Bob Warwicker's blog

Slowly the pattern emerges from all the to and fro-ing. Janet is moving further north. The last couple of days, her route has taken her along the east coast of northern Scotland. And at various times we’ve had one or more of the sun, the sea, the sand. Janet’s found out about the John o’Groats Trail, which runs next to the sea for quite a long way. It’s not suitable everywhere, but where it is, it’s glorious. Sometimes the A9 is unavoidable. It’s not unusually busy, but it is fast, and unpleasant walking.

Anyway, a departure tomorrow, heading inland on the tiny road from Lothbeg to Kildonan. We hope the weather holds.

… we hope the weather holds in High Peak, and before too long the people of Whaley Bridge can go home.

Sheep grazing on the remains of Tain airfield, overlooked by fireweed….

BTW, fireweed doesn’t sound as nice as willowherb, convolvulus is a lovely name, bindweed less so.

Ice cream is full cream or low fat, never low cream or full fat.

Language games are part of retail, politics, horticulture even. So maybe Christians like me have a problem with the word ‘sin’. Or we could just think of it as an opportunity to live a better life, individually and corporately.

Janet found loads of painted ladies today. Here are a few on some flowers…

No doubt they will eventually disappear as quickly as they came.

Here are some rigs for the hydrocarbon industry. Just looking at them, you would not know whether they were being built, serviced, or scrapped. People are prisoners of economic forces, and in this case uncomfortably bound to the harmful burning of fossil fuels (as most of us are in one way or another BTW)…

Sooner or later, all jobs in their present forms will disappear.

Economic pain and/or the fear of persecution drive some people away from their homes, their friends, their families, and they have to say goodbye. Nothing new there. Look at this stone in Cromarty, about nineteenth century emigration to Canada…

To ruin a sea shanty,

Farewell and adieu to you fair painted ladies, 
farewell and adieu to you beauties of Spain… 

After a hard day, the last section of walk took Janet on a gentle downhill through these lovely trees.

Footpaths in Scotland are not marked on the map in the same way as they are in England. Finding ways through sometimes involves gathering information from one or more sources and exploring on the ground. This can be tricky, but worked well today, resulting in that pleasant end to the day’s walking.

Some have used a map as a metaphor for the Bible. If so, as today showed, getting from the printed page to a sensible route involves a bit of consultation and exploration.

Living God, may we walk with you
as you walk with us
all the days of our life. 

Today Janet took the Kessock Bridge to cross the Beauly Firth. Unfortunately, although the waters below her didn’t cause any trouble, the waters above fell from the sky and made puddles on the road next to her, which were then redistributed all over Janet by the heavy traffic.

But on a short day of many stops, she had time to dry out as the weather improved.

One stop was at the now defunct Black Isle Wildlife Park, another at Munlochy’s Clootie Well.

The wildlife park had been in disarray before closing. The clootie well was surrounded by tattered and mouldy cloths, each carrying the story of a loved one’s suffering. Last night, the place we were staying had a festival of short films. One was about a man’s love for his dying daughter, which passion, combined with a life-philosophy drawn from tabloid headlines, made him try to freeze her to keep her going.

It seems love can’t let go, even when it is hopeless. It is wonderful and terrible.

And maybe it gives some insight into God’s love for us.

We thank you God, 
for never letting us go,
for holding us
in the infinite love of Christ. 

While Janet walked down to the end of the Great Glen Way in Inverness in the heat, I took the car to have its three worn tyres replaced. Even the car gets wear and tear.

Well, it is. Even though it’s quite a bit less hot than Cambridge, it was a hard day for Janet. But with the help of copious water, and a lovely woodland cafe at Abriachan, she made it to Wester Altourie today.

Maybe such weather helps us to understand the psychic geography of some of the Bible. Constant sun bad, rain good, refreshing, making growth. Water life-giving. And so on.

One heatwave in itself doesn’t mean there’s global warming. But the evidence is building. And if this is the future, I don’t like it… I don’t like the personal consequences, and I don’t like what it’s going to do to people too poor to escape from what is coming.

There may seem to be something unnecessarily ‘wacky’ about green theology in some of its forms, but I still believe it’s God’s world, and we have a responsibility to keep it safe as a place for others to live….

… So says someone who has driven his Picanto over 5000 miles in the last 3 or 4 months.

After yesterday’s rest, Janet did a substantial piece of Great Glen Way today, quite a bit of up and down, mostly through sunlight-dappled woodland on the steep north west side of the Great Glen….

It was warm and sticky, though not so hot as southeast England. Soon we came upon a place that both Hannah and I had passed on our end-to-ends…

… Nice to have something linking the three journeys.

Sometimes pilgrimages connect people with the past. Sometimes maybe, pilgrimages can disconnect us from aspects of the past which bind us in chains.

So, our new prime minister as a liar. I suppose the theory is that all politicians are liars (or so it’s believed) , so one is as good as any other. The thing is though, politicians aren’t all liars. Many, most quite likely, are honest and hard working and really care. They will be liars now, though.

At least the new person’s optimistic. But you wouldn’t want an optimist driving your bus, would you? “It’ll be fine”, he says, as he pulls out in front of a lorry load of bricks. Divorce may sometimes be the right thing, but it’s never easy. It’s never going to be a happy time. Also, you really do have to pay the bill.

After Janet did a long day yesterday to create space for a day off under today’s expected rain, the rain didn’t come in the expected amounts. It’s not that the forecast was wrong exactly – it was just our lack of local knowledge about how much of it would be sucked out by the mountains before it got here.

We had our day off, wandering around Drumnadrochit, feeling the little sprinkles of rain falling from a partly blue sky, watching skeins of low cloud blow along Loch Ness, and being displeased with the humidity.

A quiet day.

Also, on the way back from looking at the route for a couple of days ahead, we saw a sign for Bona Church. As one who can remember Round the Horne and Beyond our Ken, I got wondering what a sermon in Polari might be like.

With a lot of rain expected tomorrow, Janet did two days’ walk today, so she could have tomorrow off. Fortunately, these were two fairly light and pleasant days: nevertheless, it was a hard day’s work for her, open towpath, canal works paused for Sunday, the dark and mossy wood, water works paused for Sunday. Big engineering, delicate plants, mosses, fungi. We have moved digs again, to Drumnadrochit, getting closer now to the east side of Scotland.

Strange that another Sunday passes without church. Yet not a day, maybe not a moment, passes without Jesus. How does that work?

God of love, Creator, Jesus, Spirit, one God,
we thank you that we are not alone.
In happiness or in suffering,
you are alongside us.
In the boring, ordinary days, 
you do not desert us in favour of
more interesting people. 
Your Creation is all around us. 
Your love calls us out of ourselves.
Your Spirit meets us in unexpected places. 
You are our God, and we are your people. 
Help us then, to live as you want us to,
every day of the week.