The AA book of country walks

Stone Parsley (Sison amomum). Swindon, 17 September 2019.

When Alfred Wainwright wrote his guidebooks to the Lakeland fells, his journeys to the foot of those fells were always by public transport (he lived in Kendal). Not many of his followers have had the tenacity or time to rely on whatever bus services still exist (blogger Drew Whitworth being a splendid exception). Most peak-baggers drive cars, like most other visitors to the Lake District, all making their contribution to the choked Grasmere and Ambleside that we know today.

I'm not in a position of moral superiority here. I've made two European trips by plane this year, and burnt up plenty of diesel miles for social and family reasons. And if plans come to fruition I'll be off to walk in the far north of Sweden next summer, in what the Swedes themselves like to call "Europe's last wilderness". That sort of walking is, alas, very costly to the planet.

The mystique of the word "wilderness" has a lot to answer for. It says to us lovers of nature that the best of nature is somewhere very far away from the mundane semi-urban environments where we live and work. For most of us it's somewhere that takes a deal of fossil fuel to reach. The association of motorized transport with enjoying the glories of nature has been firmly embedded in us.

So I can't blow my own trumpet, but over the years I have become less and less willing to increase my own carbon footprint purely in pursuit of nature. Bill Oddie laughed at, but rather admired, the twitchers who constantly triangulated between the furthest corners of our islands (Fair Isle, Cley and the Scillies) in pursuit of rare avian visitors to add to their British list. I rather admired them too, for overcoming the logistics and for all the money they must have had to earn to fund their addiction. But why stop with Britain? The globe will supply you with eco experiences in all its birding hotspots. It's a lifestyle choice that feels ever more problematic.  

It sometimes seems as if the driving is as important as the brief exposure to the outdoors. What about that popular assignment for charity sponsorship, the Three Peaks Challenge (walking up Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon within 24 hours)? It's obvious that nature is the victim here, just as when Dick Turpin resolved to ride Black Bess from London to York in a single night.

Among us wild flower fans, too, there's a widespread impulse to rack up the miles. After all, many of the unusual plants we haven't yet seen tend to be on far-flung coasts and mountains. We too set ourselves assignments, as for example those orchidophiles who set themselves the target of seeing all the UK orchid species in flower within a single season.

But, more and more, I've come to see it differently. I was never all that bothered about visiting the reserves and the sites of known rare flowers anyway. I suppose I really preferred the idea of making my own discoveries, even if they were tiny ones. The place we're most likely to do that is the area where we live. (Discovering a rather rare plant just ten minutes walk from my door, as I did recently, seemed like a kind of endorsement of my approach.) The nature within walking distance, in an environment that many would call unpromising, has a quality of secrecy. At a certain level of detail it isn't even mapped. Below the level of species maps, for example, are the individuals, the local growth forms, the unique places and associations of different plants and animals. I can travel a thousand miles to find an exquisite alpine plant flowering on a misty crag, but in a way it's a kind of phantom because I'll never live with that plant,  I'll never see it in sun and frost, at dawn and at dusk, I'll never get to know its first fresh leaves in spring or its withered stems and seed-cases in autumn. It's only on our own patch that we can begin to understand the life of plants and animals in that kind of detail. It all awaits our attention. Isn't here, in fact, the true wilderness?

Stone Parsley (Sison amomum). Swindon, 17 September 2019.