Day Two: New England Bay to Sandhead, plus a change of plans...

The night at New England Bay was difficult. Adapting to the different rhythm of activity and eating meant I had some sore muscles and tummy trouble through the night. Fortunately the campsite facilities were good and not far, and I got some good but relatively brief sleep between about 1 and 5am.

When I woke, I made use of the rare opportunity when camping of taking a hot shower, ate a tasty breakfast of berry porridge, and packed up to set out by 7am.

It was a really beautiful morning, with an amazingly calm sea, and sunlight streaming through light cloud. The path initially led along the sea-shore, just enough inland to be smooth underfoot. It was also a lot flatter than the first day, so I made good time and could give some attention to looking around me. Gulls diving to fish in the mirror-like sea, Oyster-catchers patrolling the shore, and a couple of floating objects that turned out to be a pair of sea otters, floating together in the early sun before diving together.

Unfortunately the easy path didn’t last all that long: we soon turned onto the pebble beach again for sections that skirted small Ministry of Defence installations. Even when the path returned to the grassy banks above the shore, they were either narrow and eroded, or so heavily overgrown that they made passage with the backpack tricky.

After about half an hour of this, the path happily turned inland and I had my first sections of forest walking on this route. Gentle deciduous woods, with narrow but well-maintained paths through banks of wildflowers.

I took a break for about half an hour at the campsite at Ardwell, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine in the steadily-clearing sky. Its clear that, although south-west Scotland is relatively undiscovered by tourists, it’s very popular with campervans and motor homes. There were four or five families enjoying the beach, fishing, playing with dogs, and washing up after breakfast as I watched the sea gently lapping at the shore.

When I started again, the growing heat and the weight of my pack teamed up with a pathway that moved in and out from the shore on mostly steep staircases to make the next section feel rather harder than than the first. After about an hour, about a mile south of my half-way target of the day, I was struggling through a patch of forest when I decided I needed to stop, ditch the pack, and take advantage of the shade.

I was in some level of physical shock. My body complaining at the strain in the heat on little sleep, and mentally I was struggling with the challenge. I was both hot, and shivering with the cold of no longer moving with a heavy pack.

At that point, my family happened to ring to check in on me. We had a frank conversation and made a plan for them to head down to the town a mile up the road where I had planned to have a break. While they made their way there, I had a Chia Charge flapjack, put on my fleece and lay down on my sleeping mat in the middle of the narrow path, which happily was empty apart from me. I lay there for an hour, dozing to the sounds of birdsong, insects, and lapping waves, and caught up on some of my lost sleep from the night before.

Somewhat recovered, I donned my pack and gently made my way the mile and a bit to Sandhead.

Sandhead is a nice little seaside town, with a very popular pub, where I was happy to find a shady table in the beer garden to sip a ginger beer and lime as I waited for my folks to arrive, which they did about half an hour later. We discussed alternative plans, and settled on a change that involved stopping early for some physical recovery and moving some of my targets around.

The original plan had been to carrying on that day another nine or ten miles to Stranraer (having already walked eight or nine miles to Sandhead), then spend three days cycling to the sites around Whithorn associated with St Ninian. Now, the plan was to break the walk at Sandhead, visit Whithorn by car that afternoon, and spend a couple of days recovering and lightening my pack. When I’ve built up my physical and mental health again, I’ll pick up the path at Sandhead again, and head up to Stranraer and the coastal path again to Troon.

Over the next couple of days, I’ll reflect on the mental health aspects a bit more, and post about the visits to the pilgrimage sites around Whithorn: St Ninian’s Cave, the Isle of Whithorn, and Whithorn Priory.