Stories & Reflections

I retired in the spring and by August I was restless in a way I couldn't quite name. A friend mentioned the Whithorn Way almost in passing — she'd read about it somewhere — and something in me just said yes.

I'm not a religious person, not in any formal sense. But there's something about walking a path that others have walked for a thousand years that gets under your skin. You feel it most in the quiet stretches — the moorland above Barrhill, the long descent into Glenluce, the moment you first see the sea.

The cave at St Ninian's was the moment that undid me, if I'm honest. All those small crosses left in the rock by people who'd made the same journey, century after century. I sat there for a long time. I left a stone.

I came home lighter. That's the only word for it.

I work in finance. I won't pretend the last few years haven't been brutal — they have been, for a lot of people in my industry. By the time I booked the train to Glasgow, I was running on fumes.

I'd never done anything like this before. I'm not a walker. I bought new boots three weeks before I left and paid for it on day two. But I kept going, partly stubbornness, partly because the landscape wouldn't let me stop.

What surprised me most was the silence. Not the absence of noise — there's plenty of that in the city — but a different quality of quiet. The kind that lets you think. Or not think. Both felt like gifts.

I finished in fourteen days. I cried at the end, which I wasn't expecting. I'm not sure I can fully explain why. Something had shifted. I went back to work a month later, but I went back differently.