Highly Commended
Tony Howard
Quest Into the Unknown
WHAT THE JUDGES SAID...
Chris Townsend’s relatively slim volume on
walking the Watershed of Scotland edged ahead
by combining some beautifully crafted prose
with personal insights and amusing detail.
In the end his dogged pursuit of a seemingly
arbitrary line revealed some very well-
explained concepts of what wildness means in
a modern Scottish concept. A wonderful book
from an author who immerses himself in the
landscape without feeling the need to ‘list tick’
or ‘beat any personal or other record’.
Judges Sue Viccars, commissioning editor of
Dartmoor Magazine and Chris Bagshaw, editor,
writer and former OWPG member.
After a wild night. Camp at Loch a’Bhealaich
From a Watershed walk I hoped to gain
a bigger overall picture of what was
happening. A ribbon of wildness the
length of the country would be a big
step towards ecological restoration on a
landscape scale.
However despite my awareness of
the state of wild land and nature in
Scotland, I did expect to enjoy the walk.
I wasn’t setting out to have a miserable
time. As walking in wild places is my
passion, especially for weeks at a
time, I expected to mostly feel content
and satisfied. Just being out in nature
walking and camping every day is
enough to lighten my spirits. I hoped for
surprises along the way too, surprises
that would please and cheer me, wildlife
in unexpected places, beautiful light,
calmness and peace. I also knew that
even when damaged, nature always has
something to offer. As the cliché goes,
as long as there is life there is hope. Overgrazed land
can recover, plantations can turn into more natural
forests, wildlife can return. This is the process now
known as rewilding. It needs to happen, and on a large
scale. The Watershed could be part of this, a corridor
linking areas of wild land, a corridor along which
species could travel to new areas.
Much of Scotland is scenically beautiful, grand
and spectacular despite the ecological deficit. Except
in places where the latter really impinged on my
consciousness, I was looking forward to spending so
much time in the wilds of the Southern Uplands and the
Highlands (though I wasn’t so sure about the Central
Lowlands). Being in wild places I always find uplifting.
There’s no real wilderness in Scotland of course. Nearly
everywhere has been touched by humanity. But land
can still be wild and show little visible sign of people’s
influence. Scottish Natural Heritage says wild land
consists of ‘largely semi-natural landscapes that
show minimal signs of human influence’. I hoped and
expected to see much of that on the Watershed.
I love walking as a way to see places properly, to see
details and subtlety missed at faster speeds, and I love
long-distance walking the most because there is time
to immerse myself into nature and wild places, time
to really feel part of a place. Moving on day after day is
also a way to see how the land changes, how changes
in the underlying rocks alter landforms, sometimes
gradually, sometimes abruptly. As a walk progresses I
gain an overall feel for the whole route, for how it’s all
linked. This is helped if I have some understanding of
how the landscape came to be the way it is. Knowing
a little about the geology and geomorphology of the
places I walk through adds greatly to my enjoyment,
just as being able to identify wildlife and trees and
plants does.
As well as the natural history I also like to learn
about the human history. The Watershed has few
habitations and only one town but there are many
signs of human presence and activity going back to
Roman times and earlier. I was interested to see just
how much remained and how easy it was to understand.
The Watershed today is very much what people have
made of it, even if that’s only a fence marking an estate
boundary.
The effects of long walks can take time to surface.
No long walk is ever exactly as expected, at least not
for me. It would be boring if one was. During a walk
my thoughts and feelings about it develop and change.
They continue to do so afterwards, for weeks, months,
years. At the same time as I undertook this walk I was
also thinking deeply, though often not clearly, about
living in Scotland, where I’d moved twenty-four years
earlier. This was now my country but what did that
mean? How had I changed in that time? Walking the
length of the country, and the aftermath of the walk,
would stimulate thoughts and feelings that would
surprise and disturb me.
Sandstone Press Ltd
ISBN 191224022X
www.sandstonepress.com
winter 2019 | Outdoor focus 11
9