watlington to Goring and the card I pulled was oak, which represents ‘wisdom, masculinity and strength’. So this was the day where I was thinking ‘oh my god that guy, he was back and forth on the trail, what if I see him again, what am I going to do’. So I had all this fear still but I remembered this card and so I was kind of using this as a mantra as I often do with these card themes and I was walking along I was going ‘wisdom, masculinity, strength, wisdom, masculinity, strength…’ and I was repeating that over and over to calm myself, every time mind would go to stupid places I would go over this mantra in my head and think, ‘men aren’t always scary, they can represent wisdom and strength and good things’. So that day was really about overcoming my fears and I finally calmed down that day and had a really lovely walk at the end once I realised that the guy was nowhere in sight or anywhere on the trail in the portion that I was walking.

And the next day I walked from Goring to Wantage and the card was plantain which represents ‘innocence, naivety and unaware’. That was a Saturday, there were so many people out on the trail and that was a shock because the trail had been really, really, quiet, but there was this bike event, I think it was 100-mile or 100-km cycle event all along the Ridgeway and I kept passing all these cyclists because they were going in the opposite direction from me and it was just really lovely to see all these people out on the ultra-challenge and I don’t know feeling really proud of them. I had seen so many of them I felt like, I don’t know solidarity with these guys, (it was mostly men, that is why I say guys but there were some women) who were doing this event and I just, I don’t know, it was lovely seeing them all doing this big challenge.

Then, at the end of the trail, when I got to the turnoff to the town where I was staying I heard this guy get hit by a car, it was one of the cyclists. And I went to try and help and there were already people there, so there wasn’t anything to do, so I ended up getting back to where I was staying that night, but it was really unsettling. I didn’t see it, but I had never heard anything like that before, and it just knocked me off my balance. I was finally getting back to centre after being paranoid about that guy and then this really knocked me, I think he was probably fine, he was coherent and he got medical assistance right away, I could see the ambulances and the police coming up the road which was parallel to the road that I was taking down to town. So I am hoping he is fine, I am pretty sure he is fine, but it was a shitty end to a really lovely day on the trail. So I think that was that innocence of just walking the trail and being in my own little happy bubble and then getting hit by real life. So that was that day.

Day five was Wantage to Ashbury, the card was turkey tail, ‘unknown, mystery and unsettled’. So I was really unsettled because of events that had happened the previous day and also really unsettled because there were so many people on the trail and kind of disappointed with myself for not planning the trail better in terms of which day I was starting at, because this is a really popular portion of the trail where there are a lot of hill forts and sights which have a lot of people out at the weekend. So I was just unsettled by all these people because I had gotten accustomed to having such a quiet time on the trail so that was relevant.

Day six was Ashbury to Ogbourne St George and the card was cannabis which represents revelry, fun and time off. Yeah, I don’t know, I can’t say that this was a particularly fun day on the trail but I went to see Wayland’s Smithy in the morning, I saw hill forts along the way, a lot of this portion of the trail I had walked a second time in March, when I did my two-week camping-and-exploring trip. So it was just really nice to revisit and I think I was sinking back into the happiness and the joy of being alone on this trail.

Say seven, was Ogbourne St George to East Kennet, the card was catnip, ‘opposite, separation and contrast’, and I guess I was nearing the end of the trail, it ended before I reached my accommodation in East Kennet, so it was kind of that separation of the trail, it was that sadness of the separation of this kind of beautiful, liminal, space where I had existed for the last seven days. It was just really lovely but also really sad (as it always is) when I get to the end of the trail.

The final extra day was where I walked around Avebury and the theme was stinging nettles, ‘sacrifice, reward and pain’, reward for me was returning to Avebury which is one of my favourite places, reconnected with a bunch of trees from the book, chatted with them about the book, the old book, the new book, I collected some new stories for the new book, which is ‘how to talk to trees’. And the pain was the sadness of finishing the trail and just being sad that it was over.

So the overarching theme was knotweed which represents ‘defences, resiliency, and preparation’. When I pulled these cards, I was really on edge about it, because they didn’t seem like very fun cards but, as the women in my master-gut group reminded me, these were cards that really represent the ups-and-downs of an inner journey and transformation and change and defences, resiliency, I think that represents all the kind of fear that I had that was bubbling up along the trail and my resiliency was my determination to carry on and there was actually one day and I didn’t mention this earlier where I was super-paranoid about that guy and I actually thought: is it safe for me to carry on? Should I quit walking? Should I stop posting pictures about this on Instagram? Probably. I thought about pausing my journey and I am glad I didn’t because that would have been fear taking over my life, so defences and resiliency totally makes sense. Preparation, I feel like all the preparation I have done came from my previous walking and preparing to do it in a way, taking all the breaks I needed and taking care of my feet, I didn’t get any blisters this time around, which I am super proud of. I feel like my preparation and my experience really paid off.

So that is the Ridgeway. That was my experience. (That kind of went on for longer than I wanted it to.)

Benefits of having time and space

Let’s get into the content fo this podcast episode. Long distance walks give you time and space to think and reflect. I think that pulling an oracle card for these walks really gives me an idea of what might be coming, they give me a topic to reflect on, before, during and after the walk, so I find that really useful and would recommend. Because you have so much time and space to think and reflect when you are doing a long distance walk or a run even and I am starting to get into trail running again and I am finding that’s also a great time to reflect and think. Unless you fill up your mind with podcasts or music or keeping busy, if you don’t listen to things and you just walk, you have this beautiful time and space to be with yourself and to let the crap come up – and I think a lot of people are afraid of this and that is why a lot of people don’t want to walk alone, but I like the fact because I can work through it, the way I worked through it on the Ridgeway. It can also bring up beautiful things, ideas, beautiful thoughts and creative ventures and things that you want to do when you get back home and new ways of doing things.

I just think that when we allow ourselves to have this space to walk long distance it allows us to reflect. A lot of time in the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life we just don’t have the time and space to reflect on what we are doing, what we want to be doing, on who we are, on where we want to be headed in life. I think this is really, really, important. It gives us space to think about how we can improve our lives, how we can improve our projects, how we can improve our creative ventures and to me this only happens when I am walking alone. When I walk with someone else, we are talking, I am not focussed on stuff and I am not giving myself that space to have stuff come to the surface so I really think that walking alone can just be a massive difference for our own capacity and our ability to self reflect and think about our lives and mindsets and wellbeing and personal, professional being and where we want to be going in life.

So if you are not a solo walker I would like to invite you, start out with solo day trips, expand to long-distance walks alone, expand to camping trips alone. Getting out in nature alone it is life-changing, it gives us that time and space to be with ourselves and to get to know ourselves. And there is not much I can say on the topic except go do it and give it a try. Block off time in your calendar if you need to but do what it takes to get you outdoors and to get you alone with yourself because when you get out alone in nature everything kind of slows down. It is like I find my thoughts when I slow down. And give yourself that gift of time and space and any long distance trail in nature can give you.

That is all for this week, I hope you found it interesting and useful, please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of this week’s episode [you can email me at: [email protected]], and please let me know what you would like me to talk about. Also, if there are any trails or places that you would like me to visit for the podcast, or for the blog, let me know, I am always looking for new places to travel to, preferably within Britain, because I am not travelling internationally anytime soon.

Finally I would love for you to join me on Patreon if you head over to http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton  you can me join me there, membership starts at just $1 a month and you get exclusive access to stuff that I don’t share anywhere else, including a monthly Q and A and you can also get access to all of my ebooks for free.

Thank you for listening and remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/376 for the show notes on this episode, thank you.