In recent years I have been acutely aware of how many more women are getting out hiking. Perhaps this is because I am a member of a couple of women only online walking and adventure forums, or, perhaps just not! I have, for a long time, always hiked with my husband, partly because it is something we both share as a hobby. More recently however, I want to get out there on my own, walk a bit at my own pace (he has a commuter walk), improve my navigation skills and explore the areas I want to look at. This is not to say that we don’t still do most of our walking together, but I want to be able to take others out on walks and feel confident doing so.
At the end of last year I did my silver navigation award up in the Peak District. I realised I know more than I think and perhaps I have actually just lost my confidence along the way. I am now going to go on and do my Lowland Leader training so that I can take other groups out on walks. In order to do this, however, I need to have logged ten quality lowland days where I have lead the walk. Whilst I have walked thousands of miles over the year, several of my walks have been either in a group where I am not supervising, or in the hills, so not lowland, or don’t take around 4 hours. I am, therefore a couple of walks down on my ten, so decided I would get out on the one sunny day in quite a while.
I chose a circular walk as these are always easier if you’re walking alone, there’s no need to plan in transportation back to your car. Obviously I shared the route with my husband so he had an idea where I would be if I got into trouble and I planned to finish in the light.
Whilst the day was gloriously sunny, underfoot was still boggy and muddy and at one point, my OS map led me to an area that was completely underwater. There wasn’t any way around it short of retracing my steps for the hour and a half I’d just walked, so realising it wasn’t actually hugely deep, I held onto the tree branches and hauled myself through the water. This highlighted my first error of the walk, no gaiters. Gaiters generally make me hot. I should have put them into my pack so I at least had them even if I didn’t wear them all the way. I also remembered afterwards that I did have my waterproof trousers, but hey, my boots didn’t let in the water and my trousers could be washed so what’s a little dirt…not sure that ‘luck’ is the best plan.
Returning to my point about women walking, on the first hour of my walk I primarily met women walkers, it was really uplifting, women out with packs doing what I was doing and enjoying the fresh air. Without sounding harsh, unless you are a woman, it is not easy to really understand what extra precautions women do have to think about when they go out. Some of these thoughts may not even be conscious, but they will affect routes you might choose to take, the time of day you wish to walk, whether you take a friend or not, what you take in your pack etc.
However, I think that things are changing, more women are getting out there alone, even kit and clothing is now often being made to actually fit the real figure of a woman. How many pairs of walking trousers have you maybe tried on over the years that are sized sm, m or l and have no hip space whatsoever? I still find that I have to size up for most of my walking kit to ensure that I can get my hips and boobs comfortably in it with the right amount of layers, but it’s improving all the time. This conversation is worth a blog post in itself, but Sian has a great post about trousers!
Short of getting exceptionally muddy and my knee suffering a little due to the slippery mud, my walk was really enjoyable. It is harder walking by yourself as you have no one to talk to and I don’t like to walk with my headphones on as I can’t hear what is going on. I also found that my phone battery using OS ran down really fast, so I needed to have put in my charger really, that was another error really. However, despite that, it was nice to have that time to myself, no dog, no speed walker, no whining child, no one to tell me when to stop, where to go, what to do.
There are lots of walking groups out there these days, mixed groups (we like Get Outdoors as they are relatively local to us), groups for women (Love Her Wild I am a volunteer for my local section, Adventure Queens), groups for Muslim women I follow Amira on Instagram (@amira_thewanderlust), groups for LGBTQ+ people. It’s fantastic to see so many groups and people getting out there. On the otherhand, just remember, that the more of us there are out there on lowland, hills, fells and mountains, the more pressure we are putting on the environment, so make sure you stick to paths, take your litter home, don’t pick wild flowers or disturb animal nests and dens, don’t light fires where you are not allowed and basically be sensible so everyone has the chance to enjoy. Have fun!
