Have been on a bit of a hiatus recently as you can see from this blog, and every time someone has asked me when I am going to be walking again I've had to mutter something about the floods currently sweeping the nation and how awful it is and how every walking route in the country is most likely submerged under a few feet of water; when in fact the true reason I have not been walking is simply because I am pregnant. And pregnant women obviously can't do any exercise, right? At least, not any that causes one to be out of breath, apparently, which for me would pretty much mean that walking up the stairs at Wembley Park tube station is prohibited.
Anyway, I figured that now I am "safely" in the second trimester ("safe" is obviously a misnomer in pregnancy. For example I have just spent the last five hours fretting that something terrible has happened to the baby because I hadn't felt it move since my particularly difficult walking experience today, and googling whether needing the toilet for excessive periods of time without being able to find one is likely to cause the foetus to expire with the sheer stress of it all).
So off I went to Fulwell, which is somewhere sort of near Kingston (as in, upon-Thames, obvs. Not Jamaica). I had a pleasant walking experience last week, the first since my long hiatus, walking from Kingston to Fulwell, which was a shorter distance that I usually do (have to make some allowances for the extra weight I'm now carrying and the delicate state of my mental health when it comes to stressing about doing too much exercise or being in places without guaranteed toilet facilities), with a conveniently placed cafe mid-walk and a John Lewis right on hand to dash into when it started raining, so I had clearly been lulled into a false sense of security about how easy walking "with child" was going to be.
That sense of security was to be completely shattered today.
Firstly, it started raining at the precise minute I stepped off the train at Fulwell Station. The rain then got progressively harder and I made a series of poor decisions, including not stopping under a bus shelter to put my waterproof trousers on lest people in passing cars think I am getting changed in the street, and what would they think, and O the indignity of it all!
I ended up walking along the banks of a river somewhere in the vague direction of Heathrow Airport through a quagmire of mud and sludge, getting wet, needing the loo and wondering why I had ever left my nice, warm flat that morning. The rain eventually eased off. The longing for a toilet, however, got worse and worse.
There wasn't. Bloody rainbow.
Shortly after this, I found myself on Hounslow Heath, which according to my London Loop guide book, was a pretty spooky place back in the 1700s, liberally scattered with highwaymen and rotting corpses swinging on gibbets, both of which I would have gladly braved had there been a working toilet in the vicinity. I have to admit, there were times when I thought today was going to go down in history as the shameful day I had a poo on Hounslow Heath, in full view of the planes approaching Heathrow Airport, and probably found myself in the Daily Mail's sidebar of shame, alongside a heading along the lines of "Woman caught crouching in field near Heathrow DEFECATING brings SHAME ON THE NATION!!!! Cameron outraged and pledges to leave "no stone unturned" in hunt for "Heathrow Horror."
"Any chance of a lift to Terminal 5? I know for a fact there are toilets there. Just let me cling on to the underside, yeah?"
Luckily, it was not to be, and I did manage to hold it in, but I had to escape from the heath onto a suburban street, where I made my way to the nearest main road, clutching my distended abdomen and now visibly in so much pain that people on the street probably thought I was in labour.
Eventually I reached a hotel full of Eastern European air cabin crew-a massive benefit of being near the airport as it is much easier to sneak into a hotel and use the facilities without having to buy anything than it is in a pub or restaurant-and was able to find some relief. After that, it was fortunately only a short walk to Feltham Station, which was completely off the route and not the eventual destination I had anticipated, but there was no way I was going to continue walking after such a traumatic experience.
As I was making my way to the platform, believe it or not, some lecherous man actually tried to CHAT ME UP. This despite the fact that I was four and a half months pregnant, wearing mud-splattered wellies and a bright green fleece and looked as though I probably had just hitched a ride to Heathrow on the underside of a plane. Now that is someone with no shame.
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