Back near the beginning of the month I took a couple days off from walking to rest and rejuvenate. I stayed with friends of Ann’s in the village Kirkby Malham. It sits in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales.
(If you’ve seen any of the episodes of “All Creatures Great and Small” on PBS – which you should! – this is exactly what it looks like. And I do mean exactly, because this area is where the exterior shots were filmed.)
Read moreOne thing about this trip, that I think I’ve mentioned before, is that there is no set path to follow. Everyone who does this LEJOG – Land’s End to John O’Groats – does it their own way.
Read moreSheep have been one of the constants of this long walk. I have no clue how many I’ve seen, but it must be thousands or even tens of thousands by this point.
Which, of course, has me thinking about the Good Shepherd and the sheep of his flock.
Read moreAs of today, Monday 9th June, I am in the city of Carlisle, Cumbria, in way northwest England. About 10 miles of walking from here is where I cross the border into Scotland.
“There is no creature so little and so vile as not to manifest the goodness of God.” (Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book 2, ch. 4)
Really, Thomas?
When I was young, I questioned whether the goodness of God was manifest in gnats flying around me on a summer afternoon. (I was also not a big fan of worms, but they could usually be avoided.) Lots of other insects were not on my ‘good list’ even if they might be on God’s. Yellow jackets in the rotting apples on the ground under the tree or sipping from our soda cans at a picnic. Crickets in our cellar. Mosquitoes.
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Pathology: the Study of a Path 