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<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nand enter bright-colored farmland worthy of Van Gogh.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nIt\u2019s still grazing country. That\u2019s a herd of sheep on the path ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nThere are interesting things to see, of course. We walked by Invermark Castle, built in 1526 on a site where a castle existed back to the 1300s. It\u2019s wonderfully intact. The other side has a semi-circular corner tower lacking only Rapunzel. <\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nOne of the things that makes this reentry tolerable is the promise of meeting a mass of Challengers at Tarfside, a village that hosts a Scots version of a mountain-man rendezvous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
People set up tents on the village green\u2014sometimes there are 40\u2013and eat sandwiches and cake at the local church hall made by volunteers, most of them Challenge alumni and alumnae. Afterward, everyone repairs to the clubhouse of a fraternal organization, where the beer taps open for a price and walkers exchange exaggerated accounts of the previous week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alas, there was none of that this time. I\u2019m a little unclear why not.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Covid is the standing excuse for any buzzkill decision, but I\u2019ve also heard there were complaints of objectionable behavior from bibulous Challengers in previous years. By now you have a sense of this crowd. How much damage could a bunch of self-punishing 70-year-old bald men do? Maybe it was the women, and the sub-40 cohort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In any case, we drowned our sorrows in tea and nut bread at St. Drostans parish hall. One of the volunteers, Ann Thorn, was there in 2014 when I met my distant cousin, Marion Mitchell, who like me is descended from John Brown the Covenanter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was a Presbyterian martyr shot in cold blood on May 1, 1685, by a notorious English military enforcer, John Graham of Claverhouse, in front of his pregnant wife and two children. (There\u2019s an obelisk to him on a Lowland moor my parents once visited.) His widow and her children moved to Ireland, and two sons moved from there to Pennsylvania in 1720. <\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nThe church offered 12 rooms for 25 pounds apiece (and toilets and showers, of course.) It tells you something about this group that I was the only Challenger in the place that night. My excuse: an underperforming tent. The real reason: I needed a place to write, and I wanted to sleep in a bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Personally, I hope superannuated dissipation returns to Tarfside someday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its stead\u2014and a good, if sober, substitute\u2014was The Right Reverend Mark M. Beckwith\u2019s reading (and later, on the road, interpretating) the Oak of Mamre story in Genesis 18, in which three angels tell Abraham that his wife Sarah will bear a child in old age. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
St. Drostans (part of the Episcopal Church of Scotland) had in its nave a copy of a famous icon of this encounter, which, among other things, is about hospitality. Mark had contemplated it for an hour alone before Ole and I got up.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nAfter Tarfside, we spent the night in Edzell, at the Panmure Arms Hotel. The original plan was to camp somewhere, perhaps sneaking onto the grounds of the ruins of Edzell Castle. By then, however, we were no longer casting around for good excuses for eating in a bar and sleeping in a bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last day was 14 miles on road. The last climb was up the Hill of Morphie, which I\u2019d done on a previous crossing. (Love that name.) <\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nAt its foot we met Rich, who like his wife, is a local school teacher. They\u2019re used to seeing Challengers trudge by their house. He came out to greet us. <\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nWe talked for a few minutes. \u201cWe can\u2019t get away this time of year,\u201d he said enviously. But he and his wife have plans for the summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coming down the hill I passed a road sign. <\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nYou\u2019d think this was the end of the story, but it wasn\u2019t quite. We still had to get to St. Cyrus, just ahead, and beyond it, in the mist, to the North Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We got to the cliffs and looked out. It was a beautiful sight. We\u2019d made it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the built-in Health app on my phone, We’d walked 230 miles in 13 days. That included everything–walking around campsites and villages–not just time underway. And I think the app exaggerates distance. Nevertheless, it was a long way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We still had ahead of us the podiatric intinction.\u00a0We left our packs at the top of the bluff and walked down to the beach, Ole first. It was almost a half-mile.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nWe took off our boots and walked into the sea, and took a picture of ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nWe had to wait more than an hour for a bus to Montrose; luckily there was a pub nearby. When we arrived we signed in at Challenge Control, a room in the Park Hotel. Then we truly were<\/em> done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sue Oxley, one half of the sainted \u201cAli and Sue\u201d who run the show and have been communicating with us since last October, was there. She provided a few statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, 74 people had \u201cretired\u201d\u2014dropped out\u2014from the starting field of 400. Because of the staggered starts that number could increase; there were still several days to go. That\u2019s both more people, and a higher percentage, quitting than since 2015, and possibly longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The weather, and its associated hazards and discouragements, were the main reasons. Mountain Rescue had been called for three people, although one search was aborted when the person appeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I put my tent (slept in three nights) in front of the message board and taped to it a note saying it was for the taking–as long as the taker gave a donation to The Great Outdoors Challenge.\u00a0I’ll be interested to get follow-up on that sometime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next morning I went into Challenge Control. The only person there was Pierre De Greef, the Belgian we\u2019d briefly encountered when he came in late at the pony shed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We talked for a while. As we exchanged observations, I realized he embodied the Challenger ethos in an extreme form. Everyone who does this has a bit of Pierre in him or her.<\/p>\n\n\n He\u2019s 50. He has a sister, six years younger, who is schizophrenic. He dislikes it when people paper over her illness with euphemisms. (I don\u2019t know the French ones.) In his walk he\u2019s raising money for Macaulay College, a \u201ccommunity interest company\u201d on the Hebridean Island of Lewis, where he lives. People with mental and social problems run a farm. Things are expected of them, and their work is productive. This is what he wants to support. <\/p>\n\n\n So far, he\u2019d raised 1460 pounds of a target of 3750. The effort has liberated him, he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor my sister, there is no escape. This has allowed me to speak freely of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his driven state he\u2019d climbed 20 Munros\u2014mountains over 3,000 feet\u2014in 10 days. He\u2019d walked 240 miles in 13 days. He pulled up his shirt. \u201cI have lost eight kilograms,\u201d he said, in amazement. (That\u2019s 18 pounds.)<\/p>\n\n\n We\u2019re all a little driven and we all have some agenda, however secret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What it is for most Challengers was the topic of discussion in a tea break with some of the old English and Scottish guys one day about mid-crossing.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n