THE BIG CIRCLE

As a retired leisure walker, my achievements are always likely to be classified as 'modest.' Frankly, I missed out on places like the Derbyshire or Yorkshire Dales, and the Lake District, and reached not the high places. Strength and stamina were always a problem to the extent that an easy, relaxed gait was my trademark stride, prompting one walking companion to describe my gear changes as three-fold: slow, slower, and stop.
Another reason, in addition to a lack of stamina, was that I didn't really start proper walking (ie, for several days at a stretch, with a tent and rucksack) until I was nearly 40, and even at that age home comforts were hard to push into the background.
Nevertheless, I did manage the annual Breckland Forest Walk (23 miles, I believe) four or five times, finishing every time, though I did faint on one particularly hot day. And I have walked the Norfolk Coast Path three or four times and the Peddars Way a dozen times. Earlier challenges, dreamed up by myself and a colleague, were a cross-Norfolk east to west walk; I forget where we started from, but we ended up at Hunstanton in a thunderstorm. And we also attempted to walk Norfolk's bit of the Icknield Way, but it gave us a lot of road walking and we couldn't find much of the Icknield, anyway.
Within Norfolk, however, the Blue Riband of walking is or was the Big Circle, or Round Norfolk walk, now available in several guises and by several routes, but which in my day comprised the aforementioned Peddars Way and Coast Path, plus the Weaver's and the Angles Way.
To be perfectly honest I did not walk them in one continuous 'go,' but always as separate walks done at different times. If it still counts, then I can say I have walked the Big Circle twice, and parts of it much more than that. However you do it, it is an experience I heartily recommend.
The Peddars is the Peddars, of course, my favourite path, with the ever changing views of the Coast Path not far behind. These two will take you from Knettishall Heath to Hunstanton (or Holme) and then east round the north Norfolk coast to Cromer; whereas the Weaver's Way will lure you all the way from Cromer to Great Yarmouth.
We found the Weaver's an if-and-but sort of route, characterised by a singular lack (at that time) of facilities and rather too much time spent on former railway lines, for it tends to put you into nice green and tree-lined cuttings and then keep you there. Three miles on and you're still in a nice, green, tree-lined cutting. It's still an entertaining yomp, though.
However, the Angles Way is or was a quite different kettle of fish, taking the walker from Yarmouth alongside Breydon Water and Halvergate Marsh (where I once fell over a stile) and on as far as Knettishall, where you complete the circle. You follow rivers and nip back and forth across the Norfolk/Suffolk boundary so many times it is as though you're stitching them together. A fascinating walk, then, and aside from the Coast Path perhaps the most varied of the lot.
Have I missed walking elsewhere? Well, yes. I have yomped on Dartmoor and walked near Edale, but I can't help seeing TV shots of some of Wainwright's walks on the high hills without feeling a pang of disappointment that I missed out. Did I start too late in life? Yes, I did. And could I do it now? No, not with the sort of legs I'm left with.
The high places, the thrill of strapping on a rucksack and setting off for a few days, the night camps and bonfires, the fresh air and wayside pubs, are no longer for me in a walking sense. But I do have my memories, and try to be content.