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By 9.00 a.m. the next morning we were lined up, ready for the off again, with feet tended,
water replenished and backpacks stocked with lunch, snacks, waterproofs and some detritus
of our other lives. We were at the western margin of the Lake District, the path skirting En-
nerdale Water, then rising steadily up to lunch at the remote Black Sail Youth Hostel. After
only a day's walking together we had already settled into something of a pecking order with
long limbed Irishman Mat, wife Corrie and determined diminutive Vicki in the lead, Aus-
tralians Bob and Joanne in the rear and the rest of waning empire vying for position in the
middle. The walk along the lake, despite the rearing and bucking of the path, was rather
lovely, the lake reflecting the clearing skies and gathering hills. Although we pushed on at
a pace, we all breathed in the clear country air and began to muse about the peacefulness
of nature and the restorative effects of getting away from it all. Fighter jets ripped through
the valley, dispelling the gentle reverie, destroying it, smashing it. Again and again they
swerved past at an altitude lower than the mountain peaks. The engine noise crashed through
every cell of our bodies. Every quavering, near-pacifist cell in me braced to be offended at
this monstrous invasion of nature, but there was something breathtaking, magnificent, even
inspiring, about this low-flying exercise, that in its own raw, momentary power seemed to
heighten the grandeur of the enduring peaks and valleys. We walked on, more mindful of
scale and perspective, and I wondered at my own reaction; it was not at all as I would have
predicted; through the violence a voracious beauty exploded, human engineering sheering
alongside eternal engineering. Could I have felt the same if bombs had dropped, if I were
not a bystander but a potential victim, if the hills and valleys had been visibly scarred; could
I have felt the same about the ways of humanity and divinity? Obviously not, but in this di-
vorced context, my rhythm and my thinking were jolted. So soon, walking the Coast to Cost
had shaken my body and my thinking.
Black Sail Youth Hostel came into view and I felt a tremor of excitement. This, of course,
spelled lunch and a welcome break for the weary, but for me it was a little mark of achieve-
ment. I had never visited Black Sail before, but as a teenager I had heard other hikers speak
of it with words of awe. It is the most remote of British Youth Hostels and, in my day, be-
longed to the “simple” category of hostels, simple of course, being a euphemism for primit-
ive. Only the strong made it to Black Sail. Here, decades later, incongruously I was, at last,
strong! My teenage self eyed its older overlay, jaw dropped, eyes merry with recognition.
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