Inveraray Explorations

"Don't ask Why. Ask What." Hemingway was supposed to have said that. It may become my mantra for the rest of the trip. Or maybe my life.

The "What" I have for these two days has been "What's next? What's happening now?"

I spent some time Friday getting phone numbers and bus info for the Jura stay and found it easy to change plans--always a good sign. The Jura Hotel is booked, but they gave me the names of two B&Bs, and I've pieced together a full five-day stay by using them both. The WWOOFer family in Fort William, Great Glen Chalets, was also fine with my change in plans and can take me in the next week.

During lunch I sat on the seawall at the Inveraray park and fed pigeons, sparrows, a pushy gull, and several jackdaws from my bread roll, then poked around town a little. Decided to walk the mile south to Argyll Adventures, a family-run, family-fun place that advertises horseback riding, indoor laser tag, bungee trampolines, and--my objective--a 7-meter rock-climbing wall. Ever since seeing those girls climbing the wall at Okehampton, I've wanted to try that. And I want to see how different it would be from the tree climb on Wight.

My first adventure of the day happened before I got there. I needed a toilet, so I took a detour to a golf course on the way. Now this golf course isn't your typical American course, with a fancy-schmancy clubhouse and attendants, sports shop, and coffee shop. Access is obscure, the parking lot is gravel, and the clubhouse is a small bungalow of a building with a board on the outside announcing the next local tournaments, all of which occurred last month. Inside is a small paper-littered table, bulletin boards, oddball furnishings, and, hoorah, two bathrooms. No one was around to ask, so I just used the ladies' room.

When I went to leave, however, the bathroom door wouldn't budge. Not an inch. I pushed. It wasn't stuck, it was barricaded. Damn it all, who would block the door? I yelled out--"Hello! I need some help! Anybody there?"

Nuts. I had seen one man head out to the course with his clubs, and the parking lot had had very few cars. Hollering wasn't likely to rouse a response. But who would block the door anyway, and why? Had someone seen me go in and deliberately stopped my departure? I suddenly felt very aware that I was a woman traveling alone, and I didn't like it.

I wanted out. I wanted out now. I shoved on the door and got it a few inches open. A bench. Someone had placed a six-foot long bench against the wall, wedging it between the door and a table at the end of the room. What kind of perverse universal timing would make someone happen to block a door within the two minutes I was in the restroom unless they knew I was there?

I shoved and pushed more, and thanked god that the wooden table wasn't particularly sturdy. The bench pushing against its legs buckled them slightly and yielded the extra inches I needed to get the door open enough to reach out and tip the bench over and aside. I left it angled in the room with the bathroom door open, steadied the table legs to keep it from falling, and decided not to announce the situation to the thick, middle-aged man I saw coming up from the parking lot. He'd figure out what happened, whether the incident had been innocent or not.

All the way to the adventure park, I tried to recall whether the bench had been there in the room when I arrived or if someone perhaps had brought it in to furnish the room while I was there. Another bench had also been on the opposite wall when I left, but not blocking the men's room door because of more space on that side. The whole situation was probably void of nefarious intent, but it unnerved me just the same. And I was proud of myself for getting out.

The rock-climbing was different from tree climbing, involving my whole body and balance to stay on the wall. The first of four faces was easy--lots of fat holding spots, a flat surface. The young girl who spotted and instructed me was supportive and encouraging. She had climbed it many times, and knows the best handholds and how tricky the harder walls can be.

I was supposed to use my legs to push up instead of my arms to pull up, and I didn't always get it right or remember to do it. I sometimes felt scared to balance over my feet and then let one of my feet go to find the next foothold. I was harnessed to a hydraulic system that would let me down easily in case of a slip, but that didn't make it any less scary when it came time to let go of the wall once I'd reached the top.

The trick there is to let go and grip a plastic sleeve on the cable and walk the wall back to the ground as the hydraulics let me down. I kept swinging away like some flailing, panicked spider, or tipping my body flat so I was sliding bum first, or staying too upright and zooming down too fast. By the fourth time I'd done it, my body was trusting the system enough that I could walk the wall with enough balance to earn praise from my guide.

I managed the two beginner's faces, then got stuck halfway up the third face. It doesn't look hard at all, but once I got onto it, I found miserly protrusions and lots of recesses to clamber around, which makes for more awkward hand and foot holds than I would have thought. My muscles were fatigued from the previous ascents and practice, so I stopped on that wall, went up the beginner's wall another time, and then slid down, hot, sweating, sore in the arms, and proud of myself. I'd like to do this again when I get home, although right now I've got no desire to do it "for real" out in some national park or Olympic mountain. The body awareness is all I'm looking for.

I came back to a packed hostel. Peter, a middle-aged, bulky, rather loud man in a T-shirt, kilt, knee-high socks, and tennis shoes, kept trying to talk with me in the kitchen and dining room, but my barriers were still up from the golf course escapade and I wasn't in a talkative mood. He acted drunk, or it may be that he's got physical issues that keep his eyes off center, his words a bit slurred, his hips canted, and his walk hard on the ground. He stomps down the hallway like the hungry giant in search of Jack.

He's part of a group of about ten people (it seems like eighteen, they keep coming and going so much), three leaders and the rest in their late teens. All three other beds in my room are full tonight. After such an uncrowded time at the hostel, I closed up around this group of people--too many at once for me to process right away. The leaders seem kind, as do their somewhat shy charges, who each seem to have mild learning disabilities.


I ate breakfast early on Saturday and stuck my attention in a magazine to keep Peter out of my face. I was in no mood to talk or interact--it took too much energy to do it. I hopped a two-hour bus to Campbeltown, down the length of Argyll peninsula, which also took me past Kennecraig port, where I'll pick up the ferry to Islay and Jura on Monday. I was glad for the dry-run of that trip. Lovely coastal views most of the way, and startling to see sheep next to a loch, cattle next to the beach. Waves show up where there is no land mass between the coast and the Atlantic.


I walked around Campbeltown to check it out (interesting parking warnings and bumpers), then spent an hour in a lush green park by a school. Barn swallows swished over the grass and jackdaws hopped about and cawed. A woman walked by with a German shepherd who paused to snuff the air in my direction. The salami and cheese next to me were clearly on his preferred list.

Here it was quiet enough for me to make calls to arrange ferry, bus, and train travel for the next two weeks, including to St Bees, where I start the coast to coast walk on July 17. The plan is Jura five nights, Oban two nights as transition, Fort William seven nights, then on to the C2C walk.

Stopped for tea and chocolate cake with thick milk-chocolate frosting at a local café called Foncie's. The frosting's good, the cake was dry. I have yet to find a moist cake in Britain; maybe it's not a quality they look for in cake. Dined to a pop radio station, which was playing Spirit in the Sky: "Gonna go up to the spirit in the sky. That's where I'm gonna go when I die. When I die and they lay me to rest, I'm gonna go to the place that's the best."

I walked out from the restaurant, got to the pier, and then walked back to the restaurant--I'd forgotten to pay my bill again! I'm still confused about the variable dining-out protocol here...at pubs I order at the counter and they usually want me to pay ahead, although some will keep a running tab; at some coffee shops like this one, I order at the counter, but they want me to pay when I leave (and they don't bring the bill); at other restaurants, I'm to order from a waitress at the table and then need to ask for the bill, sometimes paying the server, sometimes paying up front. I shouldn't be surprised that I occasionally mess up on this, but I felt embarrassed and exasperated at my oversight. The café owner told me she had seen me leave but didn't want to chase after me and create a scene. She appreciated my honesty in returning, and a white-haired patron at the counter empathized--she had done it a few times, too. We had a good laugh, and I headed back to the pier.

One new bird caught my attention on the pavement--the body-size of a sparrow with striking black-and-white chevron markings, and a long tail that flicks up and down like a Hollywood clapboard. I described it to the proprietor of a nature-based craft store, and he said it was a pied wagtail. Appropriately named.

I sat on a rock wall by the harbor and watched seagulls fly and tree trunks get loaded onto a cargo ship. Once again I began to question my choice of Inveraray as my base on Argyll. Why not Lochgilphead, a sweet-looking little fishing village we passed today heading south? Or even Campeltown, which at least has more port activity and all the trappings of a large town and the chance of a movie theatre?

On the return bus trip to Inverarary, I spotted a wild swan swimming in the loch's waters, fish jumping the surface in three floating round pens, a white crane fishing in the tall grass of a marsh, two people tying off a sailboat as it bobbed in some kind of lock, and a family camping near the shore--their campfire on the sand, their tent on the grass, their brown skin shiny with sweat from the heat or maybe midge spray.

It's all a thread. An invisible skein of spider's silk that we unwind behind us, day to day to day. We connect with others, tie off a knot, launch into a new direction. We leave behind a trace of our energy, a shadow of our having been there, a wisp of us that no one else can recreate.

I chose Inverarary to meet Geoff and Jean and Heather and Ani and Peter. To get stuck and unstuck in a public bathroom. To see all these lovely sights today. To set my face toward Jura for equally mysterious reasons, for equally yet-unknown meetings. To be who I am every moment.