1991
Mullardoch
"Shall we zigzag?"
Andy looked back at me, quizzically.
"All the best paths zigzag up mountains," I replied. We were well beyond territory that a path would care to grace.
"Okay."
We turned sharp right and traversed for about a hundred yards, rising gently before doubling back to a point thirty feet above our conversation.
"Is that better?"
I nodded, but paused for breath and to allow the tops of my legs to catch up with the pain. We were on the last stretch of our approach to An Socach, about six hours into the day and 2000 feet left to ascend over a slope averaging a one in seven gradient.
I was glad to be walking with Andy, much fitter and stronger than me but more than willing to travel at my pace. We had drawn lots for this walk, the four of us staying in a cottage in The Kyle of Loch Alsh - Andy and Ady Glover, David George, the remains of a Peak District activity holiday group which in three years had dwindled from eight to four people. When something is good you feel it will last forever. Little by little it ebbs away, like a dying flame. At first you do not realise that something you held as special is drifting apart. You try a little harder then realise you need to let go and move on. Savouring the present, not prolonging the past.
The night before we had come up with the idea of two of us walking from Killilan through to the dam near Benula Lodge on Loch Mullardoch whilst the other two would drive the car round to the dam and do it in reverse in the hope we would meet somewhere on the 21 mile route taking in four Munros. I had drawn to be with Andy and to start from Killilan.
My legs were killing me, blood was thumping round my head and again I was wondering, "Why am I doing this?" Not even one Munro of the four done and I was struggling well beyond the bounds of a hobby. We slowly made progress and reached the summit in just under nine hours before the demoralising drop and painful ascent of An Riabhachan, summiting shortly before 1900, very late in the day, barely half way, for getting across to the dam at the head of Loch Mullardoch.
"We could drop down to the shore of the Loch," I suggested.
Andy's reply was slow in coming, it meant missing the last two Munros.
"Do you think the other two are too much for you Steve?"
I nodded.
"Okay," I cringed at the disappointment in his voice but knew that he would accept it in his usual gentlemanly manner. Just a few moments for him to re-factor his day and we were off, cutting down to the shores of Loch Mullardoch by the cottage that sits north of the throat in the Loch. This cottage is only accessible on foot or by its own motorboat.
"Looks like the cottage is inhabited," I said.
"Yeap."
"We could ask if they would give us a lift up the Loch," I replied.
"Do you think they would?"
"We could offer to pay."
"What time does it get dark?"
"It's July the tenth today?"
Andy nodded.
"Just past midsummer, quite late then."
We both paused.
"I'll pay, you ask," I offered.
"I haven't got the bottle."
"Nor me, that's why I'm offering to pay."
Shyness got the better of us, instead we opted for a five mile walk up the shore which only had a vague path in places and was very tough going. Treating it like a route march, trying to ignore the pain in our legs, we trooped along.
For the last two hours I was able to flash my pathetic torch and get a response from Ady and David flashing the headlights on the car, confirming our suspicions that they had not done the walk in the opposite direction. The route along the shores was very wearing with no real opportunity to pick up a brisk even pace. We tried walking hard for a few minutes at a time but were quickly thwarted by undulating terrain and difficult tributaries to manipulate. I played games in my head of trying to judge the remaining distance against our pace and came up with estimated times of arrival between 2300 and 0200. I felt the walk would never end and knew that I had over done it and with darkness also came exhaustion. I tried to put it from my mind and kept just concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other but the necessity of frequent rests gave me too much opportunity to dwell on our situation.
I cursed myself for the stupidity of taking on this walk, this had been my big idea, too ambitious. Something that I have fallen into before, like the final year project on my degree; I could not keep it simple and instead designed and built something that took every spare moment that I had for six months. When I was 16 I scraped all the money I had together and bought a new bicycle. The next day I took it for a test ride, 150 miles. Setting off at 0630 and arriving home after 2200 barely able to pedal, so exhausted I could not speak, just managing to point out on the map where I had been to my Mother's shock as she prepared me soup. Soup that I could only just manage to pass through my lips before a night of hallucinations and a racing heart.
I was overcome with a sense of relief when the dark shape of the dam at the head of the loch became more focused, our haven where David and Ady waited for us in the car. Within a quarter of a mile of the end I had to rest from exhaustion by way of laying down in the heather, I simply could not go on and my heart felt as if it were racing inside my limp body.
Andy stood over me, "You need to get up Steve, keep going."
"I can't," I replied.
"We are nearly there."
"My heart's racing, go and tell the others."
Andy peered down at me through the half light "Okay, try and rest. I'll go and tell the others." Lying, alone, half drunk with tiredness, with the heather scratching the back of my neck, I realised how much I had overdone it. It was my 'bright' idea to do this walk, clearly now proven to be poor judgement. I tried to move my legs but they were just dead appendages. My heart was racing and I could not regulate my breathing. I just laid back, accepting that I was now reliant on David and Ady finding me. A dreamy twenty minutes passed with hallucinations flirting with lucidity. Slowly my strength started to return and I came to my senses and managed to struggle to the car. I fell in through one of the back doors and found Andy half asleep. David and Ady soon appeared from their aborted attempt to find me and we set off back. The fact that they must have walked within a few yards of me calling out, and I never heard them, hit home just how remote the highlands are.
On the trip back to our cottage, in The Kyle of Loch Alsh, we got stopped by the police, it was very late and at the time some IRA prisoners had just escaped from Brixton Prison and this would have been a recognised route for them to escape back to Ireland.
After an early morning feast I amazingly slept until 11.45 the following morning. Years later Ady told me that they had waited for about five hours for us at the dam, only having one tape they now knew the words to all the Abba tracks by heart.
We felt that we wasted much of the holiday and just had a few trips around with no further Munros to add to an earlier failed attempt at the Five Sisters Of Kintail. We did not get over to Skye, the classic destination from The Kyle Of Loch Alsh, until the last day of the holiday. We also crashed the car twice, once David reversed it into a picnic table causing about £1000 of damage to the car and about £5 worth of damage to the picnic table. Another trip out was a revisit to Loch Mullardoch so that Ady could do a time trial up the road from Cannich. This was because he was too young to drive the hired mini bus in 1989 and missed out on the time trials that we did then. Therefore it was his turn to try his hand at the Cannich to Mullardoch road in a Ford Sierra. At one stage in the road is a wooden bridge, just before we hit it I said "the wood will be wet Ady." I meant this just as a warning but Ady thought it was best to apply the brakes as hard as he could and we slid all over the place and hit the side runners of the bridge denting the wheel and losing its trim. The collision was so great that we thought that there would be much more damage to the car but we were lucky with the little damage that we caused.
Going Solo
During 1991 my company based me in Glasgow to continue working on a computerised 999 call taking project for Strathclyde Police. The proximity to the Highlands added nine new Munros to my list. This may sound a good start, given that I achieved none in 1989 and only one in 1990, but I always felt that I could have made more of an effort.
The project infiltrated my life and at a very young age I was given a lot of technical responsibility. This primarily came about because all the senior technical staff had left leaving me at the tender ages of 23 through to 26 having more responsibility than I otherwise would have had. The skills shortage threw me in at the deep end with a multimillion pound project and I was left to sink or swim. I think I bobbled about on the surface for the most of it. The project was late, became very political and all of us working in Glasgow were under a lot of pressure. However the strife and the common cause bonded us with the customer to make the project a success. For myself I felt a student in the university of life and welcomed the chance to sharpen up my technical skills.
I made friends with one of the police officers on the project, Willy Newlands. Willy soon discovered that I was an apprentice Munro bagger and he took me up the popular Ben Lomond, the most southerly of the Munros, on the May bank holiday.
After the Kyle Of Loch Alsh holiday I increased my Munro tally by six. For the first of these I thought that I would be brave and on Saturday August the 10th I took the train from Glasgow Queen Street to Tyndrum Lower arriving in time to start walking at 1100. I almost did not make it because the guard failed to call the stop and my carriage was not lined up with the platform. By pure chance I happened to look out of the window and caught sight of the tail end of the platform, leaping to my feet I made a mad dash to get out before the train set off again.
On the platform I had my usual panic of making sure I had collected everything together and nothing was left on the train. The sudden rush of adrenalin did not aid my mental state of venturing onto the hills alone, hills covered in cloud.
I found the going tough but was thankful that I could rest whenever the notion took my fancy. I was soon into the cloud and the rain. With my map case letting in water and my gloves becoming a squelching mass I made progress. After much worry of solo navigating, with the continual unease of leaving the security of the railway station behind, I reached the summit of the first Munro of the day, Beinn Dubhcraig at 1500. I then set off for Ben Oss and reached its summit in a further hour. Here a crowd of other walkers turned up, one called out "here is another one" - my god how many were they doing I thought, any sense of pride in having soloed two was relegated to mere inner satisfaction.
It had rained all day and by this time I had got very wet and the poor visibility did not aid my comfort. I cut down via Coire Bidhe and was pleased when Tyndrum came into view through the heaviness of the mist and rain.
The Little Chef restaurant in Tyndrum, a trap for the holidaymaker motoring north, proved to be my sanctuary. I ordered myself a massive feast, a reward for my days efforts, and once devoured I spent a long time in the loos drying myself off with the hand dryer. I then just sat at the table hoping that the staff would not ask me to go back out into the rain, fortunately I was left in peace. When it was time to leave I ventured back to the station and waited for the welcome sight of the train.
Working at the Police Headquarters in Glasgow meant that we were in frequent meetings and informal discussions with the police. Willy Newlands often stopped by my desk for a technical discussion about an issue or a brief social chat. He brought the subject of further Munros up so one evening I studied the only map I had with me, that with Ben Dubhcraig and Ben Oss on it. Willy dropped by my desk again and broached the subject of a further Munro bagging expedition during a weekend. I was keen and we started to talk about which Munros to do. He mentioned a few names and I knowledgeably chipped in a few for good measure. After a while Willy tipped his head back and roared with laughter as he said, "Steve, we can't be just doing the Munros on your map." He should have been a detective.
On Sunday August the 25th Willy drove myself and Mike Linnett, a contractor working for us on the project, up to do Ben More and Stob Binnien. It was after breakfast when we set off from Glasgow and I perched myself in the back of Willy's Ford Fiesta. After a while I felt uncomfortable as my nose began to run and my breathing tightened. I then noticed dog hairs.
"Willy, do you have dogs in the back of your car?" I asked.
"Aye." Mike and I swapped seats and I was able to travel in more comfort with the window slightly down.
The two Munros of the day were near to the village of Crianlarich and we parked in a lay by at foot of Ben More, setting off walking at 1015. I found the climb tough going and Mike and Willy frequently got far ahead which I found frustrating. When they waited, and I would catch them up, they would take it as a cue to move on. After a few occurrences of this I asked them to wait so I could catch my breath but I did not dare even twitch in case they saw that as a cue to move on. This evoked feelings from childhood, when on bike rides I would often lag behind and my friends would wait for me to catch up. Once caught up they would set straight off again, having had their rest. I'd question this and be told that as I had been going slower then I must have been exerting less effort and therefore did not need a rest. They assumed that our bodies were equal and that I was merely dawdling.
We reached the peak of Ben More in less than three hours and went on to claim Stob Binnien in just under a further hour. There were reasonable views on the way up but both summits became covered in cloud in between the arrival of Mike and Willy then myself some twenty minutes later. My breathing problems denied me a view from the clear tops. I found trailing behind Mike and Willy quite demoralising and decided that there were definite advantages to solo walking, finding my own pace, not worrying about dropping back behind other people, being able to rest and savour the view when it was there.
Finally for the year, Sunday September the 22nd, myself, Willy Newlands, Mike Linnett and a chap nick named Snigger tackled An Caisteal and Beinn a'Chroin. From the road south of Crianlarich we set off, on the six hour round trip, in good weather which held until I was approaching the first summit whereupon cloud and a subsequent downpour ensured that we got the brunt of the wind and rain which lead me to get a reputation for attracting the bad weather.
I commented at the top of Beinn a'Chroin that I had now done 10 Munros and had only 267 to go. A fellow walker then kindly told me that a Corbet had just been reclassified to a Munro so I still had 268 to go! I realised at this stage the sheer enormity of the task that lay before me and I had elected to participate in a somewhat gruelling hobby. A Corbet is the next series of peaks being those below 3000 but above 2500 feet. Subsequently the information supplied by the walker, about the promoted Munro, proved to be incorrect and, for the time being, the total Munros stood at 277.
Munro Count: 10 out of 277
