From Gunpowder Green, below the Buachaille, via Meall a'Mhuiridh and the Black Mount to the Bridge of Orchy Hotel. In the intervening 57 years, climbing gear has changed for the better, it's a long time since cameras needed light-meters, and it's possible that people are nicer to each other now?

(the pictures were taken on a much better day)

Sewing Up the Tops: Etive to Orchy

the start: Gunpowder Green

It was cold in the tent; I had wakened up shuddering uncontrollably. The illuminated hands of my wrist watch said five to five. I pulled back the tent-flap and looked out. Very dark indeed. Soon the dead, colourless greyness of the pre-dawn would usher in a nasty day, by the look of it. Last night the sky had been clear, sparkling with stars, bitter and frosty; now it must be completely clouded over: it wasn’t nearly cold enough - no frost, no chance of a decent climb at all, just nasty wet soggy uncompacted powder-snow, typical November manky weather. A great shudder clanked my teeth together: it might not be cold enough for a decent snow gully climb, but it was still bloody cold for sleeping.

I pulled my face and hands back into the comparative warmth of the sleeping-bag, How had I got cold enough to waken up? Getting decadent, getting past it, hmm? 29 next birthday. Maybe time to get me a spouse, and start to age gracefully. Maybe. Trouble is, all my prospects kept turning out to be married already, most discouraging. Perhaps Joe? Joseph “Souperman” McCash. So called because for the past year he had brought with him every weekend on the climbers’ bus a tin of Kidney Soup, first donated to him by (or rather ravished by him from) an admiring girl on a Fresher’s Meet: “I’ll eat that fillet steak for you, and you can have my kidney soup”, or - more subtly - “We’ll eat your food now, and you can share my kidney soup in the bus on the way home” (but in the bus “Oh, my rucksack’s got itself put in the boot, we’ll need to open your peaches”). Every weekend, never got discouraged, never ashamed - you had to hand it to the lad, he had persistence. Or something.

Anyway lately there’d been this peculiar glare in his eyes when he looked at me, especially since I’d let drop what size of salary I was pulling in. I reckoned he was coming to the boil - he’d even invited me to go to the Alps with him next summer; not the Alps of Austria, which he reckoned to be fit only for going to with girls, but the veritable mighty near-vertical granite walls of the Chamonix Aiguilles. Very nice, very flattering (if a tad scary), but should I start considering him as a feasible spouse? Perhaps it wasn’t flattering at all, it could just mean he didn’t think of me as female; and was that good or bad? - too complicated for this time of the morning, too cold to think at all, in fact.

Where’s my airbed, that’s why I’d wakened up cold ... put my hand out, feel around a bit … there it is, a sleeping-bag on it, the long nose, the stubble, the bastard, he’s stolen my airbed, oh well, not worth bothering now, the night is over, it’s getting light; Joe will say it’s a day to sew up the big tops, and it’ll rain all day, and at the end of it I’ll be cold and wet and not have time to change into dry things before the bus comes, oh the misery; and here, patter patter on the tent, softer than a whisper at first, then louder and more determined, here comes the rain.

The rain drummed on the heavy, dark-green fabric of Joe’s ex-GI bivvy slum, and the body in unlawful occupation of my airbed twitched convulsively, maybe locked in a dream of Very Severe rock. Suddenly up sat the dedicated man, Joe McCash, and out into the grey, wet, chilly dawn he extruded his stubble to garner the data for his Dawn Weather Report and Schedule of Tops for the day - not, however, forgetting to keep a firm grip of my airbed (which might otherwise induce in me a decadent unwillingness to do anything at all).

“Ahh … occluded front … a day” - his pale-blue eyes held a ravening glare that only the cognoscenti realised bespoke pure pleasure - “for sewing up the High Tops."

"Some might say,” I murmured, sloshing some meth around the primus and casting a lighted match at it, “that it was a day for staying put and having a wee game of poker.” I banged my hand, which had some burning meth on it and was swathed in a pleasing flickering blue flame, against the dark, damp canvas beside me until the flame died down, then I shut down the primus valve and pumped hard till it was roaring steadily.

“Stupid female!” roared the Great One, overpowering the primus roar by several decibels, “you might have set my Slum on fire, you might have let the rain in.” He examined the canvas narrowly: but it neither leaked, nor was its precious skin of grease and paraffin-smoke disturbed. “You can stay here” he continued in more moderate tones, "if you like, and fritter your time away with the Peasantry; but I have my Programme to think of."

The Peasantry, still snoring cosily at this hour in a great communal palace of a tent some 50 yards away from us, had one great unpardonable fault: they believed in enjoying themselves. They swam when the heat was unbearable, they skied when the snow was deep; and when the cold, wet, and nastiness were switched on for the day (as clearly they were today), the Peasantry would while away the hours eating, sleeping, singing, and chattering.

For Joe, such a way of life was incomprehensible. He had, as he had hinted, his Programme to think of. And since his Programme for the year still had x summits and y climbs to be knocked off, a day such as this was a welcome opportunity to sink a vast number of tops at a blow, unimpeded by any temptation to loaf about and admire the view.

By now I was fortified by a half pound of ulster fry and two eggs, and the coffee was nearly brewed. I tried again to divert Joe from his Programme. “There is said to be a very hard poker school down the river,” I suggested. For down the river there crouched amid the peat-hags the fabled Black Rock bothy, a lowly edifice of stone, corrugated iron and tarpaulin, within which dwelt the hard men of the eponymous Climbing Club, whose exploits were a legend from the northern wastes of Greenland, down through Skye and Glencoe, right across middle Europe and into the fastnesses of the Himalaya. And it was sure that these tigers would be spending their day mewed up in their desirable riparian residence, laying their dole money on the luck of the cards and peeing into their empty soup tins, not sewing up any tops at all, big or small.

But Joe was not to be lured by the prospect of socialising with the Black Rock. He didn’t care to think about the hard men and their habits. Himself a moderate climber by nature, raised a notch or two in standard by a truly frightening dedication, he viewed the Black Rock with a mixture of envy and awe which accorded ill with his normal bent of mind, accustomed as he was to look down on from above with condescension, rather than to look up at from below with admiration. And so he attacked my feeding habits instead: “Disgusting stuff you eat, carcinogenous, no vitamins.” Scrabbling in his rucksack, he dragged out a tired old lettuce (“it only cost me fourpence - very good, don’t you think?”), tore off its fundament, shook an assortment of sandy earth and defunct slugs out of the tent door, and crammed the rest with both hands into his gob. A minute of frantic nibbling, a couple of loud belches, and he was ready for off.

“I thought we might do all the Black Mount group and drop down to Bridge of Orchy, we can wait for the bus in the hotel - beer and women, eh?” he nudged me in the ribs, his face glowing with lechery; for the moment I was just an audience to admire his exceeding sophistication and potency. It was sort of touching in a way; like his technique with the lettuce it was like a baby’s first tottering attempts to cope with the great world, so I said nothing. Nothing could usefully be said, anyway, with Joe you either tolerated or you went your own way: he wasn’t asking my opinion, he had decided on the day’s course of action; I could come or not, as I pleased.

And while he trundled off round the neighbouring tents to drum up some enthusiasm, I considered options. It would be about 15 miles and it would take in four or five summits, continuously cold and wet, no view; worst of all there would be no dry clothes at the end of the day, for we would pack up here and leave our rucksacks to be loaded on the bus; and it would all be done at high speed, and there would be no mercy for any who dropped behind. All this was certain, all depressing. Why go?

On the other hand, for all the misery, it would be memorable; and no doubt Joe would come away with some merriment-causing sayings typical of himself (e.g. one weekend “I’ve forgotten my sleeping-bag; I’ll just have yours and you can sleep in my rucksack.”) There would also be the write-up of the expedition afterwards in his highly secret Diary, wherein the exploits of others were transmuted to dross, of himself to gold, in the oblique light cast by the author’s powerful ego. (The sleeping-bag episode, I remembered, had been immortalised as “M. offered me her sleeping-bag.”) To read extracts from this Diary about events in which we had taken part afforded some of us an esoteric pleasure comparable only to the viewing of a Party Political Broadcast.

Spurred on, then, by prospects of future amusement, I loaded a small rucksack with lots of carbohydrates, since I reckoned that the Maestro, after his health-food breakfast, would become famished pretty soon, and would come seeking what he might devour; so I put in what I thought would be enough, and then added half as much again. Then some oranges, and a map, compass, torch and whistle, on the grounds that, Joe being what he was, I could easily be spending much if not all the day solo. The next thing was to pack up the tent itself, so out I crept reluctantly into the larger world.

By now the rain was driving obliquely across dreary, sodden moorland. The lower rock-faces were streaming with water, and already the level of the river beside us was rising. At about 1000 feet the hills turned white, and another 500 feet above that they disappeared into the overcast. Long before we got up there we would be soaked; even without the rain, there was the Etive river to be waded early in the proceedings; once above the snow-line, in the blizzard which clearly infested the tops today, we would gradually freeze - ears, noses, hands, feet. And finally, if we got there in time, if we hadn’t got wandered in the cloud, we would squelch into the hotel and run the gauntlet of all the warm, dry, nicely-pressed, well-groomed, car-borne slobs sitting in the cocktail bar, while Joe sipped daringly at his sophisticated beer, and leered at the supposedly admiring women. Not an alluring prospect.

And yet, and yet. What was the alternative? To hang around with the Peasantry, eating and chattering and frittering time cosily away, would produce no glory, nothing memorable. Better just to have stayed at home. I’d grow glum, obsess about the depressing state of affairs on the romance front; for the latest candidate for possible matrimony, after an excellent start (6¼ feet high, beautiful voice, gorgeous smell of cigars and brandy, demon driver), had just got round to telling me that he had been married for fifteen years; but first he’d waited till it was going to be pretty hard to disentangle. They should have an indelible mark put on them, married men. How was a girl to know? There were warning signs, of course - their shirts were clean, their faces smooth. That was one thing you couldn't accuse Joe of, anyway. Yes, this was a day for sewing up the big tops: the nastier it was up there, the better for stopping brooding.

Hot upon the thought, back came the unsmooth one himself, clad in splendidly unmatrimonial grey, dung and olive. “There's one bloke keen to come with us. Called Geoff Host. Never climbed before, but says he's done a lot of cycling. Cycling.” (A snigger from mid-stubble.) “From Dorset or some such.” (Snort.)

A pair of rambling boots emerged from Peasant Palace and conveyed their occupant towards us; he seemed only nominally in charge of their actions; someone had told him to get boots big enough to hold three thick pairs of socks and leave plenty of room for his toes. This must be the cycling G. Host who was keen to sew up the big tops with the renowned Souperman.

Small he was, and hairy, with slightly bowed legs and a big white nervous smile. To demonstrate his keenness he started running on the spot, elbows working, train noises thrown in. Yes, well, we would see. But would I be able to keep up with the two great men, with no other frail person to help hold back the party? It might be difficult, but then I'd had a lot of practice and acquired some useful techniques, plus natural cunning. And being solo didn’t trouble me. I reckoned I’d probably survive.

Part one of the survival technique was to get in front right away, whether by fair means or foul; part two was to use every trick at your disposal for the first ten minutes to stay out in front - not easy, this, for Joe could go a lot faster uphill than I could, and he had long ago learnt to ignore primitive diversionary tactics such as casting bars of chocolate into the heather. But if you could keep the pressure on for those vital few minutes, the Souperman would lose heart, and after that the day was yours - unless you got lost.

Even as I was considering the best strategy for a day such as this, Joe was already steaming across the moor at a rate of knots, with G. Host’s rambling boots coasting along after him in top gear. No matter: ten minutes would bring them to the Etive river, and the fording thereof; and Joe hated and feared the water, which dissolved (he claimed) his natural oils and rendered him pervious to the wind and the cold, and might even drown him, for he couldn't swim. Even if the water barely reached his knees he'd wait at the river, so I took it easy for that first mile. What I had in mind was a great sprint once across the Etive.

When I reached the crossing-place, Joe was stamping about muttering at my sloth. The river was in excellent form, swirling past all brown and foaming, so that you couldn't tell how deep it was. Joe was totally unnerved, and was for roping up. I indicated that he could rope up if he wanted, but that I wasn't going to wait, and into the Etive I plunged. “Wait!” he screamed, and rushed in after me, towing an apprehensive G. Host. We linked arms tightly, forming a heavy, stable, six-footed animal, far less likely to be swept away by the current or unbalanced by the slippery stones of the riverbed than three separate bipeds.

Etive

In spite of its dramatic foam and swirl, at its deepest the water just came above my kneecaps. At the far side we took off our boots to empty them out. Joe and Host also had to wring out their wet socks and pull them on again, a time-consuming task, but necessary if feet that were going to be above the snow-line most of the day were not to freeze. But I had worn my boots on bare feet for that first mile, and I had warm, dry socks in my pocket. Aha. The socks were on, the boots laced up, and I was away, while the Souperman and his acolyte were still swearing and tugging at wet wool down by the river.

Success! First ploy for the day had worked, I was out in front. But could I stay there? Joe could go terribly fast uphill; I didn't look back, I concentrated like mad on all the known ways of causing the body to rise upwards faster than it really cared to: I leaned forward; I used my hands, pushing one knee down, pulling the other up; I counted the steps; I pretended it was downhill; I pretended that I weighed nothing. The breath was whistling in and out, chest aching, heart pounding, legs turning to wee jellied lumps of fiery agony ¼ and here he came storming up, and I just couldn't go any faster - not if I was going to last the rest of the course.

He was going to pass me anyway, so to take the pleasure out of it for him I stopped first and waited for him. Mustn't appear out of breath, though, breathe s-l-o-w-l-y a‑n‑d e-v-e-n-l-y, even if it kills you. He can't hear the heart going de-BOING de-BOING, but if you gasp like a stranded fish he'll know he's won. Now then, everything under control, what's the excuse for stopping: not photography, not with the rain peeing down and the landscape as enticing as a slag-heap, what then? - ah yes, the apprentice, his welfare. Good.

“Where’s your friend? Is he OK?” - and indeed he was some way behind. The Souperman’s eyes gleamed with piggy pleasure: “Him? Oh he got harrowed crossing the river, apparently he's afraid of getting drowned (a great smile of pure glee) and he doesn't like getting his feet wet, ho-ho-ho!” And onwards and upwards he strode, still chuckling.

My heart bled for G. Host, sentence of social death had just been passed: if he didn't like getting his feet wet, what was he doing here at all? he should get back to the city, and take up some gentler sport, knitting, for example, or embroidery, and not forget to take his nice Horlicks last thing at night.

Still, harrowed or not, socially dead or alive, those rambling boots were trundling along fast now, so off I went again, following Joe. As always, the top receded as fast as we approached it; as we gained height, the force and wetting power of the rain increased; icy rivulets began to trickle down neck and ankles. Presently rain turned to snow, and soon we were in the mist. The outside world became a dim memory, and each of us dwelt in a tiny inferno of cold, driving snow-flakes, whining, shrieking wind, and freezing, painful feet; a monochrome of flat white and shades of grey; nothing but stones and boulders, nothing but up and down, and difficult to tell which was which, with no distant perspective.

Behind me, in a momentary lull, I heard a moan issuing from the apprentice: “My feet, ahh my feet, the pain.” I stopped and waited, to give encouragement: “So long as you can feel the pain,” I cheered him up, “you're all right, you haven't got frostbite - not seriously, anyhow.” His mood did not noticeably lighten. “Ahh, my feet!” “Can you feel your ears?” I asked, “they're usually the first thing to go, you don't notice them because of your feet. But of course they don't matter as much as your feet.” “Aarggh!”

With such cheerful badinage, typical of the Merry Camaraderie of the Hill, we soon found ourselves with our first top in the bag. We stood on Peak One, a great heap of boulders, surveying a dismal waste of stones and powder-snow receding downwards into the mist: this was the ridge leading to Peak Two and points south.

The tallest and greyest of the boulders brushed a fringe of mini-icicles off its anorak hood, and stood up: “Bloody slow you were. Have you got any chocolate?” Sure enough, the rabbit-fodder hadn’t lasted long, and the great man lusted after my unhealthy carbohydrates. He grabbed my rucksack and ravished it. “You won't need this, you made a pig of yourself at breakfast. And I need this stuff, the leader has to make Decisions, it uses up energy very fast making decisions, more nutriment is needed for the leader - you brought all this stuff, far too much for yourself, so that I would be able to lead the expedition more efficiently and look after you.” He was probably unaware of speaking aloud, it was more an ongoing stream of self-justification momentarily leaping the barricades and bursting into the outer world. But I basked in the unusual recognition of my role as organisational guru and provider of plenty. (And I still had some left for myself: he had got two large bars of chocolate, a pack of biscuits, some Kendal Mint Cake and an orange, but he had not thought to unroll the ancient pullover, the pair of socks, the underwear sitting innocently at the bottom of the rucksack, hidden inside which lay as much food again.)

Guzzling “his” bar of chocolate, Joe now revealed to us the next part of the course. “We’ve sewn up Ben One. Along there” - pointing along the waste of stones and snow and into the mist - “is Ben Two. After that the main ridge sweeps eastwards to Ben Four and Ben Five, but we can take in Ben Three on the way by a short diversion to the west. And we'd better get a shuffle on” - rising to his feet as he saw G. Host starting to unwrap a great cake - “because there isn’t any too much time before dark. Thanks.” He grabbed a full half of the Host cake and was off, munching.

Now it happened that I had done Ben Three on another occasion, and saw no merit in repeating it today. Moreover I had the problem of the relief of the bowels which for some time now been hinting that it would be nice to stop and etcetera. But if I mentioned this to Joe, he would refuse to wait for more than a minute, which left no time to find concealment, far less get nice and cosy somewhere out of the wind. And he would go on and on at sickening length about what a problem for girls the natural functions were in the Alps, roped together on the glacier ¼ who needed to hear all that stuff?

So I caught up with Joe and explained to him that since I had sewn up Ben Three I didn't need to go there again, that I’d left a light-meter somewhere along the main ridge a few weeks ago, that I’d go slowly looking for it, and I’d see them again on the top of Ben Five. He opined that looking for a light-meter in these conditions was "utter bloody madness, just like a stupid female", assessed the rendezvous as "OK, but don't be bloody late, because we won't wait for you" and shanked off closely pursued by our cycling companion, head down, pedalling away gallantly and fingering his ears from time to time.

Ah, the relief. Feeling like a child escaped from school, I nipped smartly down the lee side, looking for a nice warm place, and there was a group of big boulders with a lovely sheltered hole in the middle, and it was very pleasant to be out of the wind and not to have anyone stamping up and down, waiting and muttering and generating dispeace. And I could eat my own chocolate at leisure at the same time without fear of having it taken away. Afterwards, as I emerged, purged and happy, it seemed to me that I had seen this lot of boulders before. Was there not a wee hole, away back here, where I had stowed my light-meter that day ... and there, as if by magic, it was, eighteen months older but in quite a reasonable state of preservation. I opened it. It even appeared to be working.

Up to the main ridge again, and onward to Bens Two, Four and Five. Conditions now were atrocious. Incessant shrieking of wind, mist and snow driving across the ridge, blowing and swirling underfoot all had a numbing and hypnotic effect: the mind retreated into a place not exactly outside the body but perhaps in a different dimension. Something still piloted the body, seeing that it didn't wander off the route, watching that its feet didn't slip on a boulder and break one of its legs, ready to summon back full consciousness immediately if there was need; but the main part of the mind was away off living over again the day I’d lost the light-meter, unalloyed happiness, sunlit and sparkling, with the peaks, still white-streaked after a savage winter, clear from Nevis to Cruachan, the islands glittering in the west, a day spent in the comfortable companionship of long-time buddy Allen, without the least premonition that in a fortnight he would be lying dead at the foot of the Nevis cliffs; even eighteen months later I still found it hard to believe that the intricate subtle workings of that mind had stopped for ever. Reflecting on the ever-increasing number of friends that were becoming climbing fatality statistics I began to understand the attitude of my Dad, who had survived WWI intact but lost every single friend in the trenches: he reckoned it wasn’t worth the trouble making new friends, only to see them die - this was his gut-level knowledge impervious to the intellectual comprehension that the war was finished. By now I too was finding an automatic reluctance to make new friends: it took a long time for a friendship to mature, and then one day there’d be another statistic, so why bother. Joe, for all his drawbacks, was one of the very few still around. (In fact, as it would turn out, Joe had now only another 5½ years to go.)

As well as this automatic pilot trundling the body along at a fair speed, and the main consciousness swilling about in all directions spatial and temporal, I was aware of yet another entity following along the ridge, behind and slightly to the right, monitoring progress. All things considered, solo wandering on the hill was a crowded experience, no feeling of loneliness. No wonder that many small or solo expeditions in bad conditions return with reports of feeling that there was another person in the party; the only surprising thing was, I felt, that it was only one extra, and not the great shoal that were with me.

It seemed no time at all that I was on the summit of Ben Five, with no recollection of the stages by which I'd got there; Bens Two and Four had just flowed past with the automatic pilot at the helm. Now I was aware that hands, feet, ears and nose were acutely and painfully cold, and that I was hungry, growlingly hungry. So I posted down a great feast of chocolate biscuits and an orange, in haste before Joe should arrive needing leader-fodder; in a secret cache in my anorak I hid some glucose tablets in case of emergency. Then I jumped about and flapped arms and rubbed ears and nose, until all the extremities were warm and cosy, and I hoped that Joe and Host would not be too long.

Soon they hove into view out of the blizzard, Joe going like a well-oiled machine: his pace looked easy, but it ate up the ground effortlessly, and he could keep going, as I well knew, for another 15 hours and 12 peaks if need be. The apprentice, ten yards to the rear, was making the same speed, but the effort was clear to see: there was no rhythm in his pace; his feet slipped on the unaccustomed snow, he stumbled, recovered by a mighty effort, broke into a run to catch up, slipped again, energy output quite out of proportion to progress; he was going to be very tired by the time he got to the hotel. If he got there under his own steam.

At the summit cairn, Joe paused and looked expectantly at my rucksack. "You took so bloody long," I said, "I had to eat all the food to keep warm." "Idle, no-good wench," cried the Maestro, more enraged by an accusation of slowness than by the lack of free food, "no kidney soup and prunes for you on the bus," and from his own rucksack he drew a bent and crumpled packet of some veteran brown stuff which had clearly accompanied him for many moons. I peered at it with unfeigned curiosity: “What’s that, Joe? Is that your kidney soup?” "Stupid woman, it’s dates, sultanas and mixed nuts, highly nutritious, better for the teeth and digestion than that crap you carry,” he explained. "Here, you, have a piece" - he broke off a microscopic corner and offered it to Host, then stuffed the remainder of the precious sludge into his cheek-pouches and gnashed it into a nutritious soup faster than the eye could follow.

summit cairn

The wretched Host had meantime produced the cyclist's boost for waning morale - an aluminium bottle of milk. A gleam of interest entered Joe's eye, and he actually stopped chewing and stared with grim delight while the bottle was unstoppered and upended. A meagre trickle of whitish fluid; the rest was frozen. The apprentice drooped and visibly shrank; deprived of his mother-substitute he was ready to weep; but Joe had the solution: "Stuff it down inside your pullover, it'll thaw out." He sat still until Host had taken off his anorak and wedged his aluminium mummy against his bosom; then up he rose, slung on his rucksack, and remarking "Well, we must get the finger out or the bus will go without us", off he sped.

The cycling boy had no little difficulty re-entering his anorak, which had frozen into a sheet of crumpled iron. But the speed with which the Souperman was disappearing from view proved a remarkable spur to action. Crumpled iron painfully crammed over his head, off he tottered, still thrashing about trying to get his arms into the sleeves.

The strategy now, as I saw it, was for me to stay with Host, encouraging and prodding him, ensuring that he didn’t get wandered or have an accident (bad for the club, that would be, a sure generator of media feeding-frenzy).. It was certain that the Souperman was going to stay out there in front. He had often in the past made it clear that to wait for one who lagged behind was a mistake: it simply encouraged the laggard to go slower than ever; the only thing that would get the idle and incompetent home was the fear of being left behind in the gathering darkness. This was partially true, but he completely discounted the depressing effect on a tired novice of the sight of his figure fast disappearing towards the horizon, bearing with it, as like as not, the map, the compass, and probably most of the edible goodies of the party; persons of weak fibre had in the past been known to lie down in the snow, weep, and even express a desire to perish in situ. Up to date, however, even the weakest of fibres had eventually realised that without a remorse-filled audience death was going to be not only uncomfortable but also inglorious, and had risen to their feet and followed the Maestro back into the world of men: of his many many apprentices, probably 90% had sworn never to go near a hill again, the remaining 10% had been gripped and fascinated and had come back for more, but not one had suffered lasting damage let alone death, so his philosophy and his non-tender unloving care actually did work. Nevertheless I felt impelled to stay with the apprentice, if only out of curiosity.

He staggered along at a reasonable pace for a shattered cyclist whose drink-bottle had frozen. I trundled along with him, pointing out that it was all downhill now, that the hotel where we would wait for the bus would be warm, that there would be drinks and/or food, that he was doing very well, and a great deal more pap of this nature. And his spirits even rose a little, and into his glazed eye there came a look which said: "She is making up to me; I am diamond hard and girls admire me." His chest swelled and he began to tell me of the great distances he had covered on his bike in the olden days down in the deep south, of the girls on whom he had conferred the boon of his friendship, of the untold numbers who had desired to share a tent with him because of his prowess ...

This was fine, if boring. He was well away in his wee dream-world, and I had only to say "Amazing" whenever the flow stopped, and he was off again. Meantime reasonable speed was being made over easy, sloping ground, and I could let my mind wander. What was it about the creature, I wondered, that was so irritating? Not his incompetence, for that was no greater than was to be expected in someone with no experience of winter conditions. Not so long ago I too would have been staggering along by this time, buckling at the knees. Was it his boastfulness? Not altogether, for most of us did our bit of boasting now and then. His lack of humour? Well perhaps he had cause, for he was getting harsh treatment. Had we maybe been too cruel?

His voice broke into my thoughts: “ ¼ and on the way back down off Ben Three it was very difficult, no wonder you were frightened to do it ¼ " Eh? Me? Frightened to do Ben Three? Me frightened of a wee snowy scramble? He was out of his tiny mind with the harrowment of the day. Yes he was humourless, and pompous, and boastful and incompetent, and no, we hadn’t been too cruel; we’d been nowhere cruel enough, and he was for the treatment.

Joseph must have reached the same conclusion, whether by a sort of remote osmosis or independently, for he stopped and waited for us, an action without precedent once all the food was gone. "lt’s getting dark," he pronounced gloomily. "We can’t afford to hang about, we’ll have to cut straight down there" and one bony forefinger pointed to the left, where the angle of slope increased dramatically and the ground fell away into what the ancients would have described as a Vertical Yawning Abyss. The slope was in fact probably only about 60° at its steepest, and there was a little crag here and there, and a lot of unstable boulders, all covered with the cold white slippery stuff; a little care would be needed, that was all. But in the gathering gloom, to an eye accustomed to a view of smooth tarmac and whirring wheels, it would look a tad formidable.

The cycling boy gazed into the void, and his face grew ashen. "I can't go down there" - his voice was a strangled hoot an octave higher than it had been when he was droning on about his exploits. “My knees" he explained "are cycling knees; they seize up going downhill.” “Ah well," said Joe in his fruitiest tone, "in that case you'll have to stay here and die, because we can't carry you."

The face above the cycling knees turned from ashen to plain white as Joe turned and plunged at speed down into the mist and the gathering murk. Then he gulped convulsively, and moved like an automaton to his doom.

Now there was no need to go down the steep unstable slope at all. Continuing along the easy slope where he had been happy he would have arrived at the path and ultimately at the hotel - a bit farther in distance than the steep descent, but actually faster because easy and well-trodden. But the cycling boy wasn’t to know this: he had been too busy yapping on about his prowess to look at the map, and there was nothing visible except mist and snow. In reality, if he slipped, he would be fielded by Joe, and helped down to easier ground by both of us; for it would do our image a lot of no good if our apprentice came badly unstuck on his first outing. So we were watching him quite carefully.

No need, however. For in the despair of the moment the cycling boy stopped thinking, and let his feet work by instinct. And his feet, as reasonable feet tend to do, got him down as surely as if they had been mountain goat hooves. There was potential there after all.

Joe doled out a meed of praise: "You came down there like a bird." And while the cycling boy was still regaining his normal colour and wondering which sort of bird he came down there like, the next blow fell: “Now we'll have to think about crossing the river - it's much bigger than the Etive, and it'll be in spate by this time. I wonder if we’ll be able to get across?" Joe arranged an anxious crease on his brow, and peered about him, making like a worried man.

By now we were down out of the snow, below the mist, and out of the worst of the wind. Our apprentice must have been beginning to feel quite warm and cosy; he must have been thinking eagerly of heat, lights, food, drink, just as Joe and I were. And then, at the end of a trying day, he was suddenly confronted with the prospect of a black rushing torrent of unknown depth and shocking iciness through which he must push his poor aching body with its seized-up cycling knees, before these delights could be gained. He gazed hopelessly around. By now the last of the daylight lingered only up among the snow; down here it was impossible to see the river or guess where it was. His face was taking on the wizened look of a terminally deflating balloon.

For a moment I thought we'd overdone it; the cycling boy's mouth was quivering, and a wetness quite other than the wetness of the rain was in his eye. Then he gave a tiny sigh, took a deep breath, straightened up and a kind of dignity came upon him as he called our bluff: “Well, if we can't get across the river we'l1 just have to go back the way we came, won’t we?" We were delighted at his spirit, and a little ashamed; for while there was indeed a river to be crossed, and while it no doubt would be in spate, was there not also a fine road which ran alongside that river, and was there not a beautiful bridge, courtesy of the famous General Wade, which would bring us safely across the river not a hundred yards from the hotel?

Joe and I all looked at each another and giggled. “Just kidding” said Joe, and set off, singing his little song which means he's pleased. It has just three notes, and the lyric goes:

Humpy pumpy pumpy PUM

Pumpy pumpy dumpy DUM

* * * * *

In the hotel the cycling boy was very quiet. Not sulking, just thoughtful. Afterwards, outside in the night, with the lights of the bus approaching across the Rannoch Moor, Joe pointed up to where the glimmer of the snow-covered tops could barely be distinguished. The rain had stopped; the clouds had lifted from the summits; the wind had dropped, and the quietness was full of the roaring of waterfalls and rushing streams. "There's your route, up there,” said Joe. "We'll call it the Tour de France in your honour." The cycling boy’s knees were sagging and he moved stiffly. But gazing upwards "I enjoyed it," he said with evident sincerity. “I hope you'll let me come with you again,” as the bus drew up beside us.

Joe, from half-way up the steps of the bus, turned and looked down on him severely. "Next time" - very emphatic - "don't bloody forget my chocolate."

*  *  *  *  *

I was a different person back then. How could I have guessed that ten years later Joe would have fallen to his death on Nevis one windy Easter, that I would have three small children and be living with someone I hadn’t even met on that day of the Tour de France, someone for whom such a day would be a ridiculous waste of time ¼

Now I am old, and grateful for days like that, when the future was still hidden.