MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS
Paracord
When I was a young hiker I carried a length of Venetian blind cord wrapped around the handle of my sheath-knife. You'd get arrested for that today. The cord had hundreds of uses related to camping and hiking. This time I put a 3 metre length of paracord (army string) in my pack. I used it to tie together a pair of banging window shutters, to stop my pack from falling over in a train luggage area and many times to make impromptu washing lines. It turns out to be one of the most used items of my kit. Be Prepared never goes out of style.
Toilet Training
When walking in the wild, in countryside, when bushwalking, taking care of one's toilet requirements may be a little different to the normal residential setting, but fairly standard procedures are now in place amongst hikers for digging scat holes, burying waste and bringing out all extraneous materials. Recent technical adaptations such as the use of high-strength, ultra-light trowels are also becoming commonplace amongst serious hikers. I took such a kit with me on this hike, but never used it. I came close once or twice, but the opportunity didn't arise.
What I hadn't taken into consideration was the social context of my hike. That is, the complete lack of assured privacy. No matter how solitary my hike may have been, there was always the possibility that a boat would come sweeping around the bend at any time, or a cyclist would whizz past me from down the trail, some lady taking her poodle for a stroll could come ambling past out of nowhere. Moving away from the canal would have placed me in fields during harvest season and voices could frequently be heard on the other side of hedgerows. In short, there was nowhere suitable for the use of such equipment. At least, nowhere suitable when the occasion required it.
That meant finding public toilets in the villages and towns I passed. All simple in theory and all impossible in practice. Villages don't invest in public toilets. Their economy doesn't derive from tourism and the locals have their own facilities. Canals often don't go through towns - they go close to them, run around them, pass them on the outskirts, but entering a town could mean a three kilometre round trip, with no assurance of a public facility once you get there. I made this journey on one occasion, found the only public toilet in town and then realised that it had fallen into disrepair years before. The local primary school teacher suggested I should walk on to the next town and try there. The thought of a stranger using a toilet in a private home is repugnant to most people.
Cafés will often make their toilets available to their clients. One option is to stop for a coffee and ask to use the facilities. They will often oblige, but, without wanting to be overly graphic, they expect your needs to be simple. Often their plumbing will not cope with anything more than urine. There are also some very handy apps, like FreePee.org and toiletfinder.net. They are handy when you're in one of the main cities, but they don't really help in the spaces between them.
What's the answer? I don't really have one - at least not a reliable one. Training your body to meet its toilet needs at the start and the end of the day is perhaps the most independent approach. Being prepared to embarrass yourself by marching into a local town hall and asking to use their facilities. They are obliged to serve the public, but not necessarily non-residents, so this may / may not go well depending on their demeanour. For men, taking a pee behind a bush is still manageable, even on the canals, if done with tact, timing and discretion. For women, the local café approach is possibly the best option. I don't see this situation changing much as it seems to be the status quo along the canals.
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