Land's End to John O'Groats may 2017

I have just committed myself to cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats this coming May. The commitment is nailed down by opening a JustGiving page . LEJOG is rather iconic and it will please me (I hope) to ride the length of the country. It feels like a target to pass after which one could be condescending or dismissive but nonetheless one to aspire to. Being 60+ helps to relieve me of any sense of competitiveness. I know it will be fairly slow and that will be partly because I am carrying a lot of stuff and partly because I am no great athlete and so on. i want to do some things to get in shape before setting off but i know that anything like a serious training schedule is unlikely to happen and if I get fit it will probably be en route. I would like to place updates here but as this site has virtually zero traffic (thanks google!), i may have to prioritise the Just giving site.

August Diary

Mito, Alcantara Gorge, near Etna, Sicily

31^st August 2016

Sicily is at once a redolent sensuous present and a layering of pasts that demand attention from even the most indolent passers through.

We are in a small house in an estate that rambles along the Alcantara a sweet watered river that cuts through and tumbles over the grey volcanic rock spewed out in the distant past by Etna our ever present smoking companion.

We are not alone. This is a working estate. Fruit trees must be irrigated, animals attended, paths extended. There is a working day – brought forward to accommodate the heat.

At some hour too early to be fully conscious the thump thump thumping of the irrigation brings relief to the parched trees. As you drift off again the workforce arrive, starting the ancient tractor breaking your slumber with a judder and a whiff of diesel. The workforce converse soto voce. The patient dogs, there are three, whine and bark. The sun is turning the sky red. Who would want to laze in bed at the beginning of such a day?

Breakfast on the narrow terrace fruit, bread and coffee while the three dogs and a thin cat hope for crumbs. We reflect on our visit to Taormina and its breathtaking theatre built by the Greeks for plays and modified by the Romans to make room for wild animals. The place where an American tourist stops to compliment Jo on her choice of travelling outfit. Taormina where Lawrence wrote Lady C and, I fancy, given the spring in the grounds of his villa, where he wrote

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.

After breakfast, time to walk down to the river not to drink but to bathe, plunging and holding the rocks to avoid being carried away – then more relaxing and eating and reading. Is it ok to laze away the day? Should we be up and gardening or out and absorbing culture?

Well the dogs seem happy to laze except that one has disappeared. The rangy brown male has gone leaving his female lookalike and a more heavyset black female – like a tall bull terrier.

When we decide eventually to walk up the valley to see the Gorge, the female dogs come too.

It is as we climb a path up the hill that we see the snake still on the path partly shaded by an overhanging fig.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
And she was quite black and very long and...

The black dog leapt and the snake slithering at speed made it through the fence to the orchard and in a moment the black dog was upon it – breaking its back – worrying it, and worrying it so long that we left it and carried on.

And carrying the snake in our heads

On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And not having Lawrence’s education there was shock and sadness at the death of the snake but an awe, an admiration for the dog so decisive, focussed, competent. And in a way the dog stood for a simpler connectedness than I can have, just being and acting in the moment.

And as we continued on our way the black dog caught up, her belly hanging low.

At the Gorge we found the beach and the tourists and, fast asleep on the sand, the male dog. We paddled in the river, took our photos, woke him and walked together home.

Mito 2016