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.