Father and son

The South West coastal path is 630 miles long. Officially starting in Minehead Somerset and ending in Poole Harbour in Dorset. 

I have been walking this for 8 years now, with my son, with the aim of completing the full length. Sometime.

Well we'll see. We still have about 230 miles to go.

We're also doing it back to front, starting in Poole and finishing in Minehead. 

So being contrary as ever.

It also has to be admitted that we aren't breaking any land speed records.

However there are reasons, or excuses, for this. Firstly we only walk it for about five days per year. Secondly when we first started off, my then 11 year old son needed a lot of encouraging to get him to walk even 3 miles in a day.

Usually the complaining started after the first mile!

"Dad my legs are tired, I want to go back"

I was unmoved, just giving up wasn't going to be allowed. Yes the weather was miserable, but being miserable builds character.

Strangely this would make him grumpy and sulky!

For those not in the know, the path can be difficult and challenging, leaving you with steep climbs, scrabbling over rock's, and trying to find the best path through the boggy patches.

Some of it can be as easy and as pleasant as a walk in the park.

On the challenging parts of the walk averaging 10 miles a day can be exhausting and now a days it's my son who sets the pace, with me struggling behind trying to keep up.

But it's worth it. The scenery can be spectacular and as a lot of the path goes along a cliff edge, it can also be scary. Especially if like me, you're not good with heights.

And even though he's 19, I still shout out for him to be careful, such as when we come across a field with cattle, fuss around telling him to avoid getting to close or he'll be trampled by them.

Of course he ignores me and walks right through the middle of the herd.

So still the worried parent, trying to ensure he doesn't get hurt, as if he was still eleven, never really being able to fully let go. 

Actually with the progression of my symptoms, he has started getting protective of me on our walks. Which is both nice and sad 

But it's not the scenery or the sense of achievement that makes me do the walk, it's the time spent just talking, communicating with my son. 10 miles of uninterrupted conversation, learning about his world.

And it's very different to mine. Nowadays it's a world of online gaming, watching YouTube, having online friends, programming and tech. 

A lot of tech.

His one area of interest outside of gaming and technology is politics, mainly US politics. I was a bit concerned about his interest in Ben Shapiro and the like. So although I took the decision a long time ago to let him develop his own politics, we talked about my concerns about some of what these type of political influencers say. 

He listened carefully.

So sometimes the conversation does briefly spread out onto something I know about, but mainly it's his world. And that's just fine, it's his world I want to understand.

And this world has evolved over the last eight years. He's grown from an enthusiastic young boy, to a know it all teen, who can barely hide his disbelief at my ignorance of his world.

So all perfectly normal. As Mark Twain may have said and my father repeated to me:

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

My worry is that when I did reach 21, I still thought he was mostly wrong.

But despite this our walks bring us closer together and we bond over a sneaky pint at a pub we come across on the route. 

The walk also does me physical good. My Parkinson's symptoms after a week of strenuous walking are measurably better. 

And there is increasing evidence supportive of this, that vigorous exercise has a measurable neuroprotective benefit for those already diagnosed with Parkinson's. 

That it helps slow down progression, staves off dementia and gives the best possible quality of life.

But even without this I would do the walk, time is precious and time with your children even more so, especially as soon enough he'll leave home and become more absent from our lives.

Like I did from my parents.

I just hope that for four more years at least he will find time to spend with his dad so I can catch up on his world and finish the walk.