The first day of my walk along the South Downs Way, it was raining. Not just raining, it was pouring – chucking it down: a torrential downpour. There isn’t a good enough word to describe what was falling from the sky as me, my mum, dad and youngest brother made our way out of Winchester and into the Sussex countryside. What I had begun optimistically calling a passing shower proved to be nothing of the sort. Within a few minutes of striking out away from the city, my feet were swimming in my boots, and cold rainwater was clinging to my skin because I’d been too slow off the mark putting my coat on. My T-shirt seemed to have angered the weather in its presumptuousness: though April had just begun, this was no mere ‘April shower’.

Plodding our way up a hedged lane that was becoming more river-like each minute, I had to laugh. I’d thought a lot about the walk in the few months since mum and I had tipsily resolved to organise a walking holiday at Christmas, and I’d had plenty of ideas of how it would be. I’d imagined the trip as the perfect way of walking myself back into the pace of family life, slowing down after a non-stop term and grounding myself a little in preparation for my finals. I had not imagined walking into a cold, wet, grey monsoon with an increasingly grumpy and damp family while crossing a noisy footbridge over the M3.

The South Downs didn’t helpfully point out my next steps to me, but reminded me of the important details I’d been forgetting about pathways

We were luckier with the weather for the rest of the walk, and the South Downs Way slopes through some truly idyllic pastoral scenes – but that first day tripped me up on some pretty misguided assumptions I’d been making about the Way. Before I’d even set off, I’d thought up some neat life-metaphors I would encounter on the walk. On unknown territory far from both Cambridge and Cornwall (where my family lives), I was going to spend time reconciling the distance and difference between university and home life. Negotiating my way over shifting ground, I wanted to figure out an answer to that perennial and panic-inducing question for all finalists: what, and where, next? I’d be setting out on a journey with my family, falling back into step with them before marching off in a new – and yet to be decided – direction. I was imagining the outcome of the walk (clarity, resolution, purpose) before we had even set off. As torrents of rainwater ran down my legs (I had only brought shorts) and into my socks, I got the feeling that I might be in for a reality check or two.

The thing with adventures is they’re never quite what you expected. Setting off two and a half years ago to begin my degree at Cambridge, I felt pretty sure of what I was getting myself into. With all the optimism (or blind naivety) of a 19-year-old gap year kid on my side, I felt certain not only of who I was, but also of what Cambridge was, and what kind of an experience I’d have here. I genuinely felt myself to be a pretty much ‘complete’ person, and imagined that I would travel through the landscape of university both unscathed and unchanged. I knew the work would be a challenge, but I felt sure I had myself well mapped. I don’t need to tell you that I was misleading myself. Speaking to friends about the assumptions we made about ‘the Cambridge experience’ before we got here, the consensus feels universal: far more than soggy socks at the beginning of a 100-mile walk, university has been a powerful reminder that you can’t possibly imagine how the land will lie before you’re in it.

I experienced the first two years of my degree as a dividing line between home and university. At home, I returned to the coast paths, and to myself, after eight weeks of stumbling further and further off-track under the pressure of a workload I seemed to have neither the time nor intelligence to deal with. Home was respite, a reunion and a re-orientation. Term time was a lot of longing for home and dreaming of a gentler pace of life. And then a weird thing happened: slowly the dynamic began to shift. I was reluctantly packing my bags at the end of term, waiting until the very last minute before planning my journey home. Once there, I found the change of pace unsettling – like stepping of a treadmill and onto solid ground. Travelling towards is always also a travelling away from, and part of the university experience is finding that your inner compass has begun pointing you in a different direction than it used to.

Preparing to drive towards Winchester to begin the walk, I’d been exasperated by my mum’s insistence on helping me organise my journey up there. Part of the disjoint I’d felt between family and university life was my parents’ difficulty in realising that I am, you know, an adult now. Travelling through term time with an increasingly sure-footing, I found her questions and instructions – “Where will you park?” “Make sure you leave in plenty of time!” – frustrating. I imagined the walk would be an opportunity for me to demonstrate that I didn’t need this kind of advice any more, that I was capable of navigating the world (and its car parks) on my own. When my van broke down on the drive there, the first thing I did was ring up my mum and ask her: “what should I do?”. I’m not sure the episode did much for my demonstration of independence.

Long Read: Modern-day pilgrimage, and why it matters

As disorientating as it is to feel that your direction ‘home’ has altered, it’s both comforting and strange to find that there are some moments where you still need your family to find your bearings, and help you along the way. The South Downs didn’t helpfully point out my next steps to me, but reminded me of the important details I’d been forgetting about pathways: they’re never as straightforward as they appear from a distance, and there’s usually more than one direction to be taken. Sometimes, you have to retrace your steps to find your footing. And always, always, pack a spare pair of socks