Suriyavamsa - newly installed President of Triratna Highlands in Scotland - is marking the start of his time in that position by making a Dharma Walk from Inverness to Glasgow (that’s 165 miles or so!). And he’s blogging it for us from his trusty Blackberry… + follow above to get updates from the road!
Days 5 and 6: Well. I made it over the Lairig Ghru and down Glen Tilt, camping last night by the Geldie Burn ford and eating my dinner in a ‘dangerous building’, an old cottage with decades of hillwalkers’ graffiti scratched on the walls. My achievement was paddling across the Geldie ford barefoot with my blisters.
The Lairig was sublime - great threatening ugly lumps of rock dwarfing me as I walked by, huge corries, crags and snow high above. Glen Tilt on the other hand was beautiful - the lower reaches are a romantic ideal - waterfalls, crags and rocks, mists and birch and hazel woods.
Along the way I chanted some, did the metta bhavana, most of a puja (got muddled up with the entreaty verses) and lots of reflection and catching up. It feels like a solitary in that I’m reflective and sensitive and I am bursting into tears easily over lots of things - fond childhood memories, parent grouse putting themselves in the way until the chicks can escape, Rolf Harris’s victims (seen in a newspaper stand in Aviemore).
Today it rained a lot and my blisters were worse, so the looooooong walk down Glen Tilt was hard and weary. By the end I was swearing at everything - wet grass, rain, the length of the road, lambs stuck in front of me on the road.
I’m now in a bar and having dreamt of pasta, cheese and chips for miles, ordered too much and now I’m feeling a bit sick! Thus the fool proceeds.
Having pored over my damp map (everything about me is currently damp) and worked out tomorrow’s journey it is time to limp across the river to the campsite. I should make it to Pitlochry tomorrow and make a serious assessment about these feet then.
Days 5 and 6: Well. I made it over the Lairig Ghru and down Glen Tilt, camping last night by the Geldie Burn ford and eating my dinner in a ‘dangerous building’, an old cottage with decades of hillwalkers’ graffiti scratched on the walls. My achievement was paddling across the Geldie ford barefoot with my blisters.
The Lairig was sublime - great threatening ugly lumps of rock dwarfing me as I walked by, huge corries, crags and snow high above. Glen Tilt on the other hand was beautiful - the lower reaches are a romantic ideal - waterfalls, crags and rocks, mists and birch and hazel woods.
Along the way I chanted some, did the metta bhavana, most of a puja (got muddled up with the entreaty verses) and lots of reflection and catching up. It feels like a solitary in that I’m reflective and sensitive and I am bursting into tears easily over lots of things - fond childhood memories, parent grouse putting themselves in the way until the chicks can escape, Rolf Harris’s victims (seen in a newspaper stand in Aviemore).
Today it rained a lot and my blisters were worse, so the looooooong walk down Glen Tilt was hard and weary. By the end I was swearing at everything - wet grass, rain, the length of the road, lambs stuck in front of me on the road.
I’m now in a bar and having dreamt of pasta, cheese and chips for miles, ordered too much and now I’m feeling a bit sick! Thus the fool proceeds.
Having pored over my damp map (everything about me is currently damp) and worked out tomorrow’s journey it is time to limp across the river to the campsite. I should make it to Pitlochry tomorrow and make a serious assessment about these feet then.
