by Gary Hayden
Overall, the walk was very pleasant, as far as I recall. But the thing about it that sticks in my mind is the shock and dismay Wendy and I felt as we entered the outskirts of town and found the footpaths, verges, and bushes littered with cigarette butts, crisp packets, fast-food cartons, and dog-shit.
When you live in a town or a city, you get so used to that stuff that you forget how ugly and depressing and dehumanizing it all is. But after spending a few weeks on the moors, in the glens, and beside the lochs and streams, you see it all afresh – and it disgusts you.
We dutifully visited the obelisk that marks the southern end of the West Highland Way, which is incongruously situated on a pedestrianized street in the town centre, and then shopped for supplies, before heading a mile or so out of town to our campsite at Bankell Farm.
That night, just before sleep, a strange and unexpected thought entered my head.
Up to that point, during four weeks of JoGLE, I’d always thought of our backpacker tent as nothing more than a necessary inconvenience.
Necessary, because backpacking is the only way to do End to End without breaking the bank. Over the course of three months, camping works out approximately £5,000 cheaper than B&B-ing.
Inconvenient, because the tent has to be lugged around for eight hours a day, because it has to be erected each evening and taken down each morning, because it isn’t big enough to hold you and your stuff comfortably, because it’s wet through with dew every morning when you have to pack it away, and because it’s infuriatingly difficult to get out of and back into when you need the loo in the night.
So, bearing all of this in mind, it came as a surprise, as I drifted off to sleep that final night on the West Highland Way, to find the thought ‘I love my tent!’ popping unannounced into my head.
Whether it was the expression of a genuine emotion or the product of some half-sleeping delirium, I couldn’t – and still can’t – say.
But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty – the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life – thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty, simple and divine?
—Plato, Symposium
Chapter Four
Sentimental Journey
Milngavie – Falkirk – Linlithgow – Kirknewton – Carlops – Innerleithen – Melrose – Jedburgh – Byrness
Before setting out on JoGLE, Wendy and I spent a long time pondering how to get from the end of the West Highland Way, at Milngavie, to the start of the Pennine Way, at Kirk Yetholm. There’s no established walking route between these two places. There are few campsites and fewer hostels. And there’s not much in the way of scenery either.
In the end, we decided to enliven the journey by taking an indirect route via Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, which we both adore. Apart from that, we had low expectations for this part of the journey. And, in the main, our expectations were fulfilled. Looking back, there are entire days I struggle to remember.
But, although the outer journey was dull, the inner journey wasn’t. Thoughts and ideas bloomed in those unstimulating surroundings like flowers in the desert.
We began with a twenty-four-mile forced march from Milngavie to Falkirk, most of it along the towpath of the Forth and Clyde Canal. Rain was forecast, so we decided to leave our tent at Milngavie, walk without backpacks, and return to Milngavie by train at the end of the day.
The Forth and Clyde Canal isn’t Britain’s prettiest waterway. It’s wide and quiet, and has an excellent towpath, but the view is often obscured by trees. And even when there is a view, it is often of nothing more inspiring than industrial parks and housing estates.
The route has one highlight though, namely the Falkirk Wheel, the world’s only rotating boat lift. This 114-feet-high landmark structure, which connects the Forth and Clyde Canal to the Union Canal, manages to be both a magnificent piece of engineering and a breath-taking modern sculpture at the same time.
Apparently, the design took its inspiration from, among other things, a Celtic axe, the ribcage of a whale, and the propeller of a ship, but to me it resembles nothing so much as a giant corkscrew. In any case, it’s a splendid sight, which attracts half a million visitors a year.
Of course, Wendy and I weren’t so much visiting the Wheel as marching past it. We didn’t reach it until late in the afternoon, and had to press on for two more miles before we reached Falkirk High railway station.
On our journey back to Milngavie, we shared a train with a crowd of business-suited Glasgow commuters. It felt strange, after a month of solitary tramping through the countryside, to be back in mainstream society, and I felt a little sorry for all of those people with their briefcases, laptops, and mobile phones.
That day’s walk was the longest so far: a total of twenty-eight miles, including the walk to and from Milngavie Station. It hadn’t been the most exciting of walks either. But, despite its length and lack of stimulation, it wasn’t unpleasant.
On the very first stage of JoGLE, between John o’Groats and Inverness, I had found the last few miles of each day dull and painful. By the third stage, on the West Highland Way, I had ceased to find them painful, and found them merely dull. And by this fourth stage, even the dullness had ceased to be an issue.
Don’t get me wrong. The dullness was still there, to a degree. It just wasn’t a big deal any more. I had adjusted to it. Accepted it. Even begun to embrace it.
Each day had a predictable rhythm: a mildly tedious start to the morning with the quotidian chore of taking down our camp. Then five or six hours of enjoyable walking with energy levels high. Then an hour’s weary plodding, late in the afternoon. And finally, a congenial evening of food, rest, and relaxation.
And it was a nice rhythm, consisting of modest highs and lows that flowed seamlessly from one to another like the peaks and troughs of a sine wave. It had a balance about it, and a tranquillity about it. The modest lows offset the modest highs, and the modest highs offset the modest lows. So, in a curious way, it was all good.
In The Conquest of Happiness, Bertrand Russell suggests that too much excitement may not be a good thing, and that a certain amount of boredom may be a necessary ingredient of a happy life:
There is an element of boredom which is inseparable from the avoidance of too much excitement, and too much excitement not only undermines the health, but dulls the palate for every kind of pleasure, substituting titillations for profound organic satisfactions, cleverness for wisdom, and jagged surprises for beauty.
By this stage of JoGLE, I had begun to appreciate what he meant.
Many of us, nowadays, feel compelled to fill every waking moment of our lives with TV, music, Facebook, text messages, tweets, and smartphone apps. We can’t abide the thought of sitting quietly, even for a moment, with our thoughts. We crave excitement and stimulation, and regard boredom with abhorrence and fear.
But long-distance walking changed all of that for me. It taught me that periods of mild boredom are nothing to be afraid of. In fact, they can be a good thing.
On a typical day, I walked for about eight hours. I spent perhaps an hour or two of this listening to music and audio-books, and perhaps an hour or two conversing with Wendy. This left me with at least four hours in which I had nothing to do but walk and think.
Those quiet hours, free from electronic stimuli, and free from talk, work, and play, were sometimes a little dull. And in the early stages that dullness worried and bothered me. But, as time went by, the worry and the bother faded. I came to regard periods of mild boredom not as an enemy but as a companion – and even as a friend.
Those long, empty hours were a cold-turkey cure for my addiction to stimulation and distraction. And, although the cure was painful at first, once it had taken effect, I felt liberated. My mind acquired a newfound tranquillity, clarity, and focus.
The following morning, we packed up our tent, hoisted up our backpacks, walked to the
railway station, caught the train back to Falkirk, and then walked ten miles along the Union Canal to Linlithgow.
I remember little about the walk except that the Union Canal was much prettier than the Forth and Clyde Canal, and that Wendy suffered a couple of hours of agony after being bitten on the inside of her lip by an insect.
Linlithgow boasts the magnificent ruins of a royal palace, a beautiful little loch, a fine medieval church, and a high street replete with historic buildings. However, all of this passed me by unnoticed. I recall getting my hair cut by a barber who removed my ear hair by setting fire to it, and I recall eating fish and chips out of a box, and that’s about it.
But, although I have forgotten the day’s sights, I remember very clearly the music I listened to as I walked. With only a week left in Scotland, I had opted for some traditional Scottish songs. And they really got to me.
In the past, I’ve observed a tendency in myself, when I’m worn out or stressed or depressed, to become emotional at the drop of a hat. I’ve found myself moved to tears by such unlikely stimuli as advertisements for Sunny Delight and episodes of Bargain Hunt.
On this day, though, I felt neither worn out nor stressed nor depressed, and yet I found myself welling up at the words to songs. For example, these lines from ‘When You and I were Young, Maggie’:
They say we are agèd and grey, Maggie,
As spray by the white breakers flung,
But to me you’re as fair as you were, Maggie,
When you and I were young.
Or these words from ‘The Road and the Miles to Dundee’:
I took the gowd pin, from the scarf on my bosom,
And said ‘keep ye this, in re-mem-brance O’ me’,
Then brave-ly I kissed, the sweet lips O’ the lassie
E’er I part-ed wi’ her, On the road to Dundee.
I was surprised to find myself in such a tearfully sentimental mood in the absence of any of the usual triggers.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been partial to a bit of sentimentality – which explains, in part, my adoration of Dickens. But by this stage of JoGLE, I seemed to have got into an unusually heightened state. My feelings – all of them – had become more intense.
Walking for hours each day, attuned to the rhythms of my own breath, heartbeat, and footfall, and with a mind free of distraction and stimulation, had put me into a meditative state. And, like many a meditator before me, I achieved a higher level of consciousness. I began to think more clearly, to feel more intensely, to understand more deeply, and to appreciate more fully.
This enabled me to enter right into the words, music, and sentiments of those wonderful old songs: one moment striding along, arms swinging, bellowing out the words to ‘Loch Lomond’, and the next moment getting misty-eyed over the bittersweet parting on the ‘Road to Dundee’.
I don’t recall the sixteen-mile walk from Linlithgow to Kirknewton. I imagine that we took an indirect route along the towpath of the Union Canal (looking at the map that would seem the obvious thing to do). But it’s possible that we took some other route.
What I do remember is looking at Wendy, as we walked the last half-mile into Kirknewton, and being surprised at how exhausted she looked. I, on the other hand, felt as fresh as a daisy and as strong as an ox.
This was such a role reversal, Wendy being the walker, that I couldn’t resist posting on Facebook, ‘New walking-partner required. I’ve worn the old one out.’
This was met with incredulity and outrage among Wendy’s friends. ‘I don’t believe it! Wendy would never give up!’ being a typical response. So, for a brief time, I got to experience the perverse thrill of Internet trolling.
Kirknewton is a village situated just southwest of Edinburgh, which has, as far as I know, nothing to recommend it to visitors. Our only purpose in going there was to catch a train to Edinburgh where we had arranged to spend a couple of nights with our friends Marilyn and Raphie.
Wendy and I had spent two years living in Edinburgh, and it’s our favourite place in the world. So we had a splendid time there, visiting old haunts and enjoying our friends’ open-hearted hospitality. On the second evening, we even managed to squeeze in a visit to the cinema and eat dinner at a proper restaurant – just like regular people.
From Edinburgh, we took the train back to Kirknewton, and then set off on a five-day hike southeast to Kirk Yetholm.
We’d intended to break up the journey wherever we could find cheap accommodation. But cheap accommodation is in short supply in that part of Scotland. Consequently, for our first night, we had to book an expensive (by our standards) room at a pub-hotel in the village of Carlops.
The ten-mile walk to Carlops took us across the Pentland Hills, which lie southwest of Edinburgh. It was a pleasant stroll through upland pastures and heather-clad moors. And, although we were never more than ten miles from the city centre, the hills were so empty and quiet that we might have been a hundred miles from anywhere.
On such a short, easy walk, there was no point hurrying. So we spent the day ambling rather than hiking, and stopped frequently to enjoy the scenery. I spent a lot of time listening to music as I walked, and supplemented traditional Scottish songs with rock-and-roll hits of the fifties and sixties. It was fabulous.
Walking, and having nothing to do except walk, and having nothing to distract me and pull me out of the moment as I walked, enabled me to listen to music the way I listened to it as a teenager: with complete and unforced attention.
Certain songs moved me deeply, especially, I noticed, those that expressed simple heartfelt emotions. For example, The Teddy Bears’ 1958 hit ‘To Know Him is to Love Him’, The Dixie Cups’ 1964 hit ‘Chapel of Love’, and the 1964 hit ‘Soldier Boy’ by The Shirelles.
Those songs rekindled the feeling I had when I was in my late teens and suddenly realized that life and happiness were simple matters after all: love this girl . . . win this girl . . . and, in the words of The Dixie Cups, ‘never be lonely any more’.
This is the essence of romantic love, which Schopenhauer describes so accurately and so pithily as ‘this longing that closely associates the notion of an endless bliss with the possession of a definite woman, and an unutterable pain with the thought that this possession is not available’.
Most of us have felt like this at some period of our lives. And few of us have not since learned that life and love are never quite so simple. But those sentimental old songs with their naive optimism take us back to those wonderful times – which is, I guess, why we love them so much.
And the interesting thing about them, artistically speaking, is the emotional punch they pack into a few simple words.
It doesn’t take a genius, of course, to understand that simple words can be an effective medium for expressing uncomplicated emotions. But knowing precisely which words to use, and in what order to put them – that’s the tricky bit. That’s where the artistry comes in.
Take some of those early Beatles songs for example: ‘Love me Do’, ‘Ask Me Why’, ‘From Me to You’, and so on. They use simple words to express uncomplicated emotions, but, even though they’re great songs, they pack no emotional punch. It’s hard to imagine anyone ever getting misty-eyed over ‘Love Me Do’.
Now, by way of contrast, consider ‘To Know Him is to Love Him’.
The first verse uses just fourteen different words, thirteen of them polysyllabic, but it captures perfectly – and I mean perfectly – the tenderness and innocence of early-stage romantic love.
So what’s so special about those words in that order? And how does the songwriter choose them?
I spent a long time, as I ambled across the Pentland Hills, musing upon this. When, for example, Phil Spector wrote the magical first line of ‘To Know Him is to Love Him’ was it poetic inspiration? Or did he just get lucky?
Ditto for the equally simple-yet-poignant lyrics of ‘Chapel of Love’ and ‘Soldier Boy’. Did the songwriters lovingly craft those words, knowing that they p
erfectly express the excitement and unalloyed joy of young love? Or did they just stumble upon them?
In my normal, distracted, overstimulated frame of mind, I don’t suppose I would have made much progress on those questions. But in my walking-induced, meditative frame of mind, I felt that I had the time, the energy, and the clarity of mind to pursue them.
I came to the conclusion that moments of perfection in song-writing occur when the artist is completely attuned with both subject and medium.
When I say that the songwriter must be attuned with her subject, I mean that she must have a profound insight into the aspect of experience that she wants to share. There’s a parallel, here, with kado, the Japanese art of flower-arranging.
In his splendid book The Japanese Way of the Artist, the calligrapher and martial-artist H.E. Davey says of the kado-practitioner: ‘If she perceives the rhythm and alternation of the ki [life-force] of plants and blossoms – their growth, decline and death, how they change in form and feeling with the seasons – then she can successfully arrange flowers.’
And that’s precisely how it is with the songwriter. If she’s attuned to the rhythm and alternation of the ki, the life-force, of romantic love – its growth, decline, and death, and how it changes in form and feeling with the seasons – then she can successfully write a love song.
The song may ostensibly be about just one phase of love, perhaps its beginning or its end. But in the listener it will awaken thoughts and feelings about love’s entire course.
This means that a truly great song about the joy and innocence of early-stage love will evoke subtle feelings of sadness for love’s decline, and a truly great song about the heartbreak of declining love will evoke subtle feelings of joy for love’s arising.
