Each October, as is well known, I and some colleagues on this magazine go away together for a weekend’s walking. We’ve covered Dorset, Devon and Sussex, plus the Malverns, the hilly bits of Derbyshire, a stretch of the Suffolk coast. This year, our 17th such outing, we made our second trip to the Isle of Wight.

The destination changes, the personnel change, the distance walked changes, the miles ever less, the time spent in pubs and tearooms ever longer, but one fixture will last for ever: I and my fellow writer Alan Franks share a bedroom. Some consider this strange, yet the simple fact is Alan and I are extremely fond of each other.

Naturally, traditions have emerged. When we get to our bedroom around teatime on the Saturday, after the walk and before pre-match drinks in the bar, first we scrub up. I have a shower, and then I run Alan a bath. While I’m doing that, he puts the kettle on. Then, when he’s in the bath, I complete the tea-making duties. Now that I write it down this doesn’t seem an especially fair division of labour, but never mind about that, I’m the junior partner, some day someone else will do it for me.

When Alan’s had his bath, we strut around slapping our chests, trawl the TV channels for any form of sport, discuss how many miles we’ve covered, possibly sing a few songs, argue about the correct course of action to follow should a crocodile suddenly come in through the window, and so forth. I imagine as they perform their own toilet, similar conversations are taking place in the rooms occupied by our female colleagues.

But after dinner, after the drinking and analysis and gossip, Alan and I end up back in our room, and that’s when we do something I believe is unique to us. We decide what to call the walk. That is, we agree on the special silly name by which that day’s walk will come to be known as it passes into history.

Sometimes the name comes easily. In 1999, for instance, we took a wrong turn on the Purbeck cliff path, and Alan had to hack a new route through a thicket with my Leatherman. The thicket (ever so slightly) resembled a jungle, so that became Green Hell Tour. Easy.

Another time, in Walberswick, our friend Colette noticed that the landlord of the Bell where we had lunch had a head shaped like a boulder. So that was Boulderhead Tour. Another time, Alan and I became obsessed with the noises and catchphrases employed by Jimmy Savile. That became the Eeurgh Eeurgh Eeurgh As It ’Appens Tour.

But then other times it’s hard, and this was one such. The day had been eventful, a taxi driver who looked like Giant Haystacks, a revenge raid on the lavatory of the extremely unsatisfactory hotel we’d stayed in seven years previously, etc. But there hadn’t been any one particular moment for Alan and I to fixate on. And it has to be me and Alan. To be honest, the women, they pretend, but I don’t think they’re that fussed about the whole special-name-for-the-walk thing.

Anyway, we lay there, midnight, twin beds pushed up close, and we jammed around a bit, played a few old riffs, waiting for something to emerge. But, you know, sometimes the magic just ain’t there, you can’t force it, all you can do is see what the morning brings. Alan and I have both been around long enough to know that.

“Good night, Bobbly,” Alan sighed, turning his light off. “Al,” I said, “I’m just going to read for five minutes if that’s OK.” “Bobbly, of course,” he yawned. “What have you brought?” “Smuggled in some of the good stuff,” I said. “Keats. Should be Tennyson, I know, on the Island, but it’s autumn, season of. Couldn’t resist.” “Hit me,” said Alan, rolling towards me, face all squashed in the pillow.

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” I began, “Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun...” I felt a little self-conscious lying in bed reciting Keats to Alan, largely because my flat northern accent is not best suited to Romantic poetry, the two creating an unnerving juxtaposition, like John Prescott doing embroidery, or Eddie Waring commentating on figure skating. But Alan didn’t seem to mind, and I soon got over any embarrassment.

“Got any more?” he mumbled. “Too right,” I said. “All the hits here. Think of me as your very own John Keats jukebox. A thing of beauty is a joy for ever? Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know? What do you fancy?” “Have you got Ode to a Nightingale, Bobbly?” “Al, ”I replied, “consider it done.”

So I read Ode to a Nightingale, and Alan fell asleep halfway through, but I finished it, out loud to the half-dark, half-slumbering room, and that is how the magazine walk of the autumn of 2009, the Bob Reads Poetry to Al at Midnight Tour, got its name.

robert.crampton@thetimes.co.uk