A Journey North.

There is something indefinable about a journey North that never fails to lift my spirits. Last week, I first travelled North to my friend Oliver’s house which nestles in the valley of Hyndburn, somewhere close to Oswaldtwistle and Burnley. Even the names have a charm that hints at a palpable non-conformist streak that runs through these towns that each sit resolutely isolated, proudly independent and staunchly of its own character along the spine of England. A spine that runs South to North, from Ilkeston in Derbyshire, North through the Peak District and continues along the Pennines all the way to Northumberland and the Scottish Borders.

These are places where the mark of industry and toil is carved into the landscape and they are just the sort of places where true independent characters, aka ‘awkward buggers’ are forged, far away from the genteel towns and cities of the South.

These are the places that have never ben conquered and where the folk have always maintained a healthy disdain for those from the South.

If my heart lies anywhere in this realm (which it doesn’t), it is in the North and it is somewhere in this Spine of England.

The following day, I continued my journey further North, picking up the M65, first West, then on to the M6 North, climbing all the while, through the uplands of Lancashire, Cumbria and North Yorkshire, past Shap, skirting Carlisle and into the magnificent splendour of the border counties of Dumfries and Galloway, before taking the North Easterly A702 to Edinburgh.

“It is better to travel the arrive” and the adage was never truer than when I reached the outskirts of my destination - Portobello, 4 miles East of Edinburgh. (The reasons for stating this are made plain in the accompanying discourse).

With its long beach promenade and views across the Firth of Forth, Portobello is a once pristine seaside resort now in a state of gentle decay caused by the usual forces of local government neglect and a corrupt political class that kow tows to WEF diktats and the psy-ops of Agenda 2030, climate change and ’20 minute cities’. It is a city marked by pathetic compliance , middle class complacency and it is appropriate that this week’s discourse pokes fun at the embezzlement of Peter Murrell and his complicit wife, Nicola Krankie Sturgeon.

I left the city of Nottingham only some 10 months ago and currently live in a mostly rural area, so it is not as though I am unused to the press of people and the noise of a city but when I arrived in Portobello on that sunny Thursday afternoon, it was like stepping from a cool hillside into a sweaty and crowded glass house of noise, populated by people with whom I do not resonate. It’s not my intention to elaborate on why I don’t like the vibe of Portobello, so let’s simply state that the Scots of that capital city are of a different hue to me. (At this point I am reminded that I can only hint at that which I experienced, as some things must remain as ineffable as God himself).

After a joyous reunion with my children, Luke and Rhea, we headed off for a camping trip the following day.

The industry of the landscape is never far away - whether it be up Lathkill Dale, Wirksworth or Brassington, my verbal and pedestrian ramblings invariably take me through places that are marked by industry - lead, iron, fluorspar, steel and coal - and so it was with this excursion as we ended up on a a campsite literally underneath a 23-arched railway viaduct on the edge of Newtongrange, next to the River Esk.

Again, I’ll leave the viewer to listen to the Roguecast rather than articulate it here.

Rosslyn was our afternoon destination following our morning guided tour of the excellent National Mining Museum of Scotland and I’ve included some footage that features the Glenn, Castle and Chapel of that name.

The Chapel at Rosslyn has been romanticised for literary and tourist purposes. The children had visited it before. Personally, I was rather non-plussed by it. Its elaborately decorated sandstone exterior sits on a barren base of shale, its carvings are interesting, its spirals capture one’s attention but I found it to be an odd place. It sits there as a monument to the Sinclair family and clearly has Freemasonic and occult features but it held no fascination for yours truly. Indeed, the carvings above Accrington Market Hall are of more interest to me and whilst I know symbols do hold sway in this realm, the place simply held no charm for this traveller. Thus, I was happy to leave and plunge away into the wooded Glenn and back to the car.

It was another of those moments when it felt as though I simply did not belong there: there was no heartfelt connection and no resonance whatsoever - only a slight sense of quiet unease, a feeling that persisted around the strange castle with its barred windows and lofty height.

Not that any of this matters for I am simply passing through, taking a few notes along the way and am but a traveller in strange lands who, paradoxically, doesn’t belong anywhere but who is more at ease in the lands the latitudes of around 50’ to 55’ North, those points along the spine of England, a vertebrae of disparate connective tissue and muscularity that may be called the North, even when the North is a direction that never ends and is marked by Polaris, a cosmic exclamation mark, a sign for the wayfarer that remains fixed in a marvellous divine simulation.

Maybe, like a mercurial needle on a compass, that’s all I can point to: a direction, a lodestar, a lone star, fixed and always directing me to the North - a fictional realm within a fictional electrical realm where all points North to a destination I will never reach.

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