The allegory of the holy mountain

A day of highs and lows, and a lesson from the story of Jesus and the cross

In the four weeks I’ve been running around Ireland, there have been many different days, sometimes running on beautiful trails, sometimes on lonely roads; through cities, villages and past endless farmland. And there have been lots of highs and lows. But last Thursday had so many of each that the whole day was almost an allegory in itself.

We spent the night in the church carpark in Portmagee, a small village at the tip of the Ring of Kerry, and the departure point for trips to the otherworldly Skellig Michael. A rock out at sea, Skellig Michael is a global wonder, and the jewel in Ireland’s tourism crown. It features a well preserved but long abandoned sixth century monastery perched on the edges of the cliffs, and was a key location for the Star Wars films The Last Jedi and The Force Awakens. 

I’d taken a 40km detour off the Kerry Way trail in order to run to Portmagee, so that we could be one of only a handful of people permitted to step on Skellig Michael each day. The only problem, is that the rock doesn’t have a proper landing point, so it requires good weather, and as we lay in the motor home trying to sleep that night, it swayed and rocked in the buffeting wind and rain. I barely slept all night, worrying about our trip to Skellig being cancelled. 

I woke at 8am and checked my phone, and sure enough, I had a text saying the weather was too rough and the trip was cancelled. It felt like a jab in the pit of my stomach, like all our feelings of progress, of finally getting to grips with this trip, had been derailed yet again. Marietta and Ossian had been playing Game of Life the night before, and it’s like we had just rolled a one. 

In almost the next instance, I got another text from my daughter Uma. She had just got her A-level results. A*A*A. The Game of Life goes on. Except this time we’d rolled a six.

***

You have to roll with the punches on a trip like this, but I’m knocked over by the Skellig news. Not just for myself, and the story I’m trying to tell of Ireland, but also for Ossian. He was so excited to go there, it’s heartbreaking having to tell him it’s cancelled. He too has endured a lot to be here. 

I want to call them up and tell them I’ve run 500 miles to get here. But they can’t change the weather. It’s God’s will. Or nature’s will. Or whatever. But we have to accept it. I have no option but to keep running.

Getting out to start my run that day, a run that just a few hours ago I didn’t expect to be doing, is hard. The rain has stopped, but it’s grey, windy and cold, and a long, straight road stretches out before me. The scene couldn’t be more gloomy as I stand there alone with my backpack, surrounded by scrubland, everyone else tucked up in their houses or snug in the cars pinging by.

I try to tip myself forward into a trot, but a few hundred metres further down the road I’m already walking. My body, having sensed a rare day without running, had relaxed, and now it doesn’t want to play. It’s like it’s just refusing to join in, like everything is stiff and heavy and sulking and saying huffily: “It’s not fair.”

For the next 10 miles, everything feels bleak. Grey houses under grey skies. A trail section that is just black mud, through a marsh. Passing farms with dogs locked in cages and chained to posts, yelping painfully at me as I go by. And then I find myself on a path completely overgrown with thistles and brambles, scratching my bare legs as I try to push my way through. 

Coming out the other side, I pass a man hanging up his washing in his garden. 

“Are you enjoying your holiday?” he asks me. I want to cry. I want to tell him that I was supposed to be going to Skellig Michael that day. Instead, I just nod: “Yes, thank you. Wonderful.”

An hour later, I reach the foot of Knocknadobar mountain, which has a pilgrim trail leading up and over it. It feels good to be off the road and I can feel my spirits lifting already as I splash through the wet grass. If I can’t go to Skellig Michael, then I guess climbing a holy mountain is a good next option.