195. Old gold: Going round in circles
The navigational simplicity of a circular walk.
In which Rebecca looks back at Jim’s observation that walking around something will minimise demand on her navigation ‘skills’.
The original version of this edited post was published in October 2023. It’s now come full circle (pardon the pun!) to become part of my Old gold 🌟 series.
Whether you’re coming across this story for the first time or you’re reading it again, I hope you enjoy it. Either way, I appreciate having you as a reader. Thank you. ❤️
Going round in circles: the navigational simplicity of a circular walk
Dear Reader,
On a rainy afternoon in the Lake District a couple of years ago, where we were on a short break after a series of shoots at historical Roman sites on Hadrian’s Wall, Jim suggested a walk at Tarn Hows.
‘It’s not as challenging as that sheer drop you dragged me up this time last year, but I think we’ll enjoy it. I gather it’s an easy two miles.’
The car park – free to us as National Trust members – wasn’t at all far from the tarn, nor, to our relief, was it crowded. We parked the van in the prettiest spot we could find, and I grabbed my rucksack, popping our flask mugs into its exterior pockets.
‘Do we need those?’ asked Jim. I rolled my eyes. ‘Well, I want my tea, and I’m not sharing. On that basis, yours is coming too.’
The path around Tarn Hows looked brand new. Our previous walks in the Lakes going from the year dot, right up to last year’s near-vertical trek to Stickle Tarn, had been on little more than sheep tracks, but this surface was something else entirely.
Our straight-line path from the car park ran out, and ahead of us was a new path set perpendicular to it. Jim asked me which way we should go.
‘You mean left or right? I’ve no idea – you’ve planned this walk! I don’t know where we’re going!’
‘No, clockwise or anti-clockwise! This…’ he pointed to where he was standing ‘…is both the start point and the finishing line. Which way we go is up to you. We’re walking around the tarn.’
Reader, why hadn’t he said so? 🙄
I strode ahead of him, bearing right. ‘THIS way, then!’ I yelled over my shoulder.
‘Even you can’t get lost walking around something!’ he yelled back at me.
Then, more quietly, almost a mutter: ‘Although clockwise would have made more sense.’
I’m a creature of habit, and when it comes to walking around something I like to go anti-clockwise.
I wonder if my left-handedness has something to do with it?
At school my right-handed best friend Jo and I would sit together in all our classes. Each desk would seat two, and she’d be on the left while I’d be on the right. Given that we would naturally look in the direction of the hand we were each using to write with, we found plenty of opportunity to engage in childish whispered giggles and conversation; a luxury not afforded to the pairs of right-handers at all the other desks.
I simply favour turning towards my dominant side. I’m not just left-handed, see, but left-footed too, and I think I just find a left turn more comfortable than a turn to my right. Embarking on a circular walk anti-clockwise, then, was a no-brainer. Literally. No brain involved at all: this was a feel thing.
And it seems that I have company in the sporting field. For track athletes a 400m circuit is an anti-clockwise challenge.
The footpath was great; with it being so much wider than the antisocial single-filers we’d walked on earlier in our trip, we found ourselves at last with enough space to walk next to each other.
This was a relatively short walk, but it was nevertheless spectacular.
I heard the sound of geese really close and looked up expecting to see some directly overhead.
‘Up high, high, high!’ said Jim. ‘Really high!’
And there they were, two large skeins of geese – a pair of perfect vees in the sky at a distance of what seemed like miles above us.
V. Sharp as an arrowhead, fleet of shape, strong and graceful as the birds themselves. I thought back to our Roman shoots just a few days before.
V for victory.
Veni.
Vidi.
Vici.
The Romans had come, seen and conquered. And those vees of geese, recent migratory arrivals from cooler, more northern climes, were in the process of conquering their warmer winter territory.
Our walk, though, was about a different shape: not a vee but a circle.
I was glad to see that the signage had read the brief. Footpath signs, you see, are round. Each is printed with a single arrow in the centre and the name of the walk or landmark being waymarked printed four times around the circumference. Regardless of the direction in which the arrow is pointing, it is easy to see the text in relation to what is being pointed at.
Soon it was time for a break to sit and watch the rainy ripples spread across the tarn.
‘There’ll be something to sit on to have our cuppa in a minute’, I told Jim. ‘A tree stump or something.’
And there was. Rounding a corner of the already curvy path we spotted a fallen beech tree. Far from being a comfy seat, though, this trunk had texture.
At first glance the tree looked to be sprouting hundreds and hundreds of tiny bracket fungi of identical size and colour. On closer inspection, though, what was growing on this tree was money, not mushrooms. Coins.
I fished our flask mugs out of the pockets in my rucksack, and, as we drank our tea, Jim and I took time to see what we were really looking at.
The coins were wedged fast, each buried to leave only a semi-circle showing. Some were bent. Most were copper-coloured 2p pieces, but there were some occasional gleaming specimens of our smaller, more precious, 5p piece, as well as several international coins.
I’d never seen – nor even heard – of such a thing. ‘Why?’ I asked Jim. ‘What even is this?’
I looked up ‘Tarn Hows money tree’ later, and it turns out that hammering coins into trees is not uncommon, with recipient trees called ‘wish trees’, ‘wishing trees’ or ‘lucky trees’.
I ran my fingers across the rain-wet coins: they were cold, but their curved edges, like our walk around the tarn, were smooth and gentle. I didn’t add a coin to the collection, but what if I made a wish anyway? Would that be theft? Is wish fraud a crime? 🤔
Reader, I didn’t make a wish. I didn’t need to. Standing sipping my tea on a circular path on which I couldn’t get lost, listening to the sounds of the geese and watching gentle raindrop ripples spreading their way across the calm water, there was nothing else in the world that I wanted.
Love,
Rebecca
📚 Reading 📚
📚 I was thrilled to see this post by
last week, in which she explored creating art from her own craftermath!Have a look: it’s a real treat of a read, and Gail’s art is gorgeous!
⬇️
📚 Pigeons fascinate me for their wayfinding abilities, as I explored in this post early last year, and this week I was thrilled to read this delightfully-written homage to their kind by
of . 🐦⬇️
📚 Regular readers of ‘Dear Reader, I’m Lost' will be no strangers to my ongoing light-hearted correspondence with fellow Brit Terry Freedman of Eclecticism: Reflections on literature, writing and life. It’s his turn to reply to me next Wednesday!
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You confused me with your left-foot turn to go anti-clockwise. HUH? If my mind is working correctly, and that's been debatable today, if you turn anti-clockwise ... to your right ... wouldn't you turn with your right foot instead of your left? I'm so confused. Sorry.
Meanwhile, I loved your discovery of the money tree. I'd love to know more about the origins of this custom. Is it based on people needing to mark their passage with a physical memento at the place? We have a couple of similar customs here in the desert lands where people do get lost and are never seen again. Visitors to Nevada bars tack dollar bills or whatever currency they have in their pockets on the ceilings. Basque bars used to do this as a means for a shepherd to pre-pay his bar tab. This morphed into visitors marking their passage at the bar/saloon/tavern. Often, they write their home location or whatever they want to say.
Another even weirder tradition is the Shoe Tree. A newlywed couple resting alongside the highway got into an argument and the bride threatened to walk back to town. Her groom grabbed one of her shoes and threw it up in the tree. This started the custom of people adding their shoes to this tree in the middle of the Great Basin. Vandals cut down this old tree with its hundreds of shoes hanging from its branches. People held a wake in its honor. Then they took all those shoes and threw them into a another tree near where the old one stood. You can't keep a good tradition down.
My wife and I were watching figure skating a couple years ago, and she noticed that a few of the skaters were spinning “backward.” Having never looked it up, or really even noticed before, I replied that I bet it was because they’re left-handed. (I can’t skate, but I’m left-handed.) I looked it up. I was right.
I also can get lost without trying, so circular walks are just my speed. :-)