Not a Tay Bridge Disaster

In a fright of frustration and indecision you stream from the house. Too much time alone, too many choices, too many restrictions, too much procrastination – poring over maps in search of something new, too much squinting at Google Satellite to find new paths, no decisions made, no enthusiasm kindled.

Just the need to get out, though the day is grey with bubbling clouds and the threat of rain.

Aimlessly through Perth, getting a few messages on the way. Drifting, still without destination, towards Dundee. Missing the road to the towering volcanic hill where the dragon (probably) still resides in his Hole, squatting on his bed of garnets and Perth May maidens. That would have been a good walk. Too late.

Abruptly turning off the dual carriageway to Errol and the Carse – but let’s not repeat the same old paths twisting in and out of the reed beds. Look out for a new sign, somewhere different, something – anything – new. Oh, missed one, wonder where that went, too late, never mind. Suddenly, you’re skirting the edges of Dundee – how about Riverside Park? What all this way for a semi-urban park? Maybe… oh, too late, you missed the turn-off. Guess what, the sun is out – that’s Dundee for you, Sun City, Yes City, smiling streets and sparkling water, and the V&A looking glassy and coolly remote as it strains toward the ocean.

Woops – and you’re on the Tay Road Bridge, heading for Fife. Desperate to walk and you’ve been driving for an hour, so you stop trying to choose and roll up in Wormit, under the shadow of the rail bridge, that eternal prompt for disaster. It’s mid-afternoon, and you skirt the narrow estuarine beach and climb onto the breezy, sunny cliffs of a hitherto unexplored stretch of the Fife coastal path towards Balmerino.

And the rushing, crossness, dissatisfaction and sense of time wasted starts to recede. You slow down. You breathe more deeply. The dog potters. Through twisted, moss-covered trees, tangled with ivy, ruined boathouses and animal tracks are glimpsed. The city twinkles at you from across the Firth, as wide and blue as the clamoring, exulting East-coast sky.

A mysteriously stranded and petrified seal basks on the grass, making a seat for warm and heady contemplation of how beautiful the world is, how long the day, even in September, and how fortunate the indecision that led you here.  Steep coast-path steps, down and up; a hedgerow heady with honeysuckle; crackling of dry grass and the twang of boot on stone. Trickling burns through the undergrowth, ferns and moss and fungi in the gloom, then out, out again into the laughing sunshine, up through meadows, down to the lucky houses clutching at the shore.

Later, a forest, a young woodland of oak, rowan and sorry-looking ash, nudging the older trees, and the pines and firs of previous plantings. Shadows flicker between them; dogs explore, accompanied by knowing locals on paths uncharted by Google maps; Kirkton and Balmerino are near.

You circle the village, fine and high above the Firth, and now as you return the sun is cooler, the air relaxed, the forest empty, chilly and very slightly intimidating. You pick up pace. After all, you started late and the nights are drawing in, and the sun is being sucked back west of Dundee.

Back at the estuarine beach, nearly under the bridge, you notice the memorial to those killed in the  Rail Bridge Disaster. You were in too much of a hurry to see it before. And you stop, and rock to and fro on the tiny jetty, as the dog paddles and sniffs at stones and seaweed.

There was no disaster here today.