I was thirteen and it was the start of the long school summer holidays. Six weeks of freedom from the confines of the prison of learning stretching ahead of me.

It was going to be pure hell.

I would be stuck at home for six weeks with my brothers and sister. I know you’re not supposed to say this, them being siblings and all, but I just didn’t like them. I never have. I didn’t much like my parents either. I don’t really know why, but I just didn’t. Nobody was cruel or anything like that, I just didn’t fit. I never felt as though I’d fitted in. I wanted to be somewhere else.

So I came up with a plan. I packed my rucksack with my usual scout camp load. Primus stove, canteen, gobbling rods, digestive biscuits, plum jam, three pairs pants, five pairs socks, spare trousers, spare shirt, pullover, sleeping bag, rain gear, a Blacks of Greenock ‘A’-frame tent, maps, compass, five pound note (saved odd-job money).

I set off at five am on the first day of the holiday to walk the pennine way from Edale in Derbyshire to Kirk Yetholm. Two hundred and sixty miles more or less. It was raining as I set off but it stopped after an hour or so as I got to the edge of town and stuck my thumb out for a lift. I had to get from Peterborough in the east of England to Edale, a distance of about one hundred and twenty miles. A lorry stopped after about an hour and, stroke of luck, he was going all the way to Sheffield, which was a good way towards where I wanted to go.

Three more lifts and I arrived at Castleton, just south of Edale, where I camped the night and the next morning packed up my kit and set off towards Edale and on up to Kinderscout. I walked all that day and that evening camped somewhere near the Snake Road. It was at that point that I remembered that I hadn’t actually told anyone what I was doing or where I was going and a pang of guilt tickled the back of my mind. I had my supper and decided I ought to let my parents know what I was doing. So I set off to find a telephone box (The invention of the first mobile phone was still fifteen years in the future). After an hour or so, as it approached evening I found one, lit up by its light, alone on a rise in the road, in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

I spent my twopence and passed on the great news to my Mum. For some reason, she seemed less than pleased. Luckily, my twopence soon ran out. I walked back to my ‘A’-frame tent.

Six weeks later I got home in time to go back to school. I had a great, if slightly lonely time.

Fifty-odd years later, at an art show in Harrogate, I came upon a painting called ‘Running Away Without Leaving Home.’ It was of a lonely telephone box, lit by its own light in the early evening. I was reminded of the phone box all those years ago. I bought the painting.