Bridge over Troubled Water

Heights and me just do not get on.

I can sometimes surprise myself by crawling to the precipice, holding onto something firmly rooted or grounded and timidly peering over but that is certainly an exception.

I may have acheived it a couple of times just for the sake of standing next to my children when they were mere fledgling toddlers, strictly for the purposes of parental supervision of course.

This rather irrational fear is a mystery to me.

I think that I can track it back to when I was not at all a good swimmer. Most large drops that I encountered on family holidays on clifftops or looking into deep valleys or just going to the shops in a town with 2 rivers and a number of crossings did feature water as the eventual recipient for a plummeting body. Worst fears would be compounded by a low parapet wall over a bridge, the type where it only comes up to your knees even when a small child.

Even if there was a good sturdy, timber slatted walkway over the mildest of watercourses this instilled great angst if the calm, shallow and millpond demeanour was actually visible through the gaps. They were after all the sort of gaps where something precious could be dropped through and lost forever. For this reason I would keep my hands firmly in my pockets tightly grasping car keys, loose change and the inevitable collection of interesting pebbles and stones. Perhaps I was also not very good at loading up my pockets in a balanced way as well.

This was, I hesitate to admit,  at its absolute worst on a suspended bridge, high up over a narrow gorge in Scotland. The thin structure, exposed to the wind could be sensed both vibrating and swaying and only with two persons on board. The cascading torrent of a mountain stream had been audible even when parking the car some distance away but with the heightened sensory experience of seeing it through the planking deck plus the lateral and oscillating movement I was fixed to the spot in rigid terror. My wife found this quite hilarious and I can accept that in a grown man, a former scout for goodness sakes, this was a ridiculous predicament to be in. I did not cross the bridge and would not have done so even if  resident Troll had made demands of me.

Steep slopes with narrow, terraced paths are also a problem and torment to me. In most cases the width of the track suggests it was made by procession of sheep rather than a team of dedicated volunteers working for the National Parks and adopting a good wide size 10 walking boot as the model for safety and passability.

One particularly terrifying example is embedded in that part of my brain reserved for bad experiences. The north side of Trevone Bay in Cornwall has an interesting feature in a deep chasm, a blow-hole. I was told it was about 80 feet deep but I did not personally verify this. In its visible depths there is an opening in the adjacent cliff base and under certain stormy high seas or tidal conditions the hole is seen to live up to its geographical description.

The large and to my mind, very unstable feature, was on the route for one of my Wife's all time favourite coastal paths from Trevone to Padstow. This is amongst some of the most magnificent scenery overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and unfortunately for me, includes the steepest sheer face cliffs and sharp rock strewn potential watery graves ever.

I started the walk accompanied by our three very young children and friends but did not find it even remotely fun or inspiring as the rest of the group were intent on making it. Other peoples dogs were cavorting about as if in complete oblivion or denial of the very real dangers that I was perhaps the only person on the cliff to appreciate. I tried to warn the others about what they were getting into but with no success whatsoever. 

If I feel in mortal danger on a gradient I just sit down and thereafter find it very difficult to find the momentum or spirit to get up again. The others continued merrily on their way leaving me behind and by all accounts had a marvellous, safe, carefree and scare-free time as they revelled in telling me later that day.

I seem to remember that, as Johnny no-mates I spent the rest of the day at the very reassuring sea-level.

It was great.