The Art of Getting Lost Part 1. How to get lost. Walking Hiking & Rambling

The Art of Getting Lost

Part 1. How to get lost.

1) Buy a very cheap head-torch.

Hebden Bridge - December 1990.

Yes, we actually got lost in Hebden Bridge - Not a very complicated town you would have thought.

It goes like this:

Following an epic struggle over Gorple and some other tussocks and a long stagger through the woods of Hardcastle Crags, it went dark.

So Denis - ever resourceful, pulls out the new headtorch fresh off the ship from Hong Kong. Beautiful yellow plastic case it had. He switches it on and transfers to the easy road walking through Heptonstall and on down towards a festive Hebden Bridge.

It has to be noted, that despite the season, Hebden Bridge's street lights are deficient at certain crucial strategic junctions where you might accidentally wander into a back alley. Suddenly, and incomprehensibly, its very very dark and Denis (bless him) appears to be tangled up in the contents of somebody's washing line.

A local dog, which had obviously been lurking somewhere nearby, takes exception and makes a noisy attack. Luckily the dog is just as much of a coward as me and keeps just out of boot-reach. The noise, however, alerts the local neighbourhood washing-line watch and curtains start to twitch, revealing a very nice Christmas tree and a large bloke in a vest and tattoos.

We escape to the bus stop. As Denis puts his rucksac in that luggage space place that buses have, then we all notice a large pair of y-fronts decorating the lid. The bus driver, ex-diplomat, obviously, doesn't mention it.

2) Be careful with your money - maps can last up to twenty years if you take great care of them.

Great Whernside - January 1992.

Bit more adventurous this time. I seem to remember him muttering something about the bloody fog and if we followed the little line of crags to the right, we'd come to a wall and we'd be back in Kettlewell within the hour.

So we followed it.

And then we followed it a bit more.

Then it disappeared, so we followed where it would have been, had it been there, if you catch my drift.

An hour passes.

Somewhere, hidden in the cloud, over on the Western horizon, the sun has it's cocoa, winds up the clock, puts the cat out and prepares to sizzle into Morecambe Bay for the night.

Denis has a logical explanation. Hill fog, you see, is, by definition, on the hill. Dropping down the hillside will increase visibility dramatically and there, below, will be the fine Yorkshire village of Kettlewell, twinkling in the gloaming.

So we drop down out of the fog and there, below, sure enough, are two bloody great reservoirs. But no Kettlewell.

The map comes out and the bit with the reservoirs on it has clearly gone the way of all Ordnance Survey paper, and is somewhere else.

Would have looked at a Compass. But who needs a compass on Great Whernside, he said. Been up there loadsa times, he said. Know it like the back of my hand, he said.

Its not like we'd get lost (he said)

I will draw a veil over what happened over the next two hours, mainly because it will spoil Part Three, but it did involve a certain amount soggy peat, a big hill, a torch with four spare bulbs and a tin of sardines.

3) Rely on Gizmos so you can keep talking

Guisboro Moor - Christmas 2001

Anyway, so he'd bought this GPS thing - to take the fun out of getting lost, as he'd explained to the man in the GPS and walking pole shop. He'd put in all these way pointy things and by selecting each one in order he would tell me what a good dog I was and did I know it was 28.6 miles to the top of Guisboro Moor from our house, and at this speed it would take us 43.543 hours to get there.

Oddly enough, the second waypoint he'd put in, a cairn, apparently, was 253 miles in the opposite direction - somewhere just visible from the highest point on St Kilda, if you stand on a chair.

Denis's mate Dave came along for this trip. He's a nice enough bloke, but very repetitive, with his mantra-like chant of "Are you sure this is right?"

So, we left Guisboro in an incipient blizzard (how many dogs do you know who can say incipient eh?) - and, by judicial following of a ten-foot wide strip of ice, or "path", as they're known locally, we found the top.

So far so good. Sardines still in an unsullied, virginal state.

After lunch (which went very meanly unshared in my opinion) - there was a moment of hesitation. After about 200 yards we turned through 180 degrees, not including magnetic variation and wind speed, and found another strip of ice to follow.

Bernie the blizzard was now in full thrash, chucking snow about and blowing me ears out so I had that surprised look.

Then we entered the wood. Denis explained quite lucidly and convincingly that, just beyond the wood, and over the hill, the small Cleveland market town of Guisborough would be spread out like a map below our feet.

So we followed the forest ice strips like good-uns, Denis and Dave discussing whether or not Marcel Proust's dad really was a milkman in Spennymoor and why the Humblebums never made it into the top ten in 1967. Then we popped out of the wood on the other side and, sure enough, there, spread out below us like a map, wasn't Guisboro.

In fact, spread out before us was a bleak and snowy hill. That is, uphill, as opposed to down hill. Denis switched on his GPS, which had begun to look quite a bit like that old torch - it was the same colour and everything.

A display came up on the screen. "You're bloody lost, mate" it said. "And by the way, its going dark in twenty minutes" " Oh, and its now 294 miles to waypoint two, and at this speed (2.1 miles an hour on average) , you'll be 68 years old when you get there. I'm going to have a rest now cos I've got a weak signal due to all these trees. Have a nice day. G'night"

Can't be right, he decided. Anyway, it wasn't so bad - just a lot of deep heather and snow and flapping ears and a bit of swearing. There had obviously been some kind of shift in the space/time continuum Denis explained later.

Happens all the time.

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