Happy coincidences are one of life’s small, unappreciated pleasures, usually drowned out by people screeching about unhappy coincidences: buses coming in threes, running into an ex with a year-long grudge against you, discovering that your girlfriend is just as submissive in the bedroom as you are so your soul is crushed as you realise the rest of your sexual life story will consist of two people laid politely asking if it’s okay to timidly fondle. That kind of thing.

To counteract this wall of whinging I’ll tell you the tale of how today’s challenge came together, and it’s a tale of a happy coincidence. When we came up with the idea for this, one of my first ideas was to have a drink away from people, out of the normal settings, somewhere very much on my own.

The aim was to discover what it feels like to have a beer when you’re truly alone. Sitting in an empty bar in the afternoon is one thing, drinking at home alone is another, but being miles from the nearest human being while you have a beer? That’s something I’d never done. Visions of Ranulph Fiennes gulping down a can of Tennants at 19,000 feet flashed before my eyes. I’m sure Ellen MacArthur kept a sly quart of gin tucked away somewhere as she bounded across the Pacific. I could be next. The only problem is I only had one day to do it.

So how far from mankind could I get in one day? I mused over wandering up to Darwen Tower, or finding a gym in a Scottish town. Happy coincidence saved me from this choice when I realised that on the weekend we’d be starting this challenge, I’d already organised going to Sheffield and I had a day to spare in the area. You only have to go five miles out of the centre to find yourself in the Peak District. For mile upon mile, up there you’re in splendid isolation.

Whipping out the virtual map, it became clear that with a good few hours walking I could be atop a hill in the back of beyond with the only other humans in range being other idiots going to desperate lengths to drink in solitude. And so off to the shores of Redmires Reservoir I went. 13 mostly circular miles to get there, 1,073 feet in the sky, 5 pints on the way and 2 drought-stricken puddles to look at when I got there.

As an aside, the walk up the hill from the west to reach this point was unwittingly one of the best choices I’ve made for a walk in a long time, as the path cuts across the ridge of a valley and lets you see miles of forest. The weather was kind to me which was fortunate as I’d gone dressed like one of the halfwits that Michael Burke casually slags off on 999 for attempting a hill walk dressed like a bedraggled Ian Brown.

Co-Op Honey Ale, a beer which resembles honey much as Stalin resembles compassion.

My beer of choice was a honey ale I’d picked up on a hasty trip around a Sheffield city centre Co-Op. Finding a bench to plonk myself down on, a curious blend of exhileration and exhaustion swept over me as I realised that after four hours I’d finally reached my destination, but I’d stopped for five pints on the way and that isn’t as effective as Lucozade Sport at keeping you going. Sitting back, I prised off the bottle cap with my pen knife, a fact which would shortly prove to be the turning point between the optimism and energy of a steady march up a beautiful English country hill, into a period of bleak depression touching upon thoughts of suicide and the nature of humanity.

All shall be explained in due course, of course, but at this stage my only thoughts were of the beer. I placed the pen knife on the wooden bench and watched as a small mound of foam crept from the bottle, almost begging to be let out. When it seemed to have settled, I took the bottle in my hand and went for the smell. There was none, which made me feel like a man who’d picked up a rock and put it to his nose, which in turn made me instinctively glance sideways to see if anyone had caught me in this absurd act. The rational brain kicked back in and I put the bottle back down for a moment’s more contemplation and a brief photoshoot.

Co-Op honey ale by the reservoir. This felt as effected as me walking round Cambridge with a soft woolen wraparound scarf.

Redmires Reservoir, Yorkshire's third smallest puddle.

Camera work complete, I stretched my weary legs out and took in the reservoir in front of me. Still, serene and quite beautiful, soft arrows rippling across now and then as fish go about their business. A bird hovers high above, searching for a flicker of movement in the fields below. No joy – it sails off into the distance to try its luck elsewhere. A cloud darkens the skies and I’m reminded that I’m here to drink this beer and go home. Absent-mindedly I take a swig but I’m still thinking about that bird and when I listen, the silence has almost become audible. The only distraction from the ceaseless whirring of my thoughts is that bird, and I can’t let it go. As the whirring grows louder I take another swig but it’s tasteless, a slight fizz the only thing worthy of note. My hands grow restless and I pick up the pen knife, flicking out the blades and twisting them around my fingers.

That’s when I notice the people coming up close to my left. Two people, old, ramblers. How they got so close in this silence I’ll never know. I don’t feel the need to act out everything going through my head so I didn’t bother looking right at them; I just kept staring ahead at the silent water. Out of the corners of my eyes I saw them come closer at a sturdy pace, until they neared and the pace slowed to a dawdle. Slowly, so slowly I almost had to look up, they passed in front of me, only twenty feet later picking up their pace again. Under a cloud of melancholy my head dropped, and then I saw why they had slown: idly cavorting the pen knife blade around my hands, I’d ended with it standing across the veins of my left wrist.

Mortified at the alarm I must have caused, I made an elaborate show of doing normal things: standing up to admire the view like I was on the front of the Titanic with Kate Winslet, rooting through my bag with a series of epileptic arm gestures like I’d lost my wedding ring down there, taking a hearty gulp of my beer and making the kind of absurd aaaaahh!!!-that-was-good sound that is only ever actually done by stereotyped men on beer adverts. As they became specks on the horizon I hope those poor pensioners got the message I wasn’t suicidal, because I felt morbid shame for putting that worry into their minds.

Jack Turner's memorial plaque. The feeling of futility I felt while gazing upon this is best likened to the eternal sorrow of seeing an X-Factor audience clap.

Sitting back once again, the melancholy twisted into gloom as the ceaseless whirring became a deafening din in my head. Beer, so often the anaesthetic that quietens the racket, was pulling that two-faced trick it has of occasionally contributing to it. In an attempt to distract myself I turned to look at the forest behind me and ended up staring at Jack Turner’s memorial plaque. Jack (1924-2001) was clearly the kind of man who would inspire those he left behind to dedicate a bench with a view to him. I think, since I was about 13 and began to think like an adult, that has been my ultimate goal in life: I’d like to be a man who is remembered with a bench plaque. The silent dignity of it touches me somehow, and I spent a good ten minutes with nothing else on my mind apart from Jack Turner.

Time passed, and I began to think about the situation. I am not normally this morbidly contemplative of hovering birds and bench plaques. I normally think about these things and then frame them within an optimistic world view that gets me through the days. It’s only when I drink alone that my mind turns to such things. I began to wonder: if drinking to these absolute excesses of solitude takes me to the excesses of pain, doesn’t drinking on my own in moderation make me moderately miserable when I otherwise wouldn’t be? I emptied the bottle and placed it back in my bag as the last lingering thoughts of doing a Reggie Perrin and strolling into the water crossed my mind. With a heavy heart, but with a lesson learned, I stood, took my bag and began the walk home.

The day: 1.
The beer: Co-op honey ale, 500ml, about 4.5% ABV.
The place: Redmires Reservoir, altitude 1,073 feet, no sentient species within 2.5 miles except alarmed pensioners.
Positives: discovered the beauty of wilderness; drank with the certainty no-one could put Celine Dion on the jukebox; further developed my imaginary friendship with Ray Mears.
Negatives: distressed pensioners by appearing suicidal; was unable to quieten the ceaseless whirring in my head with beer; missed the first Soccer Saturday of the season.
Conclusion: if drinking in splendid isolation, DO take a solar-powered radio, DO NOT take a pen knife.

30 days · Co-Op honey ale · drinking alone · gloom · Redmires Reservoir · Sheffield

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