The Pilgrim Parodied

'A Pilgrim's Cairn' was born of my 2010 pilgrimage from Iona to Lindisfarne. To be honest, I was rather pleased with my writing. At least, I was rather pleased with my writing until a friend sent me the following parody of my beloved 'Pilgrim's Cairn'.

Day: Who Knows?!

Walking from: *insert place here* to *insert place here*

The day began with me in several shades of a bad mood, again. I’ll continue to describe the odd and specific reasons for my bad mood for the next few paragraphs. My foot/knee/leg/heel hurts again, surprised that this is such an issue when I decided to go on a 350-mile walk, but here we are. Still in a bad mood for anyone that’s interested. Something happened to me earlier in the day (or earlier in life), I reacted in a certain way that seemed insignificant at the time. Then whilst walking, something else happened to me and I realised, the thing that had happened earlier had in fact prepared me for the thing that was going to happen later! Funny old life. The countryside is so beautiful and far better than the horrible city where the monsters live. 

Here’s some abuse for the poor soul that’s currently accompanying me on this leg of the walk. Although this is a religious pilgrimage, I’m going to spend an incredibly large chunk of time talking about drink, drinking establishments and the time that drinking establishments open and close. Here are some words of wisdom from my Mum who seems to be the only one talking any sense in this whole book. 

The final and most important takeaway: I was right all along and everyone else was wrong.

As much as it pains me to say it... they weren't far off the mark. You have been warned.

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So, I promise I won't complain about any hurt ankles/knees etc. As it happens, I haven't abused any poor soul accompanying me either, although that's largely because I haven't had anyone to fall out with since I saw my boys off to school this morning.

I arrived in Derry around 6ish and went for a walk around the city centre. Sadly the walk was cut short by a downpour that was as heavy as it was sudden. I took refuge in 'The River Inn', Derry's oldest bar, dating back to 1684 (fact of the day). The bar was empty except for two guys cursing Arsenal and their fans with a vigour that left me speechless with admiration.

Lots of mixed feelings at the moment. Most of the day has been alive with a great sense of exhilaration at finally starting this adventure. However, I'm also growing increasingly aware that I'm going to be spending a lot of time on my own. Right now I'm sitting in a hotel bar. The TVs which are dotted around the place are showing really interesting looking cookery programmes, but I can't hear a word of them as the sound system plays decades of middle of the road music just a little bit more loudly than this largely empty space really warrants.

Although in 2010 I walked the first half of the pilgrimage on my own, my dad was driving 'back up' and was always there at the beginning and end of each day. I think it's fair to say that we sometimes had quite a turbulent father-son relationship; but I'd love to see him walk into this bar right now and order a large glass of Rioja. Within minutes he'd have made friends with people he'd only just met. Then we'd sit at this table together and I'd be so glad to be with him, even if it was just so that we could have a bloody good argument about something, anything, everything.