Talkative Strangers

          Last week, at the start of our journey, I quoted travel writer William Least Heat-Moon’s reflection, “When you’re travelling, you are what you are, right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.”  I think that’s pretty cool but, after several recent encounters, I learn that not everyone agrees with the sentiment.

          Our journey began in North Wales, where we enjoyed several days of trekking in the covid-unfriendly hills. Despite the perfect, late summer weather, other hikers were thin on the ground. On one six-hour hike, we met just one lone walker, who crossed our path as we sat to eat lunch. He stopped to exchange pleasantries about conditions, starting points, destinations and so on, but lingered longer than is usual. I began to fear he was eying up my salami, but perhaps he just wanted to talk, for we soon learned quite a lot about him. He lived and worked – as a consultant – in Guildford and had a second home in Wales, where he loved to walk. He was recently retired but still did freelance gigs “working from home”. When he eventually left us to our lunch, perhaps disappointed that no salami was forthcoming, we speculated as to why he was on his own. Recently divorced or bereaved? Or otherwise bereft in some way and just wanting an ear?

          Campsites are extra busy this year, so solitude is hard to come by. Unavoidable neighbourliness is the order of the day, fleeting though it inevitably is. Mostly, conversations are brief and centred around weather and itineraries, but there are those who want to tell their story. Like the chap who recently retired (on a generous package, judging by his magnificent motorhome with a pair of electric bikes stowed in its belly). He told me of his long and illustrious career as an engineer in the oil industry while, just a few feet away, my partner was talking loudly to her XR buddies via Zoom. Whether or not the oil man registered this irony, I cannot say – he didn’t ask about us at all – but when he departed the next morning, he gave us a cheery farewell.

          We then made our way to the west coast of Scotland, where three miracles occurred: the weather was fine, the midges were absent and sourdough was on the shelves of the Co-op in Ballachulish. But these were mere bonuses to the real prize – the marvellously restorative powers of the sunsets over the Western Isles and the quiet, star-studded night skies that follow. It was here that Ross McPherson, farmer, campsite operator and accordionist, told me something of his life. He had just come off the phone to the accordion tuner in Inverness, who had returned the instrument with a few dud notes. Having paid £650 for the tuning, Ross felt entitled to complain and, though the tuner was unhappy about it, insisted it be sorted in time for his intended trip to Shetland to see his girlfriend, whom he had met last year at the Shetland music festival. I managed to extricate myself from this story before he showed me a photo of his beloved or offered to demonstrate the duff tuning on his instrument, though I might have been more amenable had a tot of whisky been forthcoming.

          Throughout these and other encounters, I don’t recall being asked anything other than where we had come from and where we were bound. Given some encouragement, I might have enthused about the quayside shellfish shack in Oban, or the enchanting sculpture trail through the woods at Calgary Bay on the Isle of Mull. Otherwise, I would be reticent about revealing any personal history to strangers. Yesterdays on the road really are unwanted. They dull the spirit of adventure.