100 WALKS YOU NEED TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE. 1: Springtime Creekside Hike To Longdogs Lane Via A Private Dentist (4 miles)

It is low tide as you stroll along the creek, wild geese burst into tears overhead and ancient bone dice litter the foreshore. You feel good, although your arms ache and you regret your decision to bring the large painting you purchased earlier in the day from a junk shop. The painting, which shows an upset Irish Woman in a window and is titled ‘Upset Irish Woman In A Window’, has a heavy Victorian frame, but from the moment you acquired it you felt an immense desire to show it off to strangers and upon leaving the car to embark on your walk vanity got the better of you, as it so often does. After a mile, during which you have passed only three strangers, two of whom didn’t like the painting and one of whom didn’t express an opinion due to being a dog, the foliage around the creek thickens and you decide to hide the painting in some bracken and return for it the next time a Saturday is nice. As you frantically sweep loose sticks and leaves over it with your hands, a man in a long coat arrives - American, it would appear - and asks you what in God’s name you think you are doing. You tell him the truth. He seems to accept the explanation and you walk side by side for a while, which is difficult, due to the brambles and curious badgers that flank you. He explains that he is a private detective, down from the big city. He seems pleasant on the whole, but as time goes on his occasional habit of interrupting your observations about wildflowers and birds with statements like “Hey, buddy, quit the gutter talk” and “Listen, slob, there’s some big people in this town who ain’t very happy ‘bout the games you been playin’” starts to grate on your nerves. You make your excuses at a fork in the path but when he takes the fork too and begins to eat a can of spaghetti and meatballs with it you make additional excuses and revert to your original route. It takes you to a metalled road which leads to an isolated dentist’s surgery. It is a nice day so the windows have been thrown open and birdsong harmonises with the dentist’s instructions to his assistant during an examination:

“Upper left 11. Partially exploded. Ceramic overlays need cherishing.”

“Upper right 4. Composite amalgam. Jazz funk meets country swing, actually quite electro in places.”

“Lower right 9. Coated in lichen and mango pickle from September last year.”

“Upper right 94. Initial preparatory bridge. Built solely for ponies. Courier vans usually can’t get over it.”

“Lower right 4. Looks like an upside down pair of knees.”

“Upper right 2. Never seen anything so beautiful in my life.”

“Diagonal 14. I like your spotted dress. Possible extraction. Ruptured enamel fuckpig.”

“Upper left 76. Absolute piece of shit. Throw it away next time you are getting rid of some old coats and shoes.”

As you sit outside the surgery, you think what a great and perfect time spring is to get your mouth in shape. People can let their teeth decay all they want in winter but they do not want bad teeth in spring. They’d be letting down the scenery, for a start: all those smart outfits, all those reds and pinks and greens and whites and blues. The hedgerows are a riot of growth right now and the foragers are out in force, biting into all manner of vegetation with their revitalised, refurbished teeth. The wild garlic is past its best but there is no shortage of edible plant life to replace it - endless fresh bracken and gorse and wood to bite into it. “Isn’t it just marvellous to be alive, at this time of year?” you think, but, as you do, a supercar driven by the head dentist from the surgery speeds past and clips one of your arms, fracturing it in several places. But you have been trying to be more of a “glass is half full” person recently and you reason to yourself that, of the two, it was probably the one you used less frequently. Besides, it is still a very beautiful day. You turn, strangely revitalised by your misfortune, into Longdogs Lane. A man watering his oak leaf hydrangeas in the raised garden of a terrible cottage hydrates your hair, passing it off unconvincingly as a mistake. You apologise for being in his way and ask him if he knows why Longdogs Lane is called Longdogs Lane. He says it’s because there were once some dogs on the lane who were quite long. You are nearing the end of the walk now and notice a car in the distance with the engine running and the keys in the ignition, then realise it is your car, which is strange because you left it several miles away. As you get in, warming your bottom on the heated driver’s seat, you think to yourself about hope and the yo-yoing balance of good and evil and the way that it is often at the times when everything seems most desperate that the kindness of strangers will come out of nowhere and restore your faith in everything.