by Wren Chapman

The I Would Walk 500 Miles event, backed by the Proclaimers, on September 15 will take place over three weeks. Participants will walk for 25 miles for six to seven hours a day until the full 500 miles have been walked at the end of the event. The march will start on September 15th at 12pm and end on October 6 in Edinburgh. The rally will start at Portree with SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford launching the event.

Yes supporters will then walk to Ullapool, Inverness (September 18), Nairn, Elgin, Fraserburgh (September 22), Peterhead, Aberdeen, Forfar, Dundee, Scone, Stirling (September 30) and Glasgow (October 2). It is held on the same day as Hope Over Fear’s independence march in Glasgow so is expected to draw large crowds.

Dear iScot,

I was wondering about this 500 mile walk thing and the motivating force behind it. I have considered the impact of Scottish Independence on the UK long and hard, much of it from my former home in England. For me it is a no brainer but for others it is an absolute no-no. So I was wondering is there something else that makes people take to the streets and compels them to undertake a beautiful yet grueling walk across the North of Scotland singing ‘I would walk 500 miles?’ I know what it is for me and it comes down to survival.

The political system in the UK is in need of radical reform. A pernicious symbiotic relationship exists between an archaic, elitist system and the mainstream media. So my guess is that those who do not take to the streets are either happy with the status quo or, regardless of their circumstances hold fast to it for fear of change and view their chosen media in good faith. I wonder how many other people who take to the streets are survivors of the system rather than beneficiaries? When you are a survivor then change is less threatening because the status quo is far from comfortable.

In 2014, the year of Indy ref one, I was living in Lancaster, England. I worked as a Family Mediator. It was a one hundred mile round trip to work and back. The necessity of this ridiculous commute was because the service I had been working for, closed shortly after the UK government cut legal aid in England and Wales for Family Matters. These cuts were described at the time by Emma Howard of The Guardian as ‘The Forgotten Pillar of the Welfare State’. The organisation I worked for, having run for over 20 years was no longer sustainable. We all lost our jobs and parents previously eligible for legal aid found they where unable to keep contact with their children because of prohibitive costs. Put another way many children were deprived of seeing a parent because that parent could not afford legal fees. This seemed very wrong to me. The nearest place I could find work was Manchester. So now instead of paying £6 and spending 15 minutes on a train to get to work I found myself taking out a car loan, paying £12 each day for fuel and spending up to two hours each way in traffic. Added to this it was a self-employed contract with no secure hours.