writing women back into the countryside: a book

Going off at a slight tangent here, but the other day I drove for about forty minutes in my rural-ish area on a weekday mid morning. I was struck by the numbers of male cyclists, alone or in pairs, I saw. Not one woman. This was during the working week and most of the men looked to me to be of working age (30s - 60s).

I was mainly interested in the idea of men having so much more leisure time than women. It's hard to imagine women being able to take a chunk out of their working day - whether they are in paid employment or not, to indulge a hobby. I know personally when I'm working there's little chance of a break because I need to make sure I can finish on the dot for the school run, for example (actually my DP is in a similar position but we have a pretty egalitarian approach to work and family).

Reading this thread has made me think about the other possible issues at play of women's confidence to be out in the countryside.

Gerla - I've literally just finished reading it and that's exactly what sprang to my mind. Unfortunately.

@Sophoclesthefox - Rosie Swale was a toughie for sure. Robyn Davidson (see her book "Tracks") was another.

• lone, not line!

Fascinating thread - placemarking to read at my leisure. I've read a couple of McFarlane books and enjoyed them. To be perfectly honest, the absence of his wife and children in the books wouldn't have occurred to me really. And I have to admit, as someone who has spent plenty of time doing school runs and household drudgery, that's the last thing I'd want to read about! But I do get the point about the 'line enraptured male' view.

Loved that piece linked upthread on the lone enraptured male. A great piece of writing.

I do adventure a bit alone. I am happy to go for day hikes alone or with dogs, long cycles and runs alone and generally feel happy and confident to do so. The worst thing that has ever happened was falling in a river in the bush in New Zealand, and I hurt myself and it took a long time to limp my way back to civilisation.

Overnight I do have a block about. I’ve slept in my car a few times while adventuring, but I’ve felt out of my comfort zone. I am no Rosie Swale Pope (look up her books for the ultimate in intrepid women!).

Your book sounds fab, OP, please do keep us up to date with its progress.

I missed this thread before too - thanks for bumping it, Gerla.

I'm (COVID aside) a very enthusiastic long time solo traveller, and I also compulsively hike, trek, and climb rocks (and sometimes whole mountains). I love walking/exploring alone - countryside and city and everything in between - and am normally fine doing it although careful to be aware of any dangers for the specific location. But I do find I have a "block" about camping/sleeping alone overnight in an isolated area, and that limits me from getting to the most remote places solo. There's something about being asleep or unconscious alone and oblivious to the world that makes me feel much more vulnerable than I do "just" being a women alone and awake and engaged.

I also think we can't generalise about how women feel walking (or travelling) alone. I was pretty fearless until a few years ago (it'll be six this May) when I was a victim of a violent crime and suddenly found it pretty much impossible to walk down my own street without panicking, even though I'd previously travelled around the world alone.. Very luckily for me, one of the police officers on my case recognised the symptoms of trauma and referred me to get a diagnosis (of PTSD, as it turned out) and treatment. Through group therapy and through being involved in a community of people knowledgeable about and suffering and recovering from PTSD, I learned that the ways in which so many women are routinely subject to trauma, and the ways in which we recover, are a dynamic. I've spent so much of my life yelling go girl, you can do whatever you want, don't be afraid - and a big part of me still wants to say that, and believe that. But it's not that simple - not just for some women, but for distressingly many women.

Anyway: thanks to everyone for the book recommendations. I've loved these books recently, too: Jini Reddy: Wanderland, Kerri Andrews: Wanderers: A History of Women Walking, and the anthology Waymaking: An Anthology of Women's Adventure Writing, Poetry and Art edited by Helen Mort, Claire Carter, Heather Dawe, and Camilla Barnard. Would love to read your work too, makespaceforgirls; will PM you.

This thread makes me want to go for a walk somewhere beautiful

And on the subject of men taking the walking centre stage - the famous Wainwright of the Lake District guides, apparently made his wife walk some way behind him so that he wouldnt be distracted.

Good to read this thread and realise there are other women out there who walk and cycle alone. Ive only had one bad experience and managed to get myself out of it but Im still a bit wary of going to quiet places where I`m not familiar with the route. This woman was a doughty campaigner who walked alone and wrote books. www.marionshoard.co.uk/Books/A-Right-To-Roam.php

Also has anyone read Maggie O'Farrell's I am, I am, I am in the topic of walking alone and trusting your instincts?

Just discovered this thread and it sounds really interesting OP.

@invisibledragon I can relate to what you said. I love walking on my own but I am also scared. A few years ago I was on my own and met a man who told me he was going to rape me. He didn't. Apparently it was a joke. For a while it made me extremely nervous of being alone and I often think about it when choosing which path to walk. I bet he never thought about it again.

When lockdown ends I am planning on doing a five day walk with a friend but she can only accompany me for part of it. I really want to do it though.

By the way, I remember reading about an elderly woman who loved walking near me. She would just start out on her own and walk for days with very little equipment or supplies but she knew what she was doing, despite the fact that some people wanted to write her off as old and vulnerable.

I also recommend the film 'Wild' to anyone on this thread who hasn't seen it, or anyone on FWR. It made me want to walk the Pacific Crest Trial. Seeing this narrative from a female perspective was such a pleasure when the default is always male. It deals head-on with what it's like to be a solo female walker. Glad to discover there are other fans out there!

I have always had a problem with Bear Grylls and similar for the reasons you mention - who's looking after his children while he's out enjoying himself having a really tough time in the wild? I'm unable to enjoy the programmes when the realities of home and family are erased. I find it difficult to respect these 'adventurers' when the whole quest seems so self-centred.

Your writing is great OP. Thank you for sharing, and I wish you all the best.

"invisible dragon". I don't think your response is irrational. One way to think about outcomes is to separate out the frequency from the severity. The chances of being attacked in the countryside are pretty low, but the severity of an attack could be very high. You could fall and injure yourself. The frequency would probably be higher and severity lower than an attack. It is good to analyze risk and figure out how and if it can be mitigated.

Hi op this sounds really interesting, I’d love to read a couple of chapters. I’ll pm you.

I love the sound of this book and would definitely buy it! Good luck OP

Watching with interest and I’d love to read your book!

I’m really interested in this as I walk a lot as a lone woman, both in forested areas and rural areas and I have rarely felt threatened. In fact, it hadn’t occurred to me to until someone made a comment to my husband about wasn’t he worried that I was off walking for hours by myself in isolated areas. Aside from the fact that weirdly, I wasn’t consulted, I realised that I wasn’t. I’ve even walked in the forest at night by myself.

I don’t want to sound like I’m trivialising the concerns of other women about walking alone, quite the opposite.

I also run, but I prefer running in the dark because people can’t see me to catcall me (I’m slow and fat). Until a couple of years ago, I used to run on a hard track around a local lake but stopped because groups of teenage boys would congregate and several times started catcalling me, pretending to run after me and taking photos of me. When I complained about it on Facebook, a surprising number of other local women said the same thing.

I’d love to run away from pavements and traffic and people, but forest paths and bridleways are too muddy at the moment.

During my years in London I had an unpleasant experience practically every week: men rubbing up against me or touching on the tube, drunk blokes on the bus when I was coming home from the theatre, men exposing themselves to me in train carriages late at night, being cat-called and propositioned in broad daylight.

Yes, out walking on my own I've met the occasional oddball, but no man has ever approached me and tried to touch me or propositioned me. I have female friends who run cross-country before dawn on their own, know a lone women who walks the dogs before and after work in the dark on the hillsides in the Brecon Beacons. I know a woman who runs walking holidays for women and does all her route-planning and recces in advance on her own.

The Ridgeway is lovely but it's really not comparable to the Pacific Crest Trail. Whenever I've done bits of it they've been busy with walkers, mountain bikers and horse-riders.

Have you done any research into actual risks and crime rates, OP? I think that women are pretty bad at assessing risk and very good at catching fear. I get really tired of books about 'how I learned to conquer my fear' when those fears aren't rational in the first place and the book makes previously fearless women wonder whether they need to be scared.

My guess is that the biggest danger to solo walkers is spraining an ankle or falling. Not other people.

@makespaceforgirls, that's good!

And yes, agreed about the army. We have near here the remains of two WWII encampments, sundry pillboxes, a barn built from stone formerly used for a barracks (Napoleonic), the traces of various airfields and dragon's teeth used to block gaps in fences.

I am a woman who loves being alone, but who also fears walking / being alone in the countryside.

As several people have asked where this fear comes from, I'll try to explain. My fear is definitely of being alone, far away from anywhere / anyone and meeting a man / several men who want to harm me. The idea of trying to escape, particularly on foot, from a man, perhaps in a car or van, fills me with fear. Even thinking about it is stressful.

Now, is that a rational fear? I'm not sure. From a statistical point of view, the chance of that actually happening is pretty minute; but the chance of a bad outcome if that scenario occurred is definitely non-zero. In most other aspects of my life, if the probability of something occurring is minute, I tend to ignore it (eg there is a minute chance of getting Covid from a plastic bag, but I'm not bothered about washing/disinfecting all my shopping), so from this perspective it's irrational.

On the other hand, from personal experience, I have had several dodgy experiences with men when doing solo sport. For example, the group of men in a jeep on an empty country road who asked if I would like to come to the barn with them so they could help me fix a puncture on a long solo ride (answer hell no!); or the man who stopped his car to ask for directions when I was running and opened his car door to block the pavement; or the man who stood in the bushes at the edge of a park at night, only visible by the light of his cigarette, and who then crossed the park to intersect with me in a darker section of the path. Maybe all of these experiences were benign and I just projected my fear onto them, but they definitely felt scary.

On a third hand (foot?), I also think that there is psychologically more to this than either a dispassionate risk assessment or media generated fear. I spent years in a controlling relationship in which I convinced myself that an abusive man was the love of my life. When I was in that relationship, I ignored, suppressed and denied any feelings of fear about my partner, despite him posing a larger threat to my safety than any hypothetical dark stranger on a lonely hillside. I wonder if my fears about being alone and powerless when alone are a projection and externalisation of my suppressed fear and isolation in that relationship? Answer: probably yes.

So the conclusion for me is that yes, my fear is irrational, but pointing out the irrationality isn't what helps address it. And when women are conditioned (gaslit?) to deny and minimise feelings of fear in the personal sphere, when they are instructed to dismiss their instincts (he didn't mean it like that), when society feels unsafe for women -- maybe those fears get projected onto other, more socially accepted scenarios, giving us the bogeymen, axe murderers and slendermen of our modern mythology.

I agree.

A lovely thread

I'd buy your book.

Lovely thread. Especially during lockdown!

I'd buy your book OP. Your writing is very engaging.

I know a couple of women who are very much doing their own thing and I admire them so much.

One is what I suppose you could call an experimental archaeologist and the other is an artist. So in one sense, they fulfil that whole 'middle class things in the country' role, on the other hand they are both down to earth, and the artist grew up in an Essex council house and still struggles with imposter syndrome at times.

The artist (theatrical arts) has been funded to lead a group on a walk from London to the UN climate change conference in Glasgow this summer as a nature pilgrimage/arts event.