The Naked Rambler (update)

I first wrote about Stephen Gough (aka the Naked Rambler) nearly five years ago. In fact, I mentioned him in my very first post, as it was a TV documentary about him that was one of the main catalysts for my Nakasendo walk in 2007. Since that first post in April 2007 I've completed two epic walks and one not-so-epic walk. Gough, meanwhile, has been languishing in a Scottish prison, serving a succession of sentences for breach of the peace and contempt of court. All the sentences stem from his refusal to wear clothes. As the The Guardian's Neil Forsyth puts it, "he's effectively been in custody for nearly six years for refusing to get dressed."

You can read the article here.

Reading this could shorten your life

Under the headline WATCHING TV FOR HOURS COULD SHORTEN YOUR LIFE, this recent article in The Press warned of the dangers of sitting in front of the TV for too long each day. It quoted a study carried out in Australia which found that people "who watched more than four hours a day had a 46 percent higher risk of death from all causes and an 80 percent increased risk for CVD-related death".

Someone wrote a letter to the editor a day or two later rightly pointing out that a) the risk of death from all causes is the same for everyone (i.e. 100%), and b) it's the lack of exercise rather than the TV watching which is the problem, and it would be just as accurate to say that reading books for hours could shorten your life.

I get a bit annoyed with people who regard television per se as some kind of evil. Yes, most of the stuff on TV is crap, but the problem lies in the way the technology is used rather than the technology itself. In other words, it's the commercial, ratings-driven model that's the problem.

Take The Wire, for example, which many people (myself included) regard as one of the best TV shows ever produced. As the show's creator, David Simon, has stated, the chances of it surviving on ratings-driven free-to-air TV were slim, so it was made for HBO, a pay-TV service. Sure enough, when the show eventually screened here in New Zealand, it was at a ridiculously late hour because Television New Zealand, despite being a state-owned broadcaster, is run according to a commercial, ratings-driven model.

I should also point out that, as I mentioned in my very first post, if it weren't for television I wouldn't have got into walking and this blog wouldn't exist, since it was after watching a documentary called The Naked Rambler on TV that the idea of walking the Nakasendo came to me.

By the way, if you're wondering what the subject of that doco is up to, well, according to this opinion piece in The Guardian (hat tip: my brother in Bhutan), he's still roaming around the UK naked and still getting arrested.

Naked ramblers face Swiss fines

A local Swiss government plans to take action against a sudden and apparently unwelcome phenomenon - naked hikers.

For the rest of the story, head over to the BBC News website.

(Naked?) ramblings

This will my first epic walk. In my early 20s, I did complete (half-completed, actually) an epic bicycle ride with a friend that took us half way around the South Island of New Zealand from Christchurch to Greymouth, a distance of around 1000km I think, and over a couple of highish mountain passes. We had intended to circumnavigate the entire island, but I was fed up by the time we reached Greymouth and insisted we take the train home. Earlier still, as a child I completed a non-epic walk that seemed epic at the time, when I was dropped off in town for a recorder class and couldn't find the right room, and decided to walk the 5km home. I was oblivious to the panic that struck my parents when they went to pick me up and found I hadn't made it to the class, and according to family legend, was discovered at home sitting nonchalantly on the toilet eating a piece of toast (with marmite).

Having set a tentative date (October-November 2007) for walking the Nakasendo, Erik and I agreed we should start doing some serious walking, firstly to make sure 30 or 40km a day was a reasonable pace, and secondly to get into shape. I started by walking into town and back. I'd done this journey in one direction on numerous occasions since that fateful recorder class, once or twice at night in a pretty drunk state, and most recently when I got sick of waiting for the bus during a bus drivers' stop-work meeting a month or so ago and legged it home. But I'd never done it both ways in a single day. So that was around 10km. I felt pretty dehydrated when I got home, and resolved to take a water bottle on future outings. My legs also ached for a day or two afterwards. Once I'd recovered, I did another longish walk to a local shopping mall and back.

I was feeling pretty proud of my achievements, but when I next got in touch with Erik he told told me he'd completed a walk of something like 18 miles up and down Manhattan Island - with a loaded pack! Not to be outdone, a few days later I set off in the direction of Tai Tapu to see how far I could really go in half a day. I left at 9am and got back just before midday, and though I didn't make it as far as Tai Tapu, I did cover about 14km (including some small hills). Double that is practically 30km, so I figured that 30km in a day wouldn't be a problem. And once my fitness improves, 40km should be achievable. I haven't done any major walks into the countryside since then, but I have done some walks around town in the 5km range, plus I walk to the supermarket occasionally (a return journey of just over 3km).

Update: I've been flooded with emails asking for more details about the Naked Rambler. I need to stress again that I won't be doing this walk naked. So get over the naked thing already. But since you asked, here's the very latest, courtesy of the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/6542329.stm

Distance walked today: 0km
Total distance walked since blog began: 5.1km

Formalities

Hello, world

Being a relatively private kind of person, I find the prospect of "baring my soul" to the world, of sharing my innermost thoughts and feelings with total strangers, rather intimidating, if not downright terrifying. So why the blog?

Well, I've decided to embark on a walking adventure. To be precise, I'm planning to walk the inland route (the Nakasendo) between Kyoto and Tokyo - a distance of just over 530 km. And a blog seemed the perfect way to keep track of and record my progress as I prepare for - and hopefully complete - this adventure.

The idea for the walk came to me a couple of months ago after watching a documentary on TV called The Naked Rambler. The doco was about an ex-marine who walked the length of the UK wearing nothing but a pair of boots. He also carried an enormous pack (odd considering he can't have needed much in the way of changes of attire, although I noticed he did occasionally don clothes - much to the chagrin of the "true" nudists he met along the way).

Anyway, to the great relief of my family, I never really seriously considered the naked part, but the idea of an epic walk immediately appealed to me. And it didn't take long to work out where I wanted to go. I've had a fascination with the "highways" of Edo period Japan since I started studying Japanese more than 20 years ago. Even then I dreamt about walking them. The most famous of these highways is the Tokaido, the coastal route between Tokyo and Kyoto, whose name lives on in the form of the Tokaido railway and Shinkansen lines. I have walked a short section of the original Tokaido through a lovely cedar forest near Hakone, but for the most part the Tokaido is buried under modern highways and railway lines. Another drawback is that I've travelled this route or parts of it many times before.

Like the Tokaido, the Nakasendo was established in the Edo period to facilitate passage between the old capital (Kyoto) and the new (Tokyo). But instead of running along the coast, the Nakasendo goes inland. This makes it slightly longer, and of course hillier, and while most of the Nakasendo, too, is today under concrete, some sections of it and even one or two towns along the way have been preserved. It also passes through some relatively out-of-the-way parts of Japan which I've never been to before.

I originally envisaged doing this alone (I was pretty sure I didn't know anyone crazy enough to want to come with me), maybe taking my video camera along to document things, but when I mentioned the idea to my friend Erik in New York during a Skype session, he decided he wanted to come along. Which is great. He also expressed a desire to organise an art project to tie in with the walk, something that I wasn't keen on at first, but have since warmed to.

So that, in a nutshell, is the premise. More tomorrow. I'll also try to post a map or two.

Distance walked today: 2.1km
Total distance walked since blog began: 2.1km