crossing the firth 9 oct, 2018
Day 59 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Beauly to Alness
Distance: 30km
Cumulative distance: 1544km
I ate too much last night, I couldn’t even finish my substantial full Scottish breakfast this morning. I gave it a pretty good crack to be fair, but there were definitely a few scraps left over. Anyway, I was away by about 9am staring at about 30km of road walking before I made it to Invergordon. The best thing to do on these kind of days is just look at the map and break it all down into smaller sections. It’s a similar mindset to what I’ve employed for this entire walk, just on more of a micro level. As it turned out, I bypassed Muir Of Ord then pushed on along the side of the road for miles and miles, spending large periods of time walking on the verges to try and save my feet. I called Robert and Anne on the farm in Culrain, where I would be staying tomorrow night for a rest over the weekend, and continued on across the A385 through Easter Kinkell and Duncanston. I even got beeped for the first time on this entire walk! Some BMW wanker passing by. I was beeped three times today, quite an incredible turn of events given the amount of road walking I’d done over these last two months.
The other thing to do when pounding long roads like this is to get stuck into a few podcasts. Now I might just branch off on a wee tangent here for a moment, to answer a question I received a fair bit throughout the journey, and subsequent to its completion. What do you listen to when you walk? For the first week or so in Cornwall it was just me and my thoughts, and the sound of the ocean pounding into the cliffs beside me. But it didn’t take long for me to tire of those particular stimulants (particularly the former) and I decided I would need something else to cover all of these miles. I’d bought myself an iPhone 5 off Gumtree before I left primarily for photo taking purposes, but I had no music on it. I don’t have Spotify either, although that wouldn’t have mattered I don’t think because I was out of mobile data range for long stretches of the walk. So I explored the world of Podcasts. And I found some absolute rippers! What a brilliant idea – in a single hour I could walk 4-5km AND listen to an entire podcast episode or two. A routine was quickly put into place. At night time I would download a stack of podcasts so I had a collection for the next day. Here’s a collection of what I was listening to, if any of you are looking for recommendations:
Sportsound Podcast – Covered Scottish football, and I would listen to this daily. It took priority over everything else (I realise I have serious issues).
The Game – A Times football podcast, mainly focused on the English game.
Football Weekly – By the Guardian, very good podcast about…guess what.
The Non-League Football Podcast – One of my all-time favourites, which I would listen to from Sydney before I even left. Talks about the real stuff, not that financially artificial football at the top end.
The Age Real Footy Podcast – Had to get my AFL fix, and this one is a ripper.
Six Tackles With Gus – And my NRL fix.
Richmond Tiger Talk – Unofficial Tiges podcast hosted by Nick and Andy.
Talking Tigers – Official Richmond podcast.
Inside Elland Road – Very good Leeds United news and discussion.
My Old Man Says – An Aston Villa podcast.
No One Likes Us Talking – A Millwall Podcast.
King of Anglia – An Ipswich Town podcast.
Saints FC – A Southampton podcast.
That Peter Crouch Podcast – Freakin hilarious, take a listen.
It wasn’t all just sport by the way. I also regularly tuned into:
Backpacker Radio – All about long distance hiking.
The Teacher’s Pet – About the disappearance of Lyn Dawson in 1982 and the suspicion surrounding her husband Chris Dawson.
Black Hands – About a New Zealand crime where David Bain is accused of murdering his entire family.
The Classic Rock Album-by-Album Podcast – A discussion of some of rock music’s all-time great albums.
Something About the Beatles – Pretty self explanatory.
We Didn’t Start the Podcast – An album by album look at Billy Joel’s career.
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History – An epic podcast with four-hour long episodes focusing on major historical events. I focused on his four or five part series about World War I.
Desert Island Discs – The long-running BBC classic.
The West Wing Weekly – A breakdown of each West Wing episode featuring Josh Malina.
The Simpsons Show – Similar concept to above.
The Unlimited Spanish Podcast – Very educational where the host speaks entirely in Spanish
Notes in Spanish – Another educational Spanish podcast
There were others too, but we don’t have all day so I’ll leave it at that.
I’d been working my way through the Teacher’s Pet podcast over the last few weeks and was coming towards the end of the series, and I reckon I probably listened to about four hours worth on this particular day. I had a break from the listening as I tend to do while I stopped for lunch in Culbokie, then plugged the headphones back in as I walked down a half-mile hill which only catered for one car and zero pedestrians at a time. That took me back down to the roaring A9, which I needed to use to cross the Cromarty Bridge which links the Black Isle with the mainland. Actually, that’s a factually incorrect statement because the Black Isle isn’t actually an island, rather a peninsula between Dingwall and Inverness which almost closes over the top of the Cromarty Firth. I’d been over the bridge countless times in a car from my old days on the farm, and remember thinking it was a decent enough crossing in a motor vehicle. Fortunately there was a footpath on one side of the bridge, but getting over to it meant I had to cross the A9 which I’m pretty sure is ludicrously busy even at 4am. I’d read there was a footpath on either side of the A9, but on my side it was less a footpath and more a six-inch strip of concrete between the oncoming traffic, and the firth a long way below. I picked my gap and sprinted across before putting my head down and going as quickly as I could across the 1464m span. Then it was a right-hand turn at a roundabout designed without pedestrians in mind, and another mile or so along the A9 before I was able to turn up a little side street which took me to Evanton.
I checked the map at this point and realised there was no point in me walking all the way to Inverordon, further around the Cromarty Firth. There was a town called Alness a few miles down the road and from there I could press on towards Tain and then Dornoch, from where Anne would pick me up tomorrow afternoon and take me to the farm. I texted Steve and told him of the modified plan, then ducked into the pub in Evanton where the bartender and one of the locals were both incredibly chatty. I’d planned to sit down and write in my diary for a bit while giving my feet a rest, but before I knew it Max had bought me a couple of half pints and was suggesting I set my tent up at the campsite in town and come back to the pub for a few more. Max is a rig worker who was on a week off, and is also a Partick Thistle fan – aka Glasgow’s third team. We chatted all things Scottish football, and he told me about the time when Ally McCoist walked in to the hotel he was staying at one evening. Soon after that a glamourous young lady entered the premises and headed up to the same floor Ally was staying on, leaving Max to connect the dots. Geez he was a top bloke, duck into the Novar Arms if you’re ever passing through and see if he’s about. And tell him I said gday.
From Evanton I followed a B road the rest of the way to Alness, running parallel to the railway line the entire way. It was only three miles to Alness, and the walk was actually quite shady passing through occasional stretches of cool forest via a bicycle path. I was now on the John O’Groats Trail, a recently created long-distance walk that would take me all the way to John O’Groats up the north-east coast of Scotland. Finally! I could almost reach out and touch it. Although it is 147 miles from Inverness to John O’Groats so I still had a fair stretch ahead of me. I strolled into Alness and perched up at the pub, indulging in one more half pint before Steve came and picked me up.
