'I Hadn't Spoken to Anyone Properly in Three Weeks': James's Story

James Robertson spent most of his working life on the water. Thirty-one years with Caledonian MacBrayne, latterly as a deck officer, meant he was rarely still and never short of company. Retirement changed that slowly, then his wife's death in 2023 changed it completely. "I didn't realise how much of my social life had been built around her," he says, sitting in the small flat in central Dumbarton he has lived in for nearly two decades. "When she went, it all just — evaporated."

For a year, James managed. He had his routines: a walk to the newsagent, the occasional pint, phone calls with his daughter in Stirling. But by the spring of 2024, the routines had begun to contract. The pints stopped. The walks shortened. "I think I got to the point where the effort of talking to people felt like more than I could manage," he says. "Which is a strange thing to admit when you've spent your career coordinating ferry operations." He pauses. "But grief does strange things to you."

A community nurse who visited for an unrelated appointment was the one who mentioned Vibrant Health Advocates – Verdigris. James was sceptical. "I'm not a joiner," he says, with the mild emphasis of a man who has said this many times. "I didn't want to sit in a circle and talk about my feelings." He was reassured that the befriending walks programme involved neither circles nor feelings — just walking, mostly, and whatever conversation arose naturally from that. He agreed to try it once.

His volunteer, a retired engineer named Alasdair, met him outside his building on a grey Wednesday morning. They walked along the Leven towards the Clyde, talking about ships at first — Alasdair had worked on Clyde-built vessels in the 1980s — and then about other things, and then about nothing in particular, in the easy way that happens between people who are not trying to impress each other. "I remember thinking, walking back, that I felt lighter," James says. "I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt lighter."

That was fourteen months ago. James and Alasdair now walk together every week, sometimes along the river, sometimes up towards Dumbarton Rock, where the views across the Clyde estuary on a clear day stretch all the way to Ben Lomond. James has also begun joining the occasional group walk, something he could not have imagined when he first made contact. "I'm still not a joiner," he insists, smiling slightly. "But I turn up."

What the programme gave James was not therapy or intervention — it was simply the reliable presence of another person who had time for him. That reliability, he says, was what made the difference. "Knowing that next Wednesday, someone was going to ring the buzzer and we were going to go for a walk — it gave the week a shape. And when the week has a shape, you start filling in the other parts yourself."

James's story is not unusual among participants in the programme. The specifics vary — the circumstances of isolation, the degree of reluctance, the pace of progress — but the underlying pattern is consistent. Connection, offered consistently and without pressure, tends to find its way in. Dumbarton is full of people like James: capable, private, and quietly in need of someone to walk beside. We are here to make that introduction.