Dying for Comfort: Backpacking Solo on the Thames River

April 24, 2008

It was 3 AM and I was wide-awake, huddling under questionably clean sheets in a hostel bunk. There are usually lots of reasonable causes for insomnia in these grimy, youth-oriented lodgings: anything from blaring communal televisions, phone calls made from hallways, to 19-year old backpackers loudly professing their degree of inebriation. However, none of these things were the culprit. I had chosen to toss and turn because I had convinced myself that the next evening I would be bludgeoned to death on the side of the Thames River.

I had just finished graduate school, and had flown to Oxford, England to present the results of my research at a conference. Adventurous yet broke from years of student living; I wanted to take advantage of the novel opportunity of traveling on someone else’s dime. I planned to stay a few extra days in the country, and while I was slightly uneasy about the idea of traveling as a lone female, I was (cover your ears, mom) unwilling to sacrifice a potential Life Experience because of my gender and lack of traveling companions. Given my love of the outdoors and the fact that I was broke, I decided to spend two days backpacking a section of the Thames River.

However, at that 3 AM my plan seemed moronic, and my self-styled woman-running-with-the-wolves self had degraded into trying to remember if the Green River Killer killed women on the Green River, or killed them elsewhere and dumped their bodies into the river afterwards. But I am nothing if not stubborn, and I had no other options that would preserve both my dignity and my intact credit card balance. After reluctantly accepting my imminent death, I drifted off into a restless sleep.

I awoke early the next morning and dutifully lugged my backpack onto a city bus, delighted to leave the beer soaked hostel. There was not another tourist in sight, as business people, construction workers, and schoolchildren packed me in on all sides. I got off the bus in the small Cotswold town of Lechalde and found the well-marked path where my trip was to begin. Pulling out my compass, I took a bearing on the slow-moving Thames to avoid the mortifying mistake of confusing upstream and downstream. After orienting myself in the correct direction, I took stock of the situation I had gotten myself in that the night before seemed terrifying.

Pastures rolled out in front of me, ducks dotted the river, wildflowers fluttered in the breeze, and a tractor buzzed in the distance. I felt a little silly. So far, the most terrifying thing that could happen was if I got bitten by a goose. The night had not fallen, however, I reminded myself. I, the single woman, would obviously be the headline of the next day’s paper. “Stubborn American Bludgeoned to Death by Local Weirdo”, it would read. ”’Should have listened to mother’ say locals”. But I was in for it now, and as I banished those bad thoughts from my mind, I set out into the bright summer day.

I had purchased a pedometer before my trip to ensure I covered enough miles each day so I would arrive in Oxford before the conference began. However, given how envisioning my death had taken up the bulk of my time the night before, I hadn’t gotten around to calibrating it. I reasoned that it must be set for an average human weight and stride, and decided to calibrate it that evening. I strapped it on my waist and began walking. After what felt like a short distance, a woman’s voice (whom I immediately, and for no good reason at all, named Fran) rang out “You have gone one-point-zero miles”. I looked back at the point where I had begun, and it didn’t appear to be a mile away. But I faithfully assumed Fran was pretty right on (after all, she was a professional) and appreciated her encouragement despite what I imagined was only a slight exaggeration.

Within the first half hour I saw a narrow boat, whose name effectively doubles as a description. They resembled ritzy floating trailers and were endearingly quaint, replete with flowers blooming in planter boxes in colors matching the boat’s decor. Older English couples moored their boats along the riverbank, idyllically drinking tea and eating breakfast, calling out hello as I walked past. Having been subsisting on Cliff bars of an uncertain age for the previous two days, I tested my ability to control the future by staring at the picturesque scene and thinking “Invite me in for tea and crumpets. Invite me in for tea and crumpets.” as I walked past. Unfortunately my ability to control minds still needs some work.

The single-track path was well marked, requiring little navigational prowess. As time rolled on, I got into the thoroughly enjoyable rhythm that all backpackers know, where the landscape and the hours flow past seamlessly and there is nothing to do but walk. High grasses bent gently in the wind, the river meandered slowly, the stillness of the river was marred occasionally by the occasional jumping of a fish. However, the perpetual demon of any long solo walk is brain chatter (backpackers, you know what I mean). It would have been nice to have pondered the meaning of life, the state of world politics, or even just brainstormed ways to use my freshly minted degree. Instead, my mind wandered to the pressing topic of remembering all the lyrics to “Thank You for Being a Friend”, the centerpiece of my 3^rd grade chorus recital.

Locks were unknown to me before this trip, but I came to much appreciate them. These small dams punctuate the Thames every few miles, and slow down the river so it can be successfully navigated, once commercially and now recreationally. Much to my delight, a cheerful individual is employed for the summer to lift and lower the floodgates to allow boats to pass. The locks are typically the site of an old rock cabin, a lush garden, and a water spigot, so they logically became my excuse to engage in casual conversation, resting, and occasional gloating when someone from a narrow boat would shout, “Hey, didn’t you start in Lechlade? That’s where we started!” The lock-keepers were eager of to make conversation with me in regards to my curious activity, and after seeing a total of zero other backpackers throughout the course of my trip, I concluded that backpacking is commonly held as a hobby in cultures where there are large tracks of land wherein there is little human habitation and nothing can be purchased. The English had little need to don a heavy pack and eat hideous re-hydrated food—in England, by the time you start getting hungry or tired, you would typically stumble on a pub or a B&B. This seemed an infinitely more logical strategy at certain points in my trip.

As I continued to walk through the river valley, I started to think that perhaps my fear was slightly unfounded, bred back in an urban environment where meaningless shootings are a frequent feature on the nightly news. The Thames had its dangers, mind you, however quaint they might be. “Danger! Cows with calves!” warned the occasional sign. Other signs cautioned fishermen not to cast too high below power lines. As skeptical I was about the threat of a mothering English sow, I kept my distance.

Fran, my trusty odometer, continued to confirm that I was covering an incredible amount of distance. This was a relief considering the growing ache of my feet, caused by what-I-thought-were-broken-in hiking boots. Unfortunately I realized that Fran and my guidebook’s author were at odds. Either someone had relocated a particularly distinctive bridge arching across the river, or she was doubling the distance I was actually walking. I wanted the confidence boost, but not at the expense of outright deception. Fran had betrayed me. I would have to reassess her powers of calibration later that evening.

There was one lock that allowed camping at mile 10 and another at mile 17, and I had a total of 32 miles to complete by the end of the following day. Despite my increasing blister-induced limp, I pressed on to the second site, stopping only at a pub in Newbridge for a beer at around 4, purely in deference to English pub culture, of course. By the time I got to mile 17 (or mile 36, according to my no-longer-trusty-companion Fran), my foot situation had become dire.

Serial Killer Convention ongoing! A sign could have proclaimed, and I would have erected my tent nonetheless. After paying the kind lock keeper Mike a very reasonable 5 pounds, I threw down my pack, set up my tent, removed my boots, and inspected my feet. From each heel protruded a blister the size of a silver dollar. The entire top half of my baby toes were blistered, with my only my toenail holding the skin down in the middle. I finally felt somewhat vindicated for my wussiness. But I had to put aside my pain and attend to more important things, namely being lonely and terrified. The sun may have been glowing off the trees, the meadow may have been soft and dotted with wildflowers, and the lockkeeper may have been kind—but a bad guy must have been lurking just behind each bush, waiting for a young defenseless female like me to let her guard down.

I had just begun concocting the freshman-year-of-college delicacy of Ramen noodles when a woman about my age crossed the river. Introducing herself as Mike’s partner Susan, she shyly said “We’re just hanging out in the garden if you’d like to come by.” A half hour later I was seated at a picnic table surrounded by rows of lettuce and green onions, enjoying a glass of red wine.

As the sun went down, Susan, Mike and I talked travel, history, and politics. Unlike my previous evening, there were no beer stains on the seats, rickety bunk beds, or too-close-quarters with strangers, just easy gentile conversation that carried off into the warm night. They sympathized with the pain in my feet, and promised to keep their ears open during the night after I had voiced my concerns about solitude. My fear finally defeated; I eventually crossed the river to my lone tent and drifted off anticlimactically into a dreamless slumber.

I awoke the next morning, proud that I had conquered my fear, and perhaps more importantly, survived. Now all I had to do was get to Oxford, find a place to stay, and present at the conference the next morning. But the first order of business was to recalibrate Fran, during which I found out that she was calibrated for an 80 lb. person with a 60-inch stride. Once I admitted to Fran my true height and weight, she became much less kind. I hobbled along in agony; my feet swaddled in moleskin. At some point I remembered the backpackers’ wisdom that singing can distract you from just about anything, and I got to work trying to remember the lyrics to the one billion Grateful Dead songs that served as my teenage anthems. Convinced nothing could be more painful than walking in my boots, I removed my shoes and dropped yet another rung in the ladder of social acceptability. Dirty, barefoot, and singing to myself, I limped my way towards Oxford.

Once I saw the stone buildings of Oxford peeking over the trees, I began planning my evening of celebrating not getting murdered. The conference began the next day at 1. I had noticed a brand new Youth Hostel in town, notably absent of grime. I would get a nice clean room and treat myself to dinner, I decided. With every agonizing step, I imagined clean sheets, warm showers, and soft sofa to read on. After what seemed like centuries, I took the tiny fork in the trail that led me to downtown Oxford, happily anticipating the end of a successful journey.

The shock of wandering through rolling pastures to standing on a street corner was immense. On the corner by the bus station, nicely dressed business people rushed around me. Throngs of tourists talked loudly on all sides. Cars barreled past. Dizzied by the motion of the things around me, I tried to remain on task. I walked to the Youth Hostel of my dreams and leaned on the counter for salvation.

Before I could say a word, the girl at the desk asked brashly, “Do you have a reservation? Because, we’re full.” I looked around at the monstrous building incredulously. “Full?” I asked. She nodded, and quickly returned to her paperwork. I left, feeling dazed and wronged. I wandered down the street, trying to get over my shock, and decided that I would upgrade. Yes, I would stomach the extra cash and find myself a cheap B&B.

Feeling almost like another species, I hobbled through downtown Oxford in search of a nights rest. I stepped inside the bar/lobby of the first humble B&B I saw, where neatly dressed people read magazines and sipped drinks. I set my pack down as surreptitiously as I could, hoped I didn’t smell too horrific, and asked the tank-top-clad, mascara-laden young woman if they had any rooms available. She looked me up and down. “Maybe one, but I think it’s a double” she replied curtly. “Could you check the price for me?” I asked. She turned around for a moment, turned back to me, and remarked, “80 pounds”—the equivalent of approximately $150 dollars.

I stormed out, convinced that I was being rejected from all but the scummiest places because I was an actual backpacker, rather than the type of backpackers these places wished to attract, who merely used a backpack to cart their cute outfits, makeup, and souvenirs from town to town. My dreams of clean sheets dashed, I was momentarily overwhelmed, swinging between fury and holding back tears.

I desperately wanted to call my boyfriend back in the States for some emotional support, but with an amusingly consistency with the rest of the day, the convenience store did not carry international phone cards despite the large poster on the front window professing they did. Surrounded by people, food, and lodging, I felt stranded and alone. I couldn’t face the idea of going back to the anonymity and crowded smoky quarters of the hostel.

There was only one option. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and limped down the vehicle-clogged streets of Oxford back to the Thames National Trail, in search of a place to camp.

My frustration abated slightly when I returned to the rhythm of the Thames, however the pain in my feet was now excruciating. In addition to the array of blisters, my toes were considerably swollen and red. A distance of 20 feet looked like eternity. Examining my map, there appeared to be a campground a few miles east of Oxford.

After another 20 minutes of hobbling, I saw what in my small universe had become the Promised Land—a lock. I pulled aside the blue-shirted lockkeeper and consulted him about my choice of campground, as much for comradery as anything. Seeing the pained look in my face, he recommended I diverge from the main trail and hop a bus to my destination. “The bus stop is still a few miles down the trail,” he offered apologetically. But my spirits were boosted. Rock walls bounded the river and elaborate houses lined the banks, but it was still the same river, where my task was certain and people were kind.

I slowly made my way to the bus stop. Ragged and exhausted, I peered down the street in anticipation of relief on wheels. Watching incredulously, not one but two busses sped by without stopping. Finally, I was picked up, and made my way to the RV Park that would be my home for the evening. I staggered into the main office. “I just need a place for my tent. No hook ups, nothing.” I told the woman, desperately hoping she wouldn’t turn me away. Braced for rejection and outrageous prices, I watched her smile. “That will be 4 pounds, 95 pence” she said, “Clyde will show you out.”

Relieved, I gladly paid the negligible sum and followed Clyde out the door. While he was at least triple my age, I couldn’t keep up with his pace. “What you been doing?” he asked. After telling him I had been walking the Thames for the last couple days, he smiled, revealing a huge mouthful of crooked teeth. “There’s no better way to spend a few days than walking along a river,” he said. And now that I was moments away from lying back in my tent and putting my feet up, I couldn’t have agreed more.

Thirty-two solo miles under my belt, I managed to keep my eyes open long enough to wolf down an energy bar before I was dead to the world. I slept soundly in a grassy field near a stream with none of the trepidation I had felt the night before my trip.

The urban world has so many choices, so much uncertainty about people’s motives, that we have created quick ways of judging one another. A certain type of bag, the type of lodging one books, and certainly the presence or absence of shoes indicates the degree to which someone is a likely friend of foe. This way we know who to share our dinner with, and who to be afraid of, but there always remains more unknowing, so that we never know for sure that we are safe. But when the number of choices in front of us gets reduced, the need to pick and choose is eliminated.

On the Thames, I spoke to the people I passed, and I slept when I was tired. I paid attention to how the wind moved the grass, or the blooming of wildflowers—whatever happened to be in front of me. Had the boogeyman I made up in the city reared his head, I would have been able to hear him coming, and the people I had met would have been there to protect me regardless of how I looked or smelled.

My walk down the Thames diminished my fear of the boogeyman, but created a deeper fear—fear for a culture whose material abundance has a dark side where we must judge and fear one another to get by. And I also learned two important lessons—that you should always break in your hiking boots, and never trust a pedometer named Fran.

About the Author: Jenn Bernstein has held many jobs having to do with the outdoors, including working as a fisheries biologist, a white water rafting guide, and researching people’s environmental values. She started writing when she was living at an oil refinery near Barrow, Alaska and had 24 hours of daylight and no beer.

So for peace of mind when booking a trip away don’t forget your travel insurance and if you are taking time out backpacking then make sure you get specialist backpacker travel insurance to cover any medical expenses or repatriation back home. You can generally add on other specialist sports cover such as ski insurance too.