Day 109 of the End to End was via Glen Loth to Kildonan. The walk started at the ‘Last Wolf in Sutherland’ memorial lay-by. The road to Glen Loth rose steeply from the A9. There was a small group of vehicles involved in road maintenance in the first mile or so, but other than that I had the whole road to myself. Its patchwork surface wound its way through a green and rocky landscape. There were a couple of Brochs and a standing stone: evidence of human influence on this landscape for several millenia. There was more recent evidence of occupation, but the lone farmhouse was a ruin. Sheep are farmed in the area and maybe the old sheep folds are still used.
The road climbed up the Glen to the pass over several miles. As I climbed a cloud was pushing its way over a mountain to my right. The effect was to create the ‘tablecloth’ I’d once seen on Table Mountain in Cape Town.
There is that moment almost every day of the walk when I think I might not get to the end. Often it’s on strenuous uphill sections when my legs ache and I wonder why I’ve taken this route. Predictably this happened again today on the way up to the pass out of Glen Loth.
At the top of the pass there was an information panel concerning the highland clearances in this area. It would not be the last evidence of those, I was sure.
Bob was coming up from Kildonan and we met near a pine wood which, the uprooted and broken trees indicated, had obviously been decimated by high winds at some point in the past. We ate our picnic on the edge of the wood.
We continued downhill to Kildonan Station. I has just remarked how we’d not seen any deer when Bob noticed two stags watching us. Kildonan Station marked the end of the days walking but we made a brief side visit to Kildonan Church. I was glad to find it open. Near the old Manse there was a large cross slab with a simple cross carved into it, much over grown with lichen. The nearby Kildonan Burn was the focus of a gold rush in 1869.
We had our fish super at La Mirage restaurant in Helmsdale which I last visited with my Dad in 2012.
From Psalm 100
Know that God is the Holy One:
God made us, and we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
I sang, somewhat untunefully, a version of Psalm 100 in the empty church at Kildonan. It was a simple place, well kept, although I wasn’t sure how often it was still used. Communion Table, font and pulpit its simple furnishings, speak of generations of a local community gathered here.
God grant a quiet night and a peaceful end.
JAL 04.08.2019
Day 109 of the End to End, Lothbeg road Lay-by to Kildonan Station.