27th April, 2022.  I left the flat before sunrise and trudged the ten minute walk to Basingstoke station, my pop-up tent flapping comically from my laden rucksack. I bought a one way ticket to Weymouth and caught the first train out of Basingstoke. The carriage was warm and the morning still early so I made myself comfortable in my seat and prepared for the almost two and a half hour journey. The English countryside rolled by under a newly risen sun. I was glad to be putting distance between myself and the complications of my life. Weymouth would be the furthest I’d travelled in many years. I hadn’t seen much respite from my responsibilities as a father and carer over the many years. It felt like I was going on holiday. Except that it wasn’t. A holiday is usually seen as a suspension from time at work yet this trip was likely permanent.

Weymouth had been my second choice destination. My original plan had been to travel by train to Newcastle Upon Tyne, get a connection to Hexham and so catch a 680 bus to Kielder Water via Wark. I had intended to stand at the Elf Kirk viewpoint before walking into the 250 square miles of forestry plantation to find just the right tree to lay under. I would be at the end of my metaphorical line. My second choice destination was literally at the end of the line. Trains terminate at Weymouth just five miles short of Portland Bill, the southernmost tip of Dorset. My plan was to walk from Weymouth station to the New Forest. If I made it to Brockenhurst station then I might buy a return ticket to Basingstoke. To make things interesting I decided to complete the entire journey without food or water. I was toying with my life, more than happy to leave my fate to chance. If I found just the right tree on route then I would lay down under it and go to sleep.

I was deep in the fuzzy confines of my comfortable seat, half asleep and careless when I heard the train conductor asking passengers for their tickets somewhere behind me in the carriage. I was slow to move and still rummaging around my pockets for my train ticket when the conductor arrived beside my seat. My pop-up tent stood propped against my seat and a copy of the guide book ‘Walking the South Coast Path Volume 3 Plymouth to Poole’ was on top my rucksack, face up. He piped up with an enquiry, ‘So how far will you be walking?’ I looked at him and he pointed to my copy of the guide book. I offered my ticket for inspection and mulled over his words. ‘I’m going to be walking until I drop dead’, I replied. He offered a muted chuckle and caught my expression. Was I joking? His smile faltered and he returned my ticket. He clearly felt uncomfortable with the derailment of the conversation and immediately set us back on track. He started to tell me about his own walk, some years earlier. Apparently he and a group of friends had walked from Swanage to Durdle Door just beyond Lulworth Cove but never got any further. He asked if it was my first such adventure. ‘It’s my first walk along the South Coast Path,’ I replied. ‘And almost certainly my last,’ I thought to myself. ‘First stop is Lulworth Cove, just after Durdle Door’, I said out loud. I tapped the frame of my cheap pop up tent. ‘I’ll camp there and make a really early start for Swanage the next morning.’ The conductor wished me well and moved on to the next carriage and I made myself comfortable again, turning my attention to the fleeting fields and leaping hedgerows. My thoughts were immediately pulled out of the moment and I considered the life choices that had led me to be sitting there.

I was going on a walk but this was no rambler’s adventure. I was embarking on a suicide mission and expected to die. Except, in the deep confines of my own honest heart I was hoping to be saved. I was holding out desperate hope that someone was going to come and rescue me, meet me at the precipice with open arms and save me. Not just anyone but a particular someone. Someone with open arms, telling me ‘You’re safe now. I’ve got you. You are held now.’ ‘You are held’ is a phrase used in psychotherapy. Dr Linda Finlay, an existential, relational-centered integrative psychotherapist once wrote, ‘In therapy, it is through the relationship with our clients that they feel held and safe. The holding may or may not involve actual physical holding; otherwise, with emotional holding the client’s anxiety, alarm, confusion, distress, and pain are all managed safely by the therapist.’ But it was me that appeared to be doing all the holding. Holding onto that same anxiety, alarm, confusion, distress and pain.

 The train arrived at Weymouth at around 9am and the first thing that hit me when I got out of the carriage was just how cold it was. April 27th, 2022 was promising to be a bright sunny day but there was a crisp sea wind coming in from the east. I walked into the wind, through quiet streets and eventually found myself at the beach and joined The South Coast Path. To the right the esplanade courted Weymouth Beach. To the left the path hugged the shoreline in a gentle curve away from the north for about a mile until it detoured sharply east under a crystal blue sky, undulating in fast rising hills to meet distant cliffs. My path along the South Coast path lay atop those same high places.

It was the first time in at least fourteen years that I had been at the seaside. The cold wind felt good. It was clean and bracing and I felt free. I was, at last, far away from all of my burdens and responsibilities and I felt strangely and, ironically, alive. I was in control of my life and free to choose what to do with it. My fleece jacket was wholly inadequate and I began to shiver. Best start my walk. I followed alongside the B3155 until I found a way onto Weymouth beach. I felt almost childlike joy as I trod the sand and pebbles under my tough walking boots. The tide crashed close to my right and sometimes the water reached under the soles of my boots. RSPB Lodmoor, a combination of reedbed, open water, grassland and bush lay wild and untamed to my left, the turquoise sea stretching to an unbroken horizon to my right. That sea beckoned and I felt the primal need to be subsumed into something larger than myself.

The path took the sharp detour right at Bowleaze Cove and almost immediately I started climbing grassy slopes and the sound of the crashing waves was gradually dulled. The cold wind abated and I began to appreciate the warmth of the undiluted sun. After a while I turned to look back to see how far I had climbed. I was leaving Weymouth behind. The shore line mile that I had just walked continued back to the Isle of Portland and the lighthouse that stood like an exclamation mark, the English Channel the timeless backdrop. It suddenly occurred to me that I should document my journey in photographs and I looked for my mobile phone and switched it on. The first thing I noticed was a message from Hampshire Police ‘We are concerned for you, pls can you reply to this message to let us know you are safe.’ Well, that was a bit of a surprise and a little bit annoying. I didn’t think the police would get involved so quickly. I texted back straightaway writing ‘I’m not missing. I am safe.’ I turned off my mobile out of concern that the police might have been employing a tracking app to establish my location. I wanted to be on my own. Who had notified the police, I wondered? Social Services? My GP ? Or  had it been Wanda Reynolds, General Manager of CAMHS? I carried on walking, determined to enjoy my new found freedom.