Traveler’s Journal
About the presentation:
When: 7 p.m., Thursday, March 26
Where: Sequim High School library, 601 N. Sequim Ave.
Cost: Suggested $5 donation (adults); 18 and younger, free
Presenter: Ron Strange
Presentation: ‘Walking long in Scotland’
by Ron Strange
For the Sequim Gazette
In the winter of 2012, I advised two friends, one newly retired, on gear selection for their planned long walk in Spain on the Camino de Santiago that coming summer; two-plus months and 500 miles.
Long walks have interested me for some time whether they be the John Muir Trail, The Pacific Crest Trail or The Southern Upland Way from coast to coast across Scotland. My friends who were not accustomed to backpacking or long treks had invited me along but that specific walk did not hold interest for me.
The idea for another long walk in a wilder region and alone started to pull on me once again.
I had been considering the many long walks in Great Britain since picking up a Lonely Planet walking guide years ago. Dipping back into my collection of travel writings by long distance walkers in the U.K. started the percolation process.
I also have been interested in very light- weight walking kits for some time. Always grooming the bottom line of what is carried on my back. Walking in England or Scotland offers one many choices of how to spend an evening’s sleep. Being quite frugal, I planned to “camp wild” as they call it over there (i.e. camping out), for most of the week then take a layover day to get cleaned up, do laundry, sleep in a bed, restock, have a “pint” then resume the wild camping schedule and repeat until done.
Why not go big, or, more precisely, go long, and walk what is known as the “End-To-End Walk” — 1,200 miles or so from “Land’s End” on the southern tip of Cornwall to the northern tip of Scotland? Which tip could be figured out later.
An ‘extended’ journey
Complications with a work schedule and demands at home called for a modification of that three- or four-month extended journey.
Eight weeks walking from the England/Scotland border north to Cape Wrath on the northwestern tip offered a varied journey of 450 miles through the rolling southern uplands with its beautiful small towns, farming and sheep grazing areas.
Then, it was through the industrialized midlands of Glasgow to the start of the highlands along the popular West Highland Way and beyond to the last 250 miles into the remote, deep, mist-shrouded glens and mountains of the sparsely populated far northwest seemed a good compromise.
Maps and guide books were ordered, gear was accumulated and a GPS emergency device was acquired since I would be alone in remote areas for five or six days between villages. Weight was shaved with every gear choice, physical conditioning was started and a date for launch was set. Supply boxes were shipped to dots on the map with unpronounceable Gaelic names.
The best laid plans have a way of going awry. Unforeseen circumstances present themselves. Months or years of planning get shelved as reality on the ground calls for a new plan. Now the adventure can begin as the old plan is scrapped. My long-cherished idea now demanded that I make the metaphorical lemonade.
About the presenter
Ron Strange has mountaineered and backpacked hundreds of miles throughout California, the Southwest and Baja California. He has hiked the John Muir Trail solo and currently is hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in sections from Mexico to Canada.
Strange spent over 25 years visiting and photographing archaeological sites on a circuitous path from the Outer Hebrides to the Lions Gate at Mycenae in Greece; from the American Southwest to Baja California; from the solstice sites and standing stones of North America to Ireland and the Orkney Islands, and to the Paleolithic caves of southern France.
He is interested in the origins of religious activity and how that appears in archaic art and ritual. He returned in 2009 to southern France and northern Italy to visit sites of the cult of the Black Madonna and the Holy Grail. In the spring of 2014, he returned to Scotland in an attempt to walk 450 miles from the southern border with England to the northwestern tip known as Cape Wrath.
When not traveling, Strange has worked on the potato harvests in southern Colorado, as a teamster truck driver, masonry tender and tour bus driver. For 30 years he worked in the surgical intensive care department in a hospital in San Diego.
Strange lives in Port Townsend and works in the ER at Jefferson Healthcare. He served on the board and program committee of the San Diego Friends of Jung, a group interested in the psychology of Carl Jung, for 25 years. He continues his studies in this area and to facilitate classes while currently working to develop a Friends of Jung in Port Townsend.
About the presentations
Traveler’s Journal is a presentation of the Peninsula Trails Coalition. All of the money raised is used to buy project supplies and food for volunteers working on Olympic Discovery Trail projects.
Shows start at 7 p.m. in the Sequim High School library at 601 N. Sequim Ave. Please note the change of venue: All shows are in the library, not the cafeteria as in previous years.
Suggested donation is $5 for adults. Youths 18 and under are welcome for free.
One selected photo enlargement will be given away each week as a door prize. Creative Framing is donating the matting and shrink wrapping of the door prize.
Call Dave Shreffler at 683-1734 for more information.
