Each run is its own journey. Route, distance, conditions, self: no single element is ever quite the same. Every time you go for a long run you give yourself the opportunity to experience difference. Never more so than when away from home. A camping trip in East Lothian in Scotland came with the perfect out-of-context excuse for a long trail run. A new place, a new route; a different self.
Twenty miles (long for me), from the campsite at Peffer Sands, in land to North Berwick Law via the John Muir Way and back again. Conditions were perfect, which isn’t to say that they weren’t going to be part of the challenge. It was 25 degrees C. when I set off mid-morning, and it got progressively warmer. The sky never other than cloudless.
Much of the route took in woodland, which I became increasingly thankful for. Each time I entered a wood, it was like dipping into a cooler and more peaceful world, itself a restorative break in the long journey, despite the fact that I did not stop.
Four miles inland, I joined the John Muir Way, which honours the man who created the US national parks Yosemite and Sequoia, among others, and was born in nearby Dunbar.
For much of the outward leg, navigation was made even easier by the fact that the destination was clearly visible. North Berwick Law is a ‘crag and tail’ hill that sits Uluru-like on flat land. It is what survives of an ice age glacier, and is one of the region’s two most prominent geological features. The other is Bass Rock, a solitary island out a short way in the Firth of Forth that is home to the world’s largest colony of gannets.
I followed the path to the harbour at North Berwick, and then turned back and took in a climb to the summit of the Law itself. There is a fell race up North Berwick Law, which must be quite something, but halfway into a 20-miler at noon on a hot day I didn’t have the legs for it. This bit, I walked.
Through the long grass and onwards, the ground becoming softer as sand replaced earth, up on to the dune — one last climb. Up through the bushes; I crested the dune and there at last was the sea. A short descent down the other side — astronaut steps on the soft sand — and across the beach to the line of the tide’s nearest reach. A pathetic fumble to free my feet of their shoes and socks (I was so tired at this point that even my fingers wouldn’t co-operate) and straight into the water. The beautifully cold and healing water. I plonked down like a toddler in a strop and let the sea do its work. Immediately the aches and pains that had been groaning ever louder fell silent. I’d made it. The distance covered, the miles in the bank, the ability to endure just slightly honed: a different self.
