Day Ten: Fire, Farce, and the End of the Road

The day began with me nearly burning down a Scottish forest.

I had packed up most of my gear and was, I'll be honest, feeling pretty good about myself. Ahead of the game. Organised. The kind of morning where you feel like a competent person who has this under control. So pleased was I with my own efficiency that I got some stuff back out to make coffee, a small celebratory gesture to myself, and in doing so forgot to remove the plastic measuring bowl from around the titanium pot before lighting the stove. There was a small fire. It had to be dealt with. We dealt with it.

The ​gas cooker has melted plastic all over it and I think it's done. The lesson, filed carefully for future reference: when surrounded by dead, dry wood, be extra careful with fire. You'd think this wouldn't need to be learned. And yet. We got marching at a good clip, the morning behind us, forward motion restored. And then I looked at the forecast for the following day: six hours of heavy rain from the moment we woke up. The kind of forecast that makes the following day feel less like a walk and more like a punishment.

SoI suggested something to Andy. We could, if so inclined, do two days of walking today. Finish the whole thing. Skip the rain entirely.

Andy was skeptical. Andy is frequently right to be skeptical of my ideas. He knows this. I know this. We proceed anyway.

By the time we rolled into Tealing at roughly 9am, halfway through what was supposed to be a normal day, he'd come around. We looked at each other, made the call, and set ourselves to walking double.

Out of Tealing there were horses, which made me happy in the specific way that horses reliably do. The whole walk has been a running conversation with Scotland's livestock, singing to sheep, making friends with cows, stopping at fences to say hello to whatever animal has come over to investigate. I've been enjoying it more than I expected to and considerably more than Andy has.

Just east of Tealing there was a particularly social gathering of horses who kept coming up to the fence. I was wearing an orange rain jacket. My working theory is they thought I was a giant carrot. Whatever the reason, I'll take the enthusiasm. We stayed relatively fresh through the first twenty kilometres, which surprised both of us, and took lunch up in Monikie, which is a decent-sized town with a beautiful country park, a healthy amount of new housing development, and on a Monday afternoon: no open shop. No open café. Nothing.

Monikie You have got to get your act together. People walk through here. People are hungry. This is solvable. We had to navigate some dodgy estates on the approach, including one where Ordnance Survey confidently sent us past a gate, up a path, and directly into a tannoy situation. An old lady, somewhere, came over a speaker and told us we couldn't come through. I did not handle this with grace. I grumbled. I argued with a disembodied voice. I told her, out loud, to a speaker mounted on a gate in the middle of Scotland, that I didn't believe her.

Andy ​was more diplomatic. Andy also raised the reasonable possibility that the lady might have had a legitimate point, and suggested we consider her perspective charitably.

Andy was right. I was being a jerk. Don't tell him I said that.

We found our own route around. It involved climbing under a fence and ignoring several signs promising death from active forestry work. There was no active forestry work. We did not die. We pressed on.

Coming into Arbitlot we met an older man walking his dog. The dog was curious. We stopped, as we have learned to do, and told our story. He was impressed, making him the third person, after a child in Bankfoot and a lady near a Pictish stone, to be genuinely, visibly impressed by what we were doing. He said he thought he was probably too old for big walks anymore. Said it in the way you say something when you're not entirely sure you believe it but are trying it on for size. He seemed just slightly jealous of the adventure. I felt a small, quiet pride about that. The good kind.

Arbitlot has a nice bench overlooking some waterfalls. We sat on it. We deserved to sit on it. The path down toward Arbroath pushed us along some cow fields, where the cows, as cows have been all walk, ​were extremely curious. And then we walked through a field where two large ones came straight over to me.

Reader, I got to pet a cow.

She also licked me, which suggests she has developed a taste for man flesh that will probably be someone else's problem. But in that moment: magnificent. Andy was hanging on. Delicate feet, sore legs, the particular expression of a man who has decided he will finish this on willpower alone because there is no other option. He pushed through, because of course he did. That's the thing about Andy, I've given him a hard time across ten days of blogs and he has thoroughly earned all of it, but he also walked every step of this.

We had promised ourselves a McDonald's feast on arrival. We delivered on that promise comprehensively. I ordered more food than I have ever ordered at a McDonald's in my life. I ate all of it. I went back for a McFlurry. No regrets.

None whatsoever.

And then it was time.

We walked down to the beach. We took the photo. We stood at the end of a walk that started in Oban, wound through glens and forests and A roads and illegal paths and silver service hotel dining rooms and the second greatest campsite in Scotland, and ended here, on the coast at Arbroath, sore and fed and done.

Did it rain the following day, making the whole desperate double-march completely unnecessary?

Reader, it did not.

Ten days. Two men. One complete set of working ankles between us, approximately. Worth every step.

Gonzo and Mockingbird, out.