endings and beginnings

Barns Ness + Yellowcraig, 28 December and 2 + 3 January

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. They’re too easily discarded, swept aside into the pile of unrealistic expectations. Take driving. I’ve had ‘learn to drive’ at the top of my New Year hopes for (and I can’t believe that I’m writing this) twenty six years. Yes, twenty six. I remember year one, the mix of enthusiasm, excitement, and feeling completely overwhelmed. And I’ve had various blocks of lessons over those years since. In my last two blocks - when we still lived in Edinburgh - I was driving around the city, navigating traffic and roundabouts and looking like this might be the time for me… only anxiety always, always got in the way. How could I possibly learn to drive when the anticipation of each lesson had me so stressed that, by the day of the lesson, I could barely function…

So it might surprise you when I say that this year, this year, I intend to learn to drive. I don’t know how to overcome the anxiety, but not driving is holding me - us - back on so many levels. I want to be able to get out and explore, and also simply to get in the car and take Raf for a walk down the coast. Just the freedom of this. Today, as I write this post tucked into my desk nook in the sitting room, there’s a beautiful sunny day outside, one of those crisp and frozen blue-skied January days that I love. Ideally, I’d pack a flask of tea and drive to John Muir for a walk with Raf, just the two of us. We’d take the longest route, striding out into the cold, the sand crunchy with frost, and Raf would run and run and run. This isn’t some otherworldly idea - it could be an anyday idea, and it’s a simple one. And the only thing that’s stopping me is… the driving thing.

Also, we want to move and live in a quieter spot, still close enough to our walks but away from a town and people and traffic and noise, but we can’t until… So, not a resolution, but definitely an intention. A firm intention.

And I have other hopes for this year: exploring more generally, and further afield. I’m planning a trip to Crovie in north Aberdeenshire, a place we last visited back in May 2014 with the lads, and I’m hoping that we might be able to venture north in spring. I also plan to write more this year (there’s a book idea that’s been in my mind for a long time, and I figured out the structure, the starting point, over the break) and create some new video content (I have my eye on a drone…).

It’s good to have some hopes and loose plans, obviously, but still, these early weeks of the new year feel like a time to rest, to coorie down and let the mind unravel from whatever it’s been carrying. The days are still short and the land is still cloaked in winter hues. We don’t have to rush headlong into 2025.

Saying this, I feel better going into this new year than I did a few weeks ago, as we wound down the last one. Those few weeks of rest have helped. Walks have helped. So perhaps it’s enough to simply look after one’s headspace as we navigate these early days of January.

This post follows three walks taken over this period as we bid farewell to 2024 and welcomed 2025. The first (the three photos above and four below) is one that regular readers will know well, leading from Whitesands to Barns Ness and on towards Torness. These photos are from Saturday 28 December, and this was a much later walk than we’d intended. We went into this holiday period looking forward to longer walks in daylight and more time spent outdoors, but Raf had been so reactive on our walks over Christmas (when all our quiet places had more people around) that we had to accept that daylight walks weren't for us this season.

Our post-Christmas walks were about trying to avoid everyone and anyone - though not very successfully, it has to be said. Even arriving here later in the afternoon, there were still people around, and we were ploughing through the long grasses to avoid other walkers (hoping that Raf, being of lower stature, might not notice - but he always did) and ‘hiding’ in the dunes. I’m sure a trainer would say: don’t do this, don’t hide. Train. But I’ve learned that you do whatever your head needs, and reactive barking is the last thing that my head needs. I can’t train in that situation. Sometimes hiding is the option.

I was messaging with a friend about this the other day - about how isolating it is to have a reactive canine companion, when the only time you meet and talk with people is when out on walks. We’ve always been used to saying hellos in passing, and also meeting familiar faces and pausing for a chat. Those were often the only conversations I had in any week, aside from Richard, of course, and it’s hard to have lost those simple opportunities for interaction. (Which encourages me towards writing more, I realise, so it’s not all bad.)

Here, on this late afternoon walk at Barns Ness, I was enjoying the light, from those pink and apricot-tinged clouds as we began our walk to the earthy tones of the last three photos, as the light faded.

This second walk, below, on January 2, also offered the most beautiful light as we arrived at Yellowcraig and headed through the woods and around the golf course, before looping back along the top of the dunes as the light softened, casting a warm glow across the sky that was in contrast to the freezing chill in the air. We may not have seen much daylight on our walks over Christmas and New Year, but we did have some special last light moments, as here, walking back along the beach with the thunder of the waves as a backdrop, and with Fidra’s lighthouse winking at us in the distance.

January 3 saw us back at Yellowcraig, and again with some magical light. These photos can’t do this scene justice. Indeed, I feel like the videos I share on Instagram stories are more reflective of what these walks feel like. It’s about the way the wind washes across the grasses and catches the top of each wave, and it’s about the sound of the sea. Walking back along the shore as the tide was coming in, waves pushing towards us, each frothy edge so white, almost luminous in the low light, before softening and melting into the sand.

My favourite photo from this day is probably the last one here, taken from the dunes, again with Fidra’s lighthouse blinking into the darkness. I almost didn’t add this photo here as it looks too dark on my MacBook - darker and with less definition than the edited image in Lightroom. But I wanted to include this photo as, for me, it captures the mood of these midwinter days, but also the beauty that’s there if you pause and look for it. These simple walks may not have been the adventures that we’d planned to welcome in the new year, but they offered us the peace we were craving to mark the ending of one significant life chapter, and the beginning of another.

Barns Ness + Yellowcraig, East Lothian, 29 December 2024 and 2 and 3 January 2025.

#barnsness #yellowcraig #eastlothian #scotland