Day 82 of the End to End in 2019 had me crossing the Firth of Clyde via the Kilcreggan Ferry, which from 1st June 2020 is now operated by CalMac as this report confirms:
I was soon walking up towards Garelochhead through the sort of weather that made Scottish holidays memorable in my childhood. Thin streams of cloud, like scarves, were strung out along the coast and hills, there was drizzle and showers and lets face it there were midges. Yet we still came back, although we avoided Ullapool for many years.
Today British people still talk weather. It’s the sort of subject that fills a conversation with my father in a neutral sort of way. Yet weather is anything but neutral. Caught on the adverse end of weather, as this week in Japan, then it’s memorable for all of the wrong reasons.
The problem is that weather is a sort of backdrop, atmospheric wall paper we can smudge into generalisations and thereby ignore the serious implications and most especially the way in which as human beings we affect it. As I walked up to Garelochhead a year ago the weather was not very different than it would be walking the same route anytime of the past few decades, or was it?
From the remembered bible, psalm 147
It’s God who covers the sky with clouds, supplying the earth with rain and making grass grow on the hills.
Cosmic One, as we play weather roulette,
make us mindful of our own weather related behaviour:
may we stop playing games with the future of others
and seriously respond to the climate challenges.
JAL: 05.07.2020 in Longdedale.