The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Saturday 16 May 2009

Day 9 - Kirkmichael to Glenmarkie

Sat 16 May
13.5 miles

After we left Kirkmichael this morning, after a lie-in & a cooked breakfast, we discovered that had we continued on yesterday we would not have been short of choices of pitch.

I was happy, however, to have had a night of luxury and was particularly pleased with having indulged in an indecently long shower followed by the joy of getting dry in a warm room with a big fluffy towel. After 8 days of being outside (featuring just 2 showers!) it was a worthwhile treat.

So, off we set this morning, noting the possible pitches & making our way through farmland, all the time playing 'spot the stile'.

The spotting of stiles became trickier when, about 45 minutes into the day, the cloud came down. Down it stayed too, such that we didn't see a thing all day.

I know that we passed from farmland onto open moor and that we skirted a bit of forestry & crossed more moorland. Great attention was paid to navigation in the pathless yomping & we managed to stay on track (on the tricky bits anyway; we did go very mildly awry on forestry tracks right at the end of the day)- but at no time could we see where we were going or what our surroundings were like.

And so I find that after a day of walking through this area I have no feel for the visual nature of it, which is rather a shame.

On the plus side (every cloud and all that) the day was not as wet as forecast. Although mizzly in the cloud, it wasn't until 4 hours through that any real rain fell and then it was only light. The proper wet stuff managed to hold off until we had been in the tent for a whole 10 minutes - what timing!

We're now pitched in our preferred position - at the edge of a babbling stream. It should lull us to sleep nicely later.

As for other people, it has been a quiet day. Just one couple was met out for a stroll in their 'back garden'. We chatted a while and proving what a small world we live in it transpired that the chap grew up 1 mile away from where I did.

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