Walking with Plato (2 page)

For the End to Ender, there are two ways of getting from John o’Groats to Inverness. You can loop west through some of the most remote parts of the Scottish Highlands, wild-camp beneath the stars, and experience Nature at her most wild and free. Or you can trudge 120 miles along the A99 and the A9, dodge traffic, trash the soles of your feet, and endure hour upon hour of mind-numbing tedium.

Wendy and I chose the latter option.

Here’s the journey in a nutshell.

You walk 118 miles by road: first from John o’Groats to Dunbeath along the A99, and then from Dunbeath to Inverness along the A9. Sometimes you have the sea on your left and rough pasture on your right. Sometimes, when the road takes you further inland, you have rough pasture on both your left
and
your right.

Sometimes, you pass through a small town or a tiny village. Occasionally, you come across a museum or a quaint harbour or a nice little beach. Every so often, you get to take a brief but delicious detour along a minor road or down a forest track. But for the most part you just plod along the A-road.

Sometimes the road is busy and wide and dangerous. At other times it is quiet and narrow and dangerous. There’s rarely a footpath.

If, like Wendy and me, your budget doesn’t stretch to B&Bs, then you sometimes have to walk long distances to get from one campsite to the next, unless you are the adventurous type and don’t mind wild-camping in a farmer’s field at the side of the road.

This means that unless you are wealthy or intrepid you never get time to explore the towns and villages, or to visit the museums and harbours and beaches. You’re too busy hurrying on.

You wake up. You take down your tent. You walk. You set up your tent. You sleep. Apart from eating, that’s pretty much it.

For the first day or two, you make an effort to look around as you walk: at the sea to your left and the rough pasture to your right. But you soon give up the effort. Your eyes are irresistibly drawn to the road.

Our first day’s walk took us from our guesthouse in
John o’Groats
to nearby
Duncansby Head
and back again: a round-trip of about six miles.

In 2010, John o’Groats won (but refused to accept) a Carbuncle Award from
Urban Realm
magazine for being ‘Scotland’s most dismal town’. I have nothing to add except that it serves what is quite possibly Scotland’s most dismal fish and chips from a portakabin overlooking the harbour.

Uninhabited Duncansby Head, the most northeasterly point on the Scottish mainland, and the true start/finish of the End to End challenge, is a whole other kettle of fish. With its tiny lighthouse, sea cliffs, comical puffins, sea-breezes, and stacks (large pinnacles of rock jutting out from the sea), it puts its better-known near-neighbour to shame.

On our second day, Wendy and I shouldered our backpacks (complete with tent, sleeping-mats, sleeping-bags, pillows, clothing, waterproofs, cooking equipment, toiletries, torches, first-aid kit, electronic items, and food and water) and hit the road with a vengeance.

Eight hours and sixteen miles later, we reached
Wick
, a fair-sized estuary town, which was once a major player in the herring industry.

Wick, for all I know, may have its attractions. But for me, that day, aching and weary as I was, it was nothing more than a final obstacle en route to our campsite on the outskirts of the farther side of town.

By the end of the third day 
–
twenty hot and dusty miles from Wick to the coastal village of
Dunbeath 
–
I was literally groaning with pain.

Two days of carrying a thirty-five-pound rucksack had taken such a toll on my shoulders and back that I grunted and squirmed and cursed my way along the last few miles to our campsite.

Wendy, by this time limping ten or fifteen yards behind me, was in an even worse condition. Constant pounding of the tarmac road had blistered her toes so badly that they barely looked like toes any more. Every step was a triumph of will – and stupidity – over pain.

I had known beforehand that the End to End would be no picnic, that there would be times when weary muscles, sore feet, and sheer bloody tedium would test our mettle and resolve. But I had anticipated neither how quickly nor how severely we would be tested.

When I had looked ahead, in my mind’s eye, at the trials and tribulations we would face, they had all seemed rather romantic. I had pictured myself battling through them with a stern and manly look on my face. But I learned very quickly that there is nothing romantic about an aching back and sore feet.

During the afternoon of that third gruelling day, as I dragged myself along the dreary ribbon of tarmac that is the A9, I kept up my flagging spirits by ruminating on some wise words from the pen of the English philosopher Bertrand Russell: ‘The secret of happiness is to understand that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.’

At first glance, those words appear facetious: a paradoxical
bon mot
intended for amusement rather than edification. But the more you think about them, the more you realize that they are as true as they are witty, and as wise as they are true.

Take JoGLE, for example. If you set off expecting three months of jolly jaunts through the British countryside, then you’re going to be sorely disappointed. You’ll quickly discover that it’s not all lighthouses and puffins and sea-breezes.

On the contrary, if you’re going to walk all the way from John o’Groats to Land’s End, then, as sure as eggs is eggs, you’ll have to endure sore feet, aching limbs, inclement weather, fatigue, accidents, disappointments, and boredom. Sometimes you’ll feel like jacking the whole thing in.

But, if you know all of this beforehand, if you understand that it comes with the territory, then you can keep going. You can say to yourself, ‘This was only to be expected.’

This is especially true of the A99/A9 section between John o’Groats and Inverness. Every End to Ender who’s done even a modicum of research knows that it’s long, it’s tedious, and it’s tough on your feet. So the best thing to do is to accept it; roll with it; suck it up. Because if you hang in long enough you’ll eventually get back to the good stuff: to the lighthouses, the puffins, and the sea-breezes.

And it’s the same with life, in general. If you blunder your way through it thinking that the world owes you or anyone else a good time, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Every time you’re rejected, betrayed, or frustrated, every time you encounter pain or sickness, every time you’re cheated, mistreated, or defeated, you’ll feel angry and aggrieved.

But if you accept that the world cares nothing for you and your plans, that it’s a pitiless place where bad things happen even to good people, never mind the likes of you and me, then when bad things
do
happen you can accept them stoically and wait – or, at any rate,
hope
 – for better times.

And the good news is that for most of us, most of the time, better times do come around eventually.

I was painfully conscious, as we squirmed and grunted and limped our way to Reception at the Inver Caravan Park in Dunbeath, of what a pathetic spectacle we made. But I could sum up neither the will nor the energy to try to appear anything other than I truly was: knackered.

The owner greeted us with a look of pity. She asked if we were by any chance heading for Land’s End, and then comforted us by observing that she had known people arrive ‘in an even worse condition’.

An hour later, having erected our backpacker tent and abandoned plans to cook dinner on our camping stove, we hobbled our way to the nearby Bay Owl pub: an ugly flat-roofed concrete building with a surprisingly good restaurant and a fine view of Dunbeath Harbour and Castle.

I knew that bad times had temporarily given way to good the moment I looked towards the bar and saw a shiny brass hand-pump, all primed and ready to deliver Trade Winds real ale.

If you have never drunk a pint of beer after toiling footsore and weary along thirty-six miles of hot and dusty road, then you can have no inkling of how good that beer tasted. It quenched my thirst; it nourished my body; it restored my spirits; it uplifted my soul.

It was more than a drink. It was consolation. It was courage. It was hope.

Consolation, courage, and hope were further restored by chips, steak-and-ale pie, and an additional half-pint of Trade Winds. Within the hour, I was able to look back with amused complacency upon the trials and tribulations of the previous two days. I began to feel that every single body-bruising mile had been worthwhile, that, without the toil, the sweat, and the pain, I might never have appreciated the true worth of a good pint of ale.

Like many people who live in the developed world, I rarely get to appreciate food and drink properly, because I rarely sit down to a meal feeling weary and hungry, and having worked physically hard for it.

But that day, having pushed myself harder and for longer than ever before, I was primed for enjoyment. In addition to the usual pleasures of the table – the taste, texture, and aroma of the food and the gentle satisfaction of a full stomach – there was the added thrill of refuelling the muscles and the mind.

The feeling is hard to explain, but it’s as though every tired and depleted cell in your body is sucking up energy and sustenance as you eat and drink. And it’s sublime.

In the absence of this pleasure, we in the developed world tend to seek our culinary kicks in mere excess. Step into any Starbucks or Costa Coffee and you’ll see what I mean: overweight, under-exercised punters ramming down ‘coffees’ laced with flavoured syrups and whipped cream, accompanied by a side-helping of cheesecake and a dollop of self-loathing.

As I sat there musing upon all of this, I began to appreciate what the Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus meant when he wrote to a friend: ‘Living on bread and water, I rejoice in the pleasure of my body and spit upon the pleasures of extravagance.’

I had thought about those words often before, and had even written about them, but only at that moment did I feel that I truly understood them.

Epicurus had shunned urban life and had set up a self-sufficient community outside the walls of Athens. This meant that when he sat down to his bread and water at the end of each working day he was primed for enjoyment. He was weary and hungry, and had worked physically hard for them.

This is why his simple fare ‘thrilled him with pleasure in the body’, and why he was able to write to the same friend: ‘Send me a little vessel of cheese, so that I can feast whenever I please.’