by Gary Hayden
A Oneworld Book
First published in Great Britain, North America and Australia by Oneworld Publications, 2016
This ebook published by Oneworld Publications, 2016
Copyright © Gary Hayden 2016
The moral right of Gary Hayden to be identified as the
Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78074-656-2
eISBN 978-1-78074-657-9
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders for the use of material in this book.
The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions herein and would be
grateful if they were notified of any corrections that should be incorporated
in future reprints or editions of this book.
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For
everyone who helped us on our way.
Contents
Map
Prologue
1 First Steps
2 Simple Pleasures
3 Open Spaces
4 Sentimental Journey
5 Getting There
6 Heart of England
7 Wild Life
8 Bittersweet
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Prologue
It’s a beautiful mid-July afternoon. Down below – and getting closer all the time – are the blue waters of the North Sea and the green moorland pastures of the northeast Highlands.
The tiny propeller-plane is bouncing around and making whining noises. So, to take my mind off the bouncing and the whining, I do some mental arithmetic: There are two thousand steps in a mile. So that’s two million steps in a thousand miles. But we’ll probably do nearer to twelve hundred miles. So that’s two-and-a-half million steps, as near as dammit.
Soon, we’ll land in Wick. From there, we’ll take a bus to John o’Groats. And tomorrow, we’ll start walking to Land’s End.
Wendy, sitting beside me, is looking happy and serene.
‘Do you realize, we’re going to be walking two-and-a-half million steps?’ I say.
She ponders the information for a moment, then grins and says, ‘Brilliant!’
I lean back in my seat and wonder what the hell I’ve let myself in for.
The fact is, I’ve always been a reluctant walker. In the early days of our marriage, I would sometimes accompany Wendy on mountain-walks in Snowdonia or the Lake District. But I’d usually get bored and grumpy within a few hours. So eventually she gave up on me and joined a walking group.
Since hitting middle age, I’ve become more tolerant of perambulatory excursions. They’re good exercise, if nothing else. But, on the whole, I’ve still tended to view walking as a rather dull affair.
On the face of it, then, I’m an unlikely candidate for the ‘End to End’: Britain’s longest long-distance walking challenge, extending from the northeastern tip of Scotland to the southwestern tip of England. But I was prompted to it by two considerations.
First and foremost, Wendy wanted to do it. In fact, she’d wanted to do it for years. And now, at the end of a five-year stint teaching in an international school in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, she’d finally found the time.
Second, I’m a sucker for a physical challenge. Like many middle-aged men, I’m engaged in a constant, bitter, and losing battle against physical decline. This means that, when I’m not devouring pasties and guzzling beer, I take grim pleasure in making my paunchy body run around, do press-ups, and perform tricks with a skipping-rope. So, in that sense, a three-month hike up and down hills carrying a heavy rucksack is right up my street.
For those reasons, when Wendy suggested End to Ending, I surprised her by saying yes.
Even so, I still had my doubts about the whole thing. After all, three months is a long time; and twelve hundred miles is a long way; and two-and-a-half million steps – that’s an awful lot of steps.
The plane continues its bumpy descent. I look out of the window, and I have to admit that those blue waters and green pastures do look inviting.
So who knows? Wendy might be right. It could just turn out to be brilliant . . .
The beginning is the most important part of any work.
—Plato, Republic
Chapter One
First Steps
John o’Groats – Duncansby Head – Wick – Dunbeath – Berriedale – Helmsdale – Brora – Golspie – Dornoch Firth – Evanton – Inverness
There’s no set route for the End to End. You can do it entirely along roads or you can navigate your way through forest, field, and mountain. You can take a more or less straight line or you can zigzag around, stopping off anywhere that takes your fancy. You can do it from Land’s End to John o’Groats (LEJoG) or you can do it – as Wendy and I did – from John o’Groats to Land’s End (JoGLE). You can take as much or as little time over it as you like.
All that matters is that you walk every step of the way.
If you take the direct(ish) route, along roads, the journey is about 850 miles, which means that you can do it in six weeks or less if you hoof it.
Most End to Enders, however, opt for a more scenic route, taking long-distance paths whenever possible and using roads only when necessary. These journeys are typically between eleven hundred and twelve hundred miles long, and take two to three months to complete.
Wendy and I planned to take a scenic route along some of Britain’s best-loved National Trails, including the Great Glen Way, the West Highland Way, the Pennine Way, the Heart of England Way, the Cotswold Way, and the South West Coast Path.
The first of these, the Great Glen Way, begins at Inverness, Scotland’s most northerly city, which is situated 120 miles south of John o’Groats.
For the End to Ender, there are two ways of getting from John o’Groats to Inverness. You can loop west through some of the most remote parts of the Scottish Highlands, wild-camp beneath the stars, and experience Nature at her most wild and free. Or you can trudge 120 miles along the A99 and the A9, dodge traffic, trash the soles of your feet, and endure hour upon hour of mind-numbing tedium.
Wendy and I chose the latter option.
Here’s the journey in a nutshell.
You walk 118 miles by road: first from John o’Groats to Dunbeath along the A99, and then from Dunbeath to Inverness along the A9. Sometimes you have the sea on your left and rough pasture on your right. Sometimes, when the road takes you further inland, you have rough pasture on both your left and your right.
Sometimes, you pass through a small town or a tiny village. Occasionally, you come across a museum or a quaint harbour or a nice little beach. Every so often, you get to take a brief but delicious detour along a minor road or down a forest track. But for the most part you just plod along the A-road.
Sometimes the road is busy and wide and dangerous. At other times it is quiet and narrow and dangerous. There’s rarely a footpath.
If, like Wendy and me, your budget doesn’t stretch to B&Bs, then you sometimes have to walk long distances to get from one campsite to the next, unless you are the adventurous type and don’t mind wild-camping in a farmer’s field at the side of the road.
This means that unless you are wealthy or intrepid you never get time to explore the towns and villages, or to visit the museums and harbours and beaches. You’re too busy hurrying on.
You wake up. You take down your
tent. You walk. You set up your tent. You sleep. Apart from eating, that’s pretty much it.
For the first day or two, you make an effort to look around as you walk: at the sea to your left and the rough pasture to your right. But you soon give up the effort. Your eyes are irresistibly drawn to the road.
Our first day’s walk took us from our guesthouse in John o’Groats to nearby Duncansby Head and back again: a round-trip of about six miles.
In 2010, John o’Groats won (but refused to accept) a Carbuncle Award from Urban Realm magazine for being ‘Scotland’s most dismal town’. I have nothing to add except that it serves what is quite possibly Scotland’s most dismal fish and chips from a portakabin overlooking the harbour.
Uninhabited Duncansby Head, the most northeasterly point on the Scottish mainland, and the true start/finish of the End to End challenge, is a whole other kettle of fish. With its tiny lighthouse, sea cliffs, comical puffins, sea-breezes, and stacks (large pinnacles of rock jutting out from the sea), it puts its better-known near-neighbour to shame.
On our second day, Wendy and I shouldered our backpacks (complete with tent, sleeping-mats, sleeping-bags, pillows, clothing, waterproofs, cooking equipment, toiletries, torches, first-aid kit, electronic items, and food and water) and hit the road with a vengeance.
Eight hours and sixteen miles later, we reached Wick, a fair-sized estuary town, which was once a major player in the herring industry.
Wick, for all I know, may have its attractions. But for me, that day, aching and weary as I was, it was nothing more than a final obstacle en route to our campsite on the outskirts of the farther side of town.
By the end of the third day – twenty hot and dusty miles from Wick to the coastal village of Dunbeath – I was literally groaning with pain.
Two days of carrying a thirty-five-pound rucksack had taken such a toll on my shoulders and back that I grunted and squirmed and cursed my way along the last few miles to our campsite.
Wendy, by this time limping ten or fifteen yards behind me, was in an even worse condition. Constant pounding of the tarmac road had blistered her toes so badly that they barely looked like toes any more. Every step was a triumph of will – and stupidity – over pain.
I had known beforehand that the End to End would be no picnic, that there would be times when weary muscles, sore feet, and sheer bloody tedium would test our mettle and resolve. But I had anticipated neither how quickly nor how severely we would be tested.
When I had looked ahead, in my mind’s eye, at the trials and tribulations we would face, they had all seemed rather romantic. I had pictured myself battling through them with a stern and manly look on my face. But I learned very quickly that there is nothing romantic about an aching back and sore feet.
During the afternoon of that third gruelling day, as I dragged myself along the dreary ribbon of tarmac that is the A9, I kept up my flagging spirits by ruminating on some wise words from the pen of the English philosopher Bertrand Russell: ‘The secret of happiness is to understand that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.’
At first glance, those words appear facetious: a paradoxical bon mot intended for amusement rather than edification. But the more you think about them, the more you realize that they are as true as they are witty, and as wise as they are true.
Take JoGLE, for example. If you set off expecting three months of jolly jaunts through the British countryside, then you’re going to be sorely disappointed. You’ll quickly discover that it’s not all lighthouses and puffins and sea-breezes.
On the contrary, if you’re going to walk all the way from John o’Groats to Land’s End, then, as sure as eggs is eggs, you’ll have to endure sore feet, aching limbs, inclement weather, fatigue, accidents, disappointments, and boredom. Sometimes you’ll feel like jacking the whole thing in.
But, if you know all of this beforehand, if you understand that it comes with the territory, then you can keep going. You can say to yourself, ‘This was only to be expected.’
This is especially true of the A99/A9 section between John o’Groats and Inverness. Every End to Ender who’s done even a modicum of research knows that it’s long, it’s tedious, and it’s tough on your feet. So the best thing to do is to accept it; roll with it; suck it up. Because if you hang in long enough you’ll eventually get back to the good stuff: to the lighthouses, the puffins, and the sea-breezes.
And it’s the same with life, in general. If you blunder your way through it thinking that the world owes you or anyone else a good time, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Every time you’re rejected, betrayed, or frustrated, every time you encounter pain or sickness, every time you’re cheated, mistreated, or defeated, you’ll feel angry and aggrieved.
But if you accept that the world cares nothing for you and your plans, that it’s a pitiless place where bad things happen even to good people, never mind the likes of you and me, then when bad things do happen you can accept them stoically and wait – or, at any rate, hope – for better times.
And the good news is that for most of us, most of the time, better times do come around eventually.
I was painfully conscious, as we squirmed and grunted and limped our way to Reception at the Inver Caravan Park in Dunbeath, of what a pathetic spectacle we made. But I could sum up neither the will nor the energy to try to appear anything other than I truly was: knackered.
The owner greeted us with a look of pity. She asked if we were by any chance heading for Land’s End, and then comforted us by observing that she had known people arrive ‘in an even worse condition’.
An hour later, having erected our backpacker tent and abandoned plans to cook dinner on our camping stove, we hobbled our way to the nearby Bay Owl pub: an ugly flat-roofed concrete building with a surprisingly good restaurant and a fine view of Dunbeath Harbour and Castle.
I knew that bad times had temporarily given way to good the moment I looked towards the bar and saw a shiny brass hand-pump, all primed and ready to deliver Trade Winds real ale.
If you have never drunk a pint of beer after toiling footsore and weary along thirty-six miles of hot and dusty road, then you can have no inkling of how good that beer tasted. It quenched my thirst; it nourished my body; it restored my spirits; it uplifted my soul.
It was more than a drink. It was consolation. It was courage. It was hope.
Consolation, courage, and hope were further restored by chips, steak-and-ale pie, and an additional half-pint of Trade Winds. Within the hour, I was able to look back with amused complacency upon the trials and tribulations of the previous two days. I began to feel that every single body-bruising mile had been worthwhile, that, without the toil, the sweat, and the pain, I might never have appreciated the true worth of a good pint of ale.
Like many people who live in the developed world, I rarely get to appreciate food and drink properly, because I rarely sit down to a meal feeling weary and hungry, and having worked physically hard for it.
But that day, having pushed myself harder and for longer than ever before, I was primed for enjoyment. In addition to the usual pleasures of the table – the taste, texture, and aroma of the food and the gentle satisfaction of a full stomach – there was the added thrill of refuelling the muscles and the mind.
The feeling is hard to explain, but it’s as though every tired and depleted cell in your body is sucking up energy and sustenance as you eat and drink. And it’s sublime.
In the absence of this pleasure, we in the developed world tend to seek our culinary kicks in mere excess. Step into any Starbucks or Costa Coffee and you’ll see what I mean: overweight, under-exercised punters ramming down ‘coffees’ laced with flavoured syrups and whipped cream, accompanied by a side-helping of cheesecake and a dollop of self-loathing.
As I sat there musing upon all of this, I began to appreciate what the Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus meant when he wrote to a friend: ‘Living on bread and water, I rejoice in the pleasure of my body and spit upon the pleasures of extravag
ance.’
I had thought about those words often before, and had even written about them, but only at that moment did I feel that I truly understood them.
Epicurus had shunned urban life and had set up a self-sufficient community outside the walls of Athens. This meant that when he sat down to his bread and water at the end of each working day he was primed for enjoyment. He was weary and hungry, and had worked physically hard for them.
This is why his simple fare ‘thrilled him with pleasure in the body’, and why he was able to write to the same friend: ‘Send me a little vessel of cheese, so that I can feast whenever I please.’
I had always assumed that Epicurus’s ability to enjoy a modest diet came about as a result of mental discipline, that he had somehow willed himself to appreciate it. But, no. It was a natural consequence of his back-to-the-land, hard-working way of life.
That night, cramped up in our tiny backpacker tent, we examined Wendy’s feet by torchlight.
Her blisters had ballooned so much that the two smallest toes on each foot looked like fluid-filled sausage-skins with toenails glued none-too-securely onto the ends. It was clear that it would be an act of folly to squeeze them into hiking boots and beat them against an unforgiving road any time soon. There was nothing for it but to hole up in Dunbeath and let Nature practise her healing arts.
The next morning, as I sat in Dunbeath’s cosy little tea-room, eating jam-and-cream scones, I couldn’t help but notice a certain restiveness about Wendy.
My first thought was that this was because our unscheduled stop was taking us off timetable and over budget. So I felt a twinge of irritation. Why couldn’t she just relax and enjoy the moment?