One of the nicest things about a Ramblers group walk is the possibility of coffee and cake at the end.
It doesn’t happen after every single walk, but most groups do make a point of seeking out a local café or pub afterwards.
This makes perfect sense to me, because if it’s windy on the walk or there are paths where we need to walk single-file, it can be difficult to have a flowing conversation or talk to more than one person at a time. And so, getting everyone around a table in the warm afterwards, with that lovely post-outdoors flushed feeling on our faces and where the chat flows freely, is the perfect way to end any walk.
But best of all, it gives something back to the places we visit, which I wholeheartedly approve of because it’s all too easy to do the opposite.
I spent the vast majority of my hillwalking life in my own wee urban bubble. When I went on daytrips I’d fill up with petrol in the city, buy my food from the massive supermarket in the local retail park, drive non-stop to the hills, walk (and therefore erode) someone else’s paths, and then drive back again. It didn’t matter how tired or hungry I was on the drive home, I wasn’t interested in stopping unless I absolutely had to do so.
The most extreme example I can remember was at the height of my Munro-bagging fever when I drove four hours non-stop to Loch Arkaig. I then had a nine-hour walk in Knoydart before driving the four long hours back again, non-stop and utterly exhausted. It was madness really, but I was in that crazed single-minded space where I just wanted to ‘bag and go’. I think the only time I ever thought to deliberately stop somewhere and actually spend some money was if the place I was visiting had suffered some sort of calamity and had subsequently made a very public appeal that it needed people to come and support it. Ballater after the floods, for example.
Looking back, I regret that I never spent a penny in the places I visited or drove through, and I think it speaks volumes about the nature of my then relationship with the hills. They were a playground where I spent my time but not my money. Well, technically speaking I DID spend pennies in those places but it was only ever the liquid variety, and if that’s not symbolic of my relationship with those communities then I don’t know what is.
Thankfully a series of incidents and accidents brought me to my senses, after which it dawned on me that I was taking from these places but not giving anything back. On my home patch this new-found awareness saw me volunteer with the local ranger service to try and redress the balance somewhat, but away from home I deliberately lingered longer in the places I walked, or stopped off at places on my way home from the hills. To spend money.
Doubtless it’s the ageing process kicking-in to an extent – the need to stretch aching legs, get some fresh air and spend a penny or three, but these days I find I do enjoy the slower pace and the chance to take a breather before or during a long journey. Usually it’s just for a coffee or a sandwich, or perhaps some fish and chips to satisfy my post-hike salt deficiency. But while modest expenditure sometimes seems trivial in the grand scheme of things, I tell myself it’s still better than spending nothing at all. And of course it all adds up. Some of our Ramblers groups have struck up long-term partnerships with accommodating cafes, using them as regular meeting places as well as post-walk destinations.
It goes without saying that walking is big business in Scotland, worth an estimated £1.26 billion to our economy and seemingly growing still further, but I’m not sure to what extent any business can afford to rest on its laurels these days. How many of us have driven past familiar cafes or pubs over the years, only to see them suddenly shut down one day? “Awww, what a shame”, we think to ourselves, before realising that we hadn’t actually stopped off there in the last decade, so why on earth are we surprised? I’m not saying that a coffee or a scone once a month will necessarily ensure an establishment’s survival, indeed some cafes are so woefully inefficient or behind the times that there’s probably not much that can be done to save them.
Nonetheless, there’s definitely some truth in the saying ‘use it or lose it’, and I do therefore think that conscious support of local businesses is important all year round, both in good times and bad, especially given the seasonal dependence of some rural communities on passing trade.
So the next time you finish your walk before closing time, or the next time you need to stop and stretch your legs on the way home, why not linger longer and give a bit back?
Ben Dolphin is an outdoors enthusiast and president of Ramblers Scotland
