I did not plan to leave. I planned a long walk, and then I kept going.

I had a job with a lanyard and a flat with a view of another flat. On a Thursday in March I took a train to the end of the line with the idea of walking back along the coast. I never did walk back.

Second class

Second-class tickets are the only ones that let you change your mind. Nobody is waiting for you in second class. You sit with your bag between your feet, and when the train stops somewhere with a good name, you can simply get off.

What walking does

At four kilometres an hour nothing can be skipped. You see the whole of every village, including the parts that were not expecting you. You learn that a decade which felt enormous from the inside takes about three days to walk out of.

I had been telling myself I was stuck. It turned out I had just never tried the door.

Arriving by accident

I reached the harbour here on a wet afternoon, with one working boot, and stopped for soup. There was a card in the café window about a room above the bakery. That was six years ago.

I would like to tell you that I knew. I did not know anything. I was tired, it was raining, and the soup was good. Most of the important decisions of my life have been made under roughly these conditions.