I am at a 60th birthday celebration in the country, on a walk that will turn out to be 8½ miles long. The 30-odd invitees are snaking in single file beside a hedge, a glimpse of the sea visible in a dip between rolling hills. The day is bright and warm.
There is a guide of sorts, a man I don’t know. He has a stick, a tweed jacket full of moth holes and the air of someone familiar with local matters. He stops to point things out, but I am always near the back, and by the time I get there the lecture is usually over.
