On time

April

Shalford to Gomshall

Stage seven 13.5km

I don’t want to be late for the train home. They only run every two hours from Gomshall station so being on time is important for this walk.

Getting to the start of the walk at Shalford takes time with a long wait at Guildford station, a place where time passes in a combination of boredom and a constant anxious frisson of station announcements about delayed trains and altered platforms.

However, my train arrives on time and I start walking. Once I’m walking time feels different.  I know I walk at four kilometres an hour. It’s my comfortable pace for hours of walking. When I’m walking I’m in a different time to the rest of my life. I move slowly through the world and my thoughts range from noticing flowers and birds to remembering people and places. I feel my mind expand. It’s a different brain space to the usual time-boxed everyday world with deadlines that my phone insistently reminds me about.

Walking slows the brain, makes space, makes time to just be.

Of course, with a train to catch there is always a little clock somewhere in my head counting down towards the departure time.

But, by the time I’ve walked ten kilometres I know I have plenty of time and I relax for a while at a picnic table with a welcome cold drink from a café caravan.

The railways delivered a standard time to the country with their timetables and trains to catch. Trains bring a need to plan and watch the clock. Because I have chosen to make this journey using trains I cannot escape from their timetable. When the walk is over I am back in the world where the seconds flick by on the station’s digital clock, counting down to an inevitable finale.

North Downs Way: https://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/en_GB/trails/north-downs-way/

You may be interested in Chapter Two, The Mind at Three Miles an Hour, in Wanderlust. A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit