Day 63
Norton to Knighton: 4 miles
Celebration of the day: That I'm not carrying a phone
Reason: Because the pros outweigh the cons for me
Another very quick hike
So, after another lovely Welsh cooked breakfast, my host again suggested I get a phone in case I broke my ankle. I jokingly noted that I'd made it 550 miles without a phone, and that while I was very sorry (for real, very sorry) for the inconvenience of coming to get me, I thought that the cons outweighed the pros.
What cons? You might ask - the phone could tell me directions, look up places to stay, keep up contact with the 'real world' and all other manner of super exceedingly ridiculously helpful things.
Well I'll tell you what cons. I hate my smart phone with a passion. Maybe it's because I was one of those people who had to have a blackberry for work before all the rest of the world ever knew the joy of being constantly expected to be available. At the time, my work colleagues and I thought it was funny that one of our friends had put his blackberry on vibrate and strapped it to his head with a sweat band when he went to sleep at night so he could be awoken by his boss at 4am when he was expected to respond immediately to requests to go into the office. But it's not really funny and it's symptomatic of a way larger problem, a problem I'm trying to get away from at least temporarily.
Don't worry, I love a good cat picture text from a friend as much as the next person and I don't judge anyone for living and dying by their technology - but maybe having the technology longer means I've had more of a chance to recognize that I don't like what it does to me. Many people aren't like me and can probably deal with it better, and I don't mean to be preachy and pretend that I'm holier than thou going off to live in a shed in a field somewhere without electricity and growing my own organic produce (though I think that would be great. Also I'm writing this while sitting in a shed in a field so maybe I'm lying).
But seriously, in my personal experience I find that being constantly diverted from the task at hand by the needs/ideas of other people in the form of texts, status updates, tweets, email notifications, news alerts, app alerts, etc, makes me both anxious and way way way way less efficient. There are so many studies that show it negatively affects mood and empathy, among other things, that I feel like limiting it is justified. For a device that's supposed to put the world at your fingertips and thereby increase efficiency I find that everything takes me ten times longer than it used to when I just had to call someone and tell them to do it.
But that's my generally rant against smart phones - my real idea this time was that I remember what it was like to travel without a phone. And I used to love it. Love it. It's not for everyone, but I liked the feeling of getting away from it all, not knowing what was happening in the world, and also getting by on my own. It was like a challenge that I had to work on on my own, and I had so much fun trying to figure things out and was forced to interact with people and go out of my comfort zone to find my way to where I was going. With a smart phone it's like I've outsourced my brain to someone who doesn't quite get me, and I end up in the same place everyone else goes to, there's no feeling of accomplishment because really it was the app telling me where to turn right, and I never speak to anyone local because I'm spending all my time asking online search engines what they think rather than people who are literally standing right in front of me.
So anyway, would I like to have my maps downloaded in a convenient format to my phone? Yes. Would I like to have been able to contact all my hotels, etc, while I was hiking? Yes. Does that kind of ruin the experience of hiking by yourself in a foreign country and learning how to figure things out yourself? Yes. So, I decided, no phone.
Aaaaanyway, like I said, a quick hike
Anyway, I seem to have diverted off topic - my host told me I needed a phone and then very helpfully drove me back to where I'd left off. It was way less cloudy today so I got some good long views over both Wales and England, and in several instances followed the Dyke itself (sometimes the path skips between Dyke segments, sometimes there is no Dyke to be followed).
But I got to Knighton relatively quickly as it was only a few miles from Norton. But I wanted to stay here both because several National Trails converge here (Glwndyr's way and Offa's Dyke among them), it's effectively halfway along the Path, and because I wanted to go to the Offa's Dyke Center - basically a museum of the history of the Dyke and the Offa's Dyke Path.
But today was largely focused on a phone related problem - i.e. that the inn I was staying at didn't have a front desk, and so if you arrived outside of 3 to 4 pm you should call x y and z numbers. It had taken me no time to get to Knighton, so I wrote down the numbers and went to the phone box in the center of town. Which of course didn't work properly. Because BT doesn't think it's necessary to keep up their phone boxes because everyone has cell phones (even despite the fact that there's often no 3G or wireless coverage in many places in rural Wales so I really don't understand how this works).
Anyway, remember before where I was saying I wanted to not keep a phone on me because it forces you to meet locals? Well in this case, I met the receptionist for a solicitor's office, because I was loitering outside the door of the inn randomly knocking on the door to see if the cleaning woman could let me in. And being a friendly Welsh lady sitting across the street at her desk, she thought she would be nice and tell me I should really call them. And then I explained the problem, and she was perfectly nice and offered for me to use the phone in her office. And when, of course, the phone on the other end rang busy she gave me a great lunch recommendation that I headed off to, to return in an hour to call again.
And then the person on the other end reprimanded me slightly for arriving before three, and then came to let me in anyway.
So really, everything worked out. And I didn't have to suffer through several news alerts linking to online stories about what ridiculous thing was happening back home in the interim.
