Peter and Theresa, the couple who shared our room in the Stornoway hostel, are in their late fifties. Peter is going grey, skin weathered and lined with life and sun. Theresa's hair is completely white, her cheeks rosy and her movements energetic, though careful. They are former teachers at a high school level academy - Peter taught chemistry, while Theresa took biology and psychology. It was a good school too, Peter told us as we chatted in the common room one evening. "We sent our own children there," he said. "That's how you know a school is really worthwhile - if the staff send their kids there too." He laughed a little at that. Both he and his wife have the patient, cheerful demeanor of those rare, excellent teachers who can convince even sullen teens that science is worth learning, and Theresa's mischievously twinkling grin and Peter's kind humor made Carly and I think that their students must have loved them. They aren't the the types to laze about in their retirement though, Peter told us, and are keeping busy instead.
Peter took a breath. Also, he told us, he has cancer.
"I'm not the type to sit around and wait for bad things to happen to me," he said matter-of-factly. Ordinarily, when one is diagnosed with Advanced-stage Prostate Cancer, the not sitting around involves living out a bucket list of places to go, things to see, before the disease takes hold. But for Peter and, by extension, Theresa, it goes beyond that. "I wanted to put some money back into the coffers," Peter said, referring to Macmillan Cancer support group who had helped him and Theresa during the early stage of his diagnosis. "I'm still strong, I still feel healthy," he said, and then launched into an explanation of the Grand Plan. To raise awareness and money for the Macmillan group, he and Theresa decided to bicycle across the western isles - all the way up the Outer Hebrides, from the southernmost tip of Barra to the north of Lewis, 25 miles a day or more (with saddlebags on the bikes, and a trailer, over mountains). It comes to a grand total of about 500 miles in less than three weeks, a truly staggering number for athletes in any stage of life, but more particularly when one considers the slightly advanced age and health of the pair. Awed and not a little intimidated, Carly and I hesitantly enquired if they did this sort of thing often, wondering what sort of herculean folk were sharing our room. "No, we've never done a bike trip like this," Peter replied rather, shrugging easily. "We've hiked around the highlands for years, but this is the first bike trip." "Wow. Wow." was all we could say in response. At this point they had already made it past their initial goal of 200 miles, and, after reaching the end of Lewis, they had turned around and were now on their way back south to the Tarbert ferry, across Skye, heading home.
The glasses Peter wears are thick and round, and made his eyes look even larger and more expressive than perhaps usual; as he told us about their trip his eyes behind his spectacles shone with a determined light. "We keep sending back texts to report how we are doing, and the support we get, the responses, are really encouraging." Peter smiled. "I thought we would crash after the first hundred miles or so, but we just keep going!" We shook our heads in amazement, silently sure that we would have crashed, long before the first hundred miles. He told us about the contact at their old school who spreads the word of their progress to the rest of the staff. "The fellow whom I text always tweaks things when he tells everyone else, just to make it a bit funnier. So, we haven'st stopped in Stornoway to rest and explore - instead it's so Theresa can do the washing. He seems to be under the impression that her life consists largely of washing and ironing." He shrugged his shoulders in bafflement and laughed quietly.
When we returned from our Hebridean outing the next day, Theresa was sorting things in the room, sympathized with our sodden, half-frozen state, and recommended the hostel's tea. Once we were marginally warmer and could speak without our teeth chattering like mad, I chatted with her for a while about their trip. She asked about us as well, with delicacy and ease. As with her husband, it was incredibly easy to speak with her. Before she and Peter left for the evening she recommended that we visit the museum with the Lewis chessmen before we departed (thank goodness she said something or we might not have made it to see them!).
Carly and I sent the couple on their way before we left on Wednesday morning, watching in awe as they piled their lives into tiny saddlebags and a little trailer, and accoutered themselves to withstand the tumultuous island weather: waterproof pants, jackets, and coverings for their helmets, and even plastic shells for their shoes. The brims of their helmets shaded their faces, and the little yellow flag on the back of their trailer waves bravely in the breeze. We waved goodbye as they pedaled off, wishing that we were half as strong and courageous and crazy as these two delightful people.
We watched for them all the windy, rainy way to Tarbert, knowing we would likely be taking the same road that they were, but we didn't see them. Praying that they had not drowned in the torrential rain that the sky hurled down at us all the way across Harris, we eventually arrived on Skye assuming that we would likely never see Peter or Theresa again. Incredibly, the next day as we drove about Skye on our grand tour of the north of the island, we caught sight of a pair of bikes and a cheery yellow flag waving just off the road. There, on a little bench overlooking the Uig harbor, sat our former roommates, Peter and Theresa, eating lunch and admiring the view. We nearly crashed the little car in our eagerness to turn around (driving on the wrong side of the road didn't help, but more of that later...) and we pulled off, and clambered out of the car, hoping to goodness we weren't intruding too much but unwilling to pass up this chance to once more wish them well. Likely a little amused at the silly Americans, the pair were still calm and gracious, and regaled us with tales of their harrowing ride across Harris the day before ("It was fine, except when we were having the kitchen sink thrown at us," laughed Theresa). Apparently a nice man in a truck had taken pity on the soaked couple halfway up a small mountain and had offered them a lift. They turned him down, though, after explaining they were doing the ride for charity, and he drove off, shaking his head. They ate their lunch huddled in the shelter of a bus stop, during some of the worst of downpour, and Carly and I stared at them wide-eyed, thinking almost guiltily of our cosy bus and dry ferry ride, not to mention the fact that rather than trusting our legs to get us around Skye, we had rented a car... They seemed undaunted by the weather, however, laughing a little at the ridiculousness of it all, and if they judged us for our automotive transportation they never let on.
"That is part of what makes the islands what they are," Theresa had said the day before, as I had griped about the incessant rain. If it were not for the weather, there would probably be more people and more tourists in the Hebrides, and the untamed wildness of the stretching moorlands would soon loose some of its empty beauty. "There is a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem about that, about the wildness of things," she said. "About how necessary the wildness is, in our world. Wild and wet, wild and wet... I don't remember the title." She smiled. "Look it up. That is the reason to come to the Hebrides, that wildness. Also, it's a beautiful poem." I found it, eventually, and discovered that she was right. Long live the weeds and wilderness yet; long live the wild empty Hebrides; and long live Peter and Theresa Wormald, inspiring and stoic and strong.
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