Day Sixteen

16th May 2009 SCOTLAND

Thank you Scotland….

Jim had come back late last night… a few too many beers I think… he had looked a bit surprised to see a guy in a sleeping bag on his sofa…not sure he had fully remembered that he had given his sofa to a stranger. I think it's best to remind him, I say “Thanks again Jim for allowing me to stay, I really appreciate it.” He stands for a moment taking in what I have just said. “No worries big man… if your up before me grab yourself some breakfast.” “Thanks Jim” … and with that he stumbles off to his room… ten minutes later its quiet, Jim is out for the count… As late as 1929 there were no pubs in this town, the people of Stewarton had voted for the place to be alcohol free… sometime after that date the town fell in line with the rest of the country… the pubs and inns came along… and Jim stumbles home.

I wake up just after six… I lay for a while; the house is quiet. By six thirty I’m up making a cup of tea. Close to seven the house is still quiet… I leave a thank you note for Jim next to the kettle… pick up my bag and quietly close the front door behind me… once outside I again say thank you to Jim.

Walking out of Stewarton, the place is empty no people, very few cars… I lose track of the days… it is a Saturday morning, not yet seven of course the roads are quiet… the streets for the moment are mine.

This old town was once famous for making hand crafted Scottish bonnets (hats). A craft that became increasingly industrialised… pushing the bonnets out of town. At about the same time this was happening (in the first half of eighteenth century) Stewarton’s most famous son was born...David Dale (1739 - 1806). He worked as a weaver and later became one of the main guys behind the remarkable mill complex at New Lanark (a place that is now a World Heritage Site).

Today is my last day in Scotland, I am heading for the harbour town of Troon and tomorrow I jump on a boat for Ireland… the first part of this adventure is all but done. I cannot help but to reflect back on these past two weeks and more. At the start of this walk I really… really didn’t know what to expect. For a number of years, I have given talks at inter-faith meetings, although the topic of the talks was each time different the underlying theme in what I shared was… "It doesn’t matter when or where we were born, the culture we grew up in, or what it is we believe in… Humanity is one family… regardless of the many terrible things we see happening in the world, the vast majority of people are good… and they care." I guess a big part of this walk was to put that idea out there… do those ideas mean anything… or were they just a bunch of pretty words that meant nothing at all. A little over two weeks ago standing at the top of mainland Scotland, not yet having taken the first step… I knew I needed that idea to be true… it was with faith, that the first step of this walk was taken.

A few hours into the walk I reach the village of Kilmaurs, find a small café, the Brunchies Bakery… I step inside… again explain a little… and again given a pot of tea and a scone… and again knocked sideways by the kindness of people. I sit for nearly an hour, bringing back to mind some of the people who had made this last week possible… The kitchen girl with no name who had given me her lunch, Paul the hotel manager in Fort William who sat me at a table and gave me a menu, Tom who showed me a place to get out of the rain for the night and brought me breakfast the following morning (… not forgetting the bin bags), the firefighting Rev. Donald who gave me a place to stay by opening up the fire station… paid for a fish supper and sent me on my way the following day with a food parcel, the Kings House at the top of Glen Coe for tea and cake, Steve and Helen who gave me a bed at a remote railway station and an evening meal and a full breakfast the following morning, the pots of tea given to me at the ‘Green Welly’ at Tyndrum and the hostel at Inverarnan, Ray who handed me a plate of stew pretty much as soon as I had pushed the green door open and stepped into Doune bothy by the side of Loch Lomond, John at the Inversnaid Hotel who gave me scampi and chips, a pot of Earl Gray and sent me on my way with a packed lunch, Rowardennan Hostel for allowing me to stay the night, The Oak Tree Inn at Balmaha for soup, a bread roll and tea, Taylor behind the bar at the Pottery Inn for burger chips and a glass of Coke, the lady at Glengoyne Distillery for the mug of tea, Jill at the café called the Pestle and Mortar in Blanefield for a huge breakfast roll and a tea, Arthur and the gang for an evening meal, the hotel and a ticket to Ireland, the café called ‘The Village… Tea for Two’ at Thornliebank for tea and scones and Jim from last night for the use of his sofa… and yes this café that I sit in now… as I bring each of them to mind I again say a “thank you”. That first step taken a little over two weeks ago, I could not have imagined, even at my most optimistic moments that things would have worked out as they have… people are good… and yes, they do care. In these last two weeks it had felt as if I have been passed down through Scotland from one pair of safe hands to another (…not sure my legs and feet appreciated that analogy). The good in this world outweighs the bad by a million to one and more… that is not to say we shouldn’t act \ rage against what is not good in this world… (a guy called Jonny once told me “Anger is an energy”) … maybe the world needs a little bit more righteous anger.

The handful of people that don’t seem to care (and in the scheme of things… it is just a handful) are wrapped up in their own narrow ideologies of how it is they think the world should be, these are the people that many times do harm to others, even terrible things… destroying what is most precious… life… and it is those kind of stories that makes the front-page news, the stuff we see on TV or hear about on the radio while sat behind a wheel of a truck. There is nothing in the news, about the many cities around the world with a million plus people just muddling along with each other… the helping of a young mother getting into a bus with a buggy… holding a door open to let a stranger through… the banter between a coffee shop owner and a customer… stopping to give directions to somebody that is lost… Yeah… I know… I know… good and evil is not always quite that black and white, for many, life can be difficult… not easy at all… We should be looking out for each other… if we know someone who is going through a hard time, be it in a classroom or the work-place or maybe struggling for reasons we don’t understand… don’t ignore them… offer up a genuine smile, ask something like, “you ok”… “you wanna talk”… be ready to walk with them for a while (if need be a piggy back)… maybe their road is long… He ain’t heavy he’s my brother (or is it…She ain’t heavy, she’s my sister) … people need each other.

I ramble on sometimes, don’t I… best I get back to focusing on the stone I’m kicking down the road.

Today I walk on tarmac… the mountains and lochs have gone… the woodland tracks are no more. The boots today are in my bag; I walk in trainers… the skies I think are bigger, much of the landscape is made up of pasture and arable land (the origin of the word arable means… to plough) … this land is more fertile and manageable and accessible to the modern-day ox… the tractor. I still see sheep, but they are less in number (I am not a farmer, but when thinking of sheep, I imagine hill-farms), this landscape that I am walking through (and kicking stones through) is I think (and again I am no farmer) better suited for the growing of crops, dairy and beef cattle.

With the roads not having to navigate around any mountains, many stay straight (a little too straight… I can see for miles and miles), hedgerows on either side with clusters of trees here and there. For a small island, Britain has many diverse landscapes each a little special in its own unique way… I kid myself that I’m a mountain kinda of guy, but in truth I’m just as much at home lost in the wetlands of the Norfolk Broads or throwing stones into the Atlantic Ocean from a shingle beach someplace on the Pembrokeshire coast… the kinda of guy who likes kicking stones on a road that is long.

It is while kicking stones, I again think about the good and the bad in this world. I don’t know, but I think for many this is the stuff that pushes people away from religion… it doesn’t seem to make any sense … are we not told that God is good. How can you have an all-powerful, all-knowing God… a God that is good… and still see terrible things happening in the world… A good God – an evil world… a square peg and a round hole. A paradox that needs a proper answer. To be told that God works in mysterious ways… is not an answer… not for me… not for a father holding his dead child after a stray bomb has just hit a school… not for a child losing her parents in a crowd of refugees… nor for a mother watching her little one fade away because they don’t have the money for proper medicine.

I walk into the little town of Crosshouse… the paradox of ‘good God – evil world’ still rattling around in my head… I feel without a proper solution to that conundrum people will more and more drift away from faith (the internal aspect of who we are) and rely more on science (the external \ material aspect of who we are) … and that, I think is not good. To quote Albert Einstein “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind”. Humans are both physical and spiritual, to create a better world we need both what sciences can give us and what faith can give us. I take this square peg and round hole with me onto the boat tomorrow and across the Irish Sea, I’m not done with it yet.

I find a little café in Crosshouse, the Bartling Tea Room, the café is run by Louise and again after sharing something of my story, I am given a pot of tea and a breakfast. Louise is a great example of what good people are doing, she had lost a good friend to cancer… the following weekend with a hundred other people are raising money for Macmillian Cancer Support… and again I say, ‘people are good and that they do care’… and how good is that… I cannot imagine a world without such people. Before leaving the café Louise wraps up a few sandwiches and hands them to me and tells me to be safe. Thank you.

I walk into Troon late afternoon… I’m sorry… today I realise I didn’t write to much about the walk itself… I guess I was just a little to lost in thoughts, the last day in Scotland and all that goes with that… feels like I am making proper progress… Ireland tomorrow… also a head full of thoughts of what is good and evil, that can take you to some pretty grim places.

I realise talking of kicking stones down country roads will not win me any ‘Descriptive or Creative Writing’ prizes… will try harder tomorrow.

In Troon, my job is now to try and find a place to stay the night… I see a board outside a Church of Scotland, on the board is a phone number for the Session Clerk, I figure there is no harm to give the number a ring… a guy called Andy answers… sound like he is proper busy… tells me to ring back a little later if I don’t have any luck finding a place. I say thank you, but I know I won't ring back. After a good hour or more without much luck I decide to head down to the sea front and maybe find someplace down there to shelter for the night. On the way down to the front my phone rings… its Andy the Session Clerk from the Church of Scotland… asking how things are going. I tell Andy that I’m going to head down to the beach to see if I can find a place of shelter. Andy tells me to ask someone for directions to the South Sea Hotel and that he would meet me there. Fifteen minutes later Andy is booking me in to the hotel (evening meal, bed and breakfast).

It is incredibly humbling when confronted with such goodness of heart… again other than saying “Thank you” I am lost for words… Thank you Andy… Scotland has shown me the goodness within people. People do care… Thank you Scotland.