INTERVIEW
Country Walking has a coffee and a stroll along Brighton beach with writer, footpath addict and ‘big fan of the planet’ Caitlin Moran.
IT’S NOT OFTEN I’m able to interest my teenage daughter Molly in coming on a Country Walking assignment. But when I ask if she’d like to help me interview Caitlin Moran, I kind of know what I’ll get.
“OMIGOD! Yes! Caitlin! She’s incredible!” Bingo. It’s hard to understate the influence that Caitlin Moran has, particularly on young girls feeling bothered and bewildered by the world they are growing into. Her multi-award-winning columns and interviews cover everything from politics to indie rock, while her bestselling books leap nimbly from inspirational essays (see How to Be a Woman and Moranifesto) to rude, smart, loosely autobiographical fiction (see How to Build a Girl and How to Be Famous). Two elements unite her work. 1) It’s usually hilarious. 2) It’s driven by passionate feminism. Caitlin’s abiding goal is to reach out to women and yell ‘go girl!’ at the top of her lungs. Molly, of course, is listening.
But she’s also passionate about walking. And it was a simple Tweet about her love of OS maps (‘I am a keen rambler. I like to know my trig points’) that made CW realise we needed a chat.
And so, over coffee and a walk on Brighton beach, it all comes together. And Molly is in some kind of heaven.
Oh look - flint!
It starts with Caitlin showing us her unwanted party trick: she can walk on her ankles. Molly gasp-winces as Caitlin rolls both feet 90 degrees inwards until the outer bones of her ankles touch the floor.
“Hypermobility. It’s a right tw*t,” she says.
“Everyone in my family has it in some way. When I foot-strike, my entire body weight sinks down into my ankles and they collapse. As kids we had no idea why walking hurt. We thought we were just lazy. But now I have special boots and orthotics. I build my little foot-castle, and off I go.”
And yet you still got into walking, Molly notes. How come?
“Dad,” Caitlin replies. “All. His. Fault.”
It was dad John who first switched Caitlin - and her seven siblings - on to the joys of being outdoors, whether it hurt or not. He himself was the youngest of seven and grew up as a ‘free-range kid’, cast out of the house through daylight hours and teaching himself the names of every bird, flower and animal he could find. He was also a keen trespasser, usually on large estates where he would scrump for apples or dig up shrubs to replant in the family’s council-house garden. And he passed it all on.
