It’s taken me a little while to get around to writing this report of the day I left the trail, and started my return to the norm of high speed travel. Partly that has been due to social joy of visiting people I cherish, who I don’t get to see often, and therefore not wanting to sequester myself away to a quiet place to write. Also, the heat wave Western Europe has been sweltering in this week has rattled, fried and confused my brain and completely sapped my energy. I am so incredibly grateful I was not walking through the fields and farms the last five days, and my safe wishes go out to the friends I met out there who are still walking their journeys.
Scotland was not experiencing the heat wave the south was. The morning was comfortably cool, rain was forecast. It didn’t arrive; perfect weather for a quick exploration of Edinburgh before a 2pm train departure to Cambridge. I brought the chaos of all the items I needed and wore during three months back into order one more time, and stuffed my backpack neatly. Annegret, Tory and I left Gina’s house to find breakfast at a café just down the street. We had a delightful hour to eat and chat, and I continued to relish all the relaxed time to spend with these two dear friends.
We finished just as the Botanical Gardens were opening, and went to enjoy the pathways circling around its beautiful exhibits for an hour. It was surprisingly odd to be on such well-planned paths with their designed arrangements of plants; it gave me the sense of a zoo after being out on a safari of my own taking in nature’s borders and hills of greenery and flowers. Of course, the British countryside is hardly a wild landscape, the vast majority of it being changed and manipulated for thousands of years by my ancestors. But there is an open and natural hodge podge feel to it; environments created by humans and at times managed by humans, but nature being left to take its course as well. The upland moors being a fine example as the hills were deforested 3000 years ago as Mesolithic peoples settled to farm, leaving the acidic soils to develop peat, with the plants and animals then evolving to thrive in the low lying plant environment, and eventually humans wanting to maintain this to harvest the peat for fuel and building, as well as strategically burning areas of heather to encourage grouse populations in order to hunt them.
Wandering around the gardens, I reflected on the interactions between humans and the natural world we find ourselves in; all the ways I had seen people living with and on the land, now and throughout history as I walked Cornwall to Scotland. I particularly thought of horizons, and how looking to them provides our eyes with the necessary expanse to maintain good vision, while also giving our minds hope, and sometimes fear, gazing across the vast distances. In a much closer context, there was a fabulous exhibit on the importance of soil (highlighting the geologist and agriculturist James Hutton whose area of discovery I had days earlier walked across), an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture (which I easily recognized from across the garden because I so love his powerful works with natural objects), and happily, horizon views over Edinburgh to the castle.
We left the gardens to catch a bus to the National Gallery. We really wanted to make the most out of a morning in Edinburgh! The museum is large and well-curated, but I only had time for a few of the rooms devoted to a hundred years of Scottish art. It was beautiful, and I learned much about artists I had known nothing before. Some of those were members of the Glasgow Boys. While that might sound like a rough tribe of friends following a beloved football club, it was actually group of young Scottish artists active in the late 19th century, known for their new ideas and techniques that emphasized realism and naturalism, often depicting rural life. And, again coming full circle with my walking trip from the previous few days, they gathered together to live in and paint the village of Cockburnspath. I imagined them using the same paths I had walked while wandering the countryside around the village.
We walked to the nearby train station, passing the impressively grand monument honoring the historian, author, and Scots cultural hero (revered by many as the creator of the Historical Novel genre, so that’s very pleasing to me!), grabbed a sandwich, and boarded the train heading south. In three months I had been in fast moving vehicles a small handful of times, and things beginning to blur by as the train sped up was mildly upsetting and amusing, in equal parts. I busied myself settling into my seat for the six hour trip, and just happened to notice us pass an area of the coastal path and a railway bridge I remember from the walk. It was here and gone in a flash. I looked at my watch and smiled at the twenty minutes it had taken for the train to zip across miles I had taken four days to walk through. Curious. Fast travel versus slow. Advantages of both, and disadvantages.
The train continued, with its gently swaying movement. Counties were flying by: Northumberland, Durham, North Yorkshire, Humberside, Lincolnshire, and finally Cambridgeshire. I couldn’t really get my head around the distance in an afternoon that I was making on the quickly moving train . I was desperately trying to find signs of footpaths in the fields as they flashed by the window, trying to find some kind of connection with the land, or evidence of people’s lives slowly moving through the hours of the day with chores and gatherings. I saw birds in flight, but their silence was odd and unnerving. All the time, though, I was happy and content to be arriving soon in Cambridge, a wonderful place I consider my 2nd home; and it would be the first stop on my way to my real home across many, many unfathomable miles to California. I was tired, I had had an amazing journey, and it was time to return to whatever one defines as “normal” life. What all that meant was too much for me to get a grip on. I decided to let the feelings, thoughts and emotions swirl for a while longer. It was time to just bask in the last hours with my friends and enjoy Cambridge.
And that I wholeheartedly did. We changed trains in Peterborough and Ely, taking in the familiar open views of the Fens. Lots of sky. Annegret made me laugh with her stories of teaching years ago in the villages we were passing. Cambridge has grown since I lived there twenty-five years ago, and Tory and I alighted at the new-to-me North Cambridge station. We said goodbye to Annegret, who was continuing on a few stops; we planned to meet for lunch the next day.
It was somewhere north of balmy and south of sultry as we walked a couple miles along the River Cam. Rain threatened to pour down from the twilit sky, but that didn’t stop the multitudes of joggers, families with strollers, cyclists, couples holding hands, friends laughing, rowers, all out enjoying the summer evening in the riverside parks of the city. So many memories of evenings spent just like all this when my children were young flooded back. We crossed a bridge memorializing the once forgotten but now importantly honored early abolitionist and former slave, Olaudah Equiano. This recognition of a very shameful and very sad part of our history, now informing us of his actions that helped change the world, gives me hope. This is history in action. We crossed the river again at the lock, and walked up the gentle hill to Tory’s home. After chatting with Michael, Tory’s husband, and his friend, I climbed the stairs to shower and sleep. Except sleep wouldn’t come for a while. It is the time for the May Balls (yes, I know it’s June, but tradition refers to these end of the year Cambridge University college celebrations as happening in ‘May’. You don’t mess with tradition. Usually.) Trinity College was throwing theirs this night; they are grand and great events of long hours into the morning, very fancy dress, lots of alcohol, food, entertainment and merriment heard over the old stone buildings. And there are fireworks. So, at about 10:30pm, and for a good long while, my three month walking journey ended with the jubilant and colorful explosion of joy flashing across the sky outside my window.
