Epilogue: The Numbers, the Nonsense, and the Thing About Andy

A day out from Arbroath now. The boots are off. The blisters are healing. My ribs still have opinions about sneezing, but they're coming around.

Time to look at what we actually did. 165 miles. Oban to Arbroath, on foot, in ten days. Through glens and forests and A roads nobody should walk along, past Pictish stones and community gardens, through a forest we weren't supposed to be in, across rivers we couldn't quite cross, and into a McDonald's in Arbroath where I ordered with the enthusiasm of a man who had been on his feet for ten days and felt he had earned every single calorie.

4,907 metres of ascent. That's the height of Mont Blanc, roughly, spread across ten days of Scottish hills that didn't announce themselves as significant but added up quietly and relentlessly in the way that things do when you're not watching.

363,767 steps. Give or take a few thousand that my watch doesn't know about, because I forgot to start it. Twice. We don't need to revisit this. I've spent ten days of blogs being quite free with my opinions about Andy Tremain. The coffee situation. The gleeful little dance about workplace efficiency. The word cloud that would have four enormous words in the centre. The strategic delegation of forest navigation followed by the smooth assumption of the lead position the moment a road appeared.

All of it true. All of it earned.

But here's the thing I haven't said, and probably should.

Andy is the reason this walk happened. Not in the logistical sense, I'll take some credit for the planning, but in the deeper sense that a walk like this only works if the person next to you is the right person. People don't usually say yes to my hair brained ideas. And to be fair when I told Andy about this walk he went quiet on me which is the general reaction I normally get. However, Andy came back with a response I have rarely heard, "I've bought a tent!" And the walk was on.

Ten days is a long time. The miles strip everything back. There's nowhere to hide from who you actually are when you're tired and wet and your ankles hurt and you're eating camp food and you've still got four days to go. Andy was steady. Every day, in every condition, he was just, there. Grumbling occasionally, yes. Directing me into dense forests and then emerging first onto the road, absolutely. Refusing adventures with language that won't appear on a postcard, without question. But also walking every step. Making the call at Dalmally that saved our ankles. Being diplomatic with the disembodied old lady when I was being a jerk. Quietly, consistently, getting on with it. There is no version of this trip where I do it without Andy. That's not a small thing.

Mockingbird. It was an honour.

Now let's leave it a year or two before we do anything like this again. I believe Mongolia was discussed...

165 miles. Oban to Arbroath. Done.