Wondering, Wandering, Walking

Much has been written about the physical and mental benefits of walking. I am recently returned from the UK after 5 weeks and have seen and done far more than I could have wished for. Irene was with me for three of those weeks. It is the first time I have been away since Covid closed the world in March, 2020. A lot of our time involved walking.

Apart from an arthritic right knee which is an excellent forecaster of a change in the weather, I have always enjoyed the motion of walking and, indeed, getting lost while walking. A few days ago I was standing on a street corner in London, trying to orientate the map on my phone so that I could find my way to Westminster Abbey. A gentleman kindly stopped and asked if he could help.  I told him where I wanted to go and he pointed to the heavens which in the near distance revealed the unmistakeable spire of Westminster Abbey. I laughed sheepishly, he gleefully.

I walked out of the cheap hotel in Pendrell Street in Vancouver. I left my two young children and Irene in the room telling them I wanted to explore on my own for an hour or so. We were close to Stanley Park so inevitably I found myself on the seawall. Here we were in a city and country that were new to me. It was Irene’s birthplace so I was never likely to get lost as long as she was with me. However, she told me before I left the room that if I needed guidance then I should look up, for the mountains here are always to the north. I have remembered that good advice ever since that fateful day in 1991 when we arrived to settle in Canada.

It was an April day so there was still a briskness in the air. The sun shone and the remnants of winter still glistened white on the North Shore mountains. People were out walking and biking around the park. Some were in pairs, they strolled in deep conversation. I heard a variety of languages. Some were on a fitness mission either walking briskly or jogging. The cyclists were generally leisurely, few were lycra clad, the bike lane was not really a track for the Tour de France. I was still jet lagged. I was also still probably traumatised by the decision we had made as a family. We had sold our house in the UK, given up my secure teaching job, moved to a different country with no job, no place to live and great uncertainty. What were we thinking? And yet I did not think about such things as I walked and took in my new surroundings. I noticed the people, I took in the scenery, the magnificent trees, the immense wilderness backdrop, the sea, the ships in the harbour. It all spoke of optimism and of possibilities. And yet there was something very different and I was not able to put my finger on it.

It was about a week later when we had found a place to rent in Marpole near the Fraser River that I had a ‘Eureka’ moment. There was rarely wind in Vancouver. I had grown up on a relatively small island where it is possible to be away from the coast but one always knows that it is near and accessible. In my insecure mind at the time, there was never wind in Vancouver, always wind in the old country whether inland or on the coast.

It would be wrong to say that I have pined for the wind for the past 31 years. It would be true to say that when there has been the sound of wind in the trees, choppy waves off a windswept water,  a fresh breeze on my face as I walk then I cannot help but be removed to another place. And that place is various and amorphous because I lived in many different parts of the UK before coming here. So, sometimes I am walking the Lower Cliff Path on the Bristol Channel with the wind ruffling the ferns and gorse. I am on the flat ancient rocks of Nairn Beach. I am on a moor, a mountain, a riverbank, on a loch in a rowing boat, on a rugby pitch, pushing up the gradient of the A9 road between Pitlochry and Dalwhinnie as a 17 year old on my bike. So do I miss the wind? Well, Dear Friends, after this summer’s heat and drought, after the smoke-in-the- eyes remnants of the fire season in Vancouver’s October, then, yes, I missed the wind more than ever.

Earlier this month, I was lucky enough to be in St. Andrews on the Scottish east coast, staying with my good friends, the Turners. Mine host, Jamie, led me on a walk around this quaint university town with the iconic golf course. We eventually found ourselves on the beach where some of the opening scenes of the movie, “The Chariots of Fire’ were filmed. And, Dear Reader, the wind blew, the driven sand stung our eyes, its gritty presence whitened out teeth like an over caffeinated dental hygienist. Jamie was chuckling about the fact that I was to be on the overnight ferry the following evening between Aberdeen and Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. It was to be a 12 hour voyage and it looked like it would be rough.  He kindly drove me up there on the following day detouring away from the coast through Royal Deeside where we stopped for a walk in the village of Ballater and there in the shelter of the hills the wind had found a way and blew vigorously.

The ferry sailed that night and I was surprised at how smooth it was. I rented a car on arrival and spent the following days exploring the island, known as ‘The Mainland’ because it is only one of the many that make up the Archipelago. Jarlshof on the Southern tip of the island is where the North Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. And the wind blew and I walked into it leaning forward and with it leaning backwards. I photographed the elements in their bleak and tempestuous glory; a feeling of my paltry insignificance and humbling impotency washed over me accompanied by a deep-seated joyous awe. Such feelings were with me throughout my stay.  Stumbling on a bay where 300 feet below where my car was parked  were rollers coming together in white spumy fury to attack the rocks and beaches. This was a moment when I had to get out of the car and feel as well as see.  I pushed the car door with my shoulder but it was not until I had both feet firmly planted on the inside  that I felt I could get out without having my shin bone shattered as the wind flung the door shut again.

The wind almost had its victory. My ferry ride off the island was cancelled on the Thursday. I managed somehow to get a flight to Aberdeen only to find that flights back to the islands had been cancelled. I was very lucky. I was in the city of Aberdeen with nowhere to stay and contemplating a night at the airport before flying to Bristol. And the wind and the rain continued in the city. They had lost their stark magnificence and were now just a grey drudge, greyness being the prevalent colour as the city is also known as the “Granite City”. At the fourth time of asking I found an hotel room and settled in for the night.

Dear Friends, there is something very strange about me. (“We have known that for years,” I hear the cry.) I don’t know many of my friends and ex-colleagues who would have paid good money to go on holiday near the onset of winter where there would be no tropical sun, no outside nuanced Paris cafes, few well known cultural experiences, no big city vibes of the novel and eclectic. I felt like the only tourist on Shetland. I was the only person on those bays, beaches and pathways on those days.  It is true to say there were other parts to our journey which many of you would have enjoyed but they are parts of another, different story. But, Dear Reader, on that windswept, rainy island for those five days, I felt like the luckiest man alive.