Keats – A Winchester Walk in The Poet’s Footsteps... A Modern, More Stressful Approach

It’s Monday morning, seven o’clock and as usual, I’m running late.  Already, I’m stressing about how to fit everything that needs to be done into the day ahead.  I’m cross with myself too.  I was lazy and didn’t whizz through the ironing pile at the weekend, as I should have done.  Now, I am paying the price; I’ve no clean trousers to wear.  I resort to inspecting the lower leg of the pair I wore on Sunday to walk in, but they’re no use, they’re too splattered with mud.  So, it is with great reluctance I yank on one of the three skirts I own, and ram my feet, now clad in aubergine tights, into the restrictive confines of my black pumps (normally reserved for funerals and interviews).

On a day like today, when I am close to losing the plot so early in the morning, I decide my heeled boots would not be practical and stick with boring, but safe.  Particularly as last night we were emailed, suggesting we bring a camera to our Media Lecture and imagining that we may be wandering around the campus to take photographs, I know I will regret it if I wear the heels.  

After more charging about, grabbing at bits and pieces that as a mature student I really should have packed in my bag the night before in an organized fashion, I finally make it to the car.  Where I realize that I’ve forgotten to bring my gloves, and that it’s too late to retrieve them.  A decision I will later regret.  But clueless to the adventure ahead of me, and promising myself that I will sort the ironing pile tonight, I screech along the A34 towards Winchester, and if I’m lucky straight in to one of the increasingly limited parking spaces.

Once in the Media Lecture, we discover that today’s session is to be an outdoors excursion, and we are released in to the world to find a story to write an article about, with a variety of choices as to how we achieve that.  Immediately I panic at the first idea; having to find a random person on campus and come up with intelligent questions and topics.  Another suggestion, which takes inspiration from an article in the latest edition of Hampshire Life about poet, Keats and his documented walks through Winchester, sounds appealing and less worrisome.  Just as long as I’m not dispatched on my own, because left to my own devices, I’m likely to get lost.

As a group, we descend into Winchester, to begin retracing Keats footsteps and hopefully understand what is was about the City that made the poet enjoy Winchester enough to describe it as such: ‘An exceeding pleasant town, enriched with a beautiful cathedral and surrounded by fresh-looking country.’

When we reach the Cathedral, armed with only camera, clipboard, and the article offering directions, the group disperses in differing directions. Laura and I take the time to look at the Armistice Day Poppies, and offer our respects before we saunter off in the direction of the trail: with absolutely no idea what we are letting ourselves in for.  

The sky is grey and murky and the morning cold.  My coat, which is woefully more of a fashion item than a ‘keep warm in the cold’ sort of coat feels a little inadequate even at this early stage.  Laura in a t-shirt and thin jacket and still clutching a pile of notebooks, is even less prepared than I am; although, we don’t register any of this at the time.  My perception is that we are heading off for a little stroll around the City, nothing more.   My main concern at this time is that I won’t be able to find anything to write about, and so as we head off under the archways alongside the Cathedral, I am frantically searching for an angle; for something to say. 

We wander past workmen constructing wooden huts for the Christmas market, and laying foundations for the ice skating rink, while I wish that I had taken the time to go back and grab my gloves before leaving home.   We stop for me to take arty pictures beneath a cluster of trees, where I photograph auburn leaves laying against the dewy grass.  We amble along streets, chatting about this and that, guided by the green street signs through the city centre.  College boys in uniforms flood past, when I peer in through the book store reminiscent of a time gone by.  A world where Amazon and next day delivery was still to be invented.  Where rows of tantalizing books could be touched, their papery scent absorbed. 

A few doors down, we both photograph the memorable house where Jane Austen briefly lived before she died there, and the reason she was buried at the Cathedral.

We continue on, following Keats pathway beneath weeping willow trees, alongside the stream where the water seems so clear and pure, that in the summer you can imagine almost wanting to drink it.  The Swans, idling in the water glide by us as we walk, and talk.  Occasionally we look at the directions from the Hampshire Life.  Elderly couples, holding hands, pass by us.  A man, face puce, jogs past, whilst we admire the beauty of the views surrounding us.  Pondering on why there is no display of Keats poem, ‘To Autumn’ along the pathway.  

We cross bridges, photograph benches with touching memorials to loved ones, as birds flutter around us, diving in to the hedgerows, where not so long ago berries would have grown.  Maybe Keats picked berries, stopping to feast from the brambles while on his daily walk.  We don’t know.  But it is this, which makes the walk so special for me, the sense of history captured in a walk.  It touches the romantic in me, knowing that Keats wrote a poem about autumn, after walking down the pathway where I now walk.

About now, Laura and I become aware of the time, conscious that we need to be back in class before twelve o clock.  We climb stiles- never easy in a skirt- and I berate myself again for not doing the ironing, of wearing a skirt on the very day we go walkabout.  The boring shoes are taking their revenge and are beginning to rub around the edges of my feet.  My hands have turned a blotchy red with the cold and a chill is beginning to seep in to my body.

Still, there are endless sights to see and enjoy.  We watch what we imagine might be a rat as it dives into the water from the bank lined with allotments, and see it swim across the water before ducking beneath the roots of a tree embedded in the stream.  College buildings fade into the distance, and the scenery around us turns greener, wilder.  The ground beneath Laura’s daps and my sensible shoes becoming rougher, and muddier terrain.

Mid conversation, walking through a field we come to an abrupt halt, when I ask, ‘Shit, are they cows… is that a bull?’  Suddenly, and unaware as we walked, we find ourselves standing in the middle of farmland, with a field full of cows, and possibly a bull, staring at us with interest.  I have a fleeting moment of terror; imagining it is a bull and that any moment it will charge and we will have to run for our lives.  And neither of us is geared up for walking, let alone running.  There is a woman in a red hat behind us on the trail.  She looks like she knows where she’s going, and she’s not running for her life, and this thought comforts me.  All the same, we speed up as we head towards the gate in the corner of the field.  Although, still desperate for my ‘story idea’, I stop briefly to photograph a cow stood in the stream, muddying the previously clear waters with an indiscreet pooh.

Now, as we trudge along long muddy pathways, our spirits, for the first time are beginning to droop.  The soles of Laura’s feet are burning, and I’m pretty sure I have blisters forming, and my hands are icy.  The route tells us that we will hear the roar of the M3 and we do, joking that maybe we should hitch a ride home.  We’re tired and cold and ready to be on the return journey, but as we plough forward, we hit the depressing reality that we are in the middle of nowhere and still have a long way to go.

We begin to focus on the time more, losing interest in the beauty of the countryside, which is magnificent, and surprising considering how close to a city we are.  Continuing on we finally reach the pathway that leads up to St Catherine’s Hill. 

‘If you feel able to mount the stairs winding up to the summit…’ the route states. 

Not bloody likely. 

I take my final shot of the day’s walk.  From here on in our journey is about survival.   About getting back to Uni, to warmth, to a place where I can take these awful shoes off.  In every story of endurance, there is always the low point that needs to be reached.  That ‘Rocky Balboa’ moment when you’re forced to wrestle with your own worst fears and doubts, to be able to come out the other side, victorious, emotionally stronger for the challenge. 

It is here, beneath the mound of St Catherine’s when we hit rock bottom, with the realization that we are now beginning to double back on ourselves… That we have to walk the way we have just come, and I seriously begin to worry that we won’t make it home.

Ridiculous, I know.  It’s only a three-mile walk… Not that it feels three miles; trust me.  By the time we eventually return it feels much, much longer.  We are both suffering in the relentless cold.  My hands are so numb I can’t squeeze them sufficiently to wipe the drips from the tip of my nose.  The path we now walk along is the Itchen Navigation and it is narrow, and slippery, and feels dangerously close to the clear water, where moss floats beneath the surface.  We walk single file, focusing only on where we place our feet, no longer caught up in the magic of retracing Keats footsteps.

We just want to get home.

Eventually, we are off the pathway and emerge by the Garnier Road car park.  Where we taunt ourselves with the hope that there will a sign, a view of the university, that we are at least close.  But we’re not.  A couple park their car as we walk by, to exercise their dog, ‘how much money should we offer them for a lift?’  I joke.  But it’s not funny.

On the Pilgrim Trail leading back to Winchester we feel we are getting somewhere.  We are both exhausted, freezing cold and struggling with sore feet. We pass a row of character cottages and flats that look cheery and welcoming, a woman on the balcony smiles at us, two red-faced students still brandishing their clipboards.

Another moment of panic occurs when we think the pathway has run out and that we’re stuck.  My thought is to call my husband, Steve.  He’ll come to find me; and rescue us both.  I know he’s working in Oxford, and that he’s a good couple of hours away at least, but my thoughts are no longer rational.  The panic passes, as we appear to be returning to normality.  ‘Its good to feel concrete beneath our feet again,’ Laura says.  And it is.  We are on the edges of Winchester; we pass Wolvesy Castle for the second time that day.  We make it back to Jane Austen’s home and the bookshop, where I now regret bumbling around earlier wasting precious minutes.

Back in the centre of Winchester, we change direction and head for signs towards the University.  Neither Laura, nor myself are local, and we don’t know our way around too well.  Seeing the first sign for the university we follow it.  To cheer ourselves up we guesstimate what time we will be back at the cars.  Our pace has slowed, and the road seems endlessly long, and with no further signposts we’re worried, and yet committed.  If we turn back now it will add minutes to our journey that we cannot bare to think about.

We head on.  Nowhere looks familiar.  My feet are so sore.  I want to cry.

Aware we are now lost and unable to cope with a wrong turn, Laura uses her iphone to track our location and I ask an elderly man for directions, admitting, somewhat embarrassed, that as students of the university, we unfortunately have no idea how to find it.  He’s very kind and sends us in the right direction and with an end in sight we plod onwards.

When Laura recognizes where we are and that we are indeed close relief charges through me.  At 12.39pm, a minute before Laura’s guesstimated time of arrival and thirty-nine minutes after the end of our two hour lecture, we crawl past the Meade Annexe.  The blisters that had been accruing have now popped, and there is a dampness seeping through the feet of my tights and shoes.  Up the slight incline that feels more like a mountain, we gratefully head through the car park towards our cars.  Any thought of Keats, and his Winchester walk, long forgotten.

By late afternoon, at home with the central heating blasting, I am still chilled to the bones.  My feet are throbbing.  Some blisters had popped, others are still sitting proud upon my toes, and feeling grumpy inside out, I text Laura, knowing she’ll have had an equally tough afternoon in the library and later at her afternoon lectures.

But by the following morning, I am reflective.  Keats walk was beautiful and well worth the effort if, if you are wearing walking gear, and are prepared. My walk with Laura perhaps wasn’t as calming, and as health inducing as the walks Keats would have enjoyed.  And yet, we had our own experience, our own adventure.  We chatted non-stop, we persevered when things got rough, and as we struggled on, we laughed about it, and surely there could be a poem written about that.

Previously published on Only In Winchester.  Edited by Glenn Fosbraey.