A walk along the Scottish National Trail, Scotland, in May-June 2022. Long-distance hike, mountaineering and bog-walking, amongst other activities.
Saturday, 18 June 2022
Changes
Tuesday, 14 June 2022
Universal Basic Land
Sunday, 12 June 2022
Cape Wrath
I'm here. Thirty eight days after setting off from Jedburgh, I arrived at the Cape Wrath lighthouse at 10:30 this morning, Sunday 12th June.
Just one more bog from the Cape
Cape Wrath felt very wrathful today; I walked here through a storm of southerly (luckily, I was blown along) winds and heavy showers. But as I reached the Cape - the lighthouse is set dramatically on a cliff-top - the sky turned blue, and the sun made the raindrops sparkle like jewels.
My last night on the trail was Strathchailleach bothy, the former home of a naïf artist and recluse, James MacRory-Smith, known as Sandy. All of the internal walls of the tiny, dark, two-room cottage, are covered in painting and colours, including paintings of strangely exaggerated bodies, and of an unclothed mother and child in the tropics. Walkers - and one cyclist - arrived in from the storm so that this morning there were four of us ready to do the last three-hour trek across the bogs to the Cape. It was good to have company, because out here there are no signposts, no clear trail.
Relief in a storm - I've found the bothy Sandy's paintings
And that has been one of the wonders of this wander up Scotland. No signs, no trail, no path marked on a map. Just land - much of it bog - and an endpoint for each day, 20-30km from where you start. It feels like a metaphor for our lives; we roam across time, each finding their own path, criss-crossing with others, and occasionally hitting the bog. It's the people I meet at the intersections of these paths, and the loved ones who are there at the start and the finish, that make the hard route worth taking.
Wednesday, 8 June 2022
My Day
Looking back from the bealach |
Monday, 6 June 2022
Scot Land
A Cairn Society
A gift, in the hills |
Tuesday, 31 May 2022
I Vont to be Aloyne...
Monday, 30 May 2022
West of Mandalay
Tent on the beech... |
Friday, 27 May 2022
Bothy Blether
Saturday, 21 May 2022
The Clearances
Wednesday, 18 May 2022
Catch and Release
I catch the cobweb spun between twig and bracken, sparkling with mist-dew
I catch the roe deer, hesitant, alert, alive
I catch the kite, swooping with long white-barred wings to hunt in the green field
I catch the red squirrel, scampering bushy-tailed up the spruce
I catch the olive speckled butterfly drawing nectar from the grey-pink flower, open this early morning
I catch, and remember, and in catching release myself
(She's Anthocharis cardamines, the Orange Tip butterfly)
Saturday, 14 May 2022
On Comfort
Wednesday, 11 May 2022
Mountains of Stories
On the moor between Galashiels and Peebles, there is an old carved stone signalling the "Cheese Well".
It's a wee spring, clear, cold water gurgling up from a gravel bed under the heather, running over red-brown pebbles, and racing down the hill.
I drank a toast to the fairies, because the Cheese Well was where people left gifts for them. There were fairies all over Scotland, living in the springs and the old woods. They seem to have been good spirits, so long as you kept them happy, so I wished them well with my toast.
The Three Brethren have a story to tell, too
These moors are full of stories. There are the very old stories, of fairies and of stone circles on the hilltops, of the people who cut a living space out of the ancient Caledonian forest, and found trout in the streams and deer to hunt and eat. They would have felt blessed by the soft rolling countryside and the fertile alluvial soils of the valleys.
Then there were the stories of the Romans, for their roads and camps are all about the moors. I met an elderly man with clear blue eyes who had been given a book on the Roman roads of Scotland '...fur Faither's Day. I'm no a reader, but I'm doing four pages each day before breakfast.' The legionaries, and their camp followers, meeting, loving, fighting, and listening to the stories of the Scots who lived in what was then, too, the Border between civilisation and the barbarians. (I've always been on the side of the barbarians… )
Later, the small, dark Scots and their small, dark cattle trudged along the Drove Roads to the trysts at Falkirk (I'll pass through there in a few days) and Crieff. These travellers must have told tales as they walked, about the bull that won a good price in the auction, and the drinking and celebrating that went on into the wee hours. Or about the ghost of a long-dead drover who visited them as they slept, delirious with hunger, wrapped only in a cloth plaid, on the heather.
And then I reach Traquair, and my dad tells me a story from his school days about trekking across the Pentlands to this pub, the welcome beer, and the droll comment he made to his headmaster. In Peebles, on the next day, my cousin tells me that the big hotel on the hill, the Peebles Hydro, was the meeting place for respectable young middle-class men and women; her friend's parents met there.
Like all stories, these get better as they grow older. As they are more often told, they become another foundation stone in one's personal culture, the stone-phrases passed on to the next generation, and the next (I'll be telling these tales to my grandchildren).
These mountains are full of stories.
Friday, 6 May 2022
Viure el Moment
Caminant, penso en el moment. El pròxim pas mentre pujo pel muntanya, aquell flor blanca-groga al meu costat, un 'grouse' (urogallo) negre que puja al cel quan casi ho trepitjo amb el seu 'ark-cabak-cabak-cabak', el plugim suau en la cara, i, sempre, aquell pròxim pas. L'esforç fa que no hi ha cabuda per un altre pensament, pels preocupacions del dia laboral, ni (ho confesso) per pensar del llar, de la parella.
Mentre que estic caminant, tots els meus sentits son centrats en el lloc, en les pedres del camí, en els olors de l'all silvestre que creix per tot arreu, del cant constant de l'alosa (Alauda arvensis) que sobrevola el meu camí.
Parat un temps, torno lentament al meu món amb les seves complexitats. Però la medicina de la caminada, aquell viure-moment, em cura de les preocupacions, reordenant la seva importància en la vida. L'amor, la salut, el llar… i, després, molt després, les altres.
Viure el moment és l'estat pur de la humanitat, perquè (m'imagino) era la forma de viure dels nostres antics antepassats. Vivint amb l'esforç físic cada dia - per buscar el menjar, per moure pel territori - elles i els haurien de tenir els sentits enfocats en aquell moment, en aquell lloc. Preocupació és una malaltia moderna.
Thursday, 5 May 2022
Travellers
Stroll with Spring
Sunday, 1 May 2022
I’m in a foreign country
I'm in a foreign country. It's called Newcastle.
I don't know the cultures, here. I can see tribes, flagged by the women and the alcohol (the men don't seem to differ much from tribe to tribe). The main station is where they gather.
Passion Fruit
Tinned passion fruit martinis or mojitos from Marks and Spencer. Long prosthetic eyelashes and short skirts, tottery heels and dyed blonde hair, the natural brown growing out below. Their men, hard shaved and tattooed, scrubbed Sunday faces collapsing as the alcohol takes effect. In flocks of neon crop-tops and extended, arty nails, an impending riot of colour and curves.
Doc Marten
Or the studious Durham intellectuals, bent over their laptops, their latest paper reflected in the sensible glasses perched on their noses. Brown coat, a short tear in the knees of their jeans and Doc Marten's to show that they are not conformist. No alcohol, but a refillable bottle of water, topped up at the station tap.
Elderly Mute
The lumpy proletariat, waddling across the platform dragging an ancient trolley-bag, bent over with years of hard labour (and osteoporosis). Dressed down in grey, brown, maybe a muted red scarf, unnoticed except by the attentive station staff. These are the people who built the social stage on which the Passion Fruit now perform. Invisible ancestors of the nail-painters.
Then there is a religious tribe, black hats and diminished women, and a sporty tribe, but I recognise these people. They are not strangers, even if I know nothing of their lives.
This is Newcastle at four o'clock on a Bank Holiday Sunday.
Saturday, 30 April 2022
My Fat Friend
I have a fat friend.
He's an aquaintance, a new friend. Someone I'm going to have to get to know over the next two months.
He's seriously fat. On the scales he weighs only 20kg, but to me, he's like a tonne. Heavier when he's wet, of course, and he's going to get very wet.
He sits on my hip bones, and sways gently as I stroll along.
He's black. And yes, that's a purposefully lower-case b. Because he's only black on the outside. Inside, I'm trying to think of him as sky-blue, a blue as light as air, a blue that floats along with me, on the trail. It's the only way I can cope with his weight, to think of him like this.
Inside, he's soft and warm. Downy soft, and hot-tea warm. And he's protective, because he's the one who is bringing along the plasters and the first-aid kit, as well as the maps and the compass.
It's a complicated relationship, him and me. Yes, it's new, so we're both exploring the other's vicissitudes, and limits. I need him and he, frankly, needs me - otherwise he'd get nowhere - but mutual need is not a great basis for a friendship. That sort of relationship can be pretty brittle. I'm not sure where the relationship is going - although I can clearly say that it is heading north. It's possible we'll come to like each other, in time. But not before we've taken a good few knocks.
He's called Vaude. Has his name tattoed on his back, just so you don't forget it (is this arrogance?) It's a German name, although it sounds better if I say it in a French accent. I quite like the name. It sounds a bit like baud, which (as you'll know) is a measurement of the speed of data transfer. I like that speedy connection, as though he and I could fly over Scotland at the speed of light.
I'll let you know later how we get on, Vaude and I.
Friday, 29 April 2022
It's a beautiful day, in Scotland
A reminder that the weather in Scotland is wet.
Here is the forecast for the first few days of my Stroll up Scotland:
It's always sunny, in Scotland |
I must be mad. Here in Catalonia it's 24ºC and blazing sunshine.
Monday, 25 April 2022
A fitting beginning
I'm packing.
And unpacking.
And packing again, but this time rotating everything 90°.
But still it won't fit.
I am trying, really trying, to travel light, simple and small. My tent weighs less than a kilo, my Primus stove is tiny, and I'm taking the bare minimum of clothes.
But my trial pack this weekend was a disaster. A bulging, nearly bursting rucksack, a whole bagful of stuff I couldn't squeeze in, and a pile of things that, OK, I can live without (no, I really don't need a magnify glass, or that extra pair of trousers...)
So tomorrow I'm going to have to buy a bigger rucksack, and start again. It's that, or do a Dervla Murphy https://www.travelbooks.co.uk/dervla-murphy/ and take a donkey.
Wednesday, 9 February 2022
In Praise of Walkhighlands
I'm preparing for the big Stroll Up Scotland, and there is one source that I turn to again and again - Walkhighlands - https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/
Founded by Helen and Paul Webster in 2006, the site contains the information that I need to make this walk work. There are extensive route commentaries, gear guides (I've taken advice on tents and cooking equipment so far) as well as links to Ordnance Survey maps. One user has posted video blogs of sections of the Scottish National Trail, which help me understand the terrain. The news section includes features on rewilding and land use - all of which help understand the context of the terrain I will be walking through.
The site is funded by donations from its users, and from the John Muir Trust and NESTA. So it is independent and objective, important in a site that touches on the health and safety of its readers.
Thank you, Helen and Paul!