LEJOG Day 92: Wick to Keiss: Epilogue Part 3

Weather: Cloudy with cold northerly

Distance covered today: 12.7km (7.9mi)

Last night's B&B: Queen's Hotel (£50)

Cumulative distance: 1919.4km (1192.7mi)/ % Complete: 99.1%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 92 (click!)

A Personal View

To conclude my journey, I promised a last introspection on what this has meant to me at a personal level.  The first thing I should say, and it is a disappointment in the context of my intentions, is that doing a long-distance walk is not the way to find time to think.  In my mind’s eye, I had anticipated that after the early excitements, as the days started to fuse into each other, I would be lost in introspection and that I would be able to think deeply about things.  

I can safely report that this never happened! This blog is proof!  Things were changing all the time! At the most basic safety level, I needed to keep my wits about me almost all the time, whether it was avoiding traffic on the A-roads, or avoiding bottomless bogs on the moors.  Then there was the ever-changing kaleidoscope of views, colours, flora, fauna and landscape that demanded attention at every turn. On top of that there was the practical business of making sure I was on the right route and sometimes of negotiating obstacles along the path.  I found myself interrupting myself almost all of the time. I couldn’t have been busier!  The time for introspection was therefore generally in my bedroom at night, by which time I was routinely too exhausted to think and there was the ever-present deadline of the blog to observe, not to mention the problems of gaining access to the network! 

So I may not have THUNK DEEP THOUGHTS, but no matter. It’s hard to know where to start, but I feel it would be appropriate first to reflect on the attitudes of all the people I met along the way.  Over the entire period of the journey, not once did I feel threatened or in danger. I did comment in Avonmouth on the disaffection of the unemployed youth and I worried a little in Crewe about whether things would be safe after dark, but in terms of my own experience, I met only politeness and consideration. I find it scarcely credible that one can walk in any country, admittedly mostly in rural areas, and find nothing but people on their very best behaviour! It suggests to me, despite the headlines, a country essentially at peace with itself. It reflects generations of cultural programming, but it contrasts so strongly with this land’s history, some of which I was interested to learn about, where through generations, people were at war with each other. I am convinced that those enmities were driven by the people at the top, not the common folk. They were just the cannon fodder to the ambitions of the powerful. People surely couldn’t have changed so much otherwise, could they? 

To be fair, I did have one bad moment. I was walking across an intersection in up-market Cheshire and a car came up behind me wanting to turn into the intersection, just where I was walking with my back to the turning vehicle!  The first I knew of it was a loud and prolonged blast on the hooter. I was really irritated and had the presence of mind to hold my ground, spin on my axis, observe that the hooter was a fancy Audi sports convertible with a couple of yummy mummies on board. I enquired innocently whether I knew them? “Out of the way!” came the response. I moved not an inch and cupped my ear, pretending that I couldn’t hear. There was a yelled response and again I feigned polite ignorance. By now the driver was livid with rage and she was changing colour as I watched, bewitched! Eventually, she gunned her engine, did an exaggerated semi-circle around me, and gave me two fingers as she disappeared into the distance, burning rubber.  I felt I had had the better of the exchange!  This was though the only example I can remember of bad manners at any time on my journey and I wonder if there is anywhere else on earth where that would have been the case. 

I suppose another abiding impression from my journey is the surprising emptiness of Britain. For more than 90 days, I have been wandering along the length and breadth of the country, and most of the time I was in an empty space. It is true that I designed my journey to avoid built-up areas, but even so, it is scarcely credible that so much of this crowded island consists of nothing but open country. Back home, the media are full of people objecting to the evisceration of “green belt” land and the horrors of airport expansion, and yet the countryside is actually, virtually empty. I was also conscious along the way of the intense sense of community felt by people and their reluctance to move elsewhere in pursuit of jobs. I was struck by the fact that though I have poured heaps of vitriol on the motorway network, it does serve its essential purpose of moving people in their own time and in great comfort from where they are to where they want to be in very short periods of time. I was also struck, controversially, by how little land it actually does occupy (though the sound travels further). It seems to me that people see the country in terms of their roadmaps, rather than a satellite view of the reality. On a roadmap, even an OS map, roads are necessarily huge multiples of their width in reality, giving the impression that the country is being strangled in roads, when the reality is that it isn’t and that these roads are the thoroughfare to community cohesion and economic growth, despite the problems of energy and pollution. This, no doubt unpopular, observation was a revelation for me! 

Another extraordinary experience was the fact that I was not alone!  I had anticipated that one of the problems of the journey would be loneliness. I haven’t been alone for a few months, ever! I wondered how this would affect me.  Well, I can’t answer that question!!  For a start, I met so many lovely people along the way, almost all of whom did not object to my interrogating them!  Somehow, I felt liberated to ask questions that in a social context at home, I would have thought were far too much of an intrusion, but when you are pushing yourself physically and when you are in a different place emotionally and spiritually, it seems natural to cross the normal borders that inhibit communication.  I found myself forging relationships that I hope will sustain well beyond this journey.  

And then there was this medium. This too has been a revelation! Apart from my nearest and dearest and current friends, I have reconnected with many old friends and found that we were still communicating in the same way as we did decades ago. In a very strange way, they have spoken to me as I was in my youth, and that has resonated especially because what I have been doing is so far outside of my current reality. It is not going too far to say that the effect has been rejuvenating and invigorating!  Certainly not lonely! 

Just as important have been those dear friends and relations who have joined me on my travels.  Walking is a wonderful way to communicate. I think it helps that you aren’t staring into the other’s eyes, and that you have the chance to break the conversation by looking at, and commenting on, the view. Whatever the reason, I think the experience binds one to another in a way that few other activities can. I found along the way that I met small groups of people where this was true for them too. Often walking had brought them together, and they found themselves walking repeatedly, year after year, because they found the walking experience brought them a special relationship.  I now understand that.  My only disappointment is that many of the friends who said that they would join me for individual legs found that in the event they couldn’t. More’s the pity. In most cases their busy lives just wouldn’t allow it. For those that did make it, I think we forged a special bond that will endure. 

There are of course very many people who do LEJOG. As I approach the end I become ever more aware of just how many cyclists do it, and although I haven’t seen many walkers, because we are after all walking in much the same direction at much the same pace, I know that they are out there!  In some ways though, I like to think I belong to a fairly small group. Many LEJOGers are experienced walkers, who will already have done one or more of the long-distance paths I have covered on this journey. I also know that many inexperienced would-be LEJOGers never make it, because they were insufficiently prepared for such an undertaking. In my case, I must have been on the edge of that group, but the great advantage for me was that I was sufficiently inexperienced to be positively blown away by the beauty of the landscape of Britain. I know that I have repeatedly gone way over the top in this blog; been almost emotionally overwhelmed by some of the things I’ve seen.  I will never forget that incredible walk along the plateau to High Cup above Dufton on the Pennines or that walk over Rannoch Moor in the changing weather in the West Highlands. My emotional response was elevated by the walking of it, alone in the elements, pushing myself as hard as I could, hour after hour. You just don’t feel those things if you drive there in a car. It was my naivety and inexperience that lent a boyish glow to my whole experience. When I started, I had no idea that I would react the way I did. 

Another truly amazing experience was the sense in which I walked into Britain’s past. My knowledge of the history of these islands is at best sketchy (it’s one of my firm intentions to put that right when I get home!), and with the help of countless information boards, statues, memorials, guidebooks and the web, I have learned much about the stormy history of these islands. From pre-historic dwellings to the Roman invasion, from Offa and his little understood dyke to the Reivers of the Scottish borders, from the turbulent Tudor times to the Highland Clearances, from the ruins of the Cornish tin smelters to the ruins of the industrial revolution, I learned at first hand things that probably most English kids learn at school.   But for me, often unexpectedly coming upon these things, such as the house where Mary Queen of Scots lived when she was in Jedburgh, and so many other “discoveries”, there was a sense of huge excitement and interest. It all seemed to make more sense in the physical dimension than just in the written word. Again, I fear it was my heightened emotional state that did it for me. But it undoubtedly added an extra and unexpected dimension to my journey. I also noted with great sadness that in every single one of the hundreds of villages through which I passed, there was a memorial to those who had died in the terrible wars of the 20^th Century.  At least my generation has been spared loss on that scale. 

And finally, at a deeper level, I’ve come to realise that for the first time in my life, I’ve done something that I really didn’t believe I was capable of. I wish I had learned this lesson when I was much younger. I suppose common sense and experience have prevented me from taking foolhardy risks throughout my life, but that has also meant that I have consistently erred on the side of caution, and that has affected my life and my achievements. I now realise that I, like everyone, was capable of so much more, if only I had taken the plunge. When I planned this journey, I knew that I was relatively inexperienced and planned accordingly, but I still didn’t think that I would have the stamina, the resilience and the guts to make a go of it.  I was also aware that if I failed, I would do so very publicly, especially as a result of this blog!  Yet I still went ahead and did it!  That was out of character and surprising to me. This is probably something Father Johnson and the Jesuits were trying to teach me all those years ago, but I was too wrapped up in myself to learn it. If there is any lesson at all that I would like to pass on to my daughters, it is this.  No doubt General Freyberg would approve… 

That said, I wouldn’t have made it without the consistent help and support from Veronica. She has been there all along, worrying about my safety, mailing maps and prescription medicines, insisting on a nightly call so that in its absence she could call out the entire national emergency service, following my journey in detail on Google Satellite View, worrying about obstacles ahead, helping me with B&B bookings and sorting out my business affairs at home. She has made a huge effort for this journey, but has had few of the pleasures. I am hugely in debt to her!  

I want to thank all those friends and relations who took the trouble to walk stages with me, especially John F, who came all the way from Crete to join me for three fascinating days. I am most grateful also to those people that I met along the way, with whom I hope to have a continuing relationship. I want as well to thank all those who contributed to this blog with their comments, both on the blog itself or privately in emails, tweets and texts. They have been a stimulus to me and very much made this whole exercise more of a conversation than a personal reverie. They have, at least until this particular post (!), kept me grounded and at the same time, inspired.  

(By the way, if you have been reading any of this blog and would like to stay in contact after it closes, please just email me at kevinslejog@gmail.com .  Alternatively, if you are already receiving emails of the posts, just hit the reply button in your email.  I would really like to hear from you.)

A view of the High Street in Wick

Still counting down!

The scenery today was a bleak and featureless as ever. Nothing except grey, scudding cloud and a morose sea in the distance

Through the misty atmosphere, a view of Ackergill Tower, a venue for expensive corporate getaways and upmarket weddings

Still counting down! Actually, JOG was in easy reach today, but I wanted to arrive there tomorrow feeling fresh to welcome Veronica

Looming through the mist, the ruins of Castle Sinclair Girnigoe near Noss Head lighthouse. The 4th Earl of Caithness imprisoned his son there, suspecting rebellion, and fed him salted beef with nothing to drink until he died insane from thirst. Nice man.

For Richard O and Phyllis, a last look at these Scottish lambs - now almost full-grown

The River of Wester, flowing out of the Loch of Wester under the Bridge of Wester all the way to the North Sea.

My village for the night, Keiss

And this is Keiss's main road, with my hotel up on the left. You will note that I was very short of photographic material in today's drab wilderness!