Mist and Cobwebs

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

Day 56
I flailed through the morning cobwebs and headed south.

A couple of minutes later I arrived at the southern terminus of the Forth road bridge and exploited the chance to sit on a 'proper' toilet. I've got to say I wasn't impressed now I'd exorcised the absurdity of the U-bend.

There was an electrical socket by the door, though, so I took the opportunity to prune back my face thicket with my beard trimmer, following up with a good wash. I emerged a shadow of the wildman who'd entered, and bore south towards the bike path that would whisk me to Glasgow.

Over the first hill a low mist hunkered on the valley floor, scattering the morning sunlight pouring over the distant Pentland Hills into an effervescent spectrum of grays. It was insanely beautiful. I could've sat there for hours, but with no problems to ponder, nor passersby to privately ridicule, nor booze to ease the passage of time, being static becomes a little less desirable, and the sunrise would end soon anyway.

If being static is actually even desirable in the first place, as my perspectival iris clicks open to its more usual global setting. For example, I did experience an uneasy resistance to leaving the bulkier trappings of civilisation behind when I left on this tour, but that resistance existed only in the last week or so of preparation, and lifted, like fuckery bricks from an untended backpack, abruptly upon exiting the driveway. Sudden freedom is surprisingly elating, and seems to eradicate, or at the very least significantly diminish, the petty tribulations of everyday life. Social squabbles and familial friction seem so much less potent, and infinitely more pointless, when one has to procure food and find somewhere to sleep every night.

Therein, perhaps, lies our modern conundrum: we evolved to struggle, not languish in success. With clean water, farmed food, zero predators, permanent shelters, and now the interaction of social media, we can't seem to help but invent new obstacles to take up the emotional slack. Thus, perhaps; neuroses, psychosomatic health irregularities, veganism, melodramatic soap operas, business and exercise goal creation, YouTube comment vitriol, and most curious of them all: plumbing prejudice (some people actually refuse to piss and shit anywhere else but their own home, when even the most rudimentary sanitation protocol dictates the complete opposite). We campaign against animal captivity but seem oblivious to our own. Unfortunately, we've improved healthcare enough to prolong this nightmarish Faustian purgatory into our eighties, when we finally die, peacefully and unnaturally, stuck full of tubes, drugs, and regret, surrounded by sniffling relatives.

A natural death is, of course, being killed by something that wants to eat you. Death by old age in nature is a rare accident, and the bowel-loosening terror of mortal pursuit a regular occurrence. We don't have this any more, and we apparently miss its balancing element, because we attempt to fill the void with the facile simulacra of exciting entertainments and precipitous pastimes, and I think this also plays a large part in our indignance at pictorial representations of Mohammad, or the ashes of our national flags, or rape jokes taken out of context. Perhaps we seek the adrenal surf because we're culturally bored, like listless chimps in a concrete zoo? But worse, I reckon, because we blame other chimps rather than the zoo itself.

Maybe I've been hypnotised by the unfurling tarmac, but it seems to be a metaphor for our existence now; a smooth road from the Paleolithic, roughened by overpopulation, potholed by this novel Neolithic concept of property, jolting this old jalopy along to somewhere we never intended to go. Our one saving grace may be digital technology, which seems to be bending the road back to a smoother grade, one where we've predominantly evolved to be, and the village is a charming pitstop on the way. And this is the evidence I was seeing, with so many villages now thriving. Twenty years ago they were dying. Hell, maybe village life is as retro as we care to be, now we've sampled the conveniences of indoor plumbing and WiFi routers, and the safety and comfort of the houses we put them in. Hunter-gatherers stay put where food is plentiful, after all. It's the dehumanising anonymity of towns and cities that do us in.

Personally, I may be taking it a little too far with this modern peripatetic nomadism, but the lifestyle has incredible appeal to me, perhaps because my construction career ran its course, especially in its latter years, in such a physically demanding environment I devalued the common luxuries most of us now take for granted. Plus, as a writer I feel it necessary, if I'm going to write about the way the world is, was, and perhaps will be, to go and have a bloody good look at it.

* * *

I followed the old railway track bridleway for most of the day, pondering these hefty topics, and stopped at the Morrison's in Bathgate for a quick forage, coming away with an orgiastically priced 20p bag of toffees.

It started raining mid-afternoon. From the path, I spied a peaceful-looking spot by Hillend Loch, and decided my luck was in. However, traversing a muddy ditch to get to this Eden, I accidentally ripped the heads off my earbuds when one fell out and caught in the front wheel. I did have a backup pair (one of the great advantages of bicycle touring with a trailer: one has more space to build in redundancies), or it would've been tinny phone speaker night in the tent, spiritually destroying the tranquility of the waterside, watching a few more episodes of Riker boldly humping his way through a herd of dead eyed bimbos and Worf being ragdolled by a smurf.

Hillend Loch
Hillend Loch is a 345 acre lake dammed in 1797 and creating, a marvel at the time, the largest manmade reservoir in the world. It supplies water to the Forth & Clyde canal, which similarly splits Scotland as the Caledonian canal does, eliminating the need for sea-going vessels to navigate the dangerous waters to the north. The difference between the canals, however, is the Forth & Clyde actually saw a modicum of financial success before being superseded by the railway. Twenty years to build, many thousands of navvies, hundreds of millions of man hours, obsolete twenty years later. It must've been heartbreaking for those callused, determined men.

There's a satisfaction one feels with material work that exceeds any other, I think. I take pride in my writing, so I try to make it as entertaining and fulfilling to read as I possibly can, but the way I feel when I write something well pales in comparison to my satisfaction when I drive past a wall I built or a roof I put on, even twenty or thirty years later. The tangibility is definitely more palpable. So I can empathise with these men when such a monument to their work ethic falls into disuse.

Interestingly, pride is a strange thing, indelibly tied to egotism. I had this conversation recently with one of my best friends, who's an amazing chef, a profession notoriously filled with narcissists, and he took umbrage when I mentioned egotism as a precept for perfectionism. He immediately assumed the layman's interpretation, that ego is infantile, when, in psychological circles, egocentricity is simply a necessary constituent of consciousness. Without it, we lack drive and determination. Much of our motivation stems from this component. I have an ego, as does everyone, but I've learned, especially since beginning to write for a living, to manage it. I want it to drive me towards excellence, but I also require genuine humility when someone purposely disparages me or offers a critique. Then I want to listen and possibly learn by objectively determining the value of the information.

Thus the benefit of balance, so that's now what I strive for, a malleable trade off between pride in my work and the ability to take criticism. Ego is the seed of most strife, but often the solution when applied wisely. Of course, most ill-tempered critics are completely full of shit, but occasionally one may glean a helpful nugget from the avalanche of bile.

Day 57
The winter had apparently followed me down from the mountains, as the flysheet was frozen this morning, but the low sun quickly defrosted tent, bike tarp, and the long grass around me, creating a damp mist that ultimately drenched everything. It dissipated quickly enough, though, and dried things out before I packed up.

Glasgow
Petersburn library on the outskirts of Glasgow appeared to be a relic of Assault on Precinct 13; a concrete bunker with tiny barred windows, flanked by shuttered shops defaced by graffiti, on a tower block housing estate replete with the rooster-like strutting of pit bull advocates, manfully reining in their pet predators. The librarian eyed me nervously from behind his bulwark desk as I walked in. I tried the wandering writer rhetoric, and relief washed over the man like a papal benediction. So thankful I wasn't there to violently bugger him to death he offered me access to the internet via his own account when the guest system went down. The place was deserted, and no other customer came in the library for the two hours I was there, which somehow didn't surprise me, though another librarian did turn up and they discussed me in hushed, almost reverential tones which had the curious effect of not only buffing my ego but also worrying me about my rig locked outside. I finished my final draft, emailed it to the client, landed another little project, then left to skirt the periphery of Glasgow and head south for the border and Carlisle.

I camped by Strathclyde Loch between Hamilton and Motherwell, near Bothwellhaugh Roman ruins, which destroy the popular Scottish boast of the empire ending at Hadrian's Wall some eighty miles to the south, and next to a suspiciously sandy beach, and made the single most momentous discovery in the history of cycle touring: No Bake Camp Cheesecake. You take a digestive cookie, break it in half to make it bite-sized and surmount each with a generous dollop of cream cheese, then a slight smear of bramble jelly. With a succession of cups of tea, I was in heaven. Surely something this divinely simple had been invented before? Well, I'm taking credit for it even if it has, because by gum, the symphony of sweet, oaty crunch, smooth creamy cheese and sharp tang of berry is to die for, especially augmented by an eruptive lakeside sunset.

Day 58
After weeks of cycling spending more and more of my time not listening to anything and becoming something of a meditative hippie, I curiously found myself craving music upon discovering my backup earbuds had even less purchase in my ears than the previous pair. I spent morning tent defrosting time loading up a new rockin' playlist to my phone and hit the road with the rolled frozen flysheet strapped to the trailer because it didn't.

I rode to Larkhall to work and charge my phone in the library, and discovered I'd been paid promptly for the work I sent in yesterday. I completed today's assignment and headed for the Co-op for an indulgent shop of curry ingredients and a celebratory four pack, thinking to get a couple of more hours riding in and camp early for dinner and a movie. This plan evaporated, however, when an elderly 'I'm Scottish' American cornered me as I was unlocking my bike and subjected me to a litany of family migratory history, mistaking my Canadian cycling jersey for collusion.

Coming from Britain, as I do (though born in Canada), I've never understood the North American fascination with their European ancestry. The stereotyping underpinning such interest is often quite disturbing, and rather shocking to experience from the denizens of First World countries, who should, frankly, know better. European nobility have the same obsession, and normal people shouldn't trust those weird bastards either.

Perhaps it's a relic from when we thought lineage and geography were more important than the individual, and we didn't know enough about humanity to discard the proverbial book cover? After all, this was before the internet, and I suppose the quickest way to best guess someone's character and temperament was through the generous application of established stereotypes. We weren't to know such thinking was lazy horseshit. It shocks me to see how many people still harbour these views, expressed so easily within the anonymity of the web, even with the mountains of biological evidence stacked so heavily against them and freely available for all to see. But still, this guy was ancient, so the stratifications of prejudice were probably irrevocably ingrained.

Avoiding impoliteness I murmured platitudes and feigned interest at the appropriate points, whilst internally updating how far I'd be able to ride now before darkness hit. When he finally broke the monologue at the sixty minute mark to draw what I firmly believe was his first breath, I interrupted to say I had to get going, constructing some lie about having to be in Carlisle in two days, and it was 120K away. He dismissed my objections and grabbed my arm, offering me a bed for the night. An entire evening of subjective genealogy, accompanied, no doubt, by albums of pictorial evidence, bookcases of supporting literature, slide shows, laser-pointed Powerpoint presentations, and, quite possibly, surreptitious attempts at sado-masochistic sex. I thanked him but refused, and said I really had to leave.

I was probably a little brusque in declining, and hope I didn't hurt his feelings, as he was probably just a lonely old man looking for someone to talk to, but I'd already given him an hour and I was looking forward to my plans. Curry night!

I made a mad scramble out of town before the dark and cold hit, desperate to find a place to camp. I finally found a fair spot and discovered my flysheet was still frozen. I put the beer outside to chill and slow cooked the curry for a couple of hours, seriously denting my methylated spirits supply but man, was it worth it for both my sanity and the sanctity of my bottom.

Day 59
The old Carlisle road paralleling the M74 was virtually deserted. I saw two cars in twenty miles, and with a dedicated bike path and a healthy tailwind through hilly terrain, I did that twenty miles in about ninety minutes. With the sun out and great views, the euphoria rose to a point where I started singing along to the music I was listening to, especially when Big Joe Turner came on with his version of the classic Honey Hush. I particularly like the chorus, so was belting it out at the top of my lungs, 'I SAID A-HI HO, HI HO SILVER! HI HO SILVER AWAAAAYYY!' When I shot out from the forest track, on a black bike, no less, onto a footway in front of two startled backpackers.

I passed through the village of Abington, but neglected to turn off for Wanlockhead, the highest village in Scotland at 1,531' (467 m) above sea level and home to what is very probably an interesting lead mining museum, but it would be closed for the winter. I continued on and noticed, on a bare hillside to my left, a patch of pine forest, just outside Crawford, quite blatantly planted in the shape of a giant penis. Immensely amused, pictures immediately winged their way to my Twitter and Facebook accounts.

I rode on past the rapturously named villages of Elvanfoot and Watermeetings, tyres purring their approval in the silence, but this perfect day began to crumble with the simplicity of missing a turn. Not usually a big deal, but I didn't notice I had, and this turn was important: crossing the motorway to continue the trail on the other side of the valley, and sleet began to fall and blow sideways. The tarmac gave way to a dirt track, the track thence to mud, and there was nowhere to camp. I saw some woods up ahead, though, and slogged on into them, thinking I was still on the right route, to discover a gate blocking my path. It was some kind of quarrying or mining operation, so I checked my map and discovered where I'd gone wrong. Still there was nowhere to pitch, so I donned waterproofs and backtracked the couple of miles through the mud slurry, now washing away to expose rough stone aggregate necessitating a snail's pace lest my rig shudder apart, the headwind opposing smoother stretches, as I cursed the heavens and all they contain.

I made it back to the missed junction, the cold starting to bite, got on the right path, cranked up my cadence to warm up, and discovered my trailer tyre was flat. I couldn't help but chuckle at how not fun this was. I pumped the thing up and carried on: it lasted perhaps a hundred yards. My hands were too numb to fix the puncture and it was getting dark and colder, one side of the road was a bog, the other fenced off, which isn't particularly a problem for me, but the dense and steeply sloping forest beyond was. I pumped up again, repeating the routine three times until I came across a flatter area to the left, raised above the bog.

In the dark I pitched on mossy rubble over concrete, trying to find purchase with the pegs, as the winter wind whirled into a howl. My hands had no feeling anyway, so I degloved to defrost them in armpits or crotch for half a minute to open up a few seconds of fiddling with pegs, zips, and clasps. It was below freezing now, and the sky was clearing to reveal gimlet stars, the moon an indifferent chip of ice, so removed from civilisation's glow. It was going to get even colder. I spread my stuff inside, weighting the corners to augment the insecure pegs, and thankfully, finally, got out of the elements.

I discovered, to my dismay, that my sleeping bag was wet. This was going to be interesting, as it's a two season bag with a comfort rating of +2 degrees Celsius and an Extreme Rating of -3, and it was already about -5 C, I guestimated*. Extreme Rating means you'll probably survive that temperature, but you won't sleep. I did have a silk liner though, which makes a huge difference, and I could layer up my clothing, but I was out of candles for the heater. There are those that say one should sleep naked or only in very light clothing in order to extract the full benefit of their sleeping bag. I don't believe these people.

I still woke up shivering and unable to feel my bare feet (all my socks were also wet), the tent taking a serious beating from the wind. I went out several times to adjust the guys and pegs, and actually wrote in my notes, 'HOLY FUCKING JESUS IT'S COLD!!!' when I got back in, but all told I was pretty comfortable, considering. Especially when I used my headover and woolly hat as socks instead, and wore two pairs of spare underpants on my head, and spread my towel over the bottom of my bag as a blanket. The benefit of so many years working construction in Canadian winters and Texan summers is I'm intimately familiar with a hell of a lot worse than this.

*I'm pretty good at marking temperatures. I looked at the weather report the next morning, and it had reached -6 C, so I was pretty close.

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