Clocks Back, Light Gone
I know perfectly well that the clocks go back on the last Sunday of October. I have known it every year of my adult life. And yet every year I set off at midday on that Sunday as if it were still September and get caught by the dark. This year was no different, only more so.
The route was the horseshoe round the reservoir, 15 km, two tops, nothing technical. I left the car at 12:15. Sunset was 16:45, and I knew that. What I had not accounted for was the ground, which was sodden after a week of rain. The path along the east ridge is peat and it had turned to the consistency of cold porridge. Every step sank and sucked. My pace dropped from a normal 4 km/h to barely 3.
By the second top it was 15:50 and the light was already going flat and orange. I took the direct descent instead of the long way, which saved a kilometre but meant a steep, wet grass slope that I half slid down. At the bottom, in the plantation, it was dark enough to need the head torch. I switched it on. It glowed a dim brown for about a second and died. The batteries had been in it since February. I had a phone with 30 per cent charge and used its light for the last 2 km of track, holding it low so I could see the ruts.
No harm done. The track is a track and I know it. But it was a stupid position to be in for a walk I have done a dozen times, and it was entirely preventable by one of three things: starting at ten, checking the torch, or reading the ground conditions properly before choosing the route.
Food on the day was good at least: a flask of leek soup, two slices of malt loaf with butter, and an apple that I ate on the dark track and threw the core into the trees. The soup was a hot point in a cold afternoon. Fresh batteries are now in the torch and a spare set in the lid pocket, where they should have been all along.