#tyndrum

Tyndrum to Kingshouse

The West Highland Way

West Highland Way - April 2017

Inverarnan to Tyndrum

It’s pouring rain and there is no breakfast at the affordable holiday park; I head out for the most bourgeoise place I can find. The Artisan Café has decorated its converted Victorian church (is there any other kind?) with covetously textured textiles: all tastefully subdued tartan blanket scarves and multi-coloured scans of finest cashmere. All the warmth draws all the drowned walkers and cyclists within a ten-mile radius. They all request a large cappuccino with chocolate dusting as if an ordinary tea or coffee were insufficient for their recovery. One striking man arrives with his uncovered dark hair flowing down to his shoulders in tight wet waves, his resemblance to a Byronic hero strengthened by his choice of companion: the largest Irish Wolfhound I’ve ever seen. Certainly the wettest. My seat becomes a scarce commodity, but hell if I’m going outside. Besides, I want to write. Not wanting to totally piss off the waitstaff, I take a gambit on the single woman seated next to me. She has a sweet, introverted look and I expect nothing more than a few shy smiles and we go about our business. Turns out we speak a share language: that of the tattoo traveller.

Tattoo travellers shouldn’t be diluted by incorporating tattooed travellers. Those are a dime a tribal-design dozen. No, we are the specific population who stalk tattoo artists on Instagram – sometimes for years – and then go seek them out wherever they are in the world. Her artist is evidently a full-on nomad, an Aussie poke maestro who preforms a ritual to open the session and another to close whom she flew from Canada to the wilds of Scotland to pursue. We tattoo traveller have our own ritual: first, the sharing of our own tattoos. Still fizzing with yesterday’s magic, she needs zero encouragement to whip off her oversized jumper and show me the beautiful bear cradling a woman on her shoulder. I’m not stripping off in a damp church, so I share an old blog post. The second stage of the ritual is swapping our artists’ Instagram accounts. Mine: ancient monuments and mythical chariots floating through geometric space on pale flanks. Hers: delicate black webs blossoming on white clavicles; also, loch swims and sage ceremonies. Then the etiquette breaks down. She clicks on my blog. There follows an awkwardly sweet interval where I try to finish one blog while she reads an old entry. It’s like my skin is tingling, but it’s my soul. Our impromptu coffee date ends with her buying a several-hundred-pound handmade jumper, the kind you will never want to take off, and me feeling like a high-value customer despite spending three hours in residence on the strength of the cup of soup.

I’ve yet to photograph my finished back tattoo. ‘I want to photograph it somewhere watery,’ I told my friend before I left Canterbury last week. ‘But not boring water. Like muddy water. Primordial water.’ My friend declared this idea genius; she was admittedly a few drinks into the evening. I am currently in one of the wettest places in the UK. ‘This place has four times more rain than Edinburgh’, boasts an information plaque. Jesus fucking Christ, I believe it. I’ve driven up a single track to a sheep farm in search of a ruined priory. Founded by St Filian, another one of these godly Irish invaders, and consecrated by Robert the Bruce, there is nothing left besides some mossy rocks. The surrounding copse of oaks is a cathedral. The West Highland Way walkers stream past me, not stopping to look. I walk about the priory ruins, recording a ‘soundscape’ of the rain on the tree canopy. This is pure BBC radio wannabee action, of course, but I wish I could take this place and loop it into a lullaby. The next trekkers to pass are a posse of neckerchief’d boy scouts. Their outdoor speaker plays the unmistakable choral work heralding ‘Everybody’ by the Backstreet Boys. One tips his hat to me with what I can only hope self-mocking awareness.

Next up: my search for the Holy Pool. My lovely French-Canadian woman asked if I would blog about it properly. I will.