I keep telling myself I have to start. I booked a week off work to do the South Downs Way. I’m not ready, but there’s time. There’s always time. I jump in the van with Mum and Dad. I won’t walk with them, but I’ll walk from where they start. The carpark is full, so are the verges. People are everywhere. A-just-about-dry bank holiday. Micheldever Woods are carpeted with blue. Spring is sprung. There aren’t enough wild places. Too much is walled off, kept behind fences. Where you can go is overcrowded because it’s the only place anyone can go. The first aim is to get as far away from the car park as fast as possible. I hit the outer perimeter of the woods and the crowds fall away. The bluebells rise everywhere. The shepherd’s crook stems hanging heavy. The quiet broken by the choking of a pheasant. Rain drops on leaf litter. The sweet smell of pollen.

I stroll past the private signs nailed to tree trunks and then through a gap in the wire of an extremely protected gate. I’m the trigger sending the birds to flight, launching a muntjac out of the undergrowth. Across a few hundred meters I rejoin a footpath I’m allowed to be on, seeing no reason for being advised not to travel this way, beyond the barbed wire stretched across the gate behind me. I move through field and copses. I pass the remains of a chimney. A worn out barn and rusted yard. I pause for sunscreen, encouraging the next shower. The private signs are everywhere. I’d be hard pushed to claim I hadn’t seen them if I got stopped. I remain on public rights of way to Brown Candover where I pick up a dog leg of the Wayfarers Walk. A slowing vehicle turns out to be my parents, returning from their own walk. I wave them on. A bus shelter provides as I break for lunch. Rain intensifying. I watch ringlets form on a puddle until the surface is more ripple than smooth. I’ll stay on this trail now to the edge of Basingstoke. Plenty of hills and no high ground. Rain moves in waves across the downs. Kites kee. A hare, or more likely a rabbit, bounds across a field. Skylarks warble. The endless hum of the M3 rises and falls. A time of year where layering is important and impossible to get right. By the time I get home again I’m in shorts and t-shirt, my bag is still wrapped in plastic.

The time I have becomes time I had. The week comes closer and I feel no better prepared. I learned a long time ago one walk does not make you ready for walking all day for a week. I remember the last time I went out in the UK for multiple days. My distances were short. The cliffs felt big. They probably are still big, but there’s a different confidence lingering. I’m capable of much more, even if it’s now been over a year since I last really tested myself. I check in on my gear. My hiking poles have sealed themselves with rust. No amount of WD40 or brute force gets them loose. I’m onto my third pair in the same number of years. My water reservoir split before I finished Te Araroa. Drinking water remains my biggest concern about walking in the UK. I get another one in the post. A t-shirt and a half decent pair of socks round off my gear changes. I remain hopeful of being able to replace my backpack with something smaller, lighter. Not yet though, the bag still has a few more trips in it. I fill the main compartment with my base weight. Tent and sleeping system, stove and pan, a change of clothes. Other smaller miscellaneous bits. Each day I’m at home I tell myself to take it out for a walk. I’m surprised at how light I feel. How at home I feel, nestled in to the waist and sternum straps. I remind myself where the weight really comes from, my feed bags and the necessary evil of more water than anyone should have to carry.

The early morning walks are preferable. The streets are quiet. The birds loud. The sun low, warming up fast. I can get around a solid 5km circuit. Getting my body used to the weight, feeling the gains in my knees. The evenings aren’t so bad. There’s more people, always more people. I had high hopes for the last weekend of preparations. I had visions of two 20km days with Rachael on the Ridgeway. Only, when I got to Oxford she confessed to having done herself a mischief. She seems to time these well. I suggest that if she doesn’t want to go out hiking she can just say so, she doesn’t have to fall down the stairs. In the end we manage about 10km. A little more is better than nothing. Taking both cars out for a 2 hour trip for a walk that’ll take the same time or less has us both a bit angsty. We return to Barbury Castle and follow the Ridgeway behind Ogbourne St George. We grab a quick photo at a sign almost certainly put up by the private landowners whose land the trail runs through. The wildflowers are speaking a little to me; little blues and pinks among a see of yellow. Things I’ve never noticed but notice now. White Hawthorn blossom lights up the trees. On the chalk tops we enjoy big views. A steady pace takes us to the foot of the final hill in good time. A sandwich in a field full of rabbits. Still sort of mushroom flavour tea from the thermos. Surprisingly quiet on trail. On the final stretch, Rachael’s car almost in sight she says thank you for getting me outside. I say thank you for coming outside.