pilgrimage

Revised, 10 Jan 2022

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

TS ELIOT - “Four Quartets” - Little Gidding

At 14, with some experience of camping, I came across John Hillaby’s “Journey Through Britain”, which was inspirational, even if it was not transformational: the seed was planted. In my sixth form years at school, I was introduced to the poetry of T S Eliot, and was mesmerised by its sounds. I was and continue to be bamboozled by his meanings but am transfixed by his rhythms and sounds. Later, after schooling, before education, my fascination with Eliot remained: lines stuck like velcro to memory. I have the books, and have from time to time read the poems, not understanding. But the notion of journeying through space and thought was centred by the Four Quartets and the lines from Little Gidding:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

For me, this is a truth, a reality, the sense that revisiting a place offers insights informed by experience, between then and now. Walking is about looking, understanding, talking. So it seems to me that the walking and thinking is as important as the where and the where to, and perhaps more valuable.

Walking and a journey is at the core of many books, for example the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s poem about journeying is well-kent:

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.

As Tolkien says, “ Not all those who wander are lost” .

During our walks on the Pilgrim Way, we (the inevitable Neil and I) had spoken about the artificiality of the Pilgrim Way itself and why we were doing it; Neil’s drive was about being one of the first to complete the way.

I liked the walking, and discovering the secrets on the way

However, as time and season passed, Neil had begun to see a real possibility of completing the Munros before the year end. For Neil the Munro round had become wearisome, something that has become less of an adventure and more of a burden, less attractive as the years passed faster than the Munro count. Now it was a probability not just a possibility. Different.

14 Jan 2022

Before lock down, experiences of Munro bashing with folk like Iona and Neil had been very wet, very long and pretty uncomfortable. There was a sense of well-ness and achievement afterwards, but I had little sense of enjoying being in the outdoors. For instance, it did make catching the ferry back to Oban and recovering in Oban YHA (with the most amazing showers) followed by food and drink in Spoonies at the harbour very sweet, but insufficient to erase the recent memory of that blasted heath. I had been drawn into a kind of walking that, for me, was missing the point. I had come to question the worth of ploughing up hills for the occasional spectacular view and sense of ( sometimes) being on top of the world. That kind of experience was often a less than wonderful world of mist and cloud. And being very wet. With Neil, I’d completed the North Mullardoch Ridge, starting by boat and walking back to the car in gathering dusk to retrieve the car at the dam. A “Dam” long way. Munros and peat hags in the gloom. I’d also done Buchaille Etive Mor with Iona, both peaks, in mist, in rain. Drenched. I’d done Ben More on Mull, again with Neil, and had been rained on continuously for several hours.

So, walking Munros in the rain is not a favoured past-time. I like walking as physical exercise, and it was necessary as part of a regime that addressed diabetes 2 issues. In contrast to the hills, the easier, lowland walks have been comfortable and interesting: passing through a social history. They have been a contrast to walking over hills denuded of trees and at other places broken by regimented forestry. Walking through lowland areas offers an opportunity to see history, and allows me to work on my dubious photographic technique. I like walking. I have also enjoyed walking with people. Reasons that justify walking. But there is a sense of the Fife Pilgrim’s Way (for example) being just an excuse for a long walk with a tenuous thread. For me walking needs should perhaps be something more. Pilgrimage has a clear connection with religion, and religion for me is a nonsense, just a way of rationalising the inexplicable. It is is also too often an excuse for intolerance and brutality. But I am drawn to the notion of a non-religious pilgrimage, a spiritual journey that has both a sense of its external surroundings and a recognition a relationship between thoughts, feelings and environment.

In August 2018 Neil, Iona and I travelled to Knoydart so that Neil and Iona could knock off Ladhair Beinn, a remote Munro on the Knoydart peninsula. The venture involved a substantial (20k or so) walk following the path on the south side of Loch Huorn to the hostel in Barisdale.

Iona and Neil are committed heavy duty walkers, keen to achieve their targets. Me? I like walking, and like remote areas, so I had little intention of hitting the heights if the weather wasn’t right. Trying to keep pace with those two was walking of a different kind.

The T.S. Eliot extract at the top of the page continually remains relevant.

Over the years I have sampled writing that talks about walking and all its dimensions, but John Hillaby’s “Journey Through Britain” inspired me as a teenager, and involved a vision of walking through the pathways of Britain.

My current fantasy is the North Sea Trail: I have no doubt I will not complete the trail, but I reckon that I have 10 years left to sample parts of the trail.