Day 66 of the End to End in 2019 took me west from Gretna. This was a departure from Hannah’s 2012 route as she went up the M74 corridor to Glasgow. I was going the long way round through Dumfries and Galloway for entirely my own reasons. The first section was along the coast and past some of the places marked on the OS map that required some explanation. That explanation was to be found at the Devil’s Porridge Museum.
It turns out that the landscape hereabouts has been extensively influenced by the munitions industry since WW1. Several large camps were built here, and as far as Longtown in Cumbria, to both store the munitions and house workers. The town of Eastrigg was built and it’s streets named for different parts of the Commonwealth, a heritage the town tries to explain through the museum. Some of this infrastructure was reused and expanded again in WW2.
Of the women who worked at the munitions works in WW1 (and the ordinary workforce were mainly women) 62% were aged 18 or younger and 80% were single. These women did dangerous work: the factory manager may have been awarded honours but the young women risked their lives and health daily. Their stories are amongst the less regarded ones: no one makes statues to women like these. Devil’s Porridge was the name given to the noxious mixture which was made in the factories.
Thankfully we were provided with lentil soup. We were getting into Robert the Bruce country and what with him, Robert Burns who we’d also encounter from time to time, and Robert/Bob my walking supporter it was clear to me that the Roberts were taking over the world.
The day’s walk ended at Annan and I’d already come a full 15 miles since Carlisle. From my reflections in 2019:
An unmetrical version of Psalm 18
God is my rock, rock, rock
And my castle.
God us my strength, strength, strength
I trust God:
My body armour and the source of life in me,
God is my high tower.There are many high towers in the local landscape which were used for defense. They crop up in Celtic spirituality as an image of the strong presence of God, as defender and refuge.
We remember the unremembered: the unremarkable ones,
those whom history has forgotten or written out,
those not accorded voice or value,
erased or expendable people.
Timeless One, you recall us to our task,
of truth telling: may the names written on your heart
be recalled again and celebrated in the land.
JAL: 18.06.2020 in Longdendale.