Spine 2: Return to Zion (Part 7 of 9)

CP5 to CP5.5: Bogged down in quantum Flintstates

This post follows Part 6: Helios gets smothered by a blanket of bog.

I’d been freezing cold since turning north from Hadrian’s Wall, so I was mightily grateful to receive a steaming cup of tea and a nice hot meal at CP5 Bellingham.

My spotlight here came from the human rights organisation Amnesty International’s report: You Feel Like You Are Subhuman: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians In Gaza.

Amnesty’s extensive 296-page report was just one of many forensic analyses of Israel’s genocide. A genocide that Netanyahu himself described as a ‘war’ between “the children of light and the children of darkness”.

His supposed ‘war’ comprised a medieval-style siege and an aerial barrage on an historically unprecedented scale. Using this strategy he had killed 2% of the residents of Gaza, in amongst which were 18,000 dead children. A success for supporters of Israel’s genocide, I assumed, on the basis that they were Palestinian, hence “children of darkness”.

Standing there holding my recycled cardboard sign, I couldn’t help but cast my mind back to the 1990s when Hutu leaders dehumanised their neighbours by decrying them as “cockroaches”. One of many polarising acts that led to the Rwandan genocide in which at least 500,000 Tutsis were massacred by the Hutus.

The Palestinian death toll since 7th October 2023 was approaching 50,000. How many more had to be slaughtered before we in the UK joined South Africa, Spain, Ireland, humanitarian agencies, charities, academics and so many principled intellectuals in calling a spade a spade, Israel’s so-called war a genocide…

Borrowing a phrase from Omar El Akkad, “one day, everyone will have always been against this”.

The Anti-Spa

I’d been on the Spine for 112 hours and had clocked just 3 hours’ sleep. If I hadn’t felt tired and numbed before I held up my cardboard sign, I certainly did now.

Should I sleep here? The only other opportunity I’d have would be a draughty little church in Byrness with no facilities to speak of, and that was probably half a day away. Anyway, I hadn’t slept here at Bellingham before, so in the interests of getting the full Spine experience I felt I ought to.

A counterargument was that this checkpoint’s sleeping quarters were renowned for being floor-based and as cold or colder than outside. Having just battled through a freezing miserable stretch, I struggled to convince myself that curling up on an ice cold floor was going to make me feel much better.

I came up with what sounded like a sensible compromise. I’d have another lovely hot shower instead! I collected some dry-ish baselayers and my dripping wet handtowel, pulled on my camp slippers, and found a volunteer to show me the way.

To my surprise and displeasure, the way to the showers was back outside into the arctic. Wearing only shorts, a technical t-shirt and my camp slippers, in the freezing cold temperatures of midnight, the journey at least woke me back up. The volunteer showed me inside the shower block that was no warmer than outside, warned me that the water might take some time to warm up, and left me be.

Inside a cubicle, I stepped out of a slipper, screamed “F*** ME!” and promptly leapt back into it. The floor tiles in this shower block were as cold as ice. Very delicately I manoeuvred myself into the shower avoiding the ice sheet floor, shedding mud all over the cubicle in the process.

The shower hung dead-centre over this bafflingly oversized square shower tray. The shower was a simple push-button operation, but the button was offset in a far corner, quite a distance from the showerhead. I moreorless had to depress the button and then walk back under the shower.

The water was ice-cold just like I’d been promised, and only ran for a second or two before stopping. I walked back to the button to trigger the next short burst, and then walked back under the shower head only for the water to stop before I could reach it. This felt like it ought to be a Laurel and Hardy sketch.

I repeatedly pumped that cold-hearted button, tried to launch my body under that fleeting stream of water quickly enough to catch a few ice cold drips, and just couldn’t make the situation work. I gradually came to terms with the fact the lovely steaming hot shower I dreamt of was simply not going to be. I wasn’t able to raise the temperature of the water even so far as lukewarm, but that hardly mattered since I couldn’t get the water to run long enough to place my body under it anyway.

I got stuck in tunnel vision, doggedly trying to effect my steaming hot shower despite the mounting evidence that it would not be possible, and entirely lost track of time in the process. The only outcome in the end was covering my muddy body in a light sheen of ice-cold water droplets.

I stepped back out onto the ice cold floor, which caused me to scream, leap back up and onto my slippers. I picked up my dripping wet handtowel, which was also plastered in mud from the chaos earlier. Drying myself probably transferred more water to my body than the shower had managed, and did a stellar job smearing the mud all over me too.

Finally, to polish off my spa experience, I spent 5 minutes shivering uncontrollably while attempting to clean the cubicle of all the mud I’d plastered it in. Then there was the task of navigating back to the checkpoint, feeling my way along brick walls through the freezing darkness, wishing I’d had the foresight to bring a torch.

Back in the checkpoint, I pulled as many clothes as I could back over my shivering mud-plastered body, and tried to recover from the whole ordeal with mugs of tea, the only hot liquid I’d managed to find here at Bellingham.

Running Away

I checked on Steve’s progress, hoping for good news to buoy my spirits. He’d have made Alston, I knew he would. He’d be heading north toward Greenriggs, putting daylight between himself and the cutoffs. Perhaps he’d be powering along Hadrian’s Wall, or passing Horneystead. Maybe, just maybe, he’d be bounding up the road to join me at Bellingham. It’d be Steve and I to the finish! Huzzah!

But he wasn’t about to join me at Bellingham. Nor was he approaching Greenriggs.

And as I scrolled back down the table of runners with a growing sense of dread, I could see what I really didn’t want to see, that Steve hadn’t made Horneystead, or Greenriggs, or Alston. Steve was no longer a participant.

I leant back in my chair, dropped my shoulders, and my heart sank. Everyone I knew in the full had DNF’d. I closed my eyes, and held my head in my hands.

I didn’t want to be here.

I felt overcome with tiredness, and I needed to sleep, now. But I was too crestfallen to sleep. Nothing about my being here at Bellingham was as I’d have wanted. I’d wanted Steve and the others to finish. I’d wanted to enjoy the experience, to feel proud of what I’d done, to grow, to develop, to evolve. None of it was happening.

I remained slouching in the chair, feeling numb. I couldn’t let myself sleep like this. I ordered teas and coffees back-to-back, downing each one, trying to drug myself into a state of alertness that would enable me to leave the checkpoint. Because that was all I wanted to do, leave. Not to complete the race, but just not to be here.

I pulled on multiple upper layers, stuffed my pack full with clothes, and then kept stuffing it with more clothes until it bulged, and still more until it looked like it might explode, and then crammed my belt with even more. And then I left.

9 Minutes

It was the early hours of the morning and biting cold. I struggled down the road under the weight of what was an absolutely preposterously overladen pack until I found myself down in the heart of Bellingham village. There was no hint of life on these quaint streets, its residents no doubt snug in their beds, dreaming of summertime.

It was here that my refusal to sleep in the checkpoint caught up with me, for I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. I stumbled around Bellingham’s little alleys like an inebriate, struggling against the odds to move in the right direction, even to remain lucid, upright, awake.

I tried to find a sheltered spot to doze off out of sight, but I couldn’t find anywhere suitable, and before I realised what I was doing I’d left the security of the town behind. I was out onto Hareshaw Commons; an expansive, boggy, waterlogged fell, completely exposed to the elements, where a rocketing wind began hurling me around like a ragdoll while chilling me to my bones.

But not even exposure to these blistering winds could counteract my tiredness. Sleep was no longer optional; it was inevitable, but where?

I was giving up hope when my headtorch’s high beam picked out a 50 metre wide peaty mound some way off-trail. Hardly an obvious bed for the night, but it was the only feature I’d seen on this desolate landscape that looked as though it’d offer any sort of buffer against the wind. I hacked my way through gorse, leapt over bogs and crossed streams to carve a path to its rear where the wind was indeed slightly calmer.

I turned off my headtorch, lay my bulbous pack against the peaty mound, set my alarm for 10 minutes, balanced it on my forehead and closed my eyes. Colours swirled around in a vortex, leading me down a black hole, and to the rest I so badly needed.

I came to feeling groggy and confused. Why was I starting at a starry sky, why was I lying in mud, and why was there a gale blowing over the top of my head? And why was my forehead vibrating, and beeping? Ah; yes, my phone. I checked the time, and found I’d slept for 9 minutes.

As I hacked my way back across the streams toward the Pennine Way’s flagstones, I realised I felt far more compos mentis than before. My power nap had done its job, and I seemed to be back in business.

Sunrise

The Pennine Way’s flagstones were sporadic here, with bog being the predominant surface. For the first time in days I deployed my poles, finding them invaluable for testing depths, leaping over wider bogs, and stabilising myself against the often overpowering force of the sidewind.

Passing a cairn at an intermediate summit, I paused to admire the sunrise behind me. It was simply majestic, and I hoped some of those hardy villagers of Bellingham, most doubtless still enjoying their slumber, would get to witness it.

The wind only grew in its ferocity as I climbed, until I was fully dug in, bracing myself against a roaring wall of air that strained every sinew to blast me off the fell.

I leant my body into the wind, finding the angle of equilibrium where I could drop my poles to the ground and hold my arms out wide, embracing the full force of the wind. It was like I were standing proud on the bow of the Titanic.

I was wearing all the upper layers I’d brought with me; quite a feat in and of itself, and I didn’t feel chilly in the slightest. I felt warm and comfortable.

And I knew that wasn’t a good sign. For in not too long, I’d enter the woods and find protection from the wind. Temperatures would continue to rise, becoming quite warm by midday. So if I already felt warm now while moving slowly in gale force winds; by far the coldest conditions I’d face, how hot would I feel later in the day? I thought of my exploding pack and bit my lip. I’d brought way too many clothes on this leg. Not just one or two extra garments, but an entire wardrobe too many. What had I been thinking when I’d packed all this stuff back at Bellingham?

Quantum Flintstates

Under the rising sun, I still felt quite groggy. Up ahead, I could see the strangest thing: a small car, parked in the middle of this vast bog. I screwed up my eyes, trying to make it out. A Mini Cooper, perhaps? There was a campervan beside it too. A Mini Cooper and a campervan… how very odd.

While I drew closer, I became less sure about the Mini. It looked crude. Kind of… blocky. In fact, it looked like the sort of car Fred Flintstone had. And the campervan was undergoing a similar transformation, taking on an altogether rockier, Flintstones-style form.

Of course, I was used to this sort of thing by now. But there was something fantastically romantic about finding a collection of imaginary Flintstones’ vehicles nestled within Northumberland’s remotest bogland. I slowed my pace to a crawl, to delay their probable transformation back into earthly objects.

It was still mind-bending to watch it happen: to observe one object morph into another right in front of your very eyes. My groggy mind tried to form rational explanations in the most irrational of ways. Was decoherence breaking down at the macro level, and the superposition of matter collapsing into multiple states? After all, it was freezing cold, which would reduce entanglement; but alas, the wind was wild, and then there was all the sound, and light, and cosmic rays… No, of course this wasn’t quantum effects… come on, wake up!

Just like the disappearing photography studio atop Old Cam High Road, the Flintstones car demonstrated just how fallible our observations can be. Something we prefer not to admit to ourselves.

I saw it in the Matrix all the time; for it was principally a disinformation space, where billionaire interests leveraged their practically infinite resources to form and promote alternative realities to suit their needs, using any means they desired: troll farms, shills, faux journalists, cyberwarfare.

Navigating this maze of disinformation required constant vigilance, as Winston would have corroborated before his visit to Room 101. The task was made infinitely harder by the technology platforms’ promotion of emotive clickbait, echo-chamber algorithms, tolerance of faux accounts and personalised targeted adverts.

In the Matrix’s post-truth era, doublethink reigned supreme. War is peace. Genocide is defence. Defunding is levelling-up. Trickle-down economics is plugging the inequality gap. Migrants are both lazy and taking our jobs. Ceding rights is taking back control. Climate tipping points are being passed but we can safely delay climate action. Oligarchy is democracy. Reform UK is for the people.

It was enough to give anyone a headache, and anyway, I still felt groggy and tired. I really needed to sleep. My thoughts shifted to the church at Byrness. Sheltered from the wind. Pews to lie on. I could lay down my sleeping bag and get some proper shut-eye. This might be the first time in my life, I reflected, where I felt an urge to go to church.

Reflections

I stopped in my tracks, because I recognised this landscape. The fellside I was descending was where I’d skated down the ice last year, out of control, barrelling through gorse and landing head-first in mixed vegetation. Ahead of me, the route continued up the facing fell, just to the right of the wood, where I recalled struggling up its icy rock climb, half-asleep, fending off hypothermia.

I stood still, soaking it all in. And in that moment, I felt I understood a little more about why I was here, why I’d re-entered the Spine 11 months ago.

I had needed to see it again, to see it as it really was. Unsullied by the darkness, pain, tiredness, hallucinations and clouds of mental alchemy. To build an objective understanding of what I’d actually experienced. Of what any Spiner experiences. Of what the Spine is, and is about.

Because, truly, why does anybody run the Spine? What are we collectively seeking? Is it merely external recognition, or is it more of an internal revolution?

Was I experiencing an internal revolution…?

Pain from the soles of my feet tore me away from the ethereal realm back to the physical, wherein I lost my thoughts down another rabbit hole: was rerunning the Spine really the best way to gain any of those insights? After all, I’d just been using a broken hand to bury a pole in a bog in order to brace myself against gale-force winds, just so I could admire an imaginary campervan parked next to Fred Flintstone’s rocky jalopy…

If I wanted to see part of the route again, perhaps a brief holiday might have worked better? If I wanted time to reflect, maybe a library or coffeeshop might have been a more effective solution?

The awkward rocky climb beside the forest was mercifully ice-free this year, through not entirely without challenge thanks to an abundance of slippery clay mud and polish-smooth rocks. It opened up at the top into a gateway to a Chamonix-esque playground of easy trail, shielded from the weather by alpine-style conifers, surrounded by colourful vegetation.

This was fantastic running territory; but alas, the knee problems that had afflicted me earlier returned once more, forcing me to a hobble. It took all my mental fortitude not to become too disheartened by this. I tried to enjoy the present moment in this wonderful location, and held out hope that my knee would improve.

The Boiling Descent

I popped out onto the road I’d been waiting patiently for, the forest descent road. From here, it was just an easy run down to intercept an easy riverside trail into Byrness.

I couldn’t hobble down a descending road, that’d have been totally unacceptable. So I tried swinging my left leg around in an arc to reduce the impact on my knee. This seemed to work, and I found I could sustain a run of sorts using this unorthodox gait.

Under the protection of the trees, and with the sun rising nicely, it was turning into a lovely morning. And this led to my next problem - now I was running again, while I was wearing more layers than the Inuits, I wasn’t just hot, I was boiling-in-a-bag.

So I began the lengthy process of stripping off layer after layer. I crammed the first few into my pack, until it was straining at the seams so much I worried whether it’d hold together, and then I filled my belt. I didn’t know what to do with the rest. I tied two tops to the outside of my pack, hoping they’d stay attached.

I was still wearing a couple more layers than I ought, but there simply wasn’t anywhere else to put them. So I accepted I’d continue to overheat, and hauled the enormous pack onto my back, feeling its weight and heft. This was utterly ridiculous, but I didn’t know what else to do.

At the bottom of the road, I tentatively praised my Enduro 2 for not crashing for an hour or so, while also eyeing it with suspicion: what was it scheming? Right on cue as I was inspecting the map for the way ahead, its screen went blank before flicking over to the ‘Enduro 2’ logo. What a relief, everything was normal!

Last year, I’d become very confused here. The GPS route had led me through woods to a river, from which it seemed like I ought to track alongside it, where in reality this was impossible. The situation had deteriorated until I became ensnared in a gargantuan bamboo-like plant.

I’d emailed Lindley about it, and while I didn’t think he’d updated the GPX route, I wondered whether he’d try to help us in another way.

So this year I was on high alert for any indication I was deviating from a trodden trail. And that indication came rather unsubtly in an assemblage of luminous signs with phrases like “Straight ahead” and “Ignore GPX!!!”. I gave a metaphorical hat-tip to Lindley as I passed.

Sitrep

That concern behind me now, my thoughts shifted to my physical state. I was carrying so much weight in the pack that it was bouncing around terribly and doing my back some real damage. There wasn’t much I could do about all the unnecessary clothing I was carrying, but I realised I was also carrying almost all my water from Bellingham, which was 1kg right there. So I drank some and sprayed the remainder into the trees, which helped a little.

Something felt badly wrong with my left foot. A building pain just above the foot where the top of my La Sportiva Cyklon’s gaiter sat. The pain seemed to be coming from the zip. I unzipped the shoe’s gaiter, which helped considerably; but without that locking my foot in position, my foot began shifting around the shoe, which I worried would exacerbate the pain in my soles.

My Achilles was in distress too. That was easy to explain - it’d been destroyed from dragging my foot out of all the bogs, which exercised quite different muscles to a standard running gait. There was nothing I could do about that.

My toes were obviously swollen, bulging against the toebox. And then I realised my right foot was also suffering with that gaiter’s zip too, and so I unzipped it as well.

“I’m in a bit of a state right now”, I concluded. I needed food, too. And for the thousandth time, I asked myself why.

I’d seen the course again, I’d experienced the bits I’d missed out on last year. I’d achieved my goals.

Pushing on further from Byrness, over the fearsome Cheviots, in this wrecked state; how would that help? My body was done. My mind was done. I didn’t need to prove anything, to myself or anyone else. Now it was time to go home, to heal, and to move on with my life.

Wizened Mosses

The entrance to Byrness village was truly delightful. An ancient stone church spoke to the history of its people through its weathered though carefully tended tombstones.

Then an enticing footpath led through an ancient woodland bedecked with wizened mosses that looked to have been entirely untroubled by their human neighbours. It suggested a close relationship with the people of the town.

Its inhabitants had obviously loved this patch of native woodland through the ages, just as I loved it now. This was Zion, in all its majesty. Its beauty, its mutualistic relationships, its yin and its yang.

It was moments like this that we runners run for. The connection. The symbiosis. The unity. The truth.

I am because we are.

Namaste, Spine 🙏

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