I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in the summer of 2006. I had been walking with a limp, cycling with a limp and even driving with a limp (my right foot refused to lift up when I changed gear and I revved up like a boy racer – brrrrrrrrrum!). Sometimes my right arm hung loosely by my side when I walked. When it got worse I had to spend two weeks in Morriston hospital, Swansea, waiting for a brain scan. They found nothing that shouldn’t be there (no blood clots, no cancer) and decided that it must be Parkinson’s. I returned home and found my symptoms getting worse. My body refused to work when asked, did things I didn’t require of it, and seemed to be occupied by an alien. When I closed my eyes at night great waves of coloured light drifted up behind my eyelids. I had always wanted to see the aurora borealis but not like this. I felt too ill to do anything and spent whole days lounging around lying on the sofa.
Then one bright sunny morning in January 2007 Flic decided to walk up the hill behind our village in west Wales. I was too ill to go with her but it was too lovely a morning to miss so I tried anyway. We got to the old spoil heap and a view of the Dyfi estuary and the sea and the Lleyn Peninsula in the distance. Wonderful. I waited while Flic went on to the top of the hill. She came back soon, told me how beautiful it was up there and insisted that I come up too. When I got to the top my Parkinson’s symptoms pretty much went away. The exercise, the beauty of the morning, the relief at being out in the world again, maybe all these things together worked a cure. We walked for an hour or so and I came home a happy man. That walk was the start of something big for us.
A few weeks later we walked up Cadair Idris. I felt I could get as far as the lake half way up. It was easy and we continued to the summit. We saw the seaside town of Barmouth in the distance and decided to walk there, some eight miles away, arriving after dark. I cannot express how special a day that was for me.
Flic and I love the outdoors and we continued walking in the hills. We spent six days in the Swiss Alps in the summer. In November we arrived in Kathmandu, ready to walk the Annapurna circuit. It was to be a one off, an unrepeatable trip of a lifetime. We had travelled together many years ago, before we had children. Now Kit had left home and was at art college. Peter, at seventeen years old and with friends in the village, could manage without us for a month. We were ready for a long walk.
A few years ago I was walking along a stretch of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, with Flic and her sister, Anna. I had been limping for a while but not so badly as to spoil my day. It was a different way of walking not, as it can sometimes be, a difficult struggle. Anna said something like: It’s strange that you like walking so much when you find it difficult. The truth was, and is, that most other things are more difficult for me; walking is one of the few things I can do. More than that, the repetitive motion often makes my body function better while more complicated tasks cause me to become more dysfunctional. And I’ve always liked walking.
Flic and I have covered a lot of ground on foot in the years since my illness became apparent and our shared pleasure in the outdoors has brought us closer together. And so it causes me great sadness to realise that it’s becoming much more difficult for me and that increasingly I choose to stay at home rather than attempt and fail to enjoy a long walk. But I shouldn’t make myself too miserable yet. There are three things I can think about to come to terms with this.
The first is to remember the time when I injured my foot by treading on broken glass when I was wandering around Greece as a young man. I limped along painfully and slowly, there was no possibility of hurrying, and I began to take note of much more in my surroundings. The slower you go, the more you see I thought and I still think it now. Secondly there’s this: I can still walk quite well, quite often, if only for short distances. Finally I have to celebrate what has been possible for me. Flic and I had a wonderful time walking a hundred and fifty miles around Annapurna. We can’t do it now but we did it when we could and it was marvellous, as were the travels that followed. And here’s the strange thing: if Mr Parkinson hadn’t come knocking on my door we quite probably would have stayed at home.