When Taido planned our Switzerland trip, he let us all know that it was going to be hard.

Really hard.

And he kept saying it.

Once someone texted that they had climbed up Pinnacle Mountain as a training hike, and he texted back:

Great. Now go back up two more times. 

And he meant it.

He kept saying that whatever amount of elevation we were picturing, we would be doing more.

For our training hikes, we went to Wales.

We can reach Wales in less than an hour from Bristol, but then it’s a little further to get into the hills.

In May and June the days were so long that we could drive over to Wales, do a long hike and still drive home in the daylight.

And as the trip got closer, we started hiking in Wales every weekend, sometimes on Saturday and Sunday.

When I did a navigation course in Wales, we all camped out over there for the whole weekend. Taido and Simon did training hikes while I did my course.

A few days before we all went to Switzerland together, my sister and her son flew here to Bristol. Almost as soon as they had landed, we were off to Wales for a final training hike. We hit up a hike along a hill that’s called The Dragon’s Back.

It was foggy, but muggy, like a lot of our summer hikes had been. We hiked in the thickening fog and climbed up into total cloud cover. We couldn’t see anything. It’s a shame to do all that uphill work and not get the views from the top.

But on our way down, the clouds parted and we got to see the summer green fields below us.

The descent was long over several ridges, which make up the dragon’s back.

We were all saying we were tired by the time we could see the bottom.

Not as tired as you’re going to be in Switzerland, Taido said.

We made our way back to the car and down the road to the pub where we laughed around the table and hoped that maybe we would be ready for the Alps.

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog a fabulous year of walking. During December, I’m inviting you to come along with me on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here. Or subscribe to get stories to your inbox here.

The post Mini Walking Stories: Training for Switzerland in Wales appeared first on Alison Chino.

I was first introduced to OS Maps when we lived in Scotland.

When we would go hiking with other families, someone would bring along a paper Ordinance Survey Map, usually in a plastic square waterproof case that they wore around their necks. When the kids were in secondary school, they used them on school hiking trips.

As long as I have been hiking with Taido, he has used either a GPS device or mapping software on his phone for mapping, so I learned from him how to do this same.

Mapping software and phone apps have steadily improved over the years. I’ve learned to use so many different apps that I often don’t even carry a paper map anymore.

Until this year.

Bronze Navigation with OS Maps

Last spring I signed up tp be a leader on walks in the UK with Ramblers Walking Holidays, and one of the many requirements for leading was that I had to pass several levels of British navigation certification. On these navigation assessments, you are not permitted to use mapping software or a phone. Only a paper map and compass.

Well, I am game for learning new skills, especially ones that make me more reliable in the hills. So I started to learn to read OS Maps. To prepare for my first course, I watched lots of YouTube videos to try to start deciphering the symbols and lines on the maps.

Honestly, it was hard for me to make the switch. For one thing, you can’t increase the size of a paper map by spreading it apart with your fingers like you can on a phone, so it’s harder to see.

Also, if you want a little dot on the map that moves along on the path, showing you your position and keeping track of right where you are, then you have to draw it on there yourself. And it’s not as accurate or foolproof as the little line that is automatically drawn on your phone as you walk.

But I learned to fold the map so that my thumb is on the point where I am. Then I hold the compass onto the map pointing in the direction I want to go. As I walk, I notice the things on the ground that are also on my map: a stream, a fence, a sheepfold (there are an astonishing number of sheepfolds on OS Maps). The official navigation names for these skills are thumbing the map and ticking off features.

And there are loads more phrases that are specific to navigation with OS Maps that I’ve learned this year.

Orienting the map is holding it in the direction you want to go.

Dog-legging is finding a route on the map to avoid a place you can’t walk through by making a triangle detour around it.

A handrail is a linear feature that you can use to keep yourself oriented in the right direction.

Taking a bearing is using the map and (a very specific kind of) compass to walk in the direction you want to go.

After reading and prepping, I went on my first course in Wales last summer. For two days I wandered around in the hills with a delightful instructor called Jane. She helped me put all these terms into practice.

While much of the terminology was unfamiliar to me, many of the skills in practice are basic common sense. They were skills I’ve used without knowing exactly what they were called.

I’ve followed many a stream to a crossroads or bridge without knowing to call it a linear feature. Riverbeds often run conveniently alongside trails.

At the end of the two days, Jane awarded me my bronze navigation certificate. Next up was the silver.

Silver Navigation with OS Maps

The week-long silver course involved a detailed assessment out on the trail at the end.

We were going to be asked to find spots on the map that are not on any trail.

You bushwhack on purpose to show that you could do it if you needed to, to find a different way out or to regain your way if lost. (I don’t really care for bushwhacking.)

I was next-level nervous about this step in my training.

What if I don’t pass? Or what if I can’t keep up with everyone?

I considered backing out because I was so anxious, but in the end, I made my way up to the Lake District on a rainy November week to do the course.

All week long, we tromped around in the rain across fields, hills and bogs.

Slowly, we learned to take these paper maps (which were laminated for us because of the rain) and to use them to navigate to where we were asked to go.

We took turns being the leader, but even when you weren’t leading you were supposed to be tracking on your map where we were going.

One of the instructors would stop you and say, Can you show me on your map where we are?

When he was talking to me, he would sometimes add something like, Um, it might be helpful if your map was right side up.

Oh right! 

All week I vacillated between being mortified and too cold and wet to care anymore.

I had several moments of doubting the wisdom of my choice to be there. And the night before my assessment, I was so nervous that I couldn’t sleep.

I was never much of a test taker in school. Raging anxiety and the high stakes of a test are just not a great combination.

I kept reminding myself that I really didn’t have anything on the line. I wasn’t going to be fired or kept from attending university if I didn’t pass.

Of course it would be a bummer, but it would not be the end of the world. In fact, late in the week, we found out that our bronze navigation level was enough to lead some of the Ramblers low level walks.

I like low level walks, I told myself. They are nice. 

On the day of the exam, we headed out into the cold day early in the morning.

Four of us were assessed together, and one of our instructors came along with us for moral support.

Ramblers uses an independent assessor to be sure that their instructors aren’t fudging the line on the testing. We met the assessor and his dog at a trailhead and headed up into the hills together.

All day long he pointed out little tiny spots on the map and told us to take him there.

Sometimes it was the corner of a fence, but mostly it would be a bend in a contour line, a spot where the hill slopes up a little bit.

The rain came and went, but the cold wind stuck around most of the day.

We were in an area that if you blindfolded me and spun me around three times and took off my blindfold, I would have no clue which way I had come from. It was brown, boggy bracken in every direction.

And so we took bearings. We counted paces. We used our stopwatches to see how long we’d been walking.

We used all the skills we’d been learning all week, and one by one, we lead the group around the hills.

And then we each pointed out on our maps where we were.

On my last turn, I was leading us down the hill to a bend in a contour line. It was starting to get dark. I was using my headlamp to read my map and pointing at the side in the hill that I hoped was there. I was beyond exhausted from the combination of walking hills all day AND being tested.

The assessor finally put us all out of our misery and told us that since it was getting dark, we could head back. Then he told us that we had all passed.

Instead of jumping up and down with glee, all I could think about was a hot shower and my warm, dry bed.

A few hours later, after we were all showered and fed, the assessor met with each of us individually to let us know what kind of walks we could guide.

He told me that if I practice navigating for about 18 months that I should be ready to go for my gold navigation.

But I can’t even think about the gold just yet.

For now, I am going to enjoy having my silver. (If you visit me, I will proudly show it off to you!)

And I am leading three walks for Ramblers Walking Holidays next year.

So if you fancy coming on a walk with me, let me know!

I’ll do my very best to keep you from having to bushwhack through wet bogs.

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog a fabulous year of walking. During December, I’m inviting you to come along with me on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here. Or subscribe to get stories to your inbox here.

The post Mini Walking Stories: OS Maps appeared first on Alison Chino.

I get so excited when I start to see berries on the trail.

And it’s even more fun when I am walking with someone who shares my enthusiasm for picking them.

This past summer, we found blueberries, blackberries and raspberries on the Via Alpina.

And blackberries were absolutely everywhere along our summer hikes in England.

Such treasure!

Berry picking was a thread that ran through hiking trips from July to September this year.

I first sent Simon down the lane with his cousin in July to grab berries for a crumble after dinner.

Then Anna and I slowed everyone down with our constant raspberry picking on the first few days of the Via Alpina.

Once she left, I had some new berry picking comrades show up in my sister-in-law, Koko and my friend Jermaine. They were the first ones to spot the tiny wild blueberries along the path.

Our last week in Switzerland, we stayed on a farm and picked blackberries every morning to have in our yogurt for breakfast.

In September, I hiked with my parents and my dad and I picked berries together. They were absolutely everywhere by early September in our area. And then we met friends in the Lake District who were also game to stop for picking blackberries.

Koko even filled her water bottle with them to take back to her partner who couldn’t hike with us. I love her for that! It’s not enough just to pick and enjoy the berries yourself, but also you want to spread that berry love.

My sister, brother and I first picked blackberries with my grandparents in Arkansas. They lived out in the country. As kids, we would go stay with them in June and pick berries down the road from their house. Then my grandmother would make blackberry pie and blackberry jam.

Blackberry pie was always my favorite dessert growing up. I would request it on my birthday instead of cake.

Our early blackberry picking days were the inspiration for my sister’s restaurant when she opened it in 2012: Blackberry Market.

And now my brother has just opened one in North Little Rock, Arkansas. (You should definitely go visit.)

Though it can add a considerable amount of time to your hike, finding wild berries is always a good excuse for a stop on the trail.

Now, on these winter days,

when I walk by the sleeping blackberry bushes,

I imagine them full with berries again.

When the time comes, I’ll be ready with my pail,

and hopefully I’ll have a friend around who is willing to stop and share the joy picking blackberries.

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog a fabulous year of walking. During December, I’m inviting you to come along with me on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here. Or subscribe to get stories to your inbox here.

The post Mini Walking Stories: Picking Blackberries appeared first on Alison Chino.

Taido and I say to each other all the time that we want to keep hiking well into our old age.

Then this summer, only a few days into the Via Alpina, I was starting to think thoughts like:

I think this might be my last serious mountain climb.

It’s time for me to stick to the lower level routes.

All morning I had been counting steps up the mountain.

We could see the pass ahead of us and even better, we could spot that there was a restaurant on top, so we knew we were looking forward to a substantial break.

When we finally reached the top, I collapsed into a chair while everyone went inside to order.

Just grab me one of what you’re having, I said to Taido. I couldn’t take another step.

The restaurant on Hahnenmoos Pass turned out to be a whole beautiful resort, with comfy chairs and sun loungers.

While I sat in my barely-conscious state, I watched an older couple come up the hill.

They were taking their time, but they were not struggling. You could tell that this was not their first rodeo. I imagine they were life-long mountain climbers.

They walked inside and came back out with two espressos, which they sat down and quickly drank. Then they fell back into their chairs and fell asleep.

I don’t know where they were headed next or what their plans were for the afternoon. But in my book, they were winning life.

For the next part of the trail, they would be fueled up and rested.

I pointed them out to Taido and Anna.

Hey y’all, I said, Look…

Hashtag Life Goals. 

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog a fabulous year of walking. During December, I’m inviting you to come along with me on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here. Or subscribe to get stories to your inbox here.

The post Mini Walking Stories: Life Goals appeared first on Alison Chino.

Walking long days can push you to your edge.

So when you’re walking long days with other people, sometimes everyone’s edges bump up against one another.

But more often, what comes out is something beautiful.

Someone will have a blister, and someone else will have exactly what they need.

Or someone runs out of snacks, and someone else offers an extra tangerine.

Often it’s in the small things that you see love on the Camino:

Slowing your pace just enough that the person next to you won’t fall behind.

Carrying your roommate’s suitcase down to the lobby.

Grabbing an extra coffee or an extra cold drink.

A host offering to find a restaurant in town where 12 people can sit together.

Someone listening to someone else tell about losing someone they love.

Someone making someone laugh when they are too tired to keep going.

On the Camino, there is love to be found every day if you are awake to it.

And I suppose that is true everywhere in the world.

But on the Camino, I am paying better attention. I am watching for it. And I think maybe I am more ready to give love as well.

Ted and Stephanie, who you might remember as the owners of an extra suitcase, arrived on the Camino after they had been traveling together all over Europe. They were sightseeing, but they were also still working remotely, so they would start their work day in the afternoon.

I expected that they might be tired of traveling and juggling work. I thought they might even be a little tired of each other when we all met up in Porto.

But they were not. Far from it.

They literally held hands every day while we walked the Camino. Not all day, but at multiple times throughout the day. It was absolutely precious.

They were good-natured and genuinely happy to be together. And seemingly happy to be with all of us as well.

They showed up with love on the Camino.

And this has been a theme all year…folks showing up with hearts open and ready for the walk and for the new friends they are going to make along the way.

It’s been fun to watch.

Since I often pray that I can meet everything and everyone in my path with love, I have enjoyed learning from others this year about how to do just that.

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog a fabulous year of walking. During December, I’m inviting you to come along with me on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here. Or subscribe to get stories to your inbox here.

The post Mini Walking Stories: Love on the Camino appeared first on Alison Chino.

Hey y’all, do you think you can all be ready in an hour to walk to Santo Antonio church together for the pilgrim blessing?

We had just finished a long day of walking, but I had read about a pilgrim’s mass at a church in Barcelos that I wanted to attend. I told everyone that it was totally optional.

You can just meet us at the restaurant if you want a little more time to decompress after the day.

But one fun detail about this group was that they were consistently game for whatever I threw at them. They were all ready to go to church at the appointed time.

We planned to slip in the back pew, maybe not even stay for the whole service if it ran long. We had an 8pm dinner reservation.

But two volunteers met us at the front door and ushered to the special seating reserved for pilgrims. We sat down off to the left of the congregation in a choir stall, so that we were facing everyone.

I guess we won’t be slipping out early, I whispered to Stephanie.

The church was packed on this Tuesday evening mass, not with pilgrims, but with folks from town for whom I assumed this practice of evening mass was a regular one. There was singing and readings and faces lit with joy.

Everything was in Portuguese, so our group plus one other pilgrim from Germany, sat and joined in where we could. Sometimes a chorus would repeat and we could sing part of it.

At the end of the service, the volunteers brought us to the front of the church for the special pilgrim blessing, which the priest read in Portuguese, English and German.

The whole crowded church participated in the blessing. You could tell that this business of blessing pilgrims is a ministry that they all embrace as part of being a church along The Way.

We learned that many of them have walked the pilgrimage route themselves. They have a heart for folks walking the Camino, so they make sure that two volunteers stand outside the church every evening to welcome any pilgrims who come.

When the service finished, our volunteers ushered us off to a side room where they had gifts waiting for us: a bookmark and a list of other places along the Portuguese Camino that offer pilgrims’ mass.

There was a world map on the wall full of pins representing the many places from which pilgrims had journeyed to walk this Camino. We added our pins to the others. We were excited to place the first pin on the state of Arkansas.

Joy

They also asked us each to choose a rock from a collection that had been hand-painted by a woman in their church who especially loves the Camino.

Diane chose one that had the world JOY on it. She later said that she chose it because it echoed her Bible reading from that morning. She had read these words from Psalm 5:

Let all who take refuge in you be glad,

Let them even sing with joy.

She said later that her rock is special to her because it’s a reminder of God speaking the same message to her from all different directions, just for her heart. JOY was the world God continued to speak to her throughout our time on the Camino.

Before we left, the volunteers asked us if we needed anything. Did we have a place to stay that night? What about water? I had the sense that if we had presented any immediate physical needs, these ladies would have done whatever they could to meet them. When we walked back through the church, we paused to take a photograph with the priest who had blessed us.

He and Diane’s son, Alex, were speaking together in Spanish, and I think they could have continued visiting well into the evening had we not interrupted them.

We left the church with hearts full and with our new pilgrim friend from Germany, Kerstin. She joined us for dinner that evening and brought along another friend as well. At the restaurant, we sat chatting with them for so long that they missed their curfew at their hostel. They had to find someone to open the door and let them in.

We saw Kerstin many more times on the Camino and shared several more meals and masses. I felt like our shared experience at Santo Antonio in Barcelos bonded us together for the journey. Meeting her was one of the many gifts we received at our special pilgrim blessing in Barcelos. We will remember it always.

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog a fabulous year of walking. During December, I’m inviting you to come along with me on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here. Or subscribe to get stories to your inbox here.

The post Mini Walking Stories: Pilgrim Blessings appeared first on Alison Chino.

Something you might already know about me is that I like to travel light.

It’s a point of pride for me to leave home for weeks at a time with only my trusty blue 24 liter backpack.

Sometimes when I’m walking with a group, I find that supplemental things I carry – a first aid kit, extra snacks and water, etc – make my rucksack quite full.

Usually I have everyone else’s bags transferred each day, so that people only carry a small backpack on the trail. So I have started bringing a tiny collapsable backpack that I cram with my clothes and toiletries to be transferred with the rest of the bags. That way my backpack isn’t so heavy during the day. The small pack is also a waterproof liner if I need to use it in my backpack in the rain. And it doubles as a purse or shopping bag in the evenings. It’s so handy!

So when I arrived on the Camino in March, I had this small pack transferred each day along with the suitcases. After my first ever Camino with the princesses when we had way too much stuff, I now limit everyone to one small carry-on suitcase and one small daypack. It felt a little silly to pay to have my tiny backpack transferred each day, but I appreciated having less weight to carry around.

So in June, on the Portuguese Camino, I was planning to repeat this process.

But my friends who were joining me – let’s call them Ted and Stephanie – had been traveling around Europe already for several weeks. And it seems they had acquired a few souvenirs. Stephanie texted me before I arrived and asked if there would be any extra space in the luggage.

I replied: SURE! Why don’t you buy a big collapsible duffel bag that we can both throw our stuff in. I’ll toss in my little pack of clothes and you can fill the rest with your souvenirs. Since I was going to move my little bag anyway, I won’t have to charge you for a whole extra bag.

When I flew to Porto, I discovered that Ted and Stephanie had not bought a duffel bag. They had purchased a small European sized carry-on suitcase. European carry-ons are much smaller than American ones. They are for tiny Ryanair and Easyjet flights.

The bigger problem was that this tiny suitcase was already full of cheese and wine. I couldn’t just pop my little bag into it. Instead, with quite a bit of effort, I could squeeze my clothes around the souvenirs. Even then, I could not properly close the suitcase. The suitcase had to be perfectly aligned in order for the clasps to work. And when you sat on it, it would just bend, and then it would no longer be aligned. You had to hold both sides of it in alignment and close it at the same time.

After a couple of days of fighting with their new suitcase, and dragging it into the lobby to ask for help with closing it, Stephanie came up with a plan. She and Ted would take care of packing and unpacking the suitcase, and I would stop resenting their souvenirs. Now when we arrived each day, they would deliver my small bag of stuff to me. And in the mornings, I would deliver it back to them, and Ted would pack the suitcase. It was a daily comedy of errors.

Ted and Stephanie now had three suitcases that they unpacked and packed at every stop. I honestly have no idea how they ever made it on time to breakfast.

Missing Suitcase

We had another suitcase adventure just outside of O Porrino a day after we crossed the border into Spain. When we arrived at our guesthouse after a long, hot day, we discovered that one of the suitcases was missing.

Our host helped me to track down the driver who said that they knew they had one missing and they would bring it later. So poor Diane, who was the owner of the neglected suitcase, had to go to dinner without a shower and clean clothes. She was a great sport about it though. She said that she was glad it was her and not one of the other ladies who had just arrived.

(On the Portuguese Camino, five of us walked from Porto to Santiago, and seven more folks joined us for the section from Tui to Santiago.)

But when we came back from dinner, Diane’s suitcase had still not arrived. I got back on the phone with the company but did not receive assurance that our missing suitcase was still coming.

Our host had gone home for the day but his father happened by while I was trying to sort out the problem. Between my broken Spanish and another guest’s better Spanish, we communicated our problem to our host’s father. He then got on his phone and somehow managed to track down the suitcase. It was apparently waiting at a nearby post office.

I still don’t understand how it got there or how he found it. I also don’t know how one gets inside of a post office at 10pm at night. Undaunted by this detail, our knight in shining armor headed out with certainty that he would be able to retrieve Diane’s luggage. The other guest who had been helping us went along with him, just for the ride.

About fifteen minutes later, they returned with Diane’s suitcase, much to our delight. We all said goodnight. Diane headed off to the shower and I went to bed.

When Diane flew home at the end of our trip, somehow her suitcase was diverted to Miami and didn’t make it back to her house until a week after she had arrived home in Arkansas. That suitcase must have really wanted to have an adventure of its own.

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog a fabulous year of walking. During December, I’m inviting you to come along with me on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here and subscribe to future stories here.

The post Mini Walking Stories: The (Mis)Adventures of a Suitcase appeared first on Alison Chino.

The River Avon runs right through the middle of Bristol and on out to Avonmouth, which is obviously, the mouth of the river.

Since the river leads to the sea, the Avon is tidal. Some parts of the day it just looks like an emptied out basin of mostly mud. Other times it’s full.

When you see it all emptied out, it’s hard to imagine that ships ever came down the river into the Bristol Harbour, but Bristol used to be a major shipping port.

The port closed in the 1970’s because the boats became too big to squeeze into the Avon. Now the ships come in to Avonmouth.

Early in our time here I discovered a path that runs right along the river about 3/4 of a mile from our house. I put together a loop that incorporates walking along the Avon for a while and then climbing up the hill to the Downs and back to our house.

The whole walk is only about 3 miles, but you get a fairly strenuous climb in, so it’s one of my training walks for mountain climbing.

But the part where you walk by the river is delightfully flat.

I took my Dad on this walk at the end of summer on a fairly hot day, and he loved it. He still remembers it as one of his favorite walks we did during his visit. It was just the two of us. The tide was in, so there was a slight breeze off of the river.

To get to the path, you head to the Sea Mills train station and cross under the tracks to the edge of the River Avon.

During my parents’ visit, we had used the Sea Mills train station to visit other places, so Dad already knew the way there.

It’s funny how it is a relief for parts of my life to become familiar to my loved ones. 

Now that I’ve taken my parents on several of my regular walks, when I say, I walked up on the Downs today, they can see it. They know the way from my house and can picture the climb up the hill and the big green expanse at the top. It’s comforting to me for them to be able to picture my life here.

When you leave the River Avon to get back up to the Downs, you climb through a forest known locally as the goat gully. A herd of billy goats is kept on this part of the hill as a conservation effort. Apparently they eat invasive species that would otherwise crowd out the wildflowers.

My dad found this part of the walk awfully steep, but it’s quick. When we emerged from the gully, we were on the western end of the Downs, so the rest of the way to my house is flat and downhill. 

I walked the River Avon several more times this autumn. I saw the leaves change colors and then fall off the trees. Every time I go, I remember this day with my dad and look forward to his coming back to walk with me again.

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog a fabulous year of walking. During December, I’m inviting you to come along with me for a few minutes on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here and subscribe to future stories here.

The post Mini Walking Stories: Along the Avon appeared first on Alison Chino.

The days are drawing in.

This phrase is one that I often hear in England to describe the time of year where night is stretching drastically into the morning and evening hours.

In June the days are extravagantly long here. After the summer solstice, they begin to shrink, but the light is still so plentiful that you only seem to lose a tablespoon of its liquid gold at a time. But towards the end of September, it’s like the sunlight is being poured out by the pitcher. It is dumped off the beginning and ending of the day until you feel like the darkness is closing in on you.

At the beginning of October, I was already feeling it.

The days were definitely drawing in. 

I had planned to go to the United States for a visit during the last two weeks of October. I knew that when I came back, between the long nights and the rainy, gray skies, the light was going to feel absent.

Days drawn.

So before I left town, I cleared my schedule for a day when the weather looked decent and I planned one last long walk of the season. I took the bus from just outside my house to Shirehampton, then I walked over the Avon River and to Portishead through Portbury, a nature reserve. I did a loop around Portishead from the marina to the beach where I reached the section of the walk I was really out for, a seven mile stretch of gorgeous coastline between Portishead and Clevedon along the Somerset Coastal Path.

It turned out to be an incredible day. The sun was shining and the temperature crawled all the way up to 65 degrees, the warmest it had been all week.

As I walked along, I paused when the path touched the sea and few a threw stones into the water.

When I stopped to eat my lunch, I lapped up the sunshine and the breezy air blowing off of the Bristol Channel.

After some snacks, I passed an old lighthouse and climbed over sand dunes.

The afternoon sun probably slowed my pace a little, but I didn’t mind.

When I reached Clevedon, it was well into the afternoon, so I didn’t stay long, though it seems like a place that warrants a longer visit for sure. Maybe next spring I’ll come back again, I thought.

I checked the bus schedule and saw that a bus for Bristol would be arriving soon, so I made my way to the stop. The bus ride was about an hour back to the center of town. There was still some light left when I stepped off the bus, so I walked home from where it dropped me. That way I could take the route under the trees of the promenade while they were still fluffy and green.

By the time I got home, I had walked a total of almost 18 miles. My body was definitely talking to me. I wrote in my journal that it was worth the aches in my knees to be outside all day in the sun one last time before the days draw in for good.

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog a fabulous year of walking. During December, I’m inviting you to come along with me for a few minutes on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here and subscribe to future stories here.

The post Mini Walking Stories: Solo Coastal Walk to Clevedon appeared first on Alison Chino.

Recently I left my trekking poles in The Old Crown Inn and so when I went back to get them, I decided to walk a new route in the area.

I was by myself, so there was no one else to ask about this strange little stone structure as I walked by.

The building, which was part of the actual wall, was just outside the village of Kelston. I went in for a closer look at the hobbit-sized door, and though it might have been the inspiration on the outside for a home in the shire, up close it was dark and dank inside.

And there was a tiny little sign on the door.

It said Village Lockup.

I snapped a picture and kept going, thinking I would look it up later.

But while I walked, I tried to guess at the building’s use. Maybe people were locked into this building for disorderly conduct in the pub down the road? Or for some other offense?

But the more I thought about it, I decided that no, surely not. You wouldn’t put a person in there. I don’t think it was even tall enough to stand up in, and there was almost no light.

It must be for stray animals, I thought.

Yes, that seems right. If someone else’s cow or sheep wandered into your field, then maybe you put it in the village lockup until your neighboring farmer could be notified to go pick it up.

Mystery solved.

But then I got home and looked it up.

And of course, I was wrong.

The building was for people.

Local parishes owned village lockups, and the constable used them to hold someone until they could take them to justice in a town.

It was intentional that they had no light source, scant ventilation and no form of sanitation. Sometimes a village lockup had hay on the floor or stocks and chains on the walls.

From Wikipedia:

The majority of surviving village lock-ups date from the 18th and 19th centuries when rural communities struggled to police thefts, burglaries, shootings, drunkenness, the obstruction of watchmen and the stealing of livestock. During this period a number of lock-ups were built as a temporary place of detention for local rogues and miscreants until they could be removed to a town.

Many of the village lockups in England are round, which explains their other common name: the round house.

A line from a Charles Kingsley novel seems to imply that if someone put you in the village lockup for drunkenness, then you could be set free from the dark little hole after sleeping it off.

Put him in the round house till he gets sober.

However, sometimes local folks tormented people in the village lockups to drive them crazy as a kind of insurance that they would leave their village when someone came from the outside to assess them.

The lockups fell out of use in the nineteenth century with a government act that established a paid police force in each county, as well as police stations with prison cells.

I have a lot of recent curiosity about police in my own country, so this history was interesting to me.

The constables that existed in England before the paid police force were unpaid officials. They were either elected or appointed by the justice of the peace.

Like volunteer firefighters or mountain rescue teams, the constable was a community servant.

The first police in England were the River Police in London. In 1798, England’s busiest port needed to employ someone to protect all the cargo. (source)

The difference between the constable and a police officer is noteworthy.

The former volunteered to keep the peace between people and the latter accepted employment to protect property from people.

Still though, I wouldn’t have wanted to be responsible for putting someone in the village lockup.

Now that I think about it, even a cow or a sheep would probably find it pretty depressing in there.

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