Today was a short day walking, and the threatened rain didn’t arrive! We continued our walk on the John Muir Way and the Forth and Clyde Canal tow path, making good time as the terrain was easy. We left the canal at Kirkintilloch and stopped at a MacDonalds for coffee – meeting Sean once again, last seen on his way to Edinburgh four days ago! We compared stories of routes taken, before parting once again, us to our digs in Lennoxtown via the Strathkelvin Railway Path, and Sean in the direction of Drymen, our destination tomorrow.

A Backward Glance

We’re back on the ‘John Muir Way’ again which stretches right across the width of Scotland. Interestingly, John Muir left for North America when he was 11 years old with his family, where he made a name for himself in conservation. He never came back to Scotland. John Muir was passionate about protecting ‘wilderness’, so what he would have thought about a mainly tarmac path with his name on it, running through some of his early childhood haunts would be interesting. It’s impossible to make wilderness accessible, that’s an oxymoron like a bare footed boy with his shoes on – nonsense. Yep, treading a made flat path hour after hour, day after day may have caused even further psychological damage and made me even grumpier. But at the end of every dark tunnel there is light and today I caught a glimpse of it, a hill! We’d met up with fellow LEJOGer Sean again, first in a MacDonald’s then later sitting on a bench along the path to Lennoxtown where he pointed and said “nice views over there”. I turned and recognised it immediately, the green lumpy thing before my eyes was a hill, I’d seen one before and the memory of it was still there, lurking in the dark and distant recesses of my tormented mind. It was still a long way off, but I knew at last ‘flatland’ was nearly at an end and I’d soon have something new to complain about. John Muir loved forests and mountains, he is quoted as saying “And into the forests I go to loose my mind and find my soul”. So, just my soul to find now then.