Land’s End to John O’Groats

In Rome it seems as if there were so many things which are more wanted in the world than pictures.

George Eliot, Middlemarch

And he went away through the Wet Wild Woods, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone.

Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Cat who Walked by Himself’

The walking body has no history, it is just an eddy in the stream of immemorial life.

Frédéric Gros

The archaeologist’s spade
delves into dwellings
vacancied long ago,

unearthing evidence
of life-ways no one
would dream of leading now,

concerning which he has not much
to say that he can prove:
the lucky man!

Knowledge may have its purposes,
but guessing is always
more fun than knowing.

We do know that Man,
from fear or affection,
has always graved His dead.

W H Auden, ‘Archaeology’

Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing

under a tree.

Mary Oliver, ‘What do we know’

Whence comes Solace?
[…] in cleaving to the Dream,
And in gazing at the gleam
Whereby gray things golden seem.

Thomas Hardy, ‘On a Fine Morning’

May the road rise to meet you
The wind be always at your back

Celtic blessing

The water, there is so much of it. Once we tried to walk around the rim, traced maybe
5%. When his brother was born, stitched into a hospital, we said, Here is what to do with
fear: reach into the water, fold the soap into, around your hands, let the water run. But he is
years beyond this now, has added new rituals — rich, lustrous blooms around the crater. This
morning his brother pulled rocks from the lake, found emerald glass, but quickly dropped
it. You can hold it, we said. The water takes away its edges. See? You can turn it over in your
hand.

Ginger Hanchey

The Via Cassia or Cymina is paved with broad, solid, flint-stones, which must have greatly incommoded the feet of horses that travelled upon it as well as endangered the lives of the riders from the slipperiness of the pavement: besides, it is so narrow that two modern carriages could not pass one another upon it, without the most imminent hazard of being overturned.

Tobias Smollett, Travels Through France and Italy