Sunday, 16 February 2025

Will we make stories too?

Me, Dad, Paul and Uncle Jimmy - 2007
Day 17: Greenock to Milngavie

Distance: 20.1 miles (363.3 total)

Time: 6 hours 34 minutes

Tomorrow: Milngavie to Drymen (est 11.8 miles)

This feels like the beginning of the final chapter. The first chapter took me from St Columba's birthplace at Gartan Lough to Derry, via Stroove Beach where Columba had left Ireland to go into exile. The second chapter was every mile from Derry through to today; there have been no major 'Columban' sites en route, it's just been about covering the ground. This third chapter will take me up along the first part of the West Highland Way to Inverarnan and then across to Oban. From Oban it's the ferry to Mull and then an overnight walk across the island from Craignure to Fionphort and on to Iona. I feel a very ordinary combination of a growing sense of achievement, alongside a sense of impending loss when the journey ends. I'm not good with endings.

This final chapter is beautiful and warm with connections. I like connections.

It's very fitting that this final chapter commences at the start of the West Highland Way, because it was making this walk in 2007 that really inspired me to take up long-distance hiking. That year I walked the WHW with my great friend Paul, who'd introduced me to hiking in the first place. His 'gentle' introduction was the Lyke Wake Walk, forty-two miles across the North Yorkshire Moors, all in one day (Lyke Wake Walk The Offical Website of the Lyke Wake Walk Hambleton Hobble Shepherd's Round North York Moors). I was his meek and obedient Curate at the time and just did whatever I was told.

When we'd walked the WHW in 2007, we'd been joined by my dad and my Uncle Jimmy for the final leg from Kinlochleven to Fort William. The following year Uncle Jimmy wanted to walk the whole thing, so we did. For several years it became an annual event for my uncle and I to do one of Scotland's many long-distance walks during the October half-term.

Over the course of those walks we accumulated a wealth of stories about people we'd met, things we'd seen, times we'd fallen out with each other, and that time we accidentally got quite drunk in The Climbers Bar of the Kingshouse Hotel on Rannoch Moor. Invariably, whenever we all met up as family those stories would be told, and a little boy called Barnaby became fascinated by them. Without ever having been on a hike, he'd become hooked on the idea of hiking. In 2022 we did a small local walk, forty-five miles in three days. The following year we walked The Borders Abbey Way in Scotland. Last year we walked The Paul Taylor Way (c) from Berkhamsted to Redditch. Why does Barnaby like hiking? Here's why: before we did that first walk three years ago he asked me, "Daddy, will we make stories too?"

My most recent walking companion is Rabbi Neil with whom I did a three and a half day sponsored pilgrimage last year. Apart from forgetting to warn him that he needed to bring a packed lunch on the first day, it all went very well; especially the visit to Tring Brewery.

Across some eighteen years and several really precious friendships this final chapter begins with a 'coming together' of so many stories, as my friend Neil brings Barnaby up to Scotland tomorrow to walk a couple of legs of The West Highland Way.

You've probably noticed that I haven't said a great deal about today's walk. It was all good. Look on Google Maps and trace Greenock to Milngavie; there's not a huge amount to say. I was pleased with my time and was really driving myself along a bit. At one point I felt just so totally in tune that I suddenly found myself saying, out loud, "You're a ----ing machine." I realised that perhaps I had drifted a bit from the spirit of St Columba, Patron of this pilgrimage. Men, eh?

All Together Now: when I made my pilgrimage in 2010 I invited readers of 'A Pilgrim's Cairn' to join in the pilgrimage by making a walk of their own and sharing on the blog how it had gone (A Pilgrim's Cairn: How Was Your Walk?). I'd like to try the same again this time around. Next weekend I've got another of my non-walking ferry days. I'd love it if you'd join me on this journey by making a walk of your own that weekend. It doesn't matter if it's one mile or forty, just walk. If you'd then write in using the comments section at the bottom of each post, just saying something about where you walked, why you chose that walk and any reflections you have on it, I'd be SO grateful. Will we make stories too?

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Thanksgiving: Barnaby's mum for getting him organised to come to Scotland to walk with me for two days. (Do you think I should tell him that there are some forecasts of snow?)

Saturday, 15 February 2025

Broken chairs

The Old Largs Road
Day 16: Largs to Greenock

Distance: 13.3 miles (343.2 total)

Total Ascent: shall we just pack it in with the whole ascent thing? I'm not exactly in the Highlands and so far as I can tell, the altitude function on my watch is no better than a random number generator, so who knows what the figure is actually worth. Enough.

Time: 5 hrs 10 mins

Tomorrow: Greenock to Milngavie (est  21.1 miles)

Yesterday evening I discovered that the B&B I was staying in was just around the corner from a Benedictine Monastery which is home to a community of Tyburn Sisters; the Tyburn Sisters are devoted to keeping a continual vigil of prayer every minute, of every hour, of every year. With a short day's walking ahead I decided to have a lie-in (well, I managed 7.30) and then go and pray in the Monastery for half an hour before finding somewhere for breakfast. It was an interesting experience. There was already one lady praying quietly when I arrived in the Chapel, so I tried to put my rucksack and walking poles down as quietly as possible before going to kneel before the Blessed Sacrament; I didn't want to disturb her. Having not been in a church since the very start of this pilgrimage, when I went to pray in Letterkenny Cathedral, this felt like a special moment. It felt like a very special moment for two or three minutes, and then the banging started in the entrance hall; I'm not sure exactly how they did it, but the cleaner who'd been there when I arrived was making one hell of a racket with her dustpan and brush. Then there was some quiet and I returned to my prayers, until another chap arrived in the Chapel and started a long and fairly loud conversation with the woman behind me about which chairs in the Chapel were broken and which were safe to sit on. Then there was some quiet and I returned to my prayers, except the man who'd just arrived clearly had a bad cold and snuffled, sneezed and coughed with remarkable vigour. Then there was some quiet and I returned to my prayers, and remained suitably reverent even as the Chapel door opened and closed again and the three of us became four as another man joined in prayer. The newcomer didn't have a cold, however he had clearly had a good breakfast and began to burp, regularly, freely, considerably. I thought about prayer.

You already know me to be a grumpy and fractious type and yes I felt some irritation at the dissolution of my time of peace, perfect peace. My Confessor for twenty years, the late Fr Bill Scott, often used to say to me, "Sometimes we need to not take ourselves too seriously and to see how ridiculous we can be, and just laugh at it." I've always had plenty to laugh about on that count. These noises were the sounds of life, and God didn't come amongst us in Christ to live in sepulchral silence; in Christ, God comes amongst us in a world which has noisy cleaners, and chatty friends fretting over broken chairs, and a world in which people catch colds and break wind. Praise God for that!

God is the God of life, and where there is life there is sound. Even in your moments of deepest meditation, still you breathe in, and you breathe out, and your heart beats in your blood, and those sounds say 'I am'. I've spent large parts of the past three weeks in some quite isolated and remote spots, and none of them have ever been silent: there has been the sound of the wind, of water chuckling down streams and roaring onto the rocks at Tremone Bay, the grass has stirred and rustled, I could hear the rabbits run from me in the fields outside Ballantrae, and so many hymns sung by the birds. The sounds of life. The sounds of God's Creation. The many songs and whispers of the One God. Yes, there is a great value in quiet sometimes, but too often we fetishise it to our own detriment: we'll find silence enough in the grave. Instead of seeking silence, perhaps we would be better off asking ourselves what we can hear of God in the sounds around us, even in the sneezes and indeed burps.

Anyway. Pilgrimages. Walking. Yes. It was rather good to have a shorter day. In addition to prayer at the monastery I was able to treat myself to a coffee and a bacon roll at Scotland's Best Cafe (2016). Instead of keeping one eye on the clock as well as the miles, I was able to meander a bit, take a few photos, and still arrive in Greenock by three, with time for a couple of coffees and a spicy chicken panini (instead of collapsing on a stool in the first bar I come to and barely whispering those magical words, "Guinness please, and two packets of dry roasted nuts.")

Today's leg came in one part and that part is called the Old Largs Road. It wove easily up into the hills and strung me along above glens and past lochs. Apart from a little rain that was barely rain at all for the first half hour or so of the day the weather continued to be brighter and milder than it has any right to be in February. The drop down into Greenock was a bit steeper than my knees would have liked and I'm trying to make sure that I take good care of them; they're definitely the part of this clapped out old sod that could most easily derail this adventure and I do not want that to happen. I'm going to Iona.

In the monastery Chapel my sense of failure and guilt were acute again. And then I remembered the kindness and generosity of my friend Rabbi Neil. It seems an odd combination of thoughts, I know. But I was reminded that life is lived best when it is lived as gift, as grace. My hero, Revd Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy (BBC - The Rev. Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy or Woodbine Willie) wrote a poem which ended:
To give and give, and give again,
What God hath given thee;
To spend thyself nor count the cost;
To serve right gloriously
The God who gave all worlds that are,
And all that are to be.
I heard the poem set to music once.

The God Who gave all sound-sodden worlds that are. The God Who speaks in all the musics of Creation.
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Thanksgiving: Musics.

Friday, 14 February 2025

In my garden a fern grew tall

Day 15: Irvine to Largs

Distance: 22.8 miles (329.9 total)

Total ascent: 374ft (21,786 total)

Time: 8 hrs 10 mins

Tomorrow: Largs to Greenock (est 13.4 miles)

At my home in Edmonton I planted a fern in the garden that I loved very much. I'd found it growing in the roof of the parish church when it was still just a tiny curlicue of green. Who knows what breeze blew it up there or what bird dropped it down there, but spores had landed on that roof and found enough light and water to grow. That sort of thing just amazes me endlessly. Whenever I watch a David Attenborough documentary or some other programme about the natural world, I'm always in awe of the capacity of life to persist, to endure: life always finds a way through.

Today's leg did not have best start ever. It's a sad truth that some people have their hearts broken on Valentine's Day; I discovered that my bladder had split. I'd always been slightly suspicious of putting what amounted to a bag full of water in my rucksack and now all my fears found themselves founded. As I left the bed and breakfast I'd been staying in, I'd noticed that a little corner of the rucksack was damp. Within a mile or so the problem had spread and was definitely tending more towards the wet than the damp. Taking the bladder out of the rucksack and giving it a squeeze, I discovered that it had indeed failed the one job it had to do and was leaking.

Things got worse a couple of miles later when I discovered that I'd made my first mistake in the mapping of this walk (missing the Giant's Causeway was not a mapping failure - A Pilgrim's Cairn: nowhere near Giant enough). I came up against an insurmountable obstacle in the shape of the A77 dual carriageway. Thankfully a bit of exploring led me to the National Cycle Route 7 (or 73, it was never entirely clear) which would take me into Ardrossan, from where I could rejoin the Ayrshire Coastal Path all the way here to Largs.

One of the bits of 'growing back to myself' that's been happening on this pilgrimage is rediscovering my capacity to find a way through. There have been all sorts of obstacles along the way, from collapsed roads, irritated farmers, tree trunk strewn footpaths and more, which have been hard at times to get around, over or through, but I've always found a way. Come to think of it, there were all sorts of obstacles before I even got on the plane to Derry, in the shape of leaking hiking boots, injured ankles, insufficient training. Over the past five years or so I think I'd lost faith in my ability to find that way through. Too often I felt lost and couldn't see a way forwards and so didn't dare to take the next step. Too often I began to listen to the voices which told me I wasn't capable of finding a way through even if I tried. And I lost a lot of belief in myself. This is quite hard to write. The boys deserved better than that.

So, without quite as much water as I'd hoped to take with me and in spite of the A77, I had just a great day's walking here to Largs. The oddest part of the day was when I reached a sign on a footpath just north of Portencross which said something like, 'Our armed patrols may be here at any moment.' This isn't what you expect in a farmer's field in Ayrshire. Passing through a kissing-gate I found myself in the canyon of barbed wire, CCTV cameras, concrete and towering white buildings which is the Hunterston Nuclear Power Station; it all felt slightly surreal. I upped my pace a little.

In my garden in Edmonton a fern grew tall.

Because God, life finds a way through, and so does love.

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Thanksgiving: that although we don't always get things right the first time, that's not the only time we have.

Thursday, 13 February 2025

Valentine's Pizzas

Day 14: Maybole to Irvine

Distance: 21.1 miles (307.1 total)

Total ascent: 469ft (21,412 total)

Time: 7hrs 48mins

Tomorrow: Irvine to Largs (est 22.3 miles)

Staring at an enormous statue of a mouse in Alloway, I found myself remembering a wedding rehearsal I'd taken when I was at All Saints in Edmonton. As with many of the weddings I took then, both the bride and groom were from Nigerian families. During the rehearsal I noticed that the best man kept nudging the groom and whispering something to him and that the groom just kept shaking his head. Finally the best man broke silence and very gently and very patiently told me that I wasn't pronouncing the groom's name correctly. I was cross with myself for my mispronunciation, but these things can happen sometimes. What I was most upset by was the fact that the groom had not felt that he could correct me. I was the figure of power in all sorts of different ways; mine was the dominant voice and if that's how I was going to pronounce his name then that's just how the world turns.

This remembrance in an Alloway park was stirred because the mouse statue was a celebration of Rabbie Burns' beautiful poem, 'Ode to a Mouse' (Robert Burns Poem -"To a Mouse"). Of course, Burns is celebrated not just for his poetic vision and profound humanity, but because he wrote the words that his people spoke. He took the speech, the thoughts, the lives of his people and turned them into literature. He gave a voice to those whose voices were rarely heard.

What is our true voice? We adopt all sorts of different 'voices' during our lifetimes. Our family background gives us a certain voice in terms of our vocabulary (I'm delighted that scunner, wheesht and eejit are part of my voice!), but it can also instill in us a sense of things that cannot be said, things that mustn't be talked about. At school and college we might 'try on' different voices. I went to the same school as Jamie Oliver and like him we all talked as if we'd been born within earshot of Bow Bells, even though most of us were growing up in comfortable Essex commuter belt villages. In our professional lives and in all sorts of other contexts, we learn ways of speaking and ways of not speaking and thinking. But where in all this do we find our true voice? Which patterns of speech and thought are authentically ours?

Arran on a blue day
Today should have been such a simple and enjoyable day's walking. The first few miles took me downhill along country roads from Maybole to Ayr. When I reached the beach at Ayr all I had to do was hook a right and keep going along coastal paths and beaches until I reached Irvine. Weatherwise it was one of the best days of the pilgrimage so far, and for most of the day my beloved Isle of Arran was never far from sight. It should have been such a lovely day's walking but unfortunately The Noonday Demon (A Pilgrim's Cairn: The Noonday Demon calls me Billy) wasn't willing to wait until noon. Within an hour of setting out, all sorts of angry thoughts started bubbling; anger at myself, anger at others. It all rather took me by surprise. The most insidious voice was the one that whispered, "You know that even if you get to Iona, nothing will have changed." At several points the desire to chuck it in was bafflingly intense: I've done most of the hard bits. I know that change is happening.

For most of the past week I've shared in saying Afternoon Prayer with my friend Paul. We video call and I hold the phone up so that he can see the same view that I can as we pray together. Today, before we turned to our prayers he remarked that this leg must be really easy going after yesterday's twenty-seven miles. I hesitated. There was a great deal of temptation to agree and to point out how lovely and blue the sky was, and how long and empty the beach was. However I decided to tell my friend the truth, that in fact today was being weirdly difficult. After I'd spoken to him in my true voice, things began to feel so much better.

The lowest moment came when my phone pinged while I was walking through Ayr. At once I felt rather uplifted that one of my friends was sending me a message. In fact, it was an advert from a well-known pizza delivery company, telling me about the special offer they had on for Valentine's Day. That was so many different kinds of unhelpful.
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Thanksgiving: for the people who help us to speak in our true voice.

Wednesday, 12 February 2025

Going the long way around

Ailsa Craig
Day 13: Ballantrae to Maybole

Distance: 27 miles (286 total)

Total ascent: 1,420ft (20,943 total)

Time: 9hrs 45 mins

Tomorrow: Maybole to Irvine (est 21.7 miles)

If most of yesterday's leg most definitely felt like I was in Scotland, most of today's felt like I could have been in just about any rural part of the UK. The day began and ended on the A77, but from Girvan pretty much to Maybole itself I followed quiet country lanes that knotted in and out of one another as they rose and fell with the farmland. Here and there a quiet copse of February-bare trees and I was never far from the sound of rivers and burns, bubbling out of sight.

It was the sound of the sea that accompanied the first dozen miles or so of the walk as I made my way along the A77 to Girvan. I hadn't much been looking forward to that part of the day, but there was far less traffic than I'd been anticipating and most of the drivers seemed happy to share the road with a hiker and often waved a cheerful greeting.

For several years in the early 2000s, Mum and I would take a week's holiday in Scotland and the first of those holidays was in Girvan. It had felt very sad and run down at the time; a one-time resort that nobody really wanted to resort to anymore. Walking through the town today it felt much brighter and much more upbeat. Once again the amnesia of the present moment struck and I so nearly tried to phone Mum, because I knew that she'd be so pleased to know how much the town had changed.

Leaving Ballantrae I walked along the beach at first, and then I had a choice. The route I'd plotted for myself took me away from the A77 and along a coastal path around a headland. But the A77 route was slightly shorter and, you know, twenty-seven miles is a long way, so what's the harm in taking the short-cut? I went the long way around. It was beautiful scenery and an easy track to follow, apart from all the gates I had to cross over, which the farmer had made rather more challenging with the judicious placement of masses of rusty barbed wire. I'm not a pretty sight clambering over gates at the best of times, but when there are just a few inches between the aforementioned barbed wire and my... well, central parts, it can become quite a performance. Still, I'm glad I took the long way around.

We're not often inclined, or encouraged, to take the long way around. How often are we encouraged to buy something on the basis that it will save us time? This cooks quicker. That cleans faster. Learn a new language in four weeks. There are times when I need to make meals quickly, but how much better it is to cook the long way around; put on some Chet Baker, open a bottle of Rioja, invest time in something you love.

One of the things that religions offer us is time to go the long way around. Honestly, if we stepped back from our rituals and services and looked at them in the cold light of day, well a lot of them would seem really weird, and a weird way to spend time. You do what with a candle? You drink wine at what time in the morning? But these rituals take us into space which is sacred because it is not ruled by the laws of efficiency and utilitarianism; there's something gratuitous about practices of worship across faiths. 

We all need to take time in our lives to take the long way around. A spirit of efficiency never inspired anyone to write a poem worth reading. The laws of utilitarianism are put to one side when children become absorbed in their play. And someone once said, that unless we become like little children we can never enter the kingdom of heaven. Children know a lot about going the long way around. If we will have the humility and wisdom to learn from them, children can teach us a lot about going the long way around.

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Thanksgiving: giving thanks for the financial support of The Diocese of St Albans, The Clergy Support Trust and Ecclesiastical Insurance, without which this pilgrimage just would not have been possible at all.

Tuesday, 11 February 2025

A Rabbi made me cry on the ferry to Stranraer

Day 12: Stranraer to Ballantrae

Distance: 19.9 miles (259.8 total)

Total ascent: 1,801ft (19,523 total)

Tomorrow: Ballantrae to Maybole

Without a shadow of a doubt, today's was the best day's walking of the pilgrimage so far. A little over three miles from my B&B in Stranraer I was walking away from the main roads and onto a beautifully quiet single-track lane that climbed away from the sea and up into the hills. I wouldn't need two hands to count the number of vehicles I saw as I walked. After a mile or two's climbing the road stayed fairly level for the next eight miles or so, curling out past Penwhim Reservoir. Leaving the lane I followed a track up to a summit called Beneraird, after which I was led gently, lazily, peacefully down into Ballantrae with the sun breaking through more fully with every step. This is probably a good time to say something about how lucky I've been with the weather. Almost the entirety of today's walk was on exposed moorland and hillside; in different weather it could have been a miserable day. Today it was perfection. For fifteen miles I neither saw nor spoke to a soul. For some personality types, there's some perfection in that too.

Anyway, you want to know about the Rabbi who made me cry, don't you? Well, before we get to him we need to rewind a bit.

My youngest son, Barnaby, loves long-distance walks; who knows how that happened! When I realized that my pilgrimage took in the February half-term I tried to see if there was any way to get him up to Scotland to join me. One of my longest-standing and kindest of friends, who also happens to be Barnaby's Godfather (and who also happens to be about the only person I know who is as garrulous as Barnaby... did I say that?) kindly agreed to drive Barnaby up to Scotland and to drive 'back up' for him as he joined me for five days walking from Milngaive to Taynuilt. Unfortunately, last week it became clear that this just wasn't going to be possible, and my friend felt so awful about not being able to help. I feel so awful for all that he's going through. There was also a selfish part of me that felt really low that Barnaby wouldn't be joining me on this adventure; I know that it's highly unlikely that I'll ever get an opportunity to do something like this again and I was so delighted that he was going to be a part of it with me. I wanted us to make stories which we could keep for the rest of my days; stories that maybe he'd get to share one day with his children. At first we tried to figure out alternative ways to get Barnaby up to Scotland to join me, but quite quickly I realized that even if we could figure that out, it still wouldn't be the solution we needed; there was no way that my lovely eleven year-old could carry all that he needed for a week and do the walking we were planning to do. We didn't just need to get Barnaby to Scotland, we needed that back up driver too.

It was in Ballycastle, as I was brushing my teeth and getting ready to start another day's walking, that I realised that we just couldn't solve this problem; my reflection in the bathroom mirror had tears on his face. 

Which brings me to my new friend, the Rabbi. Well, he's actually called Neil, and if he wrote something in which he repeatedly referred to me as 'the Vicar' I'd probably send him a sweary WhatsApp message telling him to knock it off. Yesterday morning, having breakfast in Belfast, I knew that this was the day that I'd have to email half a dozen B&Bs and cancel the bookings for Barnaby and his Godfather, and I just really didn't want to do it; coming to terms with life's harsher realities has never been one of my strongpoints. I decided to put it off until later in the day when I was in Stranraer. And then an hour or two later, while I was on the ferry, I received a message from the Rabbi Neil, that made me cry: 'Do you have time for a call? Was thinking about if I can help. Thinking if I fly up with Barnaby to Glasgow and hire a car and then fly back with him... Wouldn't be the whole time but would be some of it and I'd be able to be back up driver for you as well then.' I didn't have any words then and I don't really have any words now either.

For a bit of context, Neil and I have known each other for less than five years. Across that time a really special friendship has begun to grow; but all the same, I never expected anything like this. Ironically, he was one of the very few people I had told about Barnaby not being able to join me, because I knew that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. There's something about the asymmetry of his generosity and kindness that speaks of the truth of true friendship. If I could ever do anything to reciprocate then of course I would, but it's hard to imagine a similar situation arising. It's hard to imagine that I'll ever be able to truly 'repay' my friend Neil. But that's what the best friendships, the best relationships are about; there's no 'keeping score', there's just generosity, there's gift, it's grace. I'll probably get him a pint when he arrives in Drymen with my son; it's the least I can do.

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Thanksgiving: I'm guessing that you can figure that out for yourselves.

Monday, 10 February 2025

Fellow Pilgrims

Tomorrow: Stranraer to Ballantrae (est 19.8 miles)

from Pilgrim Michael
My thoughts, on this your rest day on the ferry, are of admiration for your journey and the daily distances walked . The number of miles seems to be similar to the number of kilometres that we covered each day en route to Santiago de Compostela. You do though have a 10 year age advantage over me when I started, and 20 years when I finished! But also, walking solo must be infinitely harder than in a group. You've covered half the distance now - I'm sure you'll manage the other half!

from Pilgrim Cath
I've been reflecting on the concept of both place and memory, and the connection between them, because this is a subject close to my heart. In June 2014 I took my own pilgrimage (I've looked up the definition in Chambers and have decided this still counts!) to the remote island of St Kilda with a lady called Claire who has a very dense amnesia following a brain infection many years before. 
Coincidentally, I was reminded of this last week because Claire called me to say there was a programme on the BBC about "our island", but it was already very much on my mind because of some of the points made in your blog. Claire has no memories for most of her life. She doesn't remember meeting her husband, or of any of her 4 children being born, or indeed anything of them growing up. In fact, she remembers almost nothing at all of any of her life. She’s also unable to make any new memories. This means that she has to rely on whatever concrete evidence she can get her hands on and when this fails (which is often), she has to rely on other people’s accounts. She finds this very difficult. It makes her vulnerable because she has no measure of what is true or not true, but more importantly it feels to her that other people have more ownership of her memories and identity than she herself has. 
This takes us to the relevance of St Kilda. This remote island off of the Outer Hebrides (you will remember I spoke about it to your mum at length) had been inhabited since prehistoric times but was evacuated suddenly in June 1930. There are various accounts explaining why this happened and whose decision it was. The history of that island has been told by many people and there are over 200 books written about it, but here’s the thing: only two of these are written by former inhabitants. The artist I was working with knew the island well and saw parallels with Claire. As with Claire, the stories that are told are based on other people’s interpretations of the evidence they see and this in turn is shaped by the context and knowledge of their own life. Neither Claire, nor the St Kildans, have much in the way of their own records which means that their history – and thus in my opinion, their very identity - is dependent on what others tell them to be true. 
Those of us without memory loss are in a much better position, in that we do have access to our own autobiographical memories – the ability to recollect many different moments in our life, all of which make us who we are and shape our relationships. But the science is also quite clear in showing that we all massage our histories to some extent. Experiments that have been replicated many times show that adults are entirely able to “remember” something that demonstrably never happened. No one wants to believe that their memories are fallible, because that would make us feel like Claire – scared, vulnerable, uncertain. Our histories are so much part of who we are. But the gentle reframing of the past that every one of us does is mostly seen by psychologists as a positive and adaptive response. We fair better when the story we tell of our lives is in keeping with the values we hold and with our sense of self. 
To return to the subject of “place”, this is one of the most powerful ways we can both stimulate and scaffold those memories that tell us who we are. Moving about in new places activates the hippocampus where memories are stored (again this is an adaptive response – if you leave a safe place, the brain generally turns on the memory centres so that you can find your way home again, though not necessarily to the Giant’s Causeway). Anyone who walks a lot knows that you can often remember exactly what you were thinking at certain points in the journey, particularly landmarks or turnings, which is because the hippocampus is at its most alert when a navigational decision is being made. And using similar mechanisms, returning to familiar places from the past can also bring older memories back to life. Sometimes these are good memories, sometimes less so, which brings me to my very last point (I promise!) – that the light and dark in our remembered experiences are a crucial part of how we navigate the world. Claire would give anything to be able to access her past – not just the happy stuff, but the difficult stuff that made her who she is. In our research, we find that even the happiest people (maybe even, especially the happiest people) choose “redemption memories” as the ones they would least like to lose. These are recollections of really horrible difficult times that we have come out of the other side of. They give us strength and remind us that we can cope and that we will survive.
My very very final point (and this time I really do promise) is that my mum – who now has a very sparse memory of most of her life – is very clear about one thing, and that is that she is a survivor. For example, she remembers hating school but she also remembers that she came out the other side. Those difficult memories are what give her the most strength now when life has thrown her the biggest challenge of all. Her language is failing but the other day when I was worrying about something, she said to me, “I always work on the basis that there is an answer to every problem, even if it doesn’t come exactly when you want it to.” By mentally rehearsing some of those difficult experiences from her childhood as well as her ability to cope with them, she made those memories strong enough to withstand the ravages of dementia. And because of this she will frequently say to me, “I am a survivor”.
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Thanksgiving: for Michael and Cath.

Will we make stories too?

Me, Dad, Paul and Uncle Jimmy - 2007 Day 17: Greenock to Milngavie Distance: 20.1 miles (363.3 total) Time: 6 hours 34 minutes Tomorrow: Mil...