WALKS AND WALKERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 307, 28 December 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

WALKS AND WALKERS.

SOME GREAT FEATS. aid to health and long LIFE.

(By B. ROE.)

The interesting plans of the Auckland Trampers' Club for the Christmas holidays turn our thoughts to walks, walking and;walkers. An old English adage advises intending walking tourists "to abide at home till beneath one's foot can comfortably lie ' concealed ten brighteyed daisies." Some exuberant spirits do Hot await the approach of spring, but walk yeac in and year out. • Our Auckland tramp ere keep the rambles, going month after month. They deserve the best of luck and good weather and all they gain in health from'their excursions ' Abroad. Many people look upon trampers as a lot of cranks who are to be pitied; the'lethargic Spaniards seeing the ancient Romans walking . for the pleasure of doing so, put them down as mad. Our great travellers, such as Marco Polo, Livingstone, Nansen and other great explorers, walked" through tropic forest, and amid the eternal enows. An English traveller, John Stewart, known as "Walking Stewart," walked through India, Persia, Nubia, Abyssinia, the Arabian Desert, Europe and. the North American States. De Quincey described him as "crazy beyond the reach of hellebore (a plant anciently used as a cure for insanity)', yet sublime and divinely benignant. He had seen more of the earth's surface, and had communicated more with the children of the earth than ' • any man before or since (1856)." Gilbert pf Sempringham, another famous walker of earlier times, was the son of a knight in the days of the Conqueror, who was ' so misshapen, and otherwise painfully 1 : afflicted, that the very serving men refused to sit at the' table with him. Probably his ill-health made him dull, for the chaplain, who was his tutor, could make no way with him, and his parents dealt so hardly with their stricken child that he ran away from his Lincolnshire home to London. He took his way to France, and his .travels and studies made - a man of him. In due time he returned to the parental roof and took his right-ful-place as a eon of the house, no longer despised' by the serving men, for even the knight and his lady were proud of > theiir only child. He lived to the great a£e of 106, having been three times •on foot to Rome. No wonder he became a . centenarian, for the air and exercise involved would account for anything. The next move we shall hear of will be an in the title of the "Auckland Trampers' Club" to that of the "Auckland [Trampers and Centenarians' Club." And [jrhy not! • < '. r . '. ' Literary "TratSips." , Heedless of wind, rain, storm and bad weather, a famous walker in; the; person : of EdwardWeeton .walkedfromPortland - [bo Chicago, a distance of. 1000 milesj doing 70 and 80 miles a day, though he >. bad passed the allotted three score years and ten!' Another great walker was the 'American poet, Walt Whitman. He was heart and soul a tramp. In .this way he became personally acquainted with "all boHb . and conditions of, men." Richard Jefferie6 walked about the fields arid woods, finding them a wonderful university of .life, where he studied to the joy and advantage of every lucky student of ibis nature books. Carlyle is. in every sense a patron saint of walking. His companions on three tramps tell us "that then most of all the fire kindled." "One eunny summer afternoon," Carlyle tells us, "fVashington Irving and I walked and talked a good 16 miles." Carlyle's longest walk Was a lonely tramp of, 54 miles in one .day, when he walked from Muirkirk to Dumfries'. Some stroll!. "Wordsworth," .according to De Quincey, "must have traversed a distance of 175,000 or 180,000 "'English milesj a'mode of exertion which bo him istood in the stead- of alcohol and all stimulants whatsoever to the animal spirits; to which, indeed, I he was indebted for a life of unclouded happiness, and we for much of what is most excellent in his writings." I Innumerable poets were walkers, and one of them, the. great Coleridge, walked alone over Scarf ell. .George Meredith wrote in praise of -his, favourite pastime, walking, as did R. L. Stevenson. The Rev. A. N, Cooper, the "Walking Parson;" one time vicar of Filey, who has walked to Rome, to Venice, to Monte Carlo, to Stockholm, and many other Continental centres, reminds us that Dean Swift; has some lines on the fact that in the course of his daily walk to get thin, he met. a friend who was walking'to get fat! Walkers are generally . faard men jwho can eat anything, sleep anywhere, and are rarely ill. They are Usually pleasant' fellows and rarest of friends. The great Bishop Selwyn was a famous walker/and strode from one end of his diocese to the other. Jack Metcalf—"Blind Jack of Kriaresborough"—was a famous horseman, athlete, surveyor, swimmer, road contractor, musician and an enthusiastic walker to the end; of his days. Imagine this' Wind old man of 78, walking from York to Green-Hammerton, a distance of ten miles, in three and a half "hours! Solitude and Companionship. Katlierine C. Chorley vouches for the truth of the tradition concerning an elderly Victorian gentleman of electic tastes apparently, whose pleasure it was to go for long walks over the moors, taking with him as his only companion "a Bible and a bottle of. champagne. It sometimes happened that an acquaintance would meet him in the course of these peregrinations and ask him what he was doing on these lonely moors with his Bible and the champagne. "I am," 'he would say, "worshipping God!" Mr. G. M. Trevelyan maintains that solitude is probably an essential condition of the perfect walk, that is, the walk during which it seems that the highest expressions of which body and mind are capable have fused into one singing unity of delight. But in his next paragraph he repents, a hasty judgment and qualifies what he has just written"A com- ; panion may be good if you like him well, if you know that he likes you and the pace, and that he shares your ecstasy of body and mind." Provided th© comradeship is the right one, tramping is a most delightful pastime, repaying us a thousandfold far the effort aspeffldgd.