A Homecoming of Sorts

Five days healing in the Cheviots

By Trevor H. Smith

August 2023

Part Twelve: Five days, seventy miles, multiple blisters, six trail mates, and one trail angel, all helping me heal in the Cheviots.

I knew the trail would help me move on – from Turkey and my subsequent creative hiatus – and help me move further through my grief over Thom’s death, and Mike’s too, but I had not expected the people I met along the way to play any part in that, let alone such a major role. The freshness of the air, gravel tracks through sticky pine plantations, lesser-walked rights of way that saw my trekking poles become bushwhacking sticks, wet trousers, wet legs, and even wetter feet, all of it gave me life. Hiking related muscle pain fed my appetite for clarity. On the trail my body becomes a machine that I live in. Feed it properly and it will go all day. Take appropriate rest and it will repay me with stamina. Each day begins with only one goal: to reach the destination. Something about that kind of mission speaks to my soul. I left the worries, stresses, and cares of everything else in the world behind me, beyond the horizon. All that I am and all that I need is beneath my feet, right here, right now.

Mindless and mindful in equal measure, the walking enabled a kind of flow state in which I found my peace in the wide, open spaces of Northumberland, whose sideways rain had made me smile into the wind as it whipped across the long, wet grass, soaking my legs and obscuring the trail, making it impossible to use my phone-map, and unfeasible to dig out my paper one, leaving me with only my instincts to get me down to Rochester on day three.

In the warm, summer air that beckoned me up towards to Simonside in those first few hours of my hike, I felt the soothing touch of my brother, and remembered his words in those final days – despite his imminent departure from this world he chose to give words of support to me. He spoke of his pride in what I had achieved and of how much love he had for my children. As I ran out of trail and daylight on day two and tramped across the heather seeking a pitch for the night, I felt the quiet rise of panic in my chest and thanked fate that I was here to feel it. Enveloped by the damp of its permanent cloud, at the top of the Cheviot, my home county’s highest point that I had waited 46 years to summit, I recorded a video for my children, so lucky did I feel to still be here, enduring. I was giddy on my final descent into Wooler, skipping across the tops of peat bogs, hurdling burns and gulleys, filled once again with the wonder of life.

A few hours later, I sat on the bus back down to Newcastle, its only passenger, like the final scene in a movie where closure montage is neatly delivered on a bed of uplifting melody. I knew that things would be okay. I knew that my children were waiting for me at home with my mam, and that my wife would join us later. And I knew – as I have all along – that my life will never be defined by the actions or inaction of others. There are things that happen that are beyond the control of any of us, and while they may knock us sideways, rock our world to its foundations, and scare the life out of us, as long as we go to bed expecting to wake up tomorrow, there is always something worth living for.

‘Happiness only real when shared’

But the healing was not entirely in the walking. In Jon Krakauer’s ‘Into the Wild’, the protagonist Christopher McCandless, on finding himself stranded, carelessly poisoned, and slowly dying of starvation, is credited with writing ‘Happiness only real when shared.’ I am inclined to agree. Whilst I find much joy in these solo pursuits, there is something to be said for the beauty of the shared moment. Mutual recognition of both a situation and one another’s presence can be a powerful force, and so it is the people of my homecoming journey with whom I most credit my emotional and spiritual healing.

The personal touch began with Steve from Otterburn, that bicycling angel on the hilltop, offering me his water and a lift when, after 17 miles and a lot of tarmac, the rain had washed me all the way down to ROE-chester. I did place that phonecall and he did come and collect me and run me into Byrness, where he left me at the campsite with a bag of food and drink he had rustled up while I waited. The healing continued with my lunch in Harbottle with my old classmate, Steven, and catching up with how others had got on in the 30 years since we had left school, and conversations about life choices, career moves, and the beauty of the Northumbrian wilderness. But it was in the soothing poultice of kindness offered by the Brooks family that my healing was made all but complete. This wonderful bunch welcomed me warmly, offering support without hesitation. I felt like I had known them all my life, like Steven and I had left school just a few weeks earlier, and like Steve from Otterburn was my ever reliable, friendly next-door neighbour. Each of these encounters filled my heart with hope of better days ahead, days when I can hike and write and make new art and think of my brother-in-law with more than the overwhelming sadness that had been the previous year. Days when I can move on from Turkey, and find the creative energy to make this walking artist work again.

As I set out over the Cheviot, solo once more having parted with the Brooks at the junction where the Pennine Way heads north to Kirk Yetholm and the completion of their four year journey, my heart sang a song of positivity that I had not heard for some time. I finally topped the Cheviot after decades of wondering when and whether I might ever get round to it. The descent and five miles of tarmac into Wooler wreaked havoc on my toes, and the blisters required days of aftercare, but my heart was at last on the mend.

I needed my homecoming of sorts. I made my plan at short notice, and sought solace in the open moors, heathered hills, and blackened peat bogs of my homeland. I sought comfort in physical hardship and reconnection with the part of me that functions best out here, and, whether I knew it or not, I came here to meet Steve, Steven, and the Brooks family. When I had nowhere else to go, I turned to the great trail, my old friend The Pennine Way, and the trail did dutifully provide.

The Beginning.

PArt twelve: the brooks family