Category: walking

thing 50: ‘all is hazard that we have’:* St Cuthbert’s Way, part (v)

Breakfast with Boris: there’s a thought to make you shudder. The ubiquity of TVs in public places is a regular complaint of mine; and a screen with the loon in question was not what we wanted as we ate our croissants and eggs (not simultaneously; we’re not savages!) the following morning. There he was, though. We chatted a bit with another pair of walkers who were going as far as Kirk Yetholm today “though we might go further”. All the guidebooks were very clear that there was nothing but hills between Kirk Yetholm and Hethpool (where we were staying in the only available rooms), so why tell us that? What’s all that about?

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thing 50: ‘after today there will away this sense of sorrow’:* St Cuthbert’s Way, part (iv)

St Cuthbert rolled his eyes as we viewed yet another abbey from a distance, through railings; Jedburgh Abbey, this time. We managed to be both late and early for the bus, having sprinted through town to buy lunch (our bus sweeping past us as we sped) only to wait three quarters of an hour with Betty at the bus stop for the next service to “Gala”. Betty told us all about her dead collie, what it was like to have ten cats, and what Aunty Bunty had said about it all. I’ve always had the kind of face that people tell their life story to at bus stops; this time was no exception. Betty was warm, garrulous and very Scottish. I hadn’t heard the name Bunty since my Granny died. It was strangely nice.

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thing 50: ‘My soul is sunk’:* St Cuthbert’s Way, part (iii)

Is a Kitkat a chocolate bar or a biscuit? This might not seem an important distinction but when you’re 7 miles in and the “chocolate bar” promised in the hotel packed lunch turns out to be a Kitkat, you can feel cruelly misled. These things matter, is all I’m saying.

Breakfast had been rather good, you see. I had Eggs Florentine and coffee, served in a grand salon with huge mirror panels with fancy glass lights on them and the kind of embossed, gold, fol-de-rol wallpaper which only makes sense in big public spaces like this. Jenny and I were tucked (more…)

thing 47: ‘immensity taps at your life’: Shap Abbey and Keld Chapel

Bewildered, amongst bewildered sheep, I was blundering around a mud-skiddy fell in the steady, slanting, seeping rain. My legs, however, were having a whole different experience—of sea breeze and wide sky and blue air; of sand sliding away beneath my feet. It was a powerful muscle memory of walking in dunes on Balmedie beach when I was little: how tiring it is; how your feet slip away from you, slowly and sometimes swiftly, at unexpected angles; how hard it is to gain any ground. I felt 52 and 8 at the same time. Very odd.

This grey Sunday afternoon I’d finally managed to lever myself off the sofa, having decided on a small adventure: visiting the Chapel at Keld. Someone had (more…)