A Homecoming of Sorts
Five days healing in the Cheviots
By Trevor H. Smith
August 2023
Part Twelve: The Family Brooks
The youngest of them, Tia, was leading the group when she sunk waist deep in a peat bog. Her first step took her in over the knee; her corrective second step completed the plunge. Visibly shocked, she nonetheless kept it together as her family rallied round with offers of clean clothing, a curtain of survival blankets behind which to change into them, and an abundance of love and support with a side-helping of affectionate mockery that only family can get away with. Archie’s quiet observations were few, and far between, but seldom wide of the mark. Thoughtful and considerate, he never complained despite the tattered and torn condition of his feet. He was first to go shoeless across the bouncy, close-cut (wild-goat-nibbled) grass of Beefstand Hill. Joe, who had endured a torrid time at university during the peak of the pandemic, walked alongside me for a good portion of the day – we talked about socialising, the ADHD mind, and the benefits of being out in the open air. We also talked about music, a subject in which his sister, Meri, interjected most forcefully. Meri was admirably philosophical about her impending GCSE results and talked enthusiastically about her love of poetry and art. If only I had been that switched on at sixteen, I thought to myself. Andy carried lightweight gear and had the navigational watch I wished I could have afforded when I splurged on my Garmin two years ago. A maths teacher in his early 50s with a clutch of children under his belt, Andy happily discussed everything under the sun. He had lost a bit of weight in recent years through long-distance cycling and was breezing along the Pennine Way. When I first arrived on the top of Ravens Knowe, Phil was by a clear margin the most talkative of the group and by the time we had traversed to the Roman camp at Chew Green we each had a working knowledge of the other’s background in hiking and art. Phil is a photographer and lecturer, so sympathised with my recently having set aside my own lecturing ambitions in Fine Art in favour of switching to a day job of painting and decorating, and the kind of money I could only dream of as a jobbing writer. He was supportive when I needed him to be and regularly relayed our conversations and points of interest to the group, by way of introducing me, I suppose. Was it because I was their unexpected trailmate that the family Brooks extended this warmest of welcomes out here in the Northumbrian wilderness? I think it would have been in their nature to welcome me in this way wherever our encounter might have occurred, being, as they are, thoroughly lovely people. But here it meant so much more.
I was in their company for precisely 23 hours. The photograph I took from the top of Ravens Knowe is time-stamped at 11.41 on Tuesday the 15th of August 2023 and the photograph I took as we parted ways at the junction of the Pennine Way and the route over the Cheviot was taken at 10:41 on Wednesday the 16th. Accounting for a nights’ sleep in the middle, over about 15 hours this family demonstrated to me everything I love about the thru-hiking community and humanity in general. My morale, abyssal as I aproached their group, was immediately lifted when I Reached them. Whether or not they were aware of it, they swept me up in their collective arms and carried me for the next fourteen miles, delivering me to the Cheviot feeling like I could take on the world.