The Marches, border walks with my father, Rory Stewart
The idea was that Rory Stewart would walk Hadrian’s Wall with his ninety-year-old father. His father didn’t last long on the walk and went home, from where he bombarded his son with emails and occasionally swooped down to meet him. They were trying to decide whether Hadrian’s Wall was a purely arbitrary line drawn across Britain. Was it to keep the ‘barbarians’ out or those south of the line in? No conclusions were drawn, although there are some interesting thoughts on the Romans.
Stewart then set out on a long, solo walk from his home in Cumbria to his father’s house in Scotland. This trip was obviously carefully planned and some of the apparently random meetings pre-arranged. He was often moving from one side of the border to the other and in what he calls ‘Middleland’, a border area which is distinct, neither Scotland nor England. This is an area whose early history consists mostly of slaughter. The romanticised ‘reivers’ were nothing but cattle thieves and murderers. I can’t think why anyone would want to celebrate such a past, yet they do. This is my own opinion; I have a great respect for Scottish achievements and no time at all for the romantic view of Scottish history, which is based largely on myth and lies.
The land Stewart was walking through was depopulated and in places the landscape was being ruined in the name of ecology. Some of the people he met seem to have been quite mad, while others talked a lot of sense. One thing is clear: central government has little idea what is going on in these former sheep farming communities. The walk over and ‘Daddy’ rather disappointed in the results, Stewart returned to work before being summoned home urgently. We are then treated to a detailed account of his father’s death, which I could have done without. Brian Stewart, distinguished and remarkable though he was, remains an enigma. ‘Dear sweet Daddy’? Such filial devotion is touching but I think the jury’s out on the man’s character. He was so contradictory: voted for Attlee in 1945 yet at ninety-three still defending the Empire as a good thing. In Stewart’s acknowledgements, he thanks someone for cutting 300 pages from the book.
I thank them, too. Walking the borders is nothing like as interesting as walking in Afghanistan, as recounted in The Places In Between.