School Daze - Hiking England's Coast to Coast Way: Landscape, Laughter and Love - page 16

Tales like “The Headless Hiker,” “A Walking Hell,” “Wainwright's Revenge,” and “The
Grisedale Ghoul” began to unwind in my imagination.
A brief detour from the afternoon's walk took us to another haunt of romantic poetry. We
found the Brothers' Parting Stone, a granite slab bearing a weathered inscription. It was
here the poet William Wordsworth took leave from his brother John in 1800. Theirs was
a poignant parting since John, the commander of an East India Company ship, was later
to die at sea. William wrote a brief poem and had it inscribed in the granite slab as a sac-
red memorial to his brother. The place thrilled me and although I had sometimes thought
Wordsworth a rather pompous poet, the connection of words and nature and relationship
seemed very apt. We are an expression of all that is in us, around us and between us. I loved
that the weathered rock had not been made into a quaint tourist attraction complete with
plastic souvenirs. I dredged my schoolgirl memory to recite Wordsworth's “Daffodils.”
It took Sarah's help but together we were almost word perfect. And then the tsunami of
school memories crashed in. Chris and I were to have dinner with my old school friend
Beverly that evening. We had not seen each other in twenty years. Ridiculously, I pictured
us as eleven year olds in oversized school uniforms, bought ostensibly to allow room for
growth, but perhaps also to mask our burgeoning adolescent bodies from the burgeoning
boys who attended school across the street. And then there was the hat! A grey felt bowler,
trimmed with navy braid and adorned with a mucky duck. Actually, it was a silver cygnet,
apparently caught in the incongruous act of swallowing a key. In the impenetrable Phys-
ics classes taught by the only male teacher in the school, I had often wondered what had
happened to the key of knowledge—whether it had ruptured the bird's spleen or been re-
gurgitated at swan upping.
I quickened my steps in anticipation and in a little nervous apprehension of my reunion
with Beverly. Our fellow walkers made helpful comments like,
“What if you don't recognize each other?”
“What if you have nothing to say?”
But Beverly was, of course, still Beverly and I, of course, was still Jean, and the problem
was how to stop us from talking, catching up, reminiscing and feeling so fortunate to be
in one another's company again. Beverly and husband Steve had deliberately taken a few
days' holiday to be able to meet us. We felt it a great honor. This was, at some level, a jour-
ney of renewal, and rediscovery. How wonderful to renew and refresh this great friendship.
Steve reminded us that the last time we had been together I had been about to embark on
that early long distance walk, The Pennine Way.