Paul Theroux - The Kingdom by the Sea - A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain

I had passed East and West Wemyss ("so called because of the numerous large 'weems' or caves… along this coast") and some defunct coal fields. I would have stayed in Kirkcaldy if it had seemed a desperate place, but it was more dull than desperate. I made a tour of the town and then continued past the small windy resort at Burnt-island and along canyons of junk and discarded cars near the cliffs at Inverkeithing. But this junkyard was also part of the embankment of the Firth of Forth, and if you turned your back on this ramshackle shore, which was like a mortal wound in Scotland's side, there was a grand view of ships and water and the Forth Bridge.

Edinburgh was the next stop, but it was not on my coastal itinerary. It was, in atmosphere, an inland city, and now that the port of Leith was moribund, it hardly counted as important to shipping. But it was a handsome place still, a city of black crags and old solemn tenements of slate rising to a castle that looked like a dark drum on a cliff. Wind gusted up its steep alleys. What was now grass and railway tracks in a ravine beside Princes Street had once been a loch. It was the most beautiful city in Britain and one of the must-beautiful in Europe. It looked as if it were the setting of great intrigues and passionate vice, but I knew it to be a quiet indoor city inhabited by private souls who lived in narrow seclusion.

In Edinburgh I was told that a railway strike was looming and that in three or four days there would not be a single train running in Britain. This event was not viewed with much passion by the general public. The sort of punishing strike that created misery in other countries was met in Britain with either excitement — a kind of community thrill at the drama of it — or else indifference. The British were fatalistic; it was the origin of their cynicism, but it also made them good sharers of misfortune. "Oh, well, mustn't grumble!"

I hurried to North Berwick, which lay on a corner of land between the Firth of Forth and the North Sea, and from here I walked to Dunbar, spending a whole day making detours. I had seen Dunbar from the train as it sped by, and I had liked the look of it, so I took this chance to stop there. The harbor was on a bleak and rocky bay, faced by rotting ramparts and collapsing red stone walls. The old buildings in Dunbar were also made of this red stone and the High Street was fifty yards wide. But it was a lifeless place and a little sad on this cold day in July. I debated whether to stay the night or head for the border. On these long summer evenings there was always plenty of time to decide.

I was reluctant to leave Scotland — I had liked nearly everyone I had met. But then in Dunbar I met a loudmouth named Billy Crombie. He was traveling south and had stopped to drink three pints of beer. He was a Glaswegian, with a mustache as large as a ferret and a cowering wife. His face was purple; he drove a Jaguar.

"I'm going to a foreign country!" he declared. "Aye, England — it's a foreign land! Scotland's ruled by the bloody English. They dropped Exchange Control so that they could spend our money abroad — they don't spend it in Scotland, though they stole it from us in the first place by stealing our oil resairves. And you bloody Yanks have atomic bombs a few miles from Glasgow, and nuclear subs in Holy Loch! Why don't you put them in London, that's what I want to know. Don't mention politicians. They're beyond a joke. David Steel is a Unionist! Tam Dalyell is a carpetbagger! Jenkins is a Tory — it was an Orange seat and they ran a Catholic to oppose him — how could he lose? I'm a freedom fighter — don't let these tweeds fool you. You can ask my wife, if you don't believe I'm a freedom fighter. Now, listen, go home and tell them we don't want your bombs!"

I headed south on the train, with his voice still ringing in my ears. Scotland ended at the tiny coastal village of Lamberton, the Northumbrian border, below Lammermuir and the hills of black-faced sheep.

"IT WUNT RAIN, LAD," Mr. Yeaver the joiner said to me at Berwick-upon-Tweed. "The clouds is too high. The swallows is flying too high."

I had decided to walk to Lindisfarne — Holy Island — at low tide. The Venerable Bede had called it a "semi-isle" twelve hundred years ago. It was still a semi-isle—"accessible at low water, but it is necessary to be acquainted with the quicksands which are dangerous."

Mr. Yeaver said, "I used to work there. I had a joinery. But I lived in Spittal."

That was right across the Tweed. Spittal was an old word for hospital. There were seven Spittals in Britain.

"How did you get out to the island?"

"Pony and trap." It sounded as medieval as the word spittal, but Yeaver was my own age.

He said I could take a bus to a certain public house, and then it was a seven-mile walk. When I started away, he spoke up again.

'They're strange people out there," Mr. Yeaver said. "They're like people with their own different language. And they hate outsiders."

I thanked him for this information and caught the bus to the public house and then walked down a country lane to the shore. I faced an expanse of bubbling mudflats, some of it marked with poles showing the Pilgrims' Way; to the left of this was a narrow causeway. There was a bridge some distance out with a sign on it saying, this bridge is totally submerged at high tide. It was a sunny day, with a light breeze off the North Sea. (Seventy years ago it was called the German Ocean.) I started across the Pilgrims' Way, looking back every so often to see my footprints fill with water. The imprint sank, as if in quicksand, so I made for the causeway. Ahead, Lindisfarne was an island of low straggling dunes, with white houses and red stone ruins at its extreme end. It was banked by sand and it lay in a tide of mud; for half the day it was a village in the sea.

This offshore stroll to the island was one of the most pleasant walks I made on the coast — a memorable mile. The ruins that had been painted by Turner and William Daniell still stood. The sand gleamed. The priory ruins in shadow were silver-black like charcoal, with the same frail sculpted look of burned wood, but where the daylight struck them they were as red and porous as cake. The surface color of the island was the yellow-gray of human skin, and farther off there was a castle wrapped around a solitary high rock. It was exciting to walk across the silty sea bed with nothing but this island in view under a towering sky.

Most offshore islands have an atmosphere of shipboard isolation, with the sea all around. But on Holy Island I felt a sense of being on board a ship that was moored on a long hawser, occasionally drifting to sea and occasionally bumping the shore. The village was small but had a number of cozy hotels. I had no trouble finding a bed or a good meal. I sketched pictures of the strange Lindisfarne boat sheds — the hulls of boats cut crosswise and turned over. They were storehouses, but they looked like beached whales or sea monsters. There was a path just above the high-water mark that went entirely around the island, passing the Links, full of darting rabbits, and carrying on to a sandy promontory called the Snook. It was a restful island and even seemed to have an air of sanctity — something about its flatness and the way the wind murmured softly across the dunes.

The islanders were watchful but not unfriendly. Yet Yeaver had been right on one score. Their accent was incomprehensible to me, a mixture of Scottish and Geordie, with a kind of Gaelic gargle. They did some fishing, but their income was derived from the people who visited the island. They sold postcards and ice cream cones and offered tours of the ruins. Most people raced to the island in cars at low tide, and raced back to the mainland again before the causeway was flooded. Few people stayed the night, though it was a peaceful place to sleep.