A Hike in Scotland Takes a Turn

A buckthorn-thick trail reveals a lot about the Scots

The incessant rain of Edinburgh had broken and the sun was out. For now at least. We’d been in this dour city for nearly a month by then, another stop on a year-long escape after the farce I’d tacitly agreed to entertain for so long — My work is important! My life is notable! — now had a set of keys and refused to leave. The pose no longer worked.

The trip had started out magnificently — April, the South of France, oui, oui. But Edinburgh was refusing to partake in the illusion that travel so depends on. Dank, glum, resigned, it was a return to reality. If Edinburgh were a person, she’d be an exhausted housewife whose husband spends more time at the pub and whose kids are about to turn into truants.

But today the sun was out and we were in search of a hiking path. I found a set of trails on a sufficiently old-school website created by people who I’m certain have actually worn sensible hiking shoes and know the names of water birds. Off we went.

A trailhead at a parking lot was rather inauspicious. But like many things Scottish, it undersold itself.

A local bus deposited us an hour or so later up the northeast coast in a small town. We walked the length of it, assuming there was bound to be more around the corner. There was not. The trail, said the website, began at the top of a hill across from a car park. A trailhead at a parking lot was rather inauspicious, I thought to myself, preparing for disappointment. But like many things Scottish, it undersold itself. The spot was magnificent. A grassy expanse atop a hill overlooking the ocean. The sun was warm, the sky blue, and the beach below was filling with Casper-white white people. Dogs frolicked, babies waded. We joined them.

Looking back, we probably should have stayed at the beach. But the map led us inland. From cool ocean breezes to beating sun in open scrub grass. Across an open pasture, up and around what appeared to be an abandoned shed. The directions were very Boy’s Life — “about two meters after the remains of a homestead and one meter before a fence post, turn south.” I’m fairly awful estimating distance in yards and feet, let alone meters. It became a game of guessing whether the marker we were looking at (a stand of grouse, say) was indeed the very same stand of grouse the guide-writer looked at. I had a sinking feeling more than once that we were marveling not at the “arching silence of cedar wood” but a jumble of scrub pine. We crossed another field, lost the trail and scaled a ravine.

From cool ocean breezes to beating sun in open scrub.

Far along was a stand of pine. Our goal. We paused in shoulder high dead grass to take a drink of water. The grasshoppers boinged around overhead. On we trudged. Finally, the dark shade of the pine trees raised my spirits and lowered my temperature.

We stood silently, listening to those gentle giants creak and moan. The map said to continue on through this nap-inducing shade but I simply wanted to sit down and skip the rest of the hike. Unfortunately, we were at equidistance from the start and the thought of that pasture once again urged me on. We were guided along a narrow path for ten minutes or so until it dissipated into nothing. Never mind. We continued on through the silence. The trees were gaining girth. The spongy pine needles were giving way to rock and slick mud.

Up around a bend and we began heading downhill along a jagged, narrow path. Into buckthorn. Buckthorn is as inviting as it sounds. The air went dead, flies buzzed around my head, hard-shelled beetles alit and clung to my arms, the buckthorn scraped and stung. Sweat stung my eyes. I felt as if I were tangled and smothering in a heavy comforter. I suppressed the rising panic as the buckthorn closed in tighter. With elbows squeezed together in front of me I inched along, keeping my eyes on Rex doing the same ahead of me. The map had said a “crest” was ahead but on we went, deeper into the thick brambles. I tried to channel our friend Dave — Dave, who finds Indianapolis charming. But my fingers were swelling to the size of inflated rubber gloves from the heat.

Buckthorn is as inviting as it sounds. The air went dead, flies buzzed around my head

“We may have missed a turn,” I mustered. “This can’t be right.” After a short standoff bickering, we turned back. The sandy grit in my shoes rubbed the skin between my toes raw. Nope. There was no other turn. It was simply that the instructions were like watching a PBS show, slow and deliberate, with never any need for a sudden decision. The instructions would say, take the right fork in the path and into the stand of trees, but they meant eventually, not now. And that faint path jutting off to the right was not a fork. There are no tricks on this path. On we plodded, sweating and miserable. I calmed myself with the assumption that with torture like this, the reveal would at least be worth it. No one would put a trail through buckthorn without a reward at the end.

The Scots would. I’d recently read an abbreviated history of the Scottish kings and queens in a museum, which was now making a lot of sense.

James I: Died in the sewer. Loved a good game of tennis, but hated chasing errant balls that flew over the moat. Ordered the moat (aka sewer) covered. Fast forward to an assassination attempt. While the King’s guards held the assassins at bay, the king escaped out the back door, down the get-away tunnel, and into… the moat. But it’s since been covered… death by sewer.

James II. Died from shrapnel from his own backfiring cannon.

James III. Fell off his horse and died during a battle with his own teenaged son — every teenaged son’s fantasy.

James IV. Snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Rallied the Scotts and brought 30,000 men to the border of England for a brawl. 10,000 English showed up. Scotts even had the high ground. And yet, things somehow went awry, nearly all the Scots were massacred, nobility decimated. James died from wounds — or maybe he just didn’t want to go home and face that.

James V: Died when his wife gaves birth to a girl.

Mary Queen of Scots: You know how that one ends. Elizabeth, her second cousin, beheaded her.

The buckthorn begins to make sense.

No one would put a trail through buckthorn without a reward at the end. …The Scots would.

This trail was an exercise in in misery rescued by underwhelming landscape because too much unfiltered joy isn’t how the world works. We’ll give you a moment in the magnificent pine forests but then it’s buckthorn for you, you miserable wench. There’s something to be said for the unfettered hedonism of, say, Malibu, right about now.

When the buckthorn ceded and the path blessedly opened up, we were in a field with a few homes in the distance. In full sun. Rex thought he spied the original car park. We headed toward it. Nope. Just a mirage. We walked on. And on. Finally, around a bend, far, far in the distance was the park bench perched above the sea where we’d begun, back then, with so much optimism. Like King James I and the tennis balls, it had been a good idea, but life has a way of turning a hike into a sewer.