Walking with Plato (5 page)

As JoGLErs, Wendy and I left
Inverness
with the worst of the tarmac and the traffic and the tedium behind us, and with some of Britain’s finest long-distance footpaths ahead of us. LEJoGers, on the other hand, leave Inverness with all of the good stuff behind them, and with nothing but tarmac and traffic and tedium between them and their journey’s end.

It was with high hopes, then, that we set off along the Great Glen Way on the second stage of our End to End adventure.

The Great Glen Way is a seventy-nine-mile walking trail that runs along the Great Glen: a geological fault line extending from Inverness on Scotland’s northeast coast to Fort William on the southwest.

Although the trail runs through the Highlands, it keeps mainly to low ground, sticking pretty closely to the line of the Caledonian Canal. Along the way, it traverses the lengths of Loch Ness, Loch Oich, and Loch Lochy, linking these with sections of woodland, moorland, and canal towpath.

Since opening in 2002, the Great Glen Way has garnered mixed reviews from walkers. Some rave about the views of Lochs Ness, Oich, and Lochy; others complain that too much time is spent on forest paths where there is nothing to see but trees. Some enjoy strolling, deep in reverie, along the peaceful canal paths; others find the long stretches of towpath monotonous. Some revel in the solitude and tranquillity of the trail; others bemoan the dearth of accommodation, pubs, and teashops.

But every seasoned walker will agree that the worst day on the Great Glen Way is incomparably better than the best day on the road between John o’Groats and Inverness.

Our destination, that first day on the Great Glen Way, was the Highland village of
Drumnadrochit
. Our eighteen-mile route lay mostly through moorland and forest, with a final stretch alongside the west shore of Loch Ness.

Partway through the morning, when we had left the last traces of urban life behind, I paused to take a photograph of Wendy.

I’m looking at that photograph as I write.

She is standing on a narrow path surrounded by rough grass and slender trees. The trees nearest to the path are bent over so that their leafy branches form a natural archway. A fine mist hangs in the air.

She is dressed in walking trousers, technical T-shirt, and hiking boots. She has a rucksack on her back and walking poles dangling from her wrists. She is eating nuts.

It struck me then – and it strikes me now – that this was, and is, the real Wendy, that the workaday, lesson-planning, form-­filling, report-writing, nine-to-five Wendy is a mere shadow of the woodland Wendy.

In
The Conquest of Happiness
, Bertrand Russell describes seeing a London child taken out for the first time into the countryside: ‘In the boy there sprang up a strange ecstasy; he kneeled in the wet ground and put his face in the wet grass, and gave utterance to half-articulate cries of delight.’

The child’s joy, which Russell describes as ‘primitive, simple and massive’, seemed to be at work in Wendy: softening her features, brightening her eyes, and placing the hint of a smile permanently upon her lips. Suddenly, I felt glad – heartily, almost tearfully, glad – to be there.

Later, on a secluded section of the Abriachan Forest, two-thirds of the way to Drumnadrochit, we came across a wooden post with the words ‘CAFE & CAMPSITE’ painted on it.

As we walked on, we came across more signs, all hand-painted, dotted at intervals along the path. Some of them promised ‘REFRESHMENTS’, ‘HOT CHOCOLATE’, ‘COFFEE’, ‘TOASTIES’, and suchlike; others offered words of encouragement such as ‘OPEN’, ‘365 DAYS’, and ‘ALMOST THERE . . .’

They were a welcome sight, especially since we now had persistent rain as well as sore feet to contend with. But they also had a somewhat sinister air. The forest seemed such a remote and unlikely place to house a café that I couldn’t quite shake off the feeling that we were being lured into a trap.

I told Wendy that, if the café turned out to be made of gingerbread, or if there were any chainsaws thereabouts, we ought to keep right on walking.

As it turned out, the café did exist, and it wasn’t made of gingerbread. But it did have a clonking great buzz-saw lying around.

The word ‘café’ is actually rather misleading. It suggests a building of some kind, with tables and chairs, and a kitchen and a counter-top. Whereas, in fact, it was just a ramshackle collection of sheds and outhouses in the grounds of someone’s partially built eco-friendly home.

The coffee, which came with complimentary shortbread biscuits, was good though – and all the better for being served in non-matching crockery by the good-natured eco-homesteaders, Howie and Sandra.

As I sat slurping coffee, munching shortbread, and ignoring the hungry looks of the farm dogs, I thought again about Epicurus, and about the intense delight that simple pleasures can bring.

In his
Letter to Menoeceus
, Epicurus wrote: ‘Bread and water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips.’

Of course, you don’t need to be a philosopher to understand that bread tastes great when you’re hungry and that water tastes great when you’re thirsty. But Epicurus understood something more than that. He also understood that the converse is true, that the most sumptuous fare ceases to give pleasure when it’s too abundantly available.

I can vouch for that.

Before setting off on JoGLE, Wendy and I lived for five years in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a city where it’s possible to live very well on an ordinary ex-pat salary.

In the UK, an international buffet with free-flowing champagne at a posh hotel would be out of the reach of people like us. But in Ho Chi Minh City it’s really quite affordable. Consequently, we ended up doing ‘free-flow brunch’ quite often, whenever we had visitors, or whenever a friend had something to celebrate.

The first time I sat down to champagne, lobster, and whatnot in a plush hotel, I felt as though I’d died and gone to heaven. But, after I’d done it every couple of months for five years, it ceased to be very exciting. Certainly less exciting than coffee and shortbread at the Abriachan Café. And I have no doubt that, if you did free-flow brunch every day, it would cease to be exciting at all.

This is a specific instance of the general truth that the more you have, the less you appreciate it. A truth that prompted Epicurus to write, in a letter to his disciple Idomeneus: ‘If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires.’

So, when Epicurus and his disciples devoted themselves to a back-to-nature lifestyle, and to a simple, wholesome diet, it wasn’t because they thought there was any virtue in denying themselves pleasure. Quite the contrary. It was because they wanted to
maximize
the amount of pleasure in their lives.

They wanted to sit down each evening to enjoy the intense pleasure that wholesome food brings to a tired and hungry body. And when the occasional treat came their way (‘Send me a little vessel of cheese, so that I can feast whenever I please’), they wanted to relish it to the full, with unjaded appetites.

So, as Wendy and I left the Abriachan Café behind, and walked once more past its curious assortment of half-welcoming, half-scary signs, I thought that perhaps Howie and Sandra ought to add one more sign to their collection: one with the same message that Epicurus’s disciples placed at the entrance to their garden.

This garden will not tease your appetite with the dainties of art but satisfy it with the bounties of nature.

The vision of Wendy at her wild and wonderful best, and the Epicurean delights of the Abriachan Café, had got my first morning in the Highlands off to a cheerful start. But as the afternoon wore on, and as the minutes passed more and more slowly, I began to feel a familiar sense of ennui.

I found the walking pleasant. But I didn’t find it nearly stimulating enough. I found myself wishing the day away: counting the hours until we reached Drumnadrochit. Even worse, I found myself wishing JoGLE away: counting the days and weeks until we reached Land’s End.

A few miles from Drumnadrochit, the trail dropped down out of the trees and gave us our first unobstructed view of Loch Ness: a long expanse of water, lying serenely between the hills, forests, and fields of the glen.

But footsoreness, weariness, and boredom had blunted my appetite for nature. Not even Loch Ness, the most famous of all lochs, the second-largest lake in Britain, and the stomping ground of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, could hold my attention.

We plodded on for a mile or two along the banks of the loch, and then turned inland along the final stretch into Drumnadrochit.