The Walking Lassies

Tap on the picture to enlarge and zoom in. This is the view from one of our walks

When I was a child and lived in England, we talked to my grandparents by telephone occasionally. It seems like it was always in the middle of the night, though. Probably due to the time difference, but maybe also due to the long distance charges for calling overseas. (Remember when you had to pay by the minute and you timed your phone calls for the cheapest times?) And every time we ever talked to my grandparents, they ALWAYS asked about the weather. Always. “What is the weather like there?” they would ask.  And even now, when I talk to my mother, she often wants to know, what’s the weather like today?” 

What is it about the weather? There is this need to know what is happening elsewhere. I think it is a way of connecting us across long distances, but I am not sure why it’s about the weather. Needing to know the weather must be in the genes, because I find I am also have a need to focus on the weather. But maybe a bit differently. I don’t usually ask what the weather is doing, but I comment. I notice and I comment. I am tuned in to the weather. 

This thought came to me yesterday as I was walking with the “Walking Lassies.”  Actually, I had just left them. I was needing to get home and get ready to go be gone all day (To quilt. With other quilters. All day. For two days. J  But I digress.) As I was walking home, it occurred to me that I am always commenting on the weather. “Oh what a beautiful day!” (I may say this many times if it is, indeed a beautiful day – meaning the sun is shining and there is no wind.) Or, “It’s going to be sunny today.” Or “Oh, it’s starting to rain.” Or “Grrr. It’s getting awfully windy.” “Mmmm. The sun is warm but the air is cold.”  Always something about the weather. You may have noticed this in some of my posts. I wonder what it is about the weather and why I feel I must comment on it. I blame my genes.

Jodi, Katrina, Kirsten, and Leah

The Walking Lassies. That is what the group is called on Face Book Messenger. FB Messenger is how the ladies communicate here. IMs pop up at all hours of the day. Ding. Ding. Someone posts and Ding. Ding. Others are responding. “Trolls on the Bridge at 7:45?” is posted. Responses: thumbs up = going to be there; ‘sorry, not today.’ Etc.  OR  other messages, like, “Carol is going to Wick tomorrow and wants to know if anyone wants to go.” And the responses fly back and forth. Ding! Ding! Of course, the reasoning for using FB Messenger is ingenious. We all have different phones with the international thing getting in the way and so we cannot just text each other. But FB Messenger enables communication to happen in spite of that. For free.

The Walking Lassies is just one group. There is also the Mahjong Group (a post for another day) and Caithness Events as well as unofficial ‘groups’ of just ladies wanting to share information.

So, the Walking Lassies.  I asked this morning how that got started. It seems that Katrina started it when she moved here about 4 years ago. She liked to walk and liked to have walking partners, so she invited others to join her. And the group was formed. If I understand correctly, Leah joined the group a year ago when she moved here and, since they met at the end of the bridge, she started calling them, “Trolls on the Bridge.” So now, Leah usually puts out a message asking, “Trolls on the Bridge at 7:45?” and the phone dings with responses.

So now it is called “Trolls on the Bridge.” And I guess I am now an official member, as I received a troll key ring yesterday.

Trolls on the Bridge walk pretty much every weekday. They used to meet at 8:15 am but that was too late for me. So, after the first week, I got them to move it up to 7:45.  And yes, we meet on the bridge. And we walk for at least an hour- sometimes as long as an hour and a half. A lot of conversation happens in that time. We cover a lot of distance and a lot of topics! And the walking is wonderful. Sometimes we walk to the end of the pier and look down. We all go to the end. And we all look down at the water. I do not know why. We just do. From there,  we walk along the beach and down a grassy trail towards Scrabster. 

We come back towards town and walk on the sidewalk along the main road. But even on the sidewalk, it feels like we are just walking on the road. Remember, there is no shoulder. There is only the driving lane and then the sidewalk. No line. No space.  So, several times, a bus has sneaked up on me and is right on me before I realize it is there and it spooks me something fierce, since it is within feet of me. The hairs go up on the back of my head. It’s sort of frightening.  But then we get off the main road. And we walk down the streets of Thurso. They are stone. There is the road and stone walls and stone houses. There are some trees in some back yards, but not many. Some have grass in their yards. And then we walk past old stone churches with really high steeples and we walk past a yard filled with boats and we walk past ruins.

Sometimes we walk out of town. We walk down a road, past pastures of sheep and cows. And there is a ruin far off in the field. All by itself in the middle of a field. And there is this amazing view of Thurso and the beach and the town and the fields. And it is amazing. I know I am still new here, but I am not sure I will get tired of seeing this view. Or tired of commenting on its beauty. And the clouds.

The clouds are amazing. They are big and full and the sky is big – a lot like home – but the sky is filled with these really full clouds – more like in Spokane. Either they are big and fat and fluffy white or they are dark and full of rain. We walk past what looks like a castle remains along the shore. There is another castle remains just off the road, by a nearby field. And the stone walls are everywhere. (In my mind, I see a post coming soon about the Caithness Stone, which is what all the walls are made of.)

Sometimes we walk along the Thurso River. The Thurso River ebbs and flows with the tides. It is what I see from my sitting room window and I am grateful for this beautiful view that I get to see every single day. When we walk along the river, we end up going up and  through an old grave yard fenced in by an old stone wall. Very cool. 

This was taken June 3 at 10:30 pm

I do not think that I will be as excited for my morning walks when the weather starts turning cooler and the mornings become darker. See, there is the opposite of what we have been experiencing. We have had LONG days. The sun is till visible in the sky at 10 pm!  And they sky does not ever seem completely dark at all. And the sun has been fully up for several hours by 6 am. But those days are going to change. Slowly, slowly, a few minutes each day, until eventually, it will be dark when I get up and walking outside is not going to be as appealing. Especially if it is windy. And from what I gather, it will be.