Road Rage

Day 4: Oban to Arduaine..

Distance: 21 miles (66.7 total).

Duration: 7 hrs 26 mins.

Lowest Temp: 5ºc

Weather: Blue, white and dry like a Wedgewood plate.

Highest Alt: 523 ft.

Pilgrimages are about the people you meet as well as the miles you put behind you, and so in preparation for this journey I contacted about a dozen clergy along the route to ask if they or anyone in their congregation would be willing to give us a bed for a night. It was a real disappointment to me that I only got two replies. However, I will long be thankful that one of those replies was from Norman MacCullum, Provost of Oban Cathedral.

Last night at The Rectory, Norman and Barbara showed us the most wonderful hospitality: warm conversation, great food, and a dram to cap the night (which thankfully did not conform to the tasting notes on the bottle, which rather bizarrely claimed that it had a hint of creosote about it). Norman grew up in the Western Isles, and he was telling me that when the reflection of the moon lights a strand of water that’s called ‘the path of the soul’.

Today the name of the game changed from ‘trying not to get blisters’ to ‘trying not to get run over’. My entire route from Oban to Arduaine was supposed to be along the A816 – now, I know what you’re thinking, ‘But you’ve spent the last two days walking across an A road on Mull’. The thing is, the A roads on Mull aren’t like the A roads you’re thinking of; in large parts of the country they’d be delighted to be labelled as B roads, and in most places they’d be marked up as ‘Single Track with Passing Places.’ The A816 is like the A roads you’re thinking of, so walking along it wasn’t so much fun. In fact, the traffic was such a shock to the system that I added a couple of ‘long cuts’, just to get away from it.

Cars dominated the day, and they began to make me miserable. The thing I was so missing from Mull was the way that the drivers there always waved at you: and their waves could mean anything from the normal, ‘Thank you for stepping aside’, through to, ‘That’s a sorry looking beard you’re producing, but good on you for having a go’, or, ‘February? Why walk in February?’ Today the drivers tended not to wave.

I started to miss those friendly waves so much. A wave is a little thing, but it involves people acknowledging each other’s existence, and that’s a bigger thing, because it’s also a way of saying that other people matter. In smaller communities, in places like Mull, that acknowledgement perhaps comes naturally, but in larger communities, in places like London, somehow it’s more than we can manage, and what we lose is much more than just a wave.

In the final hour of the day I finally figured out a solution to this conundrum. Instead of raising my left hand to wave, as I’d naturally do, I raised my right hand to the speeding cars, and as they approached I’d say in my heart, ‘The Lord bless you and keep you’, and then I began to look forward to cars coming down the road; it did get quite complicated though when lots of cars sped past together, and I think I probably only got the first and last ones sometimes.

You're proving pretty hopeless as researchers so far - tomorrow I head down through Kilmartin, so I want to hear all you can find out about that stretch; but no more than two comments containing the words 'chambered cairns' or 'standing stones'.

PS Some people are finding it hard to post a comment. Could somebody please post a comment to explain how you post comments? I don't want to embarrass anybody, but it would be great to hear from my Mum...