Personal Narrative-The Wanderer

Nobody else called me The Wanderer, just me.

I’m the only person I’ve talked to recently, since everything went tits up and some of the conversations I’ve had with myself have been . . . well, I suppose weird might be a good word for them. I never realised just how confused a person could get when they are alone. Especially when they shouldn’t be alone. I couldn’t explain what had happened and nobody else had been around to explain to me. All I know is when I woke up, just off the summit of High Street, my tent flapping in the stiff breeze when I unzipped the front, everything seemed to be the same as ever.

I walked over to the nearby tumbledown dry-stone wall and emptied my bladder with a deep and fulsome sigh of contentment and a stretch,

“Geoff. Brew’s up, mate,” I said.

Nothing, just the gently undulating whistle of wind through clumps of hardy grasses and the arrhythmic flapping of brightly coloured nylon fabric.

I blew on my tea while my glasses steamed up, then took a first reinvigorating sip of life’s great reviver.

Geoff and I had been wild camping in the Lake District since we were eighteen. At least three times a year we would go, sometimes just for a few days like this trip, the longest trip had been a month, broken up one night a week by a stay in a Bed and Breakfast, mainly for the use of a shower but also to stoke up on fish and chips and a full English breakfast. Carbs, fat, and protein, every wild camper’s dream food.

I mean, I was used to eating rehydrated shite but after a while a bloke needs a decent meal and bacon, sausage, double egg, fried bread, plum tomatoes, mushrooms, and plenty of toast and marmalade fills the gap perfectly.

Not stinking like an old tramp helped.

A decent night’s sleep in a soft warm bed didn’t hurt either.

Back home we had been friends since we had been in the scouts as kids, it’s where we both got the camping

Nothing moved on the road. One car was parked in the car park. I wondered if it belonged to the couple in the other tent. There was no way I was going back in there. No way. Even for car keys.

Further away along the road I could just make out the chimneys of Haweswater Hotel through the tree cover.

I had to get there. It was the only place for miles where there might be a phone I could get help with. The only place I might find other people.

It took me an hour to finally drag myself away from the top of the mountain. It was Geoff. How was I supposed to just leave him up there? How was I supposed to just leave the couple up there? I’d walked off to the start of the drop back down following Nan Bield Pass once, then walked back until I could see the tents again before finally starting the steep winding return to the valley bottom. I remember nothing of the descent other than thinking I needed to get help.

Nobody passed me going the other way. When I could see the road again no cars trundled along. When I could see the car park, just the one car