Clear Waters Rising
Nicholas Crane
I received this as a gift from my Uncle, Jonathan. He spent much of his twenties living and travelling in India and has kept his sense of adventure despite now being a father of three living in the home counties. My reading leans towards in maths, science, history and management, so this was a good change.
The book opens with Crane describing the trip, a 10,000km walk from Finisterre to Istanbul over the European mountain ranges, and his motivations for doing it: the passing of his 40th birthday, a halfway marker for life and good time to get things done, and his recent marriage to Annabelle. Thoughts of his wife weigh on his decision to go; he’s going to miss her terribly but he’d be unable to go without the security she gives him.
In 2017 I did my own hike across the GR10, so I related to the first couple of sections through treading the same paths. That said, Crane is a more accomplished hiker; he knows how to take bearings, light fires and find good spaces to sleep. On sleep, he doesn’t take a tent for the Spanish and French legs! As he goes, he talks to as many people as possible whose kindness and hospitality repeats throughout the book, a reminder that the world isn’t as hostile as we can sometimes think.
After the Pyrenees he gets through winter in the Alps equipped with a tent and thermal underwear. I couldn’t imagine how cold and miserable it must have been, so kudos to his mental fortitude. He describes long periods of road walking as ‘neither pleasant nor unpleasant… the mind could afford to wander’, in contrast to mountain walking, where concentration is always needed. He describes a scene where he turns down a lift in a car, feeling that walking everywhere gives him control.
When he gets to the former Soviet Union (the book was written in the 90’s, so not long after it collapsed) his descriptions of poverty contrast with the Eastern Europe we hear of today. There’s a funny moment when he’s chased by a bear in Slovakia. Some lumberjacks mock him for his fear saying bears are harmless, Crane reflects that they would seem harmless to ‘eight burly foresters in an army truck filled with chainsaws and rifles’.
Crane’s dad, Hol, is mentioned a few times in the book. They meet up in Poland along with Naomi, Crane’s mum. His description of Hol made me laugh: a man who believes in ‘failsafes’, such as ‘to avoid ambiguities when communicating through a telephone answering machine, Hol always signed off with “message ends”‘. There’s something about that level of organisation that reminds me of a certain type of eccentric Englishmam you meet out walking.
In Ukraine he meets Piotr, a former soldier, now a park ranger. His method of walking is to do 55 minutes on, 5 minutes off. He was so strict with this that he would called the rest in any location, including in the middle of a bog. His timing regime was complemented by his method of walking on fixed bearings, ‘Having fixed a point on the skyline, he would head for it undeviatingly, through ravines, over rows of planted potatoes, and on one occasion over the back fence of a property, over the garden and out of the front gate’. I liked his style, it reminded me of my own approach to the GR10.
He makes it to Istanbul, but we don’t hear about his reunion with Annabelle or any post-trip reflections. I looked him up after, he’s continued writing and done further impressive walks. Reading it reminded me of the good of getting out on the trail and inspired me to do another hike, a shorter hop from Chamonix to Maggiore. Although this time I’ll know how to read a compass.