Like a lot of people, I have found my travel plans shredded by the Covid outbreak. And I have been taking comfort in the words of a nineteenth century walker and philosopher.
We’d been looking forward to this time of the year. We were planning to spend a month travelling around Spain by bus, exploring small towns in the less well-known regions. Extremadura, Asturias, Galicia. That’s now pencilled in, hopefully, for 2021.
We were looking forward to introducing two grandsons to the pleasures of youth hostelling in the Yorkshire Dales, camping on the east coast. Similarly postponed until next year.
And we were planning to re-visit St Cuthbert’s Way, a very attractive, if fairly stiff, 5-day walk along the Scottish Borders.
One of the best maintained and most clearly signposted paths in our part of the U.K., it begins with a steady climb out of Melrose and up to the Eildon Hills…
…and down, briefly, to the banks of the Tweed.
Over the next two days the three summits of the Eildon Hills remain visible over your shoulder.
We made the walk in May, and had typical spring weather: blustery showers, with glorious sunshine in between.
For some people, this walk is a pilgrimage, tracing as it does the journey St Cuthbert made in the 7th century A.D., when he was sent to Lindisfarne (Holy Island) to run the monastery there. So the final day, when you cross the water, is for some people the highlight of the journey. Lindisfarne is only accessible at low tide, so you have to time your hike, and be prepared to spend a night on the island – or arrange for someone to give you a lift back to the mainland.
You’ll start out on firm sand, but before long you’ll be up to your ankles in cold water. It took us longer than we expected to get over to the other side – probably because we spent so long inspecting the wooden towers, erected for the specific purpose of providing shelter for people who… dawdle – and get caught by the tide.
Well, we will continue to dream of getting away, if and when this emergency is lifted. Until we do, I shall remind myself of the calm words of that great walker Henry David Thoreau (he of Walden Pond). ‘I have travelled widely… in Concord,’ he once said, before going on to suggest that if you lived to seventy there’s a fair chance that you might get to know your neighbourhood fairly well – on the basis of walking out ten miles every day, and ten miles back.
