Walking with Plato (25 page)

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil – to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.

Had I read those words pre-JoGLE, I don’t suppose I would have appreciated them. Pre-JoGLE, I had never connected with the wild side of myself, and had therefore never understood its importance.

But Thoreau did. He was, in many respects, a modern-world Epicurus. He is best known today for his book
Walden
, in which he recounts a two-year experiment in natural-living in a self-made house, in a forest near the shores of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts.

Thoreau believed that wilderness and wildness are essential to human flourishing, that they are indispensable sources of invigoration, inspiration, and strength. ‘From the forest and wilderness,’ he said, ‘come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.’

And this was precisely my experience on JoGLE. It took me a while to get into it. But, by the third and final month, wildness and wilderness had worked its magic upon me. I really was invigorated, inspired, and strengthened.

Thoreau famously observed that ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation’. In my humdrum, everyday life, I identified with that. But, on JoGLE, I could no longer be numbered among the mass of men. I was fully engaged. Fully alive.

Although Wendy and I hadn’t realized it when we set off from Taunton, the Tiverton Parkway railway station isn’t actually
in
the town of Tiverton. It’s located seven miles east of it, close by the village of
Sampford Peverell
.

Had we not stopped for a beer at a pub in Sampford Peverell, and got talking to the barman, we wouldn’t have discovered our mistake until we reached Tiverton – which would have been seven miles too late.

From Tiverton Parkway, we caught a train to Exeter, where we spent two nights with our friend Hilary, who has an apartment close to the historic quayside on the River Exe.

As was the case whenever we broke our journey to stay with friends, we were fed, watered, and pampered quite royally. Hilary even moved into her spare bedroom, alongside her cat Hobbes, so that we could luxuriate in her big comfy bed.

From Sampford Peverell, we hiked fourteen miles in a westerly direction to the tiny hamlet of
Hayne
.

The morning’s walk was a flat and easy stroll along the winding course of the Grand Western Canal, to the town of Tiverton. And the afternoon’s walk took us up and over lots of small hills, across farmland.

I have a vivid memory, from that afternoon, of walking along a grassy path through gently rolling pasture, and being struck by how outrageously
alive
everything was.

The grass at my feet was long and lush, and gave the impression of having triumphed gleefully over every attempt to cut it back or trample it down. The bushes and ferns at the side of the path were so thriving and dense that they seemed to be trying to fill every cubic inch of space with as much organic matter as possible. The rich pastureland, the fields of freshly ploughed earth, and the trees and bushes surrounding them were equally bursting with life.

And so was I.

As I walked the final few miles towards the farmhouse B&B at Hayne where we were to spend the night, I found myself unconsciously humming the tune of the Elvis Presley song ‘Wild in the Country’, and realized that it expressed exactly how I felt.

By this stage of JoGLE, I had come to feel – and I mean this literally, not just poetically – part of the Earth.

From Hayne, the next morning, we continued west for twelve miles: first to the village of Morchard Bishop, and then along a section of the Two Moors Way walking trail to a B&B in the village of
Down St Mary
.

This was another day of pastures and ploughed fields, of hedges and trees, of cows, horses, and sheep, and of quintessentially English villages.

Somewhere along the route, we stopped at a pub. Wendy took a photo of me, standing before an open fire with a pint of beer in my hand, and I was startled to see how much my appearance had changed. I had gone from podgy and soft to slim and toned in just twelve weeks.

It was a whole other me; a better me; a healthier, happier, more balanced me.

There’s a passage in Plato’s
Republic
where the main character, Socrates, discusses the value of physical exercise with a young man named Glaucon:

‘Have you noticed how a lifelong devotion to physical exercise, to the exclusion of anything else, produces a certain type of mind? Just as a neglect of it produces another type? One type tends to be tough and uncivilised, the other soft and oversensitive.’

Glaucon replies:

‘Yes, I have noticed that excessive emphasis on athletics produces a pretty uncivilised type, while a purely literary and academic training leaves a man with less backbone than is decent.’

Looking at that photo, I felt, for the first time in years, that I’d got the balance right.

My body looked lithe, limber, and ready for action. My mind (that is, my intellect) felt the same. And I realized that this proper balance of the physical and mental was, in no small degree, accountable for my more robust, positive, and engaged emotional state.

Plato believed that we humans have a dual nature, that we are bodies and minds. And he believed that we can only reach our potential – we can only become the best of ourselves – when our two natures are, as it were, pulling together.

To the modern mind, Plato’s ideas often seem fanciful and idealistic. But, in this instance, he spoke from experience.

When we think of Plato, the image that generally springs to mind is that of a be-robed, balding, soft-bearded old man – the ultimate other-worldly intellectual. But that’s quite misleading. In fact, he was known for his imposing physique, and was so skilled a wrestler that he is said to have competed at the prestigious Isthmian Games.

Indeed, the name ‘Plato’ (from the Greek
platon
, meaning ‘broad’) is said to have been given to him by his wrestling coach on account of his powerful shoulders. His birth name was Aristocles.

Plato had learned, from experience, that physical vigour promotes intellectual vigour, and that the two together promote psychological vigour.

And now I had learned it too. My sitting-still-and-brooding-self had been, in Plato’s words, ‘soft and oversensitive’. But my constantly-in-motion self . . . well, he was a whole other guy.

From Down St Mary, Wendy and I walked seventeen miles southwest to the town of
Okehampton
.

For most of the way, we followed a section of the Devonshire Heartland Way: a forty-three-mile walking trail that runs between Okehampton and the village of Stoke Canon. This took us mostly along footpaths and bridleways through undulating farmland.

Partway through the afternoon, we clocked up our thousandth JoGLE mile. But this was more a cause for sadness than celebration – an unwelcome reminder that our journey was nearing its end.

We spent the night at the YHA in Okehampton, a converted railway-goods shed on the edge of Dartmoor, and then set off early to the tiny village of
Stowford
.

The first half of our fourteen-mile walk to Stowford took us southwest along the Granite Way: a traffic-free cycleway that runs along the edge of Dartmoor, between Okehampton and the village of Lydford.

The Granite Way is full of interest, offering views of Okehampton Castle, Meldon Lake, and, on its left-hand side, the Dartmoor National Park with its wild, empty moors, exposed granite hilltops, and herds of semi-feral Dartmoor ponies.

Best of all, at one point it crosses the West Okement River by means of the Meldon Viaduct, a wrought-iron railway bridge that towers spectacularly above the river and the canopy of the surrounding trees.

The second half of our journey from Okehampton took us west through farmland and small villages to some splendidly rural B&B accommodation at Townleigh Farm, near Stowford.