Lost in the Woods

Remembering how to navigate around trails I don't know, and ultimately, how to be lost.

I hadn’t done this in ages: plot a route on a map, in a place I don’t know, load the GPX file onto my watch and hope for the best. I’m connecting trails between woods and minor roads, I’m seeking a high point, I’m zooming my eyes out and looking for the best possible loop. Once drawn, I check the distance and the elevation and I might tweak it. I mentally log paths and roads that would give me either a shortcut home or an extension. I step out of the door, I press start.

Last week, I stayed in a house in Cranborne Chase with his family, dithering back and forth across the border between Wiltshire and Dorset. While plotting running routes, seeing so many permissive paths across blocks of green on a map makes me feel fizzy with opportunity, so to give myself some sort of anchor, I fixated on a point of interest near to the house: a statue of the Greek God, Hermes. It looked like it was just in the middle of a field, in the middle of nowhere, and I wanted to know if it really was as random as it seemed. I mentioned it to his family when we were talking about potentially going for a walk, and curiosity about the statue grew, until really seeing it became something of a group mission. Following the route I’d drawn, we set out into sunshine.

The 3.5km it took for us to get to the statue was even more beautiful than I’d hoped it would be. His mum pointed out the sheer abundance and variety of flora in a single meadow, inspiring me to fully see and appreciate it. The views across the valleys were expansive, the sky was so clear, the afternoon so warm, the company so convivial. We ducked under tree branches, hiked over tussocks of buttercups and climbed over gates, absorbing the landscape of our home for the next week. There was so much to take in, and with my navigational skills being thrown a couple of times, it took us a while to actually reach the statue.

But what else is a walk like that for? The statue itself was always secondary, Hermes was an excuse, but when we were starting to flag and starting to worry about getting back in time for our dinner reservation, he became a goal. We put our heads down, and we made it. He really is just a random statue in a semi-random field. The grounds belong to a house, but it looks and feels like a meadow like any other. We took some photos and wandered back. A brief Internet search only really gave me the year the statue was erected. And I like it that way. Yes. I want to live in a world where Hermes is on a plinth several feet in the air, his winged feet painted gold and his body curved in arabesque.

The next day, I ran the loop I had plotted. The trails beyond Hermes included a surprise stream crossing, a fun steep climb through bluebells, and the sort of sloping meadows that beg to be rolled down. Later in the week, I tried to make a new, longer route, using the early trails as a springboard. I used to move house once a year when I lived in London, and each time, this was how I would build my running routes and get to know an area: I’d add on, subtract, move in concentric circles and spiral, until there was a 5k, 5-mile, 10k and 10-mile route to have in the quiver as standard.

When I moved to Wiltshire three years ago, I had to learn how to do this on trails. It’s easy in a city: a road is a road, a path is a path, and if you don’t like it, you turn off and go elsewhere. You don’t have a list of routes you avoid in summer because they’re covered in nettles, nor ones you avoid in winter because they are just too muddy. I’ve got all of that pretty locked in now, and outside of race routes, I haven’t had to work that navigational muscle since then.

So, that longer route I had plotted: I got myself in a right pickle. It all felt very familiar, that mild hysteria between being steeped in frustration and laughing at myself. Nettles are always involved in this sort of palaver, and there are bonus points if you have to pick your way through a field of them twice because the gate you’re approaching isn’t actually the right gate. I still have no idea where my correct gate was, I can only assume that the permissive path has been blocked off. Still, only a couple of stings feels like a win.

I tried to find an alternative route via a gate behind some sheep, but that led me to a fenced off wilderness, surrounded by animal traps which unnerved me, and my only option was to circumnavigate it. I came to a stream, and realised I was only getting myself in more knots, but crossing the stream felt synonymous with getting the heck out of there, so I hopped from bank to rock to bank, then bushwhacked my way up to whatever lay beyond. Ah, a fence around a field. But at least I recognised this field, I could get this run back in motion, but not before scrambling up a muddy bank, grabbing onto the fragile bark of a fallen tree, then climbing over a wire fence that thankfully, wasn’t barbed. Phew.

My adventure had barely even started and I was worried I would have to turn for home. But that’s not what I set out to do. I set out to finish this route, to explore, to see, to know what those blobs on the map looked like in real life. I would adjust: stick to the road for the next section, then take a slight shortcut to the next trail.

And then, friends, I was well underway. And what I found was not what I had been expecting at all: the mid-point was a near-vertical hill out of a village that lead onto a well-used trail between trees and bluebells, up on high, the tops of neighbouring hills now at eye-level. The steepness and then the length of it was well worth choosing to continue, and my earlier frustrations were forgotten. The following bridleway was quintessential English countryside, and a gulley that rose steeply and muddily up through a deep, dark wood was surprising in its relative wildness, and humbling in its vastness. It goes like that sometimes: between moments of what looks like civilisation are tracks that are barely trodden, and maintain that weird, unkempt, gnarly energy that tells the mind to sit back and listen, just listen.

And there, then, I could see the end in sight on my watch. There was only about a kilometre left and it looked like it should be relatively straightforward. I was on the home straight, my legs turning confidently over the hard-packed ground on a nice, wide bridleway and I sent him a voice note - I’ll be back really soon - and as that trail turned to road, and the road tilted up towards our home for the week, I felt triumphant. Magnificent. I had made it. I’d been in unknown territory all on my own, and I had made it through and back, safe and sound, and not too much later than I’d hoped.

I felt different, somehow, in a way that only those exploratory runs can make you feel. You kind of have to be brave. You have to ignore all those voices of doubt and fear. On a tiny scale, you have to look after yourself, and you arrive back to safety having managed to do that. Even when the adventure is this small, trail running invites you to do that. Get lost for a while. Let your mind sit back and listen, just listen.