to and fro

the yo-yo years

~~~~~

on the Big Moss

Over 3,000 feet up, on the Moine Mhor (Big Moss), the immense plateau above Glenfeshie, studded with lochans and wee streams, surrounded by Cairn Toul, Braeriach and, far below, Loch Einich, as Kay and I put up the tent, I was impressed to find that she had carried a bottle of pinot grigio all that way, so that we could enjoy gourmet living. From quite an early age, she had been interested in cooking, probably because my skills were so limited, and it was great to be sharing the tent with someone who could do better than kippers and marmalade for breakfast.

wee lochan

In May, late winter, the snow was old and patchy, the day windless, the sun bright, and we spent the rest of the day plootering about the wee lochans, still part frozen, and coasting along the tops to the west of Loch Einich. Back in the tent, the gourmet nosh and nicely chilled bottle gave rise to a level of contentment with life that dived sharply in the wee small hours when I woke hearing the well-remembered whisper on the roof of the tent and looked out to see that there were already several inches of snow, and that the stuff was coming down very thickly indeed.

above Loch Einich

We packed up as fast as we could and headed for the valley, but it was uphill to start with, and in the snow and semi-dark impossible to see more than a few feet; without the compass, we would soon have been wandered; as it was, we were well off the track and battling through an ever-increasing depth of snow that masked boulders, heather and holes, until we were nearly down into the glen.

Had we been in too much of a hurry to pull out, wasting all that effort to take the tent up onto the plateau? no, the snow continued for the next fortnight.

Midsummer, and Ishbel, her sister Sheena and I had a gorgeous day up on the Big Moss, over to Braeriach, a little way from whose summit we found the Wells of Dee, where the infant River Dee first emerges from the stony hillside: a sharp metallic taste, but a few feet lower, trickling through bright green moss, the water became sweet.

cascading stream

This time we were camped down in the glen, by a cascading stream among the trees, dry level ground, rich in ants. That evening Ishbel insisted that we all do a quiz designed to assess our potential for survival. Sheena and I were not at all keen to find out our prospects, but Ishbel insisted, so we did the quiz. It turned out that Sheena and I would survive fine, because in the last resort we would eat Ishbel, but she, a much less brutal person, reluctant to eat us, would not. She was astounded and seriously dischuffed, a pity, up till then it had been a perfect day, and after all it was only a quiz.

Glenfeshie, much less spectacular than Loch Morlich or the Lairig Ghru, and with no chair lift to bypass the slog up to the plateau, was free from the tourist hordes, its river was good for swimming, and there was even a gliding club nearby. I found I was going back there a lot; for after coming home from the abortive Ulan Bator expedition, it had soon become clear that an early-retired body was still needing to travel, but not at all clear where to.

below Liathach

When Cee came with me to Torridon in the Mitsubishi van, there was cloud down over all the summits, so we followed a slightly furtive Japanese angler (who claimed to be heading for a loch with an exotic fish - but we may have misunderstood) up the track that goes round the north of Liathach to look at the wee loch, but without sunshine it was a dreich, dismal place, and the angler had disappeared. Fortunately Cee was happy for hours sitting in the van drawing cartoons or reading.

in the van

At the river, as I bent to fill the water container, the bank gave way and I fell in, landing on a finger which came out of the water at an unusual angle. Quicker than thought the other hand  pulled it straight; it swelled up and turned an interesting dark colour, and was so painful that I couldn’t easily change gear, so for the next few days Cee worked the gear lever while I de-clutched. (In retrospect, should the van technically have had an L-plate?) Later, back home, an x-ray showed a fracture, but it was already healing fine and nothing more needed to be done.

on Stac Polly

Kay mostly had good weather, and she cruised up Beinn Eighe, Ben Mor Coigach and Stac Polly with what looked like enjoyment, and at a rate of knots that made me realise that now she was, though still inexperienced, definitely the strong element in the duo, while I was the fading laggard.

Maude and I went to Torridon in October, in her huge car, which stuck in the mud, so we spent a day building a road out of whatever flat stones we could find nearby. After many hours we thought the road was firm enough and long enough to drive out of the mud; cautiously Maude tried, and the great beast rode out onto the tarmac, no problem.

Too late for a hill, so we went along to the pub, where the locals looked us over and wondered where we were staying. In our tent, we said. Local eyes glittered with appreciation: “Och, you will be as hard as the deer.” Well, we hoped it was appreciation rather than irony, and ever since have raised our spirits from any low ebb by saying to each other “but och, we are as hard as the deer …”

And in the following days our hard hooves sewed up Beinn Dearg and Beinn Eighe.

It was becoming obvious that each of these quick visits to the high places was costing a return ferry fare and a previous booking, which made it impossible to simply go when there was a spell of fine weather and come back when it turned bad. Perhaps it was time for a change, a longer journey, to … where?

A plan started to form: away south to the sun, maybe France and/or Italy? Fresh-baked rolls, local cheeses and wines? Tiny hill-towns pulsing with history? Major centres of renaissance art, enormous paintings by famous names? Very different from the wilderness of the homeland, but very appealing.

Was anyone interested in coming along? Yes, Cee and her current boyfriend, both art aficionados, would like to go to Venice and Florence.

(To be continued)

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

lost

finding the way

~~~~~

comfort-free zone

Inside the bothy it was fairly free from comfort: a concrete floor to sleep on, a pail to collect the formidable quantity of snow you need in order to produce enough water for a breakfast coffee – and what had been previously in that pail might have been sheep-dip, to judge by the taste. It was a relief to emerge in the morning and find the day sunny, except that the tops we were to sew up that day, Carn Mairg and Schiehallion, were lost in cloud.

Carn Mairg and Schiehallion

But we had all the navigation gear you could hope for in that era – compass, O.S. 1” maps, torch (in case of benightment) and whistle to blow for help (eh? who would hear us?) So off we trudged through the snow, onwards and upwards until we were in the cloud, and eventually we reached what we thought was probably the top of Carn Mairg.

Only probably, because we could see nothing, and this was not a sharp peak, just one of several rounded summits; but since the ground fell away downwards on all sides and we had gone what seemed to be the right distance and travelled uphill what felt like the right amount, and because we wanted to get on and sew up Schiehallion, a much more satisfying peak, from which you could see right across the Rannoch Moor to our playground in Glencoe, we decided that this could be deemed to be Carn Mairg.

So we looked at the map and got a compass bearing and our leader pointed into the whiteness and set off at a rate of knots.

Our leader, Dave, a human dynamo of close-packed energy, was of posh origin and fell naturally at all times into the role of leader; we proles fell naturally into the role of follower, and accordingly we followed Dave into the whiteness.

Time passed. The mind goes hazy in the white-out; you can actually fall asleep while still trudging steadily onwards; you lose track of reality. But shouldn’t we be starting to go downhill? For we needed to lose over 1,000 feet of height in order to cross the valley and start the ascent of Schiehallion. Instead of which we seemed to be traversing a large expanse of plateau.

But presently we were cheered by coming upon recent prints of boots that had gone in the same direction as ourselves. Hurrah, we must be on course, all we had to do was carry on and follow these other people. Must be others from our climbing bus that were doing the same as we were … who could it be? Well, whoever it was, it was fine to know there was someone to hear the whistle if we needed help, chortle, chortle. And on we went, following the lovely clear bootprints. More hazy time passed, more plateau, more whiteness.

Just as I was belatedly noticing that one of these bootprints showed a defect identical to the bit in my left boot which had recently lost a nail, we suddenly joined another set of bootprints, and the realisation burst upon all of us simultaneously that we had gone round in a gigantic circle and were following our own footprints, round and round.

Awed at having fallen into this classic trap, we now kept checking the compass, descended into the valley, climbed Schiehallion, upon whose rocky summit, above the cloud, we sat and ate Penguins and drank in the spectacular view.

Schiehallion summit

We dissected and shared an orange, while dissecting our gigantic circular trudge and sharing our amazement that this could really have happened: for we had all been sure that we were heading in a straight line; tales of lost walkers circling ceaselessly until the hypothermia picked them off we had long ago put into the Dustbin of Rural Myth. But now the tales had leapt out of the dustbin and gibbered at us. We agreed that, in the bus on the way home, no word of this episode would escape any of our lips during the usual chat about who had done what and how and why.

But later, because white-out is not uncommon, I thought it might be an idea to practise walking blindfold and see if there was a way to keep straight instead of circling. The pace with the right foot was a tiny bit longer than the pace with the left foot, so I tried to lengthen the left pace a little bit to compensate, and of course I over-compensated and circled the opposite way … friends helping with this experiment seemed to find it hilarious, as I zigged and zagged, trying to find the magic even pace.

It took time and merriment, but at last I became able to keep a straight line for several hundred yards, and felt that in a white-out on, say, the Cairngorms plateau, I’d now be better able to avoid the dread Circle of Death.

~~~

Loch Avon, Shelter Stone, Loch Etchachan

Came a day when I went up Deeside, bound for Ben Macdui, but the cloud was well down over all the tops, so I went up Glen Derry to take a look at Loch Avon. By Loch Etchachan (frozen nine months of the year) it was snowing hard and drifting in the strong wind, but once down by Loch Avon, in the shelter of the surrounding crags, it felt nearly warm, and the temptation was to linger and read the Visitors’ Book in the famous Shelter Stone where up to six people can spend the night in minimum comfort.

However it was not a day to lie about enjoying a good read, for the snow was coming down heavily, the cloud was creeping lower, and it was ten miles or so back to the Deeside road. So I had a good look at the map, zipped up tight and started off.

The steep climb from Loch Avon took me into blizzard; the track was covered, the snow was getting deeper and drifting, and the wind’s ferocity was increasing. But it would be only about half a mile before I’d be gently descending from around the 3,000-foot level down to Loch Etchachan, so this was the time to use my honed skill at walking in a straight line; for if you constantly look at the map in the blizzard you risk losing gloves, the wind can tear the map or blow it away, you get too cold, you start making mistakes.

And so I ploughed on through the drifts, taking care to keep in a straight line, and after a bit the cloud got a bit less dense and I caught a glimmer of water below me. Yes! That would be Loch Etchachan, soon I’d be out of the cloud, it would be gentle downhill all the way … but surely this bit shouldn’t be so steep? … more water came into view, a long narrow bit of water, much too far below. I had gone round in a big circle and was dropping back down to Loch Avon … ah me, the Circle of Death, the hypothermia, aarrgh!

So out with the map and compass, never mind the cold hands and the wind tearing at the map, only half a mile or so back up and over, and eventually the real Loch Etchachan came into view, and soon I was down out of the cloud and could see where I was going, whew.

It was a salutary reminder that the wilderness is neutral, it neither loves nor hates you, it doesn’t care; it can carelessly finish you off with a piece of weather or loose rock; you’re the one that cares whether you survive or not, so you have to use all your skill and clever toys when conditions are bad.

~~~

plootering about on Bidean nam Bian

There are some who have a gift for knowing the way. Four of us had been plootering about on the various tops south of the Glencoe road; the cloud settled over us, and typically, being a group, we hadn’t been paying much attention to where exactly we were; and we wanted to be sure of coming down northwards, so as to get to the road, rather than southwards where there would be a long walk back. Once below the cloud we’d be fine because we’d recognise which corrie we were in. So it was time to look at the compass.

Bidean nam Bean

But wait! George claimed always to be sure where north was, so here was a chance to see if the claim was true. OK, we said, show us north. George’s eyes grew vague and unseeing as he accessed his inner powers; then his arm shot out and pointed unwaveringly in the direction of … we looked at the compass … due south. Ah. We repeated the test from time to time, and every time without fail he would point south, certain that it was north. A powerful gift. So long as you remembered to add 180^o. George had grown up in South Africa; could that have keyed him into the South Pole instead of the North? No way of knowing, since no-one knew how the gift worked.

As we stood there wondering where exactly we were on the ridge, before we started the descent, Henry, a techno-chap whose dearest wish was for the return of the Stanley Steamer (a car powered by steam, you can get a 1910 model now for around £15,000), pulled from his anorak an altimeter; “If we know our height” said Henry, “we’ll know which top this is”. Good thinking.

Henry consulted his technotoy, and looked puzzled. “We seem to be at 4,322 feet, but …“ A pause, while the implications sank in.

“So we’re somewhere near the top of Nevis? When did you calibrate it?” asked Johnny, who had flown gliders.

“Um, yesterday, in Edinburgh” admitted Henry, looking abashed.

The silence that followed was pregnant with unspoken comment, and the altimeter never appeared again.

~~~

We were never lost. Being lost depends on how precisely you want to know where you are; you always know roughly where you are: Glencoe / Scotland / Europe / Planet Earth. We were never lost, for we knew we were (e.g.) near Carn Mairg, or between Loch Avon and Loch Etchachan, or in the Bidean nam Bian group, which was precise enough most of the time.

What we needed was to know what direction would take us, over terrain that we could cope with, to where we wanted to go, fast enough to escape hypothermia, starvation or dehydration.

What we needed was simply to find the way.

If I were a minister doing my sermon, I would say “I sometimes think Life is a little like that.” Eech.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

the road to Ulan Bator

~~~~~

to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

~~~~~

the possibility?

As I munched through biscuit and brie in a layby on the road south to Inverness, mountains were visible, way out west. Places I’d been, years ago, with all those old friends, irresistible. I turned off towards Torridon: Ulan Bator could wait a while.

Ulan B was where I was supposedly going, in the heady glitter of early retirement, a few extra years before the body became too decrepit to go places and see things, worth any amount of extra money that would accrue by working on to normal retirement age.

What will you do? people asked. You’ll get bored. No, I would not get bored. I would go places and see things and enjoy just floating about with no pressure of time. But where? they asked, wanting some plan.

Overland to Mongolia, perhaps? Down through Englandshire (tedious), across the north of Europe (probably boring), through Russia (possibly scary), to Ulan Bator, where the temperature hits 27^oC in summer and -33^oC in winter, and where the airport is named for Genghis Khan – a plan whose unlikelihood (too far, too hot, too cold) was surely plain to see.

At least it stopped the questions. And of course I just might go there.

So I had set off south in April, in my yellow Mitsubishi van kitted out for living in: walls and floor insulated with plywood, foam mat, double burner gas stove, plastic water-carrier; plus rucksack and wee tent for accessing interesting off-road possibilities. Private Eye for the cartoons and satire and crossword. A sliding door at each side let a trained sluggard such as myself watch the sunset at the west door and the sunrise at the east door without emerging from the sleeping bag. Bliss.

Morven from the Thurso river

The road from Scrabster to Inverness had stirred up the usual emotions: first proper trees, first proper hill, Morven, inland from Dunbeath; amusing bit of steep road at Berriedale plus sharp bend and sand pit for vehicles to crash into when their brakes failed, easy to get stuck there in winter conditions, it all felt like coming home after years in exile, a most comfortable and engaging exile but without the starkness, steepness and stoniness that the soul craved.

Onward south, past Helmsdale, where ancestors of the spouse are buried, past Golspie (ice cream), past Bonar Bridge and over the Struie. And then the brie-and-biscuit stop, the call of the west.

fine wee waterfall and pool

Torridon was bathed in sunshine, snow still lying above 2,000 feet, had I remembered to bring the ancient ice-axe? yes. (Would it break if I needed to use it? Maybe, for it was 30 years old.) Parking at the foot of Beinn Alligin, I toiled up the track as far as the fine wee waterfall and pool with lovely flat sandstone slabs, a lumpy, uncomfortable site, but ahh! sitting under the waterfall and feeling the trout nibbling at your toes, far too cold but what ecstasy.

Too early for the dreaded midge, but I set fire to a twig of heather in the tent, just for the nostalgic smell of the midge-repellent smoke. That night, too happy (and cold) to sleep. I dozed on and off, and the low burble of the stream turned into voices as though of people in the next room at a party: I couldn’t quite hear the words, only the tone of enjoyment. The American Indians, I had read, avoided camping beside a river, because it would steal your soul away. Well this river could have my soul any time it liked.

Beinn Eighe and Liathach from Beinn Alligin

The complete round of Beinn Alligin turned out to be more taxing than I remembered – a wee bit of scrambling at the Horns, where an ageing, unfit person could come unstuck, how had I never noticed it in the olden days? Nearly thirty years ago we had reckoned this an easy day. Now it was an effort and very slow. But the sun shone out of a cloudless sky, and every hill of this part of the country triggered a memory of past days, fine or atrocious, and the folk I’d been with. Back down at the tent, restored by a kipper and soup, I was tired enough to sleep, however lumpy the ground.

Beinn Eighe, scree run to the right

Next day wanted to be easy, so along the road to Diabaig, and a bit of plootering about on the rocks by the sea, still with the sun beating down. The day after that, Beinn Eighe, hard snow near the summit ridge, the long scree run for a fast descent, hmm, the knees aren’t as happy as they used to be, these are big hills, such as I haven’t experienced in a long while, and clouds are gathering … it could be time to press on towards Ulan Bator.

I packed up the tent and slept in the van that night, and sure enough the rain started and by morning all the scenery had disappeared into low grey cloud and wetness. So off I went, eastwards.

Inverness, a blink of sun, a quick whirr through M&S to pick up healthy food (bacon. kippers, soup, brie, grape-and-ginger syllabub, chocolate) and away down the A9, headed for Mongolia. (Whatever happened to grape/ginger syllabub? It went away, never to return.)

But south of Inverness the road goes quite high, about 1,300 feet at Slochd, and presently there hove into view big snow-covered summits and a narrow gap between them: Cairngorm, Macdui, Lairig Ghru, Braeriach, 4,000-footers, and sun beating down on them. Seemingly of its own volition the van peeled off to the left at Aviemore and trundled along the road to Loch Morlich, looking for a place to stay. Obviously it wasn’t possible just to cruise on past, no, Ulan B could wait a bit longer.

between Cairn Gorm and Ben Macdui

It used to be a long toilsome slog up to the top of Cairn Gorm. No longer. Cruising smoothly up in the chair lift watching the panorama unfold painlessly was pure pleasure, but it did put milling hordes on what used to be a place of isolation and silence but for the wind. Still, the mighty plateau stretched away for miles, and the throng would soon be left behind, so off I toddled across lovely hard-packed snow towards Cairn Lochan and Ben Macdui.

Soon I passed a straggling line of teenagers shambling along, blank-eyed, not really looking anywhere, one of them loudly moaning that he’d left his Walkman down at the campsite, so could he just go back down? Their adult minder, brisk of stride, keenly consulting map and compass, had that look of suffering patience just about to snap that said this was a school trip to expand the awareness of young people. Hah! I cruised on towards Macdui, feeling lucky, and soon they were just tiny inaudible dots in the immensity of the plateau.

A faint feeling of unease nibbled at the lucky feeling, because this was an accident waiting to happen: weather can change very fast; at this time of year; at this altitude, if you find yourself in a white-out, it’s perfectly possible to walk right over the edge of the cliff without seeing it; and unless you have good equipment and knowledge and can somehow shelter until help arrives, a bad sprain can be the end of you – though they do say that hypothermia is one of the pleasanter exits from life. Not that long ago, most of a school party had perished at lower altitude in the Lairig Ghru; some years before that, a group had set off from Glen Clova hostel to walk the six miles over the old drove road to Loch Muick, not far, but much of it over 2,000 feet high over featureless moorland; blizzard enveloped them, and they never arrived.

I wondered whether to go back and see if their leader needed help to round up stragglers? But no, they were on their way back to the chair lift in plenty of time, there was no sign of bad weather approaching, no-one was limping, they were keeping reasonably well together, they’d be fine.

So onward to Macdui, the broad flat summit where more than thirty years ago, thin and hungry, I’d wandered about in the cloud trying to find the cairn and get safely down to Loch Etchachan and back along the track to Inverey fortified by glucose tablets; now I could see for miles, the tummy was well filled with bacon and the rucksack with chocolate biscuits, and it was an easy, if a tad wearisome, trundle down past Coire an Lochain to the giant parking place. So, a perfectly satisfactory day, but lacking the excitement of the first visit. Was it time to be off somewhere new, Mongolia for instance?

That night the rain came and the morning was dreich, though the forecast indicated that it would clear from the west. The van rolled back down the road to Aviemore, where the way to Mongolia lay left, on the A9. I sat and thought. The drive down through Englandshire, so boring. Was I ready for all that suffering? Not yet, I’d take another look at the west coast first.

Almost without further thought I found myself, once more stocked up with goodies from M&S, bowling along the wee road beside Loch Quoich, in Knoydart; through the open window came the addictive scent of bog myrtle. Most of the peaks here I’d sewn up one Easter long ago, but this time I’d go for just one, my favourite, Luinne Bheinn; because not for nothing is this part of the world known as the Rough Bounds, and though the distance from the nearest parking place to LB and back was only about 20 miles, they were pretty rough miles and that would be enough for the aged bones.

Luinne Bheinn, near the summit

Good decision. Next morning as I laboured over those rough miles, fortified  with coffee and a cheese-and-anchovy-paste sandwich, I remembered that it had been toilsome even when I was a lot younger and fitter. Back then the dam at the east end of the loch was quite new and the loch had not yet finished filling up; the normal path was under water, and as we made our way along the edge of the loch by torchlight it was hard to distinguish dry heather from underwater heather, so still was the water surface. That night I had kept waking up from a nightmare that the rising water was filling up our tent, and the next day had felt a great lack of energy and a worry that when we got back to our tent it might be under water.

So coming back to the present, perhaps the older and unfitter body might find the trek to LB and back quite easy after a good sleep and no worries about flooding? Dream on. It took the full day, a lovely sunny day, splendid vista out west towards Skye … maybe I should go there next, for a look at the Black Cuillin? No, get real, that gabbro ridge is beyond beautiful, but only for a fit person.

Better to stay a day or two in the Rough Bounds, for across the loch, above Arnisdale, lurked Sgriol, as yet unaccountably not sewn up. The map told me there was a track all the way; but there were a lot of streams to cross, and it might be about 12 miles to get there, past the Dubh Lochain and down the River Arnisdale, and these pecked-line tracks on the map were often hard to find in real life … hmm, I’d see what the legs were feeling like in the morning.

Loch Hourn, looking west. Sgriol is far, far away to the right.

The morning was cloudless and looked settled, and the legs thought it was worth starting out, because they could always turn back, couldn’t they? But I knew that when it came to the point, turning back just never happened. The legs just carried on, mindless.

near Sgriol summit, looking back east up Loch Hourn

Across the streams, past the lochs, up the steep rocky face to the summit at nearly 3,200 feet, out there above the mouth of Loch Hourn, Skye only five or six miles away, yes, it was worth the slog, but it had taken around six hours what with streams to cross and the track mostly invisible, and it was nearly sunset, which would be gorgeous but I couldn’t stay there to watch, because it was a long way back. Luckily the sky was clear, the stars were bright, and the feet, left to themselves, remembered their old skill of walking in the dark so long as their owner didn’t look at the ground. After a lot of hours, those feet got their body back to the van, and the body was glad of the comfort and the treats that lay waiting.

Ben Mor Coigach from Stac Polly

Enough long slogs for the time being, where next? Ulan Bator? Well, but since I was already into the north-west, what about all those bits that had been too far to access for a weekend while I was working? So past Ullapool, to Achiltibuie, for Ben Mor Coigach, then round to Stac Polly’s brilliant wee ridge, up the road a bit for Cul Mor, all a bit under Munro level but far more interesting than the A9 slag-heaps.

Stac Polly ridge

Needing food by now, so round to Lochinver for supplies. Suilven is the obvious hill from here, but that was in the bag long ago, whereas Canisp was as yet unbagged, so abandoning the van I toddled up the track that runs east from Glencanisp Lodge, and set up the tent by the stream, between Suilven and Canisp. Back in the day, I had found this to be snake and tick territory, but it was still not hot enough for the snake, and I had a bit of whisky to scunner the tick with, and since it was not yet the season for the midge the door of the tent could stay open and the recumbent body could admire the hulking mass of Suilven and watch the heron fishing in the nearby lochan..

Canisp, it turned out, was a bit boring, and the view of Suilven from nearly 400 feet higher diminished that far more interesting double peak. In disenchantment I thought of turning south and getting on Ulan-wards. Oh, but just a blink farther north lay Quinag, as yet unbagged … so near, must just nip up there.

above the clouds on Quinag

The rocky ridge of Quinag proved to be cluttered with posh people in post-party mode, some of them still in evening dress, including one on crutches cursing inventively at the wee steep rocky bits. One could only admire their pzazz and press onwards.

The sight of posh people reminded me that I hadn’t had any kind of wash for quite some time but not far from the road was a wee loch, fed by a stream with a fine little waterfall, perfect for a shower. It’s a great feeling, post-waterfall, after a few weeks of festering.

The van seemed to want to keep on northwards, and soon it became clear that it was going to Sandwood Bay, just a few miles south of Cape Wrath. The rough road to Sandwood turned into peaty track just at a little loch, and there the Mitsubishi parked.

Sandwood Bay

Sandwood Bay held memories of the bairns, years ago, swimming in the lagoon, drawing rude pictures in the sand, scrambling on the beautiful gneiss, damming the stream, far more cheerful memories than the ones I’d been living with recently, of mountaineering friends, all now dead.

I wandered along the lagoon; one leg got sucked down into quicksand, and it proved amazingly difficult to get it out again. Online now I see that “to remove a foot from quicksand at a speed of .01 m/s would require the same amount of force as that needed to lift a medium-sized car.” Crivvens. It seemed quite some time before I’d managed to extricate my medium-sized leg, time during which I could reflect at leisure on my solitary state and the unlikelihood of anyone chancing to be passing by that late in the day. Sandwood was a beautiful as ever, but as I limped back to the van, a knee ligament probably stretched, I was thinking how easily the beautiful wilderness can get you if you don’t pay attention.

Such thoughts receded as I tucked into a mushroom omelette and coffee with a more-than-usual sensation of Glenmorangie, snug in the sleeping-bag, pecking away at the crossword. Through the open side door the Cape Wrath light was visible flashing (4 white every 30 seconds, Google tells me) all night, triggering the thought that it had been built by the father of Robert Louis Stevenson, an inveterate traveller whose opinion about travelling being better than arriving is famous.

The Private Eye crossword is always rich in anagrams, and as I wrestled with it, there popped into mind an obvious anagram of Ulan Bator – Lunar Boat. Ho hum. Was the subconscious sending up a message about how crazy it was to keep cruising on? Surely not? But perhaps the basic animal was wanting to be back in its nest?

Home seemed very far away, though the actual crow-flying distance was a lot less than it had been on that first day where I had turned west near Inverness. Almost full circle. I wasn’t going to Ulan Bator, that had only ever been a fantasy. And revisiting the places of one’s youth, what was that all about? Almost everywhere I’d gone had been full of ghosts from the past but without the camaraderie of yore. A verse floated up into memory, by an anonymous Ancient Greek lyric poet, listing the best things – riches and health, both fine things, but best of all is to be young, among one’s friends. Yes.

Robert Louis Stevenson said:

we shall never reach the goal; it is even more than probable that there is no such place … [but] to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

RLS had maybe been spending too much time alone? As probably had I. It had been fine to be back in the playground of my youth, but it had become clear that a lot of the old pleasure had been the companionship; and that a lot had also been the degree of fitness for using the playground. Neither of these would come back, so what was left was the magnificence of the wilderness and the solitude.

A bit of solitude is fine, too much can unhinge you; Colette wrote:

There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.

The time had come to stop slugging down the heady wine, give up on the tonic, avoid becoming a heid-banger, go home.

fat

a criminal word?

~~~~~

Should calling a person “fat” be a criminal offence? This was the topic today on Radio Scotland Call Kay. Some thought yes, some thought no. Unsurprisingly.

What was a surprise was that no-one (so far as I heard) considered how such a crime would be formulated in law and how it would be enforced. Joe tells Mary in their kitchen that she is a fat slag. Does Mary want to put Joe in jail, or lay a hefty fine on him? Where are the witnesses? Who pays the costs of the prosecution?

If calling someone “fat” was a criminal offence, it would take only a moment to find another word to use. Will “chubby”, which can be used with affection or dislike, need another law? How about “tubby”, “flabby”, “adipose” … there is no end to the choice of words available to be unpleasant to/about another person.

And this is the thing. The people who want calling a person “fat” to be a criminal offence are really trying to make it a crime to be nasty. But being nasty. though possibly not very nice, hardly ranks as a crime. If you try to make it into a crime, you’ll probably fail to find a form of words that covers all the possible ways in which one human can be nasty to another human using only the weapon of speech. For the nastiness lies in the intention and attitude, not in the actual words. You could call your enemy a “supremely good person”, and in the right situation, using the right tone of voice, it would be an insult.

Do we really want to live in a world where no-one is ever nasty about another person? No more cartoons, no more edgy comedy, no more honest film/book reviews. No more unthinking off-the-cuff comment. Only cautious assessment of possible witnesses before saying a word.

If a person is so hurt at being called fat that they want to make it a crime, I suspect them of gross self-importance.

Perhaps self-importance could be made a criminal offence?

the leisure game

as played in

Stromness Academy

~~~~~

staff vs pupils

Up on the flank of Brinkie’s Brae, the Slow Bicycle Race is finished, Throwing Up The Welly Boot is over, and now it’s the Staff vs Pupils hockey match, staff dressed in nappies as babies, pupils dressed as themselves except for three senior boys supervising the game dressed, Godfather-inspired, as Mafiosi.

mafiosi supervising

This is Stromness Academy in play mode.

Of course "school" derives from the ancient Greek word for leisure and the Latin for "school" was ludus, game. Hmm. Irony?

Another day, in work mode: O-Grade Latin have been writing up their account of the episode where Julius Caesar, held hostage by pirates, promised to return and defeat them and crucify them; “how amusing,” said the pirates; they were less amused when he defeated them and crucified them. Ishbel has written it as a square dance, brilliantly. I wish I’d kept a copy because now I can remember only two lines:

Take your pirate, five and six

And nail him to his crucifix.

Another day: an inspector is asking the class questions which I know they are well able to answer, but they sit, round-eyed and silent, watching the smartly-suited, fast-speaking foreign animal inviting them to think about Galatia in the Roman Empire (now part of Turkey), and how the Galatian language was a Celtic language which developed into Gaelic. From round-eyed, his hearers descend into apathy: Gaelic happens some other place, the inspector has not done his homework, this is Norse territory where the old language was Norn, and the place they feel connected to is Norway; quite a few are learning Norwegian and some go to Norway to learn how to play the Hardanger fiddle; there are plenty of European connections, only not where the foreign animal is thinking.

Had he realised it, their interest was easily aroused by the gorier bits of Roman history, Caesar crucifying the pirates, Nero offing his mother, Claudius offed by his wife; or by Catullus sailing his boxwood yacht from Turkey to his pad on the shore of Lake Garda, or the cheating in the boat race in Book V of the Aeneid, the sort of things they knew from their daily lives.

But whatever topic the inspector had tried, he wouldn’t have got them speaking, for they needed several months at least before they would relax enough to speak to a newly-arrived creature fae sooth.

One year I had a C-stream third-year class for maths; they named themselves Thick Maths, inscribed the name on a placard and stuck it in the window of the portacabin that was their classroom. They were lovely people: boys who were well able to discuss the finer points of the John Deere versus the Massey Ferguson and which was the better beast, Charolais or Simmental, and they could do quite complicated calculations so long as it was to do with the farm, the fencing, the amount of feed; girls who loved to do bills, to write down purchases, prices, amounts, totals, in round, neat handwriting, every letter i having a little flower instead of a dot, the addition reliably correct, chatting softly all the time, admiring their friends, shredding the characters of their enemies. I came to believe that they already knew everything they needed to know for a good and satisfactory life in Orkney, and to try to “stretch” them (such was the educational buzz-word) was not only cruel but pointless.

One small group, four girls and one boy, were with me for extra arithmetic tuition, and I had a little room with a computer for which I wrote a program that would screen a simple calculation question, such as 9 X 7 on the screen and give, say, five seconds for an answer. After ten such questions a mark out of ten appeared, and the next pupil had a shot. They were all fine at doing this, and could all get 10/10. Then it gradually speeded up, and the slower ones began to drop by the wayside; there would come a speed where no-one had time to key in an answer; the winner was whoever was last able to get 10/10 – calculation speed plus physical typing speed.

The fascinating thing was that Henry was the slowest of the bunch, but the girls wanted Henry to be best. So Laura and Susie sat each side of him, took a hand each, pressed his fingers on the keys and made him the winner. Henry, a most amiable boy, was pleased with the attention; the girls were content that the boy was best and that they had made it happen.

Those girls were women who had the power to achieve their ambition, and the knowledge of how to use that power. They already knew all that was necessary to live the kind of life they wanted. What use was school to them, I wondered.

Among the pupils were a number of very talented musicians, some of whom are now playing in orchestras. At one time my room was next to the music room, and it was a pleasure to hear the startlingly professional-sounding flute, clarinet, trumpet, violin and voice coming through the wall.

The staffroom of course thrummed with knowledge and elevated discussion; three of us, however, Gordon, Pie and I, preferred to play bridge, sometimes joined by Crommy which would make a proper four, otherwise one of us bid two hands, an exercise in phased forgetting if it was to be done fairly. We had only an hour, and needed to play as many hands as we could in the time, so the bidding was fast and extravagant to a degree that would curl the toes of a proper dedicated bridge player. Some staff did not approve of our evil card-playing and once we were glowered at, our poor tattered coffee-stained cards castigated as “the devil’s picture-book”; but at that moment we were engaged in a 7-no-trump doubled and re-doubled, and hardly heard the words.

R.E. teachers came and went rather briskly: came with joy and enthusiasm, went with sadness and disillusion and (sometimes) haste. One was unlucky enough to have the same name as a TV cartoon character: if the cartoon had been South Park (which had yet to be invented) his name would have been Cartman; this happy coincidence led to him being tormented ruthlessly. He was misguided enough to warn senior girls about the shortness of their skirts which might reveal their knickers; the next week the senior girls turned up at R.E. wearing skirts rolled up at the waistband to űber-mini-level, revealing vast purple bloomers; they sat at the front crossing and uncrossing their legs, staring at him with hard and lustful eyes. It was not long before he fled across to Caithness, where he lived in his tent notifying the Education Office that he was taking sick leave and requesting that his pay be sent to the nearest post office.

Latin and Greek were the subjects I was initially qualified to teach, but when Latin stopped being required for University entrance, and Science became three subjects instead of just one, it was clear that the numbers choosing to learn a dead language were going to decline sharply; up in the seats of educational power the classicists tried to postpone the death of their subject by making it easier: no longer did a pupil have to learn to write the stuff, no more worries about gerund and gerundive; even translation became easier, since a lot of it was now from a set book; questions on historical and cultural background were introduced. All, predictably to no avail: the patient was doomed, and no reduction of the effort required to grasp its subtleties was going to restore it.

So naturally I had a worry that I might find myself being slid over into the R.E. slot. My knowledge of gods and their habits was restricted to the kind of episodes that Greek writers found hilarious, for example:

role model celeb: Dionysos, god of wine

Vulcan is miffed because Venus (his wife) is shagging Mars, who is athletic and beautiful, unlike himself, who is lame and ugly though awesome at metalwork; so Vulcan makes a net of wire mesh and catches in it Venus and Mars in flagrante delicto, hauls them to where the gods are banqueting (a thing they did a lot of) and dumps them on the table - an early version of writing to an Agony Aunt, I suppose, hoping for sympathy for himself and a ticking-off for the captives; but the gods just roar with laughter and sink some more wine and Jove himself is heard to say “I wish it was me in there with her”.

Well back into B.C. the serious thinking was done by people like the inventor of the atom, or the chap who proved why, if you organised a triangle with sides 3, 4, 5, you’d got yourself a right-angle so that the sides of your house would fit together. The gods seemed to fill the slot now occupied by celebs, providing entertainment and awe, fodder for fans. The really powerful entity, before which even celebs were helpless was Necessity, which meant something like “the way things work”, the laws of nature that govern existence.

godly behaviour: Zeus carries off Europa

All of which seemed to me to make quite a bit of sense, but fearing that this kind of godliness, while it might have appeal for pupils, would surely cause trouble up among the authorities, I started an Open University Maths degree course, simultaneously enabling me to teach Maths rather than R.E. and letting me study my favourite subject once again. Double whammy. Hence Thick Maths and Henry, Laura and Susie, as well as Ishbel square-dancing Caesar and his pirates.

luggage gondola

There came a year when it seemed an idea to take some of the Norway-orientated young to Italy, to get a taste of the different life south of the Alps, and I organised a trip to Venice and Florence during the Easter holiday. To get there we had the ferry crossing, followed by train to Edinburgh and thence to London, a night there in the Youth Hostel, flight to Milan, coach across Italy to Venice, arriving 2 a.m., walk to hotel, baggage coming on a gondola – a long, strange journey for most, who had never before even seen a train.

With us came Ian MacInnes, head of Art, himself a fine painter, his wife Jean, Susie Johnston, the doctor’s wife and a doctor herself, Frank Eunson (Geography) and his wife Clare; and their expertise was most welcome.

Several posts would be needed to do justice to that trip, just as a lifetime would be too short to comprehend all that was on offer: all I can do here is scamper briefly across the scene as it unfolded .

St Mark's, Venice

In Venice, Ian conducted us all round the Accademia, telling us what and why and how; and we were awed by the sheer size of Tintoretto and Titian on the walls of churches just a step away from our hotel, gobsmacked by the magnificence of St Mark’s, charmed to see mussel-gatherers in the lagoon rowing standing up and facing forwards, impressed by the glass-blowers of Murano, incredulous about Attila the Hun’s bum-print on a stone outside the cathedral on Torcello. Everyone will likely have their own favourite pieces of wonderment; mine was the fleeting notion, contemplating the complex group of domes on St Mark’s, that a person with a sleeping-bag and a wee primus stove could live up there quite cosily, hidden from public view, roasting a pigeon or two a day culled from the hordes down in the square.

view from top of Duomo

And we had still to sew up Florence: train from Venice, sleeping quarters in a vast flat near the centre, enormous famous paintings in the Uffizi, gripping ascent of steep winding stair inside the double dome of the Duomo, emerging outside onto a perch with vertiginous view down to the street below, spectacular art and architecture everywhere.

Bus to Fiesole up in the hills, peaceful Roman theatre, great view of Florence down below.

tower summit

Day in Pisa, up the eerie winding stair of the leaning tower, steps either very steep or almost flat depending where you were in the circuit, faintly vertiginous feel at the top – what if it chose this moment to finish its topple?

Pisa cathedral and leaning tower

Into the cathedral to watch the swing of the mighty pendulum, as Galileo had done 400 years earlier. Discover a new favourite food – ice cream with brandy (adults only).

Then coach to Milan, flight to London, quick tour, courtesy of Jo Grimond (our MP) of House of Commons, train to Edinburgh, train to Scrabster, discovery that the Ola had broken down, oh no, how to get across to Orkney … unless, yes, headmaster MacLean arranged for us to be picked up and flown across, hurrah! Back to the centre of things, brains almost swamped by the many marvels we had momentarily touched the tips of.

And, for one boy, near starvation because of a disinclination or inability to eat pasta.