On this page, Daphne Loads shares with us her trike adventures and reflections in making a star of East Lothian as part of #Borders22
Click on the paper map for a Google map of progess
As well as all this triking, Daphne has published a book about foreign poems and is donating the proceeds to the Mamie Martin Fund. Thanks, Daphne, for that new perspective on borders!
Remember that if you buy through Amazon Smile, you can trigger another donation to MMF.
10th September: From April to now
So the summer is over. Holidaying and festivalling took over my time at the end, but looking back I’m satisfied with my MMFBorders22 adventures. Strange how the star-map of East Lothian turned into a snail-trail, and how my blogging turned into a kind of therapy.
Lovely that two broods of swallows fledged successfully in the bus-shelter near my house, over the course of the summer. One day as I cycled past I saw them all cuddled up in their nest. The next day they were perched in a row on the seat, apparently waiting for the X7. Inspiring to see how other adventurers fared, from surviving falls to cycling coat-hangers!
Next year, anyone?
19th July – Gladsmuir to Seaton Sands
Attention!
I get a lot of attention on my Borders22 adventures in my yellow MMF shirt and fluorescent helmet. People are often interested in my trike. Sometimes they make funny comments. A recent favourite is the woman who shouted “now there’s a bike and a half!” To be honest, I quite enjoy being noticed these days.
As a child I was painfully shy, but secretly craved attention; and as a socially awkward and physically ungainly teenager I envied those girls who could turn heads with their attractive faces and trim figures. Be careful what you wish for. When I arrived in Cairo as a plump, fair-haired young woman in 1984, I was overwhelmed by all the attention I received. Men followed me on the street and made lewd or fatuous comments. Women said I should advise my friend Brenda (a slender, stunning brunette) to eat butter and bleach her hair so that she could look more like me. Far from enjoying all this admiration I felt extremely uncomfortable.
Today as I pedalled I was reflecting on how much more at ease I feel in my sixties than I ever did in my twenties and thirties. On a beautiful, cool, early morning, it was wonderful to observe a young deer, a hare, a kestrel and a buzzard, all doing what they do without a trace of self-consciousness. Even better that a large mammal was whizzing* along on her trike, very comfortable in her own skin.
*more like trundling, actually, but you get the picture…
10th July: Today I find myself travelling to Longniddry ( again!) in brilliant sunshine with a slight fresh breeze: bliss! So my contribution to Borders 22 was to be a map of my trike trips to the borders of East Lothian in the shape of a star. What I’ve actually produced is a messy snail trail. Ah well…..
19th June – A Sense of Direction (Gladsmuir to Pishwanton Wood)
I made my way to Pishwanton Wood with the help of Nigella, the obliging little person who lives in my phone and patiently gives me directions. How thankful I am for Nigella: I’ve always had a very poor sense of direction. People who knew me as a child were surprised when I grew up to be an independent traveller. They didn’t realise that if you’ve never had your bearings, you can’t lose them. It’s no stranger for me to be lost in Cairo or Lisbon than in the tiny village where I grew up. In fact, it’s less embarrassing because I have the excuse of being foreign.
I know someone who used to say, quite without irony, that wherever she travelled in the world, she never felt foreign because she was English. It was everyone else who were foreigners. Anyway, Nigella led me efficiently to Pishwanton Wood, on the Southern borders of East Lothian. It was delightful.
4th June – Red Campion in bloom (Glasduir to Seton)
Red Campion was in bloom along my trike route yesterday. Apparently its common name predates the first use of “pink” as an adjective in the 17th century. Before that, what we now call pink was thought of as a shade of red. The modern colour name actually comes from association with another flower: the clove-scented Dianthus, with its delicately fringed or “pinked” petals. I remember being surprised by Shakespeare’s description of the beautiful Olivia in Twelfth Night as having a red and white complexion. Now that makes sense. But I still don’t know why huntsmen’s scarlet jackets were described as pink. ( Or why they enjoyed chasing foxes so much…)
22nd May – Memories sad and strange (Gladsmuir to Longniddry)
The hedges along the old railway track are frothy with hawthorn and cow parsley just now and oyster catchers and gulls are wheeling overhead. Funny how the sights and sounds of my triking trips always seem to bring back memories… When I was studying, my college was two miles out of town and most students cycled back and forth along the busy main road.
One terrible day a young woman was knocked off her bike and the ambulance that came to her aid hit another cyclist. Strangely, my memories of such shocking events are vague: I think both female students were killed. I do remember clearly that very soon afterwards a white-painted cycle symbol appeared at the site of the accidents. I thought it was a crime-scene marker, like the stick figures I’d seen onTV. It doesn’t surprise me that I’d never come across a cycle path before and didn’t know what the symbol meant. What does astonish me is that I presumably didn’t mention this to anyone else. Surely they would have pointed out my mistake. How lonely I must have been.
17th May – “Do one thing that scares you every day.” (Gladsmuir to just outside Longniddry)
There’s a lot to be said for this challenge (attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt) particularly for those of us who live comfortable lives in relatively safe places. But I doubt that the leadership gurus and inspirational bloggers who repeat Eleanor’s words imagine that it will be the same scary thing every day. For me it is. Every day when I set out on my trike, I’m a bit scared. Scared of getting mown down by a big lorry. Scared of falling off. Scared of staying on, as my trike topples over ( this has actually happened). Scared of getting stuck when the lights change and causing a lot of angry revving and beeping. Scared of looking very silly. Today I was feeling particularly twitchy. Although I set out on an adventurous trip, the only border I reached was the edge of my courage, which ran out just before Longniddry. Ah well, “Tomorrow is another day”.
5th May – voting and cup of tea (Gladsmuir to Letham Mains)
I’ve been busy with other things lately, and the promised star map of East Lothian (in which I am making journeys from my home out to the sea and land boundaries of the county) has been sadly neglected. I’ve made a list of enticing places in in the borderlands that I have yet to visit, including the wonderfully-named Pishwanton Wood. Today I decided on Tantallon, by the sea, but just as I was about to set out, I was offered a lift to the polling station, so I took the opportunity to cast my vote(s).
Then I forgot my water bottle, and a short way down the road I had a minor problem with Jo-Jo, my fabby new trike (pictured above), so I decided to exchange her for Lily, my faithful old steed. When I set off again, for some reason I forgot where I was going and headed inland. By the time I realised my mistake, the weather had taken a turn for the worse. It was cold, grey and threatening rain. So I settled for a short trip to Letham Mains, an attractive village a few miles away, with an agreeably challenging hill. Although I take great pleasure in achieving goals and really admire stickability, still, sometimes it’s good to know when to give in. I’m now comfortably ensconced with a cup of tea, watching the clouds roll in.🤓
25th April: If you see a rook it’s a crow (Gladsmuir to Longniddry)
Today on my trike trip I saw a kestrel, some French partridges, and a grumpy black bird that I think was a rook but could well have been a crow. My Dad always used to say, “If you see a rook it’s a crow, and if you see some crows, they’re rooks.” It was meant to remind me that crows are solitary and rooks are social. It didn’t really work as a mnemonic, but it reminds me of Dad and his sense of humour, which is probably more important.
Crow image from Wikipedia/commons
20th April: Eupraxia (Gladsmuir to Ormiston)
I was well into middle-age before I got my diagnosis. During a university staff training session on ‘students with dyspraxia’ we were presented with a list of signs and symptoms. It seems that children described as dyspraxic often encounter difficulties with crawling, tying shoelaces, telling the time, riding a bike and hitting a ball with a racket. As my eyes moved down the list, I gradually realised: I was dyspraxic. As a child I never crawled, but instead shuffled on my backside; my big sister was frustrated that I could read fluently before I went to school, but seemed unable to carry out simple tasks; my poor Dad patiently tried to teach me how to ride a bicycle, but I just couldn’t do it; P.E. lessons were a humiliating experience. Over the years I’ve found ways of managing, mostly by avoidance. I don’t drive, I don’t dance, I don’t play any sport at all and I still can’t ride a bike. Recently I’ve come up with a more positive self-diagnosis. If dyspraxia refers to difficulty in carrying out co-ordinated movement, then when I’m on my trike I definitely experience eupraxia: goodness, well-being and pleasure as those pedals go up and down and propel me along the road. I feel great.
16th April: Coming home (Gladsmuir to Humbie and back)
Is there anything better than coming home from a b/trike ride? A bit tired, a bit sweaty and ready to appreciate home comforts. Even the flowers in the garden seem to nod ‘hello.’ Today there was something else going on – a spooky booming/buzzing sound that reminded me of the Tardis landing. I wondered if it was a wood pigeon because it seemed too loud for an insect. Finally I found a large bee whose buzz was amplified by the ceramic pot it was stuck in. I set it free.
Postscript: Turns out the bee likes being in the the ceramic pot. It seems to live in there. And I thought I was rescuing it, when in fact, like me it was just enjoying its snug little home.
10th April – Gladsmuir to AberladyT
he roadsides are bright with celandines today. I love them but my friends Fiona and Phil can’t abide them because they wreak havoc in their garden every year. In my plot I have a choice celandine – Randall’s White. ‘Choice’ what a great word. That gardener’s adjective that’s supposed to suggest rarity and/or desirability but too often ends up meaning difficult, expensive or just not very robust. Wild celandines are by no means choice – but welcome anyway in their unchosen loveliness (except in Fiona and Phil’s garden).
7th April – Primroses and violets
For Borders22 I plan to tricycle to several points along the land and sea borders of East Lothian so that my journeys take the form of a star. I missed the launch at the beginning of the month because I was in Majorca. The citrus and palm trees were magnificent, but it was lovely to come home to primroses and violets. As a child in Norfolk I used to collect armfuls of these little beauties in the spring. My university friend, Sonia, disapproved of picking wild flowers and felt we should leave them for everyone to enjoy. At the time I thought her views were rather eccentric. “Never trust anyone…” she said, “…who cuts off the sexual organs of plants and displays them in their home.” Nowadays I agree with her. Today as I trundled along the old railway track to Longniddry I enjoyed the primroses and violets, but left them where they belong.
Daphne tells us what she is doing for #Borders22