Читать книгу The Pennine Way - the Path, the People, the Journey онлайн

79 страница из 86

However, the emergency treatment seemed to be working, at least for now, because when we set off together Barry kept up a reasonable pace with only the trace of a limp. As we made our way slowly through the fields and along the lanes, I gently began to coax his story out of him and understand more about his motivation for walking the Pennine Way. It transpired that he’d fairly recently broken up with his long-time partner, and acrimoniously too, so I immediately assumed that plunging off head first into something as different and extreme as the Pennine Way would provide a welcome distraction and perhaps a chance to recover some self-esteem. But Barry didn’t labour the point and I sensed there was more to it than that. In conversation over the next few miles with this sociable, gentle man, one or two more pieces of the jigsaw emerged and slotted into place. As we stood above Lothersdale and gazed down at the village tucked away in the fold of the hills, and to the moors peeping over the horizon, he spoke about how all he could see from the window of his town centre flat was the side of another house. He told me how, as a paramedic for the last few years, he was regularly called out to people our own age who, through drink, drugs, smoking or obesity, were killing themselves before his eyes. Then when one of his own close friends, an ostensibly healthy 40-something, suddenly dropped down dead, it really shook him. ‘I told myself, you have to live life, make the most of this one chance you’ve got. But when I told my daughter I was going off to walk the Pennine Way she said I must be mad, at my age!’ He chuckled, but with a look of resolve.