Debs Reid cycled through the trees and dismounted by our cottage gate in bright sunshine. She looked remarkably cool for a woman on the latest lap of a 541 kilometre cycle trip from Aberdeen to Edinburgh. Smiling happily, she removed her helmet.
“That’s quite a steep run from Bridge of Earn isn’t it?”
I wouldn’t know! Not on a bike anyway. But Debs has been undaunted by the challenge she set herself to undertake a solo fundraising cycling trip inspired by her daughter, Eli, who was diagnosed with a rare cancer two years ago at the age of 23.
With Eli now recovering well, Debs got on her bike. She set out on Monday 22 June this summer to raise funds and awareness for Teenage Cancer Trust, the charity who supported her daughter through treatment for Acute Lymphoblastic Lymphoma, an aggressive form of blood cancer.
Her aim: to visit 60 gardens between Aberdeen and Edinburgh – from Tarland Community Gardens near Aboyne in Aberdeenshire to the finishing point at Jock Tamson’s Gairden in Duddingston, Edinburgh. She would take a longish route avoiding busy main roads to stop at public properties of the National Trust for Scotland and private gardens open through Scotland’s Gardens Scheme. Like Pond Cottage.
Pioneering women
We were really proud to be included in the long list – our garden snuggles on Debs’ map somewhere between Scone Palace and Limekilns School and Community Gardens on a twisting trail of country roads. By the time Debs got here on Monday 13 July she had visited gardens like Drum Castle, Carnoustie’s Tropical Garden, Cambo near St Andrews and Falkland Palace. In her basket she carried a collection of cuttings from each stop that she will grow as a living souvenir of her extraordinary achievement.
“Gardens and gardening have played an important role throughout my life,” Debs wrote for her press release. “Through my work as a gardener and my involvement as a volunteer trustee at Jock Tamson’s Gairden, a community garden in Edinburgh, I found the solace and strength to help my daughter through her two and a half year treatment plan.”
In fact gardens and gardening had already brought Debs and me together some years ago when – without meeting in person – we collaborated through words, writing stories for the second edition of the Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women published in 2018. There was a place in the gardening section for pioneering women who helped make horticultural history more than 100 years ago but had often remained invisible. (Women like Lina Barker, Annie Morrison and Madge Elder.)
Blogging about the project, I ended by paying tribute to “the diligent research of garden historian Deborah Reid giving clearer shape to the lives of these pioneering women in the new BDSW”.
So it was a special treat to meet Debs almost 10 years later in person. Slim, smiling and energetic, an engagingly warm and friendly presence. A good listener and a enthusiastic garden explorer (she allowed time for walk round our garden). It sounds as if she made an impression everywhere she stopped on her long journey. It was also good to know that somewhere not far behind on a quiet B road her husband was following in a camper van so they would have a comfortable night before the next lap of the journey.
“In a way I don’t want it to stop,” she said. Everyone, everywhere, had been so kind and welcoming. Even the weather, most of the time, was kind and she didn’t mind some rain, a bracing windy blast on the Aberdeenshire coast didn’t bother her. “It’s been a wonderful experience.”
She set off again, down the lane, a Pond Cottage willow cutting in her basket. The journey would end in Jock Tamson’s Gairden, Duddingston on Saturday 18 July when she was hoping to join friends with her family for ‘a wee celebration.’
If you don’t pick up this post before then, you can still make a donation to Debs fundraising through her Just Giving Page.
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