Revisiting the past

A little over 30 years ago, my then best pal and walking companion and I used to tramp all over the local beauty spot at the foot of which our church - and the Rectory, which was her home - lies: the Bishop's Glen. At the head of this glen is a hill - you can't call it a peak, and it's ill-defined - called the Bishop's Seat. The actual summit, where there is a trig point, lies back among the surrounding hills, and cannot be seen from the town, so quite often we would go only as far as the viewpoint where I took today's blip.

One crazy year, she was put in charge of organising the Christian Aid charity walk and decided they needed a more interesting challenge than merely pounding the pavements down the coast road to Innellan and back. What could be more appropriate than an ascent of this hill ...? So she and I had a large wooden cross made, and some Army cadets were inveigled into helping, and between us we lugged this cross all the way up the hill and erected it where that rather untidy cairn sits now. For years that cross was landmark enough to appear in guide books, until it disintegrated in the weather of too many winters.

That's where we went today. It's quite a hike, and I'm 30-odd years older than I was when we went up of an afternoon with the dog. The hillside has changed beyond recognition - a tornado (yes!) demolished the forest through which we had found and worn down a pleasant path, and now that area has been cleared and is in the process of replanting. There are tiny trees - we saw the man planting some in the distance - set in a landscape that could stand in for the battlefields of the Somme, and we had to discover the little tracks laid for the tree-planters' quad bike and zig-zag our way steeply upwards. So yes, quite a hike.

The great thing about it, of course, is that we walk out of our back door and five minutes later we're on the hill track. No driving, no people - just a few dog-walkers on the lower reaches. It took us two hours from kitchen to viewpoint. The wind was fierce, almost blowing us over in places. We could see the smoke from a huge heath fire on the far side of the Firth - we could even smell it on the way down. And we heard a cuckoo, over and over in the wind.

It was the very best day I've had since our holiday in Cyprus was cancelled because of the pandemic. And somewhere, right in the centre of the photo, is my house ...