The path stretches out in front of me, and I pretend I know nothing about it.

It’s a difficult lie, this not-knowing thing. I’ve walked up and down this particular path hundreds of times. It connects to the hometown of my childhood to the city I retook my A-levels in as an adult, preparing for a career in Archaeology. My feet know it better than almost anywhere else round here. I could probably close my eyes and imagine three quarters of this 15-mile route.

But that’s not the game I’m playing today.

There are two reasons I’m doing this mile-a-day challenge this year.

The first is to turn this style of writing into a habit again. (I’m a lapsed travel writer, with “travel writer” next to my name all over the Web. The shame, it burns.)

The other reason is related to the first: when you’re not writing like this regularly, you lose the skills this kind of writing relies upon, primarily the ability to see things. When I go walking I’m not as aware as I used to be – or, to use the more popular phrase, I’m not as mindful.

Mindfulness is all the rage right now. The New York Times is obsessed with it: just look at the results of this Google search (all articles are from 2016). It’s often used to mean “being aware of your deepest feelings,” but the dictionary definition is simpler: “the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something.”

In my case, what I feel unaware of is everything outside my door. I feel blunted to the joys (and horrors) of nature, like a knife that won’t even cut cheese anymore. There is a wall between me and what I’m looking at, and that wall is more Me.

That’s why I’m here, walking down a path in waterproofs with the rain hissing against my back. I’m trying to learn how to decipher the world again – by playing an incredibly stupid game.

The game is simple – and it relies on stupidity. Specifically, mine. I have to pretend I’m perfectly, boundlessly ignorant of everything I’m looking at.

So, here we go. What am I looking at?

This path is long and straight, and bounded on both sides by impressively huge trees and hedgerows. It’s clearly been around for more than a few decades. Who made this? Did it always look like this? Who looks after it now?

It was clearly a big deal at some point, this seemingly modest, never-meandering walkway, because there’s a whacking great bridge over the top of it.

This bridge is weird. Why did they build a bridge that substantial over this path? Why not take the cheaper option of sending the road straight over the path and getting the pedestrians to walk across the road?

What on earth made people on foot more important than cars?

It’s hard, this enforced ignorance. I know the answers, but I’m not allowed to acknowledge them. No cheating.

Aha! Half a mile further, I find a line of black grit by the side of the path, a trace of what’s under this tarmac. That’s a good clue, that is. It’s hard to ignore what it’s telling me. I grit my teeth and do it anyway.

But ten minutes later, a door and a concrete ramp give it all away.

Look at that green door on the side of that house.

No architect in their right mind would stick a door next to a window like that – so that door is a new feature, or that window is. (Or, their architect was an actual lunatic! But let’s think nice thoughts here.)

Underneath the door is a concrete slope with railings, now used as a hard-standing for parking their car. It’s paved: great grey stones hanging slightly over the edge.

There’s no reason for this ramp except the obvious – and this is where the pretend-ignorant version of me would finally put the pieces together.

It’s a train platform, of course. I’m on an abandoned railway line, converted into a path for walkers. Not just any path, though – it’s now part of the Trans Pennine Trail, and a fair bit of money has been laid down to make this a smooth, accessible and yeah, rather more boring walking experience than you’d have enjoyed after the rails were hauled up in the early 1970s, leaving ash and coal dust . . . and a number of abandoned village stations, with buildings too sturdy to just knock down – just perfect for renovation.

(Although, you might have to stick a new door or a window in here and there – if you can find a builder who’s mad enough.)

I’d never have seen that door if I wasn’t actually looking.

Thanks, stupid game. You’ve sharpened me nicely.

PREVIOUSLY: A Mile A Day #3 – What’s Inside My Dog?

NEXT: A Mile A Day #5 – Face Down In The Mud (And Loving It)

 Images: Mike Sowden

I’m in London, on a conveyor belt filled with zombies.

Nobody looks excited on an escalator. The standard expression on everyone’s faces seems to be “trying to reconnect – please hold” – somewhere between boredom and sensory confusion, as you discover that keeping your balance requires effort and you’ve actually forgotten how to do that. Everyone has furrowed brows and distant looks. If you look at anything except the metal step in front of you, you’ll get dizzy, sway and clutch the rubber handrail in terror.

Nobody looks around. Everyone’s an island.

Escalators are practical and ingenious. They also terrify like nobody’s business. Escalaphobia is a common fear in the modern world (and for anyone who suffers from it, please don’t click this) – but escalators are dull, not dangerous. Millions of people use them every day – London’s Canary Wharf Underground Station squeezes 20,000 people up and down 23 escalators every hour. They’re a blessing to knackered, cranky commuters needing to turn their legs and their brains off for a minute. On paper, they make perfect sense.

The one that spat me out into London St Pancras International was fast, efficient and perfectly boring. It surgically extracted 120 seconds from my life and a day later, I can’t see the scar. You’d think escalators would be a great advertising opportunity with a captive audience, but when I looked back down, nobody was looking at the walls. Nobody was looking at anything. Hardly anyone was moving. That was the weirdest thing. It was like a production-line in a factory that makes statues.

A lot of modern travel involves being frozen in place, as Rebecca Solnit notes here:

“Perhaps walking should be called movement, not travel, for one can walk in circles or travel around the world immobilized in a seat, and a certain kind of wanderlust can only be assuaged by the acts of the body itself in motion, not the motion of the car, boat or plane.”

– Wanderlust: A History Of Walking, Rebecca Solnit (2001)

I’ll spend the whole of that day travelling without moving – through the Underground, on a train, on a Megabus, on an East Yorkshire Services bus. Each time I assemble my things, settle in, peer out the window and fall into a dull-thoughted stupor. Ah, the dream of modern travel.

And since it all started with that escalator, it’d be easy to blame it.

In excess, escalators and elevators are crappy for your health, compared with taking the stairs. Of course, that kind of advice is really easy to ignore when you’re tired or fed up, so most of us are probably better off having stairs forced upon us in well-meaning acts of sadism.

But the world likes escalators. They’re kind to those who can’t take the stairs, and great for those too weary or lazy to take the stairs, and they’re only going to get longer – like this 688-metre monster in China.

So as with all modern tech, it’s up to us to decide how we use them.

When I’m not laden with enough luggage to break the axle of a Humvee, I use what I call Sowden’s Rule Of Earned Convenience, which favours novelty over comfort:

Where there’s a harder, longer, sweatier option available, you have to do that first, to earn the right to take the easier alternative.

I’ve been following this rule for about ten years even though I haven’t fully articulated it until recently. I’ve taken multiple walks across town while moving house, shouldering a backbreaking amount of my possessions, because using a bus or taxi first would have felt like cheating. I could do that later, but not first. When asked, I’d struggled to explain this. My friends looked at me like I was an idiot, and since I couldn’t explain it, I assumed they were right.

I’ve got off the bus early when going somewhere new, so I could introduce myself to it properly, honestly, the clumsy, deliberately humble way that covered me with mud and made my feet hurt. Staying with friends in Luxembourg this November, I was utterly delighted to miss the bus home, because it meant I could walk along the side of a very boring-looking road and find out if it was truly that boring and skippable. In doing so, I discovered this terrifyingly-looking abandoned property:

(Apparently it used to be a kindergarten. Insert comment about Luxembourgish parenting here.)

It’s not just misery-loving masochism to want to do it the hard way. There’s that weird sense of having earned something. Seasoned adventurers hear the call of it. It’s partly why people drag on lycra and go for a run in freezing January rain. They’re not just idiots. There’s something else at work as well – and it’s good for the soul, and for your awareness of the world around you.

So, just occasionally, try taking the long way round…

And then relax, because you’ve damn well earned it.

PREVIOUSLY: A Mile A Day #1 – I’d Rather Walk, Thanks
NEXT: A Mile A Day #3 – What’s Inside My Dog?

 IMAGES: MIKE SOWDEN, PIXABAY