Day forty

 9th June 2009     ENGLAND

This is the last day of our adventure

Carlo and I wake up in a church hall, one of thousands that scatter these islands… they all seem to have doors that creak, big widows, the same musky smell, a small kitchen area with tea urn and a serving hatch, not forgetting a noticeboard just inside the entrance, full of all the different activities, everything from the Woman’s Institute, dance classes for toddlers, the scouts and a bunch of other clubs. The RAF Mountain Rescue would at times use these village and church halls as a base camp when out on exercise (they probably still do). I think much of the social history of this island could be told through such places… if only walls could talk. As we are packing up, the Rev. J. Turpin comes in to check how it is we are. “All good. Thank you for allowing us to stay the night, much appreciated” … we talk of this and that, five minutes later the three of us are standing outside the main door we shake hands, and the day starts.

 This is the last day of our adventure… we will meet a bunch of guys in somebody’s café… Carlo and I will talk and after breakfast, these guys will walk with us. Sorry I’m getting ahead of myself… Arthur (the guy who had drove to the top of Scotland with Irina on the very first day of this walk… that was close to a thousand years ago I think) has driven down from Scotland… plus two other guys from London (Simon and Jeff… all from the same church) have also come to this town of Ringwood, the reason being, to walk the last day of this adventure with Carlo and me. It will be good to see them (not sure when or how this was organized, I’m guessing either Simon or Arthur was behind it, the diary I am using to write this blog only tells me it happened, nothing about the how). What I know is this… with Arthur being here, the problem of how it is I get back home to Scotland has been solved.

Yeah, it was good to meet up with the guys, also good to start the day with a full breakfast (all paid for this time… Thank you). Today’s not a big walk, not much more than ten miles (just half a thumb print left to walk from the thirty-nine and a half already done). I’m thinking I could have knocked a good few days of this walk… The reason for not doing that, is because the number forty was a part of the offering that I had put together.

Seems a long time ago since I was sat at home… a little lost… between two doors, redundancy behind me and three years of college in front of me… wondering how best to use this in-between time… The idea of this walk came to mind… I remember the map laid out on the table (a mug of tea holding down one corner), starting from the top of mainland Scotland, I walked one thumb over another trying to figure out an idea of a route, forty thumbs later my feet were wet (metaphorically speaking) I was stood in the English Channel and out of that deep blue sea I had this daft idea of doing the walk with no money. Instead of ditching the idea as soon as it had entered my head, the no money idea kind of stuck… it became central to what this walk was going to be all about… the putting my trust in the people of these islands, to take care of me… somebody should. At the time I really wasn’t sure how that would pan out. The idea of this walk started to take shape… a rough idea of a route was in place… the forty thumbprints, become forty days (forty being a good Biblical number) ... and where better to end this adventure than where it all kind of began… in the church I was baptised in. Today was the day that would happen… today would finish in a church, the offering offered up and a quiet ‘Amen’ said… and after, I would walk the half mile or so down to the beach and step into the English Channel, getting both boots and feet wet (this time for real)… and that would be the end… the last chapter, the last page of this adventure… What next… head home, kick off my boots, pick up another book… turn the page and start a whole new adventure… Three years of college… essays and deadlines… oh boy… that was going to be pretty tough for a guy like me… it would make this adventure look like no more than just a walk in the park.

… Sorry I’m getting way ahead of myself… again.

Today really isn’t that hard at all, the walking is easy, all pretty much on the flat, alongside fields, wetland, country lanes and woodland, all in the good company of friends. For the first hour or so, we chat, catch up, talk about this and that and laugh… for those that know the TV series ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ it felt a little like that, a bunch of guys with time on their hands, heading out on some daft adventure… not a bad place to be.

As the day moves on, the chat becomes a little less… I’m guessing we are all caught up in our own thoughts… I wonder to myself how it is I got here (Day 40)… I kind of knew the walk was doable, I also knew that both the head and heart needed to be in the right place… to not let doubt get the better of me, to have a sense of gratitude at whatever came my way (good or bad). I am well aware that I am as flawed as the next guy, a head full of contradictions and all the stupid nonsense that goes along with that… I think in part that is why I chose to walk with empty pockets… as clumsy as my faith maybe, I wanted to know what I believe in, is real… (as real as knowing when I drop a pencil it will fall)… Three things really, Creation, People and God…

Creation, I have never struggled with… in my mountain rescue days I have been on top of mountains in the dead of winter, in some pretty extreme weather, a bunch of troops needing to hold on to each other just to stand up, the sound of Gore-Tex and laughter fighting against a thousand mile an hour wind… taking a tumble, trying (without success) to get back on your feet, the other guys again laughing… screwing your eyes up against the sting of snow and ice… snot flying through the air… and an overwhelming sense of being alive… I have also woken up in a truck by the side of a quiet road, opened the curtains to an incredible sunrise, long shadows stretching over the landscape, a thin mist sitting over fields of gold, open the window to the sound of songbirds… Yeah, creation is both beautiful and awe inspiring at both ends of the scale.

People, to pick up a newspaper, or switch on the news, you would think that people are all bad… I don’t believe that… the vast majority of people are more than just good, they are incredible. Another story from my mountain rescue days (sorry for dragging you down all these memory lanes that are in my head). It was mid-winter; the team had been up in Scotland for ten days (ten days of no sunshine just rain). We were traveling back down south, in convoy on the way back to camp. On the motorway that runs alongside the Lake District, the radios crackled into life (these were days before mobile phones), the team was being asked if we could assist a civilian team in a call out, three walkers lost in the Cumbrian hills… a grid reference is given to where it is we are to meet up… a small out of the way hill farm, maps are dug out (no sat-nav either in those days). Winding our way uphill to the farm, the Sargent in charge of the team tells two of the guys, that as soon as we arrive, they are to get the field kitchen set up and to get tea and hot soup on the go. We turn up at the farm as the day light hours begins to fade, we didn’t need a field kitchen… the Woman’s Institute (the WI) had bet us to it, as we were getting kitted up (into gear that was still wet) ready for the hill, strapping on crampons… they were pushing hot mugs of soup and chunks of buttered bread into our hands. I have never forgotten those women… they had come from nearby farms and villages to play their part in finding these lost walkers… Sorry a bit of a long story I know… it was those incredible women, mothers and grandmothers on a cold wet winters night, in a barn on the side of a hill making soup and sweet tea (they didn’t need to be there, very few people knew that they were) they had shown me just how beautiful the human spirit can be.

That is Creation and People, what of my understanding / believe in God… Yeah, I know, many reading this maybe don’t have a traditional faith, but I do think most people have a believe (as I have said in a previous chapter if using other words instead of ‘God’ such as ‘the universe’, ‘spirit’, ‘the force’ or ‘mother nature’ works better… who am I to argue). What I know is this, on that first day when I was standing in that small church in the hamlet of Altnaharra, close to the top of Scotland, with a bag over one shoulder, empty pockets, a toothbrush and little else, other than close to a thousand miles in front of me… I uttered a simple prayer, with not many more words than “This is me Lord…”. I would like to say I heard the words “Yeah I know” come back at me… I didn’t… but what was real throughout this walk, (for me anyway), was a sense, a feeling that the forces behind the universe (maybe the universe itself) was in line with what it was I was doing… yeah I know that all sounds a little bit ‘aye right whatever’… only to many times it felt that situations, places and people were put in place prior to me turning up… best I shut up… don’t want you thinking I’m a ‘new age’ kind of guy… I’m a truck driver, collar turned up, feet on the ground kind of guy…

I kick a stone a little too hard, it bounces to one side and is lost in the undergrowth, looking up I see the four guys (Simon, Jeff, Arthur and Carlo) they are all in front of me… Arthur calls out “If you keep dragging your feet, we’ll never get this walk done”. He laughs… I smile… and the five of us keep on walking. The sky is a little grey and overcast, in the clouds I see no rain… just my head and a whole bunch of thoughts. I wonder at what it is faith really is… I’m not sure I want to believe in impossible things … Yeah, maybe I am a dreamer, but as I said a moment ago, I see myself as a guy whose feet are firmly on the ground. It sometimes feels to me, that the world of science is a lot easier to understand. if I see a pencil fall, I kind know what’s going on… and if I want to better understand, I can pick up a book and read about ‘Newton’s law of universal gravitation’… such laws exist beyond who it is we are… it matters not from where it is we come from or what we believe in… drop a pencil and it will fall… and yet… at the same time I also know that I love my two daughters far more than Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution requires me too… Truth matters, be it in this world or in the world unseen … I think Albert Einstein hit the nail on the head when he said, “Science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind”… the mysteries of love, just like the laws of gravity are as real as real can be…

…The difference between people of science and people of faith (yeah, I know there are many people that are in both camps… that in my head, can only be a good thing), scientists are happy to revisit / question ideas that were once seen as true. People of faith are different; they will not question the religion that they belong too or allow other too. I’m not so sure this is a good thing (maybe that was ok a hundred years ago, but not anymore). When a teenager (or come to that, anybody) asks a difficult question, they need a better answer than, “That is for God to Know and not for you to ask”… that’s a great answer if you're wanting to push young people away… Sorry, sounds like that’s me standing on the back of a trailer again… best I climb down.

…This is the last day of the walk… I am walking through the county that I was born in. We are not many miles away from the small town of Christchurch, someplace in that town is the place I was baptised, St Joseph’s church. The end of this adventure is not far away. We pass by thatched cottages, an impressive redbrick mill, small steadings, fields, hedgerows and open moorlands… not sure how much of this I take in, the head is still someplace up in the clouds… what I do see is a landscape that very much belongs to these islands… an island that I call home…that said, I don’t really know this part of home very well, my dad was stationed here for a couple of years… and before I was two, we had moved on to another RAF Camp.

My head tells me I should be collecting my thoughts together, somehow making myself ready for when I step into St. Joseph’s church… I try, but it’s not happening… still up in the clouds, science to the left of me and faith to right of me (stuck in the middle). I don’t know how it is these two always seem to be fighting each other… they have the same mission and that is to seek out the truth.

The science as we know it today, kicked off in the middle of the sixteenth century… it was the start of The Scientific Revolution… a hundred plus years later, our understanding of physics, mathematics, biology astronomy, chemistry and other such subjects had taken a huge leap forward… mankind had stepped into the ‘Age of Reason’ (the Enlightenment). Most of this took place in Western Europe, a Judeo-Christian culture… for many of these great scientists, the wanting to understand the mind of God and His creation was how it is they got started, Johannes Kepler (the guy who figured out the motions of the planets) stated that ‘They were merely thinking God’s thoughts after Him'… I wonder at how it is today Science is doing all it can to push against the very foundations it was built on… can’t help but see a little bit arrogance in that… Yeah, I know I’m just a truck driver… what I do know is this, when climbing into the cab, I kind of know that somebody had designed this truck and behind the designer there was a mind … that can be said for a whole bunch of things, huge stones half buried in the ground standing upright and forming a circle, the magnificent cathedrals we see throughout Europe and around the world, the incredible engineering behind the building of a steam engine, a Dickens novel, a sheet of music written by one of the great composers, the know-how needed to create this laptop that sits in front of me and the writing of the software code that makes the thing work … none of this just happened by itself… you can let a billion years of evolution go by… it still won’t happen… not without the presence of a creative mind... when we see the  creation of such things, we know that behind them, there is a mind (with the passage of time a stone circle will not slowly turn into a cathedral... That is not me talking against evolution, I think it's real... we do evolve, adapt, change, grow... but I also think that that is not the whole picture)… Step into a cave that no one’s ever been into before and stumble across some ‘cave art’ from twenty or thirty thousand years ago… it was not weathering, nor some kind of algae or the crumbling of rock over time that created the images you see in front of you… You instinctively know (without being told) behind those handprints and crude etchings of stickmen, spears and bison there was a mind… a creative mind…

…with that in mind, how is it most scientist, not all but most fight against the idea that maybe… just maybe there is more to this world (and the wider universe) than meets the eye. We live in what many call a goldilocks universe… for this world and the universe to work, there are so many things that need to be just right… not too hot and not too cold, not too close and not too far, not too strong and not too weak, not too this and not too that… there are so many numbers that need to be just right… if any one set of those numbers are not as they should be, the whole thing falls apart. From what is huge to what is tiny there is evidence of design… we now know that within the strands of DNA there is critical coding going on, not with the zero’s and one’s that we are familiar with but instead with four letters, A,C,G and T (adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine) if that coding (software) is wrong, it’s game over… the machine, life and the universe stops working. There is plenty of evidence for design and coding taking place behind the creation of this world, all of which points to a mind. Some will make an argument against this thinking, by putting forward the idea that there are multi-universes and that we just happen to be the lucky ones, living in a universe where everything fell into place… for me, I’m not sure if that holds water… that’s like saying you have multiple scrapyards and a tornado rips through each of those yards and by chance after the tornado has passed by, in the middle of one of those yards an E-Type Jaguar has been assembled from all the spare engine parts, panels, tyres, nut and bolts that were laying around in that yard. You can have as many scrapyards as you like but without the presence of somebody who knows what they are doing (a mechanic… that is a mechanic with a mind, creativity and a purpose) there will never be in any of those yards / universes an E-Type Jaguar.

Sorry I rattle on… I many times get lost in my own thought. I was never too sure how this blog was going to turn out… the original idea was to use the story of the walk to say thank you to the many people that I had met and who had made this walk possible. That said I kind of knew, my thoughts would get caught up in the story… and that is all they are… I’m no boffin nor a theologian… all the above (from the beginning of this walk, up and till today) are just the muddled-up thoughts of a raggedy truck driver walking with his hands in his pockets, kicking stones along country lanes, over hills and woodland tracks… his collar turned up against the wind and rain (…collar up against the wind and rain … aye right… the real reason for the collar being up, is because he’s kidding himself that he looks cool… I think best to play along with him).

And that is the five of us walking into Christchurch …two other guys meet up with us in town, Andy and Mike… We find St Joseph’s church, a redbrick building… so this is it, the walk is done. We walk up to the door, I reach out to the handle, not really sure what I’m supposed to be thinking or feeling… I pushed against the door; I push again… Great… it’s locked, didn’t think that through very well… Jeff steps in “The vicarage is next door, give me a moment… five minutes late he is back rattling a set of keys. The seven of us step inside… not sure if I have just walked into a church or a car boot sale, tables are laid out all around, full of stuff people don’t want any more… A long way to walk, from the Top of Scotland to the south coast of England only to step into something resembling a charity shop… I remember a story about a guy who stepped into a temple and turned the tables over… I think best let it be… it is not what we see, it is the motivation behind what it is we see, that matters. The money makers here are making money to help others, not themselves…

Behind this old church, there is a new church, St Joseph’s 0.2. It’s open, I step inside, the other guys hang back... I guess they knew I needed, a moment. Standing close to the front, I let my bag fall to my feet… “I am here”. I turn full circle… maybe it sounds daft, but I feel the spirit of the walk inside, and all around me… I open my mouth to say something, but there is no sound… instead I close my eyes and imagine the church full of all the people I had met on this walk, their impossible smiles, warmth and generosity… they too belong to this moment… I open my eyes and they are gone… all but one, Carlo is standing just to the right of me. I say a quiet thank you (in saying thank you to Carlo, I felt I had said thank you to all the others). And again, I try to offer a small prayer, I start to mumble something or other, but it’s not happening. I decide to say a prayer that many of us will know… and even that I muddle up.

…Our Father,
Who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come. There must be lights burning brighter somewhere.
Got to be birds flying higher in a sky more blue.
Let Thy will be done, we’re lost in a cloud, with to much rain.
We’re trapped in a world, that’s troubled with pain.
Still I am sure that the answer gonna come somehow,
On earth as it is Heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread.
Out there in the dark, there’s a beckoning candle.
And forgive us our trespasses, while I can think, while I can talk.
As we forgive those who trespass against us,
While I can stand, while I can walk.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
Tell me why, oh why can’t my dream come true.

Prayers muddled up with dreams or maybe dreams muddled up with prayers. For that Kingdom to come, for that dream of a better word to happen, I don’t think we can just sit on the edge of some Village Hall dancefloor… and wait for God or some other guy to make a move… maybe they can take the lead… but we need to follow, we also need to step onto the dancefloor (take responsibility) … and do what it is we can to make this world a better place… be it an outstretched hand, an impossible smile, a quiet prayer, a listening ear, a shared pot of tea, to speak words that let others know that they are more than just special… The music that makes this dancefloor (this world) go around is love… and love is everything… without it nothing, nothing at all… God, religion, people, this incredible world nor the heavens above, not even a dancefloor would make any sense at all.

The End…

… Not quite… after we came out of the church, the seven of us walked the half mile or so down to the beach. It was in the church where this adventure had finished… the walking into the ocean (with boots still on) was I guess the full stop to this story… and after, with dry socks and a worn out pair of trainers on… and boots in a bin (they had had it, not one for holding on to things). We find a pub and share a meal together… and after we all shake hands and climb into different cars… Carlo and me climb into Arthurs car, I shut the door, the walk is done. We drive back to Carlo's place ‘Cleeve House’, we stay the night and the next day, me and Arthur head back to Scotland. The next door I open (not literally) will be the doors of Oatridge College… three years of essays, deadlines and exams. oh boy!.... Bring it on.