Pilgrimage
Greetings,
On Saturday a friend and I walked part of the Fife Pilgrim Way, from North Queensferry to Dunfermline. It’s an alternative first (or last) leg of the pilgrimage to St Andrews. Last year I walked from Culross to St Andrews, and so Saturday completed my walk of every mile.
It’s an intriguing stretch, from the attractive village of North Queensferry associated with crossings of the Forth by ferry and bridges, especially the Railway Bridge which looms elegantly over the village.
We then walked by the shores of the firth, past beaches, a scrapyard and derelict furniture warehouse to Inverkeithing, a long uphill street busy with traffic but dotted with medieval and early modern buildings – houses, a church tower and pilgrims’ hotel called the Hospitium – which it is hoped once again to be a refuge for people walking the Fife Pilgrim Way.
The path then cuts west to Rosyth, with shipbuilding and naval base visible from above, before heading north through woods and by fields to Dunfermline, its steeples and towers, not least of its ancient abbey and palace, visible against the skyline.
As it was exactly a year since approaching Dunfermline from Culross, my mind turned occasionally to the pilgrimage our world has been on over this year and more. This year there were more visitors – at least in North Queensferry – and more cafes open. Yet we are still in the midst of this journey through the pandemic. Restrictions may be lessening in Scotland, but this is not always matched by lessening anxiety among students and staff of the University, or indeed by the path of the virus around the world. Last year, on arriving in St Andrews after five days walking, it struck me that although that pilgrimage was over, my life continued – and the following day still had its own tasks, tensions and minor triumphs. Perhaps our attitude to the pandemic is akin to our approach to grief. We do not battle it, nor do we defeat it. But we learn to live with it, and in time its intensity may lessen, and we may be affected less frequently. There’s no headlines in that – but I suspect it’s how the world will recover. It reminds me of a favourite quotation of mine, by Frances Lawrence, widowed when her husband, the school headmaster Philip Lawrence, was killed by a pupil. She wrote this in The Times in 1996:
When a tree is cut down it falls with a crash; as it grows, it makes no sound. The process of building is always by degrees but the process of destruction is sudden enough to command headlines.
Whatever your pilgrim path, I wish you a good way.
Yours,
Donald.