7DHP

Day 7: Inveraray to Inverarnan.

Distance: 20.6 miles (126.7 total).

Duration: 8 hrs 1 mins.

Lowest Temp: 1ºc.

Weather: Phone in sick and get yourself up here.

Highest Alt: 1299ft

(Sorry for the delay with this post. There was no wi-fi at The Drover’s. There may or may not be wi-fi at The Oak Tree, but nobody’s entirely sure, so we’ve had to pop in to Drymen to post this - thankfully the very helpful staff at the The Buchanan Arms have been able to help us out. I’ll post today’s update tomorrow afternoon (basically just very tired and sore - three twenty-milers in a row is at least one too many), and tomorrow’s tomorrow evening – is that making sense?).

The SatNav in your car has the country’s roads programmed into it. You tell it where you want to go, and it works out the quickest route. With a walker’s gps it’s a bit different. From the ‘A’ you’re starting from, through to the ‘Z’ you’re hoping to finish at, you have to programme in all the Bs, Cs, Ds of your journey for yourself. As you can imagine, I’ve had to programme in a lot of these waypoints for this pilgrimage. In my little system each waypoint begins with the code 1D, or 9D or 17D depending on which day of the journey they’re in, and then they end with a three figure number – 6D081 for instance. There is, however, one waypoint on each route which ends not with a three figure number, but with the letters HP – it marks the highest point on that route. Today I reached 7DHP, and it was the walking highpoint of the pilgrimage so far.

The track from the head of Loch Fyne reaches up to a reservoir, and then after that there is no path, just two and a half miles of glen, with a web of burns, some deep bogs, and glorious views. It was the leg I was most looking forward to, and it did not let me down.

(Those of you who know me well will have been wondering when this next sentence would appear.) As I reached the high point of the leg, my eyes filled with tears at the beauty and the barrenness of my location. There was such an awesome sense of stillness, and an awareness of that silence which is not the absence of sound, but the absence of words.

I stopped still.

I stopped still and was reminded what a small thing I am in on the face of this earth, and I gave thanks for that sense of smallness. So much of the time we are encouraged to imagine our selves and our lives to be so much bigger and more significant than really they are, and those imaginings can weigh heavily on us and become burdensome as we try to live up to them. There can be a lightness in knowing how small our lives truly are...

...then I turned to the mountains in the east, and raising my hands in prayer, as our Celtic forebears did, I launched into ‘Praise to the Holiest in the Height’; it was a real disappointment to me to discover that I could only remember the first verse. If this ever gets out in the Edmonton Episcopal Area, I’m finished.