::Monday, June 26, 2006::

Day..irrelevant - beach no.4 next

Day 47 - Tim in Inverness

the universe acts in mysterious.....but if you look at from a different perspective, very obvious ways.

If you are travelling the right path, you will end up exactly where you are meant to be..what an exciting way to live when you have no idea where the next place will be, or where your next meal will come from. I know I will find food, I know I will be warm and dry, especially when I am hungry, hypothermic and dripping from the bone. But a lot of people don't.

Since leaving the Isle of Mull, I have now cleaned two other beaches; Kilchoan - Ardnamurchan, and a private beach on an organic farm in Ullapool. both on the west coast. But the journey between the two is where I sit back and smile.

I am now staying in a Tipi. Fully kitted out. my little temp-cone-home.

My intention was to get to The Isle of Skye (west coast) after Kilchoan, but instead I ended up in Fort William after Jims' words that there is a beach on the north east coast at Thurso covered in syringes. I took this is a good omen and thought to myself 'Time to 'don the gloves' . .

Every person you meet, every moment you open your eyes is a catalyst for further growth and direction.

Fort William to Inverness (east coast) after attempting to race aussie sibling combo Cara and Max (love ya guys!! thanks for being there when you were!) by thumb touring against their coach. Of course six hours later, tired legs and a stiff thumb...I came in dead last. I spent two nights in Inverness, enjoying the company and dancing to traditional scottish Caelidh, working for my bed and raiding the free food shelf at the hostel, before once more finding my spot to stand, thumb out-strecthed. Still with Thurso in mind.

Intentions and plans - forget them.

Within minutes, my ride arrived - heading back over to the west to Ullapool. not where I wanted to get to, but they have a beach there. So in I hopped. After much conversation on world water supplies and mountaineering, the question arose "where is the mess". Ullapool harbour is trashed, but the council won't set up a funded clean. Perfect target I felt. So I went straight to the community council contact Fergus Monroe and pitched my intention to clean his beach for free. An abrubt 'no' was the response. As it has to stay a mess for the council to do anything..ridiculous if you ask me. If someone offers, let them do it. At this point he gave me a number of someone who might be able to help me find a beach. So without hesitation, I picked up the phone and rang. Still wondering why I was in Ullapool. Lucy answered while driving, asked where I was before who I was, and ten minutes later I was in her car on our way back to her organic farm. another ten minutes and I was handed a bag of food, let into my two bedroom fully equipped cottage (45 out of about 50-odd nights in my tent, you can imagine the unfamiliar feeling of a house....all to myself), and told where my beach was. (the next day I looked in her Tipi, saw a stone circle for a fireplace and a rug for a bed and felt a little more comfortable, and moved in).

Lucy Beattie is the area contact and manager for "Beach Watch" in Scotland, a program run by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS), an organisation I had heard about and met with a few days earlier, who are very interested in the cleaning of the coastlands, the fundraiser and Frontier themselves.

Coincidence? You decide.

So now, her beach is clean, I am picking veges (probably should stick to my trash I think, I brought back weeds for our salad..), living in a Tipi, in direct contact with the people I should be, looking into Surfers Against Sewerage (SAS), and recovering from 'Rockness': a large festival/rave back at Inverness which overlooked a pristine sweeping valley of Lochness which was headed by FatBoy Slim.

After a general idea of going to the Isle of Skye...how I ended up here is far from a mystery, it is the way it is, for it is the way it is meant to be.

This sequence of events tells me that every decision that has been made in the evolution of this "great scottish stravaig" has been the right one.

Moving on to Reiffe beach a bit further north soon, will try to get to the outer hebridies..but realistically I have no idea...

There was an article in the Oban times, the local western scotland paper, about my clean of Carsaig, here is a small version as it will be too big otherwise - got your magnifying glass..??

tim out

Post a Comment

<< Home

::Tuesday, June 13, 2006::

Day...40? have no idea anymore..

Day 35 - Tim in a Cave

Leaving Carsaig, I was full of adrenalin.
Staying in the one place for such a long time was such an alien thing for me at the moment. So packing up for the next destination, the energy was pumping through my veins. There was also a touch of sadness. Departing the place that provided absolute perfection, in possibly the most important two and a half weeks of my life.

My next night was spent in a damp, mossy, dripping cave on the way to Lochbuie, still on the Isle of Mull. Before taking the first step toward my new home my mind and heart were racing with new ideas and possible directions to take this adventure. Considering that it had developed and evolved so freely over the past five weeks or so, I was definately waking each day with a very open mind as to where I could take it...or more acurately, where it to take me.

The public response I got from the hundreds of people who saw the beach being cleaned and supported both the fundraiser and the beach, by supporting me, was incredible. Totally unexpected. So I took this as a positive omen when making the decision that the fundraiser from this point on will be purely focused around cleaning up the coastline of Scotland. Making this decision was difficult as I hold so dearly the life in the slow lane. Step by step. Gradually taking in each ridge and every stream. So the last seven miles before I stuck out my thumb were savoured. I get little to no response while I am on the road walking at three miles an hour picking up as much rubbish as I can carry, and not even making a dent on what is there. Cleaning a beach for a week or two makes a massive difference to peoples' mind-set who visit and witness the sands or stones beneath the synthetic asphixiation. So, getting from beach to beach as fast as possible is important. The more places I can clean, the larger the reaction will be. Resulting in more support for my fundraiser. Which equates to the most possible sponsorships supplied for the conservation courses that Frontier operate. Which is the main goal. Education in Environmental Conservation.

Back to the damp, mossy, dripping cave....

When I went to collect some firewood which wasn't soaked by the first rains sice I set up camp at Carsaig, my attention was drawn toward a white bundle of fur in amongst the rocky beach outlay. The attention of this little white ball of fur was also directed toward me. As it staggered to its' feet I realised why it reacted with delay and not with the normal sheep.."...panic!!!!! run!!!!!" It had obviously taken a fall and broken both its' front and back left legs. It had been there for quite some time, it was easy to tell by its' lack of motivation to scamper. I decided to leave it be for a time while I retreated to my cave (how neandertal does that sound?) to decide what to do with the lame lamb who was destined to starve to death on the barren beach.

An hour or so later I returned to find it twitching in its last moments of struggle. I apporached it without hesitation and sat down next to it. There was a moment of recignition of my presence but nothing more. I realised at that momnet that I was emotionless toward the act that society had taught me to perform in such a situation. I decided at that moment thatif I felt nothing, I was never going to do it. This was the third animal in two days that was in its last moments of life at an early stage of adolescence. (The last being a small bird who had deformed legs who had fallen on its first attempt to fly. I attempted to train the wee one to fly for a good hour or so before letting it be to its' parents who were watching curiously from a branch.)

So I gathered the wee lamb in my arms and took it into my cave where I found a small patch of ferns to place it under in comfort and silence away from the plume of smoke bellowing from my damp wood. The was no life fighting at all. It had given up. Until it sniffed the fern above. Upon it first small mouthful ground into the pulp digestable by the herbavore, it bounced up, well unbalanced by its' favoured, or more so 'only' able side.

I sat, rolled a cigarette and watched it come to life, even though it could not leave my cave it had found some determination to survive, and occassionally looked up to check on the figure who had brought it to this smokey hole in the wall. I fell asplepp with the midgie net over my face, sleeping bag tightly drawn with this image of hope and survival. My aim was to carry it the remainging three miles to Lochbuie and put it in the care of a farmer there. When I woke, the realisation that any farmer has removed the sympathy toward a lame "product" and would slaughter it for sure. So when I scaled the slippery high tide smashed rock face it had fallen down the next morning, lamb in hands, pack on back, my motivation was directed toward finding its' mother. I did not, but I did find some sheep, who took no real notice of ti in their company, but at least it can sit there amongst its' likeness, eat a plenty for the coming days and weeks until it was healthy enough to be a sheep and follow the masses.

The point of this elongated story of struggle is that when I was sitting sipping tea with a Tinkers collecting winkles, his response to me was .... "you found a lame lamb..throw the fucker in the sea!"

The 'Clearances' in Scotland took place about 200 yrs ago, when the English forced Scottish families from their multi-generational homes, took the land and morter and turned it into aheep farming land. And when the coats of sheep are collecting 10p per year, per sheep, they can't quite understand why they are still around.....

aside from the government subsidies for sheep and highland cow farmers. Not pig or normal cattle though... ???


tim out.

Post a Comment

<< Home

::Monday, June 12, 2006::

Day 34 - Clean up of Carsaig

welcome back people!!

I have been out of contact for quite some time now....so this has been a long time coming.

Carsaig Beach was a lot more of a challenge than I thought it would be..the photo below does not show the beach but there was probably a reason for that. It was an absolutely layered from years and years of wash up!!

2 weeks later, I have had to call it a day here and move on. There is still so much more trash out there, but the next beach awaits me..This is the fundraiser now. The four sonsorship knockbacks I had while waiting in Edinburgh turned out to be a blessing in (how the hell to you spell disquise??). There is no way I would have had the freedom to let the adventure develop from just a simple, and well and truly over done, walk to raise funds for a cause, into a mass clean of Scotland. The beaches of the world are trashed. Fishing boats and other mariners offload so much crap and it all washes up somewhere. So I will head from beach to beach and probably wont leave the west coast. But one by one it will be.

This was my little paradise while I here. And the piles accumulated every day. I spent half the time sorting everything into recyclable and non, unknotting masses of rope and soaking up the sunshine of Scotland. If someone had said to me that it rains in Scotland after spending two weeks in hot basking rays, there is no way I would have believed them. What a gift. Pretty much all the rope I unknotted sold for the fundraiser. And all the plastic bottles will be collected by the council soon for recycling. and the non-recylables will inevitabley end up on a huge pile somewhere..damn us.

Plastic is a cancer that we have created on this planet, our home. Something has to be done urgently!! all plastic can be recycled, but only about 20% of what I collected can be done in the uk. the rest will be crushed and sent over seas to be be burnt probably. what a wasteful and polluting people we are!!

From here, I will head up to the Isle of Skye, find myself another beach, set up camp and get cleaning. It may take me two weeks or so to get there - on foot and all - but I will get there. Now I have a currency too!! Rope. Everyone needs it. Not everyone realises it. And my collection while walking has been narrowed down to plastic! damn plastic!!!! and cans. that way I can get it all.

Gash, Kevin and Brian. Three phenomenal meetings!! in three days. You three along with aaaaall the rest were such an inspiration..keeping me motivated´(and whisky'd up, lovely scottish isles brew..) when the high tide brought in another load. And showing me the human race is worth fighting for, and drinking to... Our planet is sick, people. but it will survive us. I know that. I feel that. But we wont if we keep going the way we are.

Carol and Johannes, I am sorry, but you'll have to take yourself down off that pedestal I put you up on, I'm off.

wow..there is so much more to write..you'll all just have to wait for the book I guess, I can't fit it all in here.

Hairy Coos and the Dread Lock bull, Sea Eagles and the Moutain Goats were my neighbours. The flow of appreciative people my support. And the midgies my enemies. damn those little carnavors!!! but, they are born to eat, as we all are..just I wish they didn't eat me!!!

Check out the Oban Times newspaper this Friday..you#ll see my pile..and my beard.

Quotes of the last two weeks -


- patiece has to be developed. it can not be taught. spending four days with close on a km of rope to untie is a good start.

- as said of carsaíg bay by two people - word for word . . .

If I was a religious person, this place would make me think of god.

- go aussie!!!

- and happy swedish day!

- i think i have become a pyromaniac.."master of the flame!!" no, no..we can never be master of any of the elements, they will punish us if we claim to be.


Oh yeah...Isle of Erraid - wonderful community. uplifting people.
Isle of Iona - .... everyone must go and experience it for themselves.

and a big shout out to Oban Backpackers!!!! Min ... go to Erraid!!

Post a Comment

<< Home