1997

Preparation

All along I knew in my heart of hearts that to achieve my aim of doing the Munros would require more time and dedication than I had previously put in. At the start of the year my tally stood at 65 out of the 277. On the face of it this may sound quite reasonable but it had taken eight seasons to achieve. At the current rate I would complete these confounded mountains in another quarter of a century, my late fifties. For some time it had been playing on my mind that to get close to finishing then be hit by some medical problem would be too much to bear. Indeed there is always the possibility that my asthma could hit hard at any point. Therefore there was only one solution, to get cracking.

For the previous two years I had been working as a freelancer for a company called Dopra developing a 999 call taking system for Hampshire Fire and Rescue service. I was getting a lot out of the project and enjoying the thrill of developing a computer system that would deploy fire engines onto the streets as a direct result of an operator taking a 999 call. Like all good computer projects it was running late and I kept agreeing to extend my contract each time the project over ran. During the winter it became clear that the customer would accept the project in late April, tying in nicely with the start of the summer walking season in Scotland. I planned not to arrange any further contracts and to head for Scotland in early May for at least ten weeks. It was also ten years since I had graduated, and therefore ten years of working in an office; definitely time for a break and no better than to extend the last seven years of snatched time doing the Munros into something more fitting of an expedition.

Arrangements were a little hectic. The first thing I decided to do was to get fit. Therefore I visited the gym regularly and some weekends put about four hours in. I also took my mountain bike for a few spins around Savernake Forest, sometimes staying out so late that I was zipping between the trees in the dusk - I was surprised I didn't kill myself. I also decided to try and get some movement into the joint between my big toe and my right foot. In 1987 I had injured it badly playing football (or to be precise I injured it by playing football badly), it had mended itself but all the muscles around the joint and down the instep had become very weak. Gisella suggested massage, which I did on a daily basis with various oils that she bought me from Boots. It did the trick as far as getting movement into the joint but the muscles still felt weak.

The next thing was to make sure my finances were in order for such a long trip away. Being a bit shy I was nervous phoning my accountant to arrange an appointment. I needed to get all foreseeable hurdles out of the way with my company before I went which meant I had to come clean and tell him what I was up to. I was expecting some talking to about how this trip would effect my income. But nothing of the sorts for he was quite enthusiastic and on meeting pumped my hand firmly and wished me luck. To add to the complications Gisella and I had decided to sell our house and had accepted an offer some weeks before my departure date. After four and a half years of DIY we had had enough and decided to sell what we considered to be 'The House Of Hammer Horror.' Fortunately the purchasers asked if we could possibly hold the house for them until the summer, July in fact. This could not have been better because a house move any earlier would have cut short my trip. Things were falling into place.

The next task was to take a good look at my kit and decide if I needed any more goodies from the sweet shop that is masquerades as an outdoor enthusiasts centre. So it was off to the Cotswold Camping shop near Cirencester that I went with credit card in hand to extend my collection of kit. I was aware that my Mother and Girlfriend had concerns for my safety. Therefore I decided to buy an emergency transmitter beacon. These are devices that are normally attached to yachts, which during a disaster the crew can activate. Once activated the device broadcasts an emergency signal on the 121.5mhz frequency that can be picked up by aircraft and specialised satellites. Anybody who remembers Tony Bullimore's rescue way off the coast of Australia will know what a lifesaver one of these devices was for him. I asked at the counter for one.

"What do you want it for?" was the assistants reply.

This wrong footed me for a second. I've bought many things in my life and had never been asked why.

"For walking," I said.

"In Scotland," I added trying to give some justification.

"They are really only for yachts, walkers should rely on the mountain rescue services."

"I know," I said, "but I walk alone and go out in the wilds of Scotland." I thought what else can I say, I know - "I only intend to use it if my life is in danger, I'm not intending to use it if I am simply lost."

The assistant relaxed and said he was happy to sell me one. Apparently there have been cases of groups of walkers using them when simply lost, annoying the RAF who I've heard have gone as far as scrambling Nimrods when one goes off. So I took possession of a brightly coloured handheld Jotron TRON 1E MKII device for a cost of about £140. Secretly it was not just my Mum's and Girlfriend's voices that drove me to buy this thing, also my own fears of breaking a leg high up in the mountains played a hand.

Earlier in the year I had watched one of the Wilderness Walks television programmes with Cameron McNeish and the Olympic gold medallist Chris Brasher. In the programme they praised trekking poles. These are telescopic ski like poles that you carry in each hand and use to take the weight off your knees. I decided to invest in a pair so what with the transmitter, a new stove, a pair of light weight boots and various other sundries I departed from the Cotswold Camping shop a little heavier in the carrier bag department but a little lighter in the wallet. I reflected that when I first started walking I always looked at the cheapest equipment and worked up. Time has brought an increase in experience and salary to the point I now always look at the most expensive kit and work down. So many times I have been in the mountains wet, cold and miserable wishing I had spent an extra £50 on a jacket.

I also invested in a new camera and doubled the value of my car by buying a CD player for it. It sounds a bit extravagant but I knew I would be spending a lot of time in my car and could do with some music of my own choice. I had never bought a tape player for my car so it was an easy decision to miss a generation of audio equipment evolution and plunge straight for a CD. As I had it installed about a month before I went to Scotland it meant that I could listen to music on the drive to work instead of having to listen to the general election coverage that seamed to dominate every radio station. At least the quality press had the decency to put the majority of their election coverage in an easily disposed of daily supplement.

I was uncertain how long I would spend in Scotland or how many Munros I would achieve. I set myself a few targets to which I would like my total Munros bagged to aspire. These targets were:

Privately not breaking the 100 total would have been a great disappointment and exceeding the 125 total would be a bonus. Of course this all sounds very sad and makes me sound like the Munro equivalent of a train spotter. This is totally untrue because I don't wear a blue pac a mac and I never take a thermos up the mountains.

As a final boost to my forthcoming trip the National Asthma Campaign featured a small piece about my Munro bagging exploits in their quarterly magazine. This was as part of a larger article discussing the sporting exploits of asthmatics.

The first one of the trip

I set off for Scotland on Saturday May the 3rd, two days after Tony Blair's landslide election victory. I decided to spend the first night in Glasgow and trail around a few of my old haunts. I booked a hotel slightly out of town, as I needed somewhere to park my car. I arrived in the late afternoon and after a rest I decided to take a walk around the city. Firstly I thought I would walk to the Central Hotel where I used to stay and have a wander around the area. Now the Central Hotel is right on the Central Railway Station, which has its seedy sides. I took a few wrong turnings and soon found myself a little lost but only a few streets away from where I knew I wanted to be. Not a particularly dangerous area, but a little drab and seedy. Ahead of me a lady crossed the road and approached me. Perhaps she needs to know the time I thought, I hope she does not ask for directions as I'm not 100% sure myself.

"You looking for business love?"

Ah, I see. I had naively strayed into the red light district. I hastily fumbled out a no and thanked her for asking! I walked on and with typical male curiosity looked back a second later, she was nowhere to be seen. I am not that streetwise.

May the 4th saw me set foot in the hills for what was certain to be my longest Munro bagging trip to date. As part of the planning I decided to base myself in various areas for a week or so and complete the Munros in the vicinity. Therefore I had booked a spell in Killin Youth Hostel and decided to make my first mountain Ben Challum on the day of the drive up from Glasgow. It was raining and I opted for following a track for quite a way. The track was above a deep gully with a fast flowing Allt Gleann a' Chlachain stream in its base. I soon realised that I had made a bit of a mistake because I needed to be the other side of the gully so I cut down to the stream. This was my second mistake because in the base of a gully your field of view is restricted to a few meters around you. I knew I needed to branch to the north east but deciding at which point to take the plunge was difficult. The map showed many tributary streams feeding the main stream but counting these off as I passed them is not a reliable method as for much of the year these are dry and it all depends at what time of the year the OS did their aerial survey as to which they would have marked as streams.

I decided to use the GPS, which quickly highlighted my next mistake in that in all my preparations I had forgotten to check the batteries. Never mind, I carried a spare set. Not quite, the old batteries were well and truly stuck in the torpedo tube battery cases. So it was just down to my navigational skills now. I decided to cross the stream at the next convenient point, this did not come for quite a while and then only in the form of a derelict bridge. The iron girders were narrow, too narrow to walk across. Many of the wooden slats were missing or rotten. This is where the trekking poles took on their third use of the day, I'll mention the first two in a moment. Whilst crossing the bridge I was able to test each plank as I went by striking it with a trekking pole before risking the weight of my foot. Many were unusable so I spent a while picking my way across with the stream in fast flow below. I was impressed with the poles as not only had they helped me across this bridge they had proved very useful on the up hill and down hill sections of the walk so far. They had also given me something to do with my hands, often when walking I don't know where to put my hands.

The escapade with the bridge reminded me of a story that Willy Newlands told me. A year or so back he had been out walking, with a friend, in the winter and it had become extremely cold. They were heading for a bothy and making steady progress before nightfall. Reaching the bothy was absolutely essential, as they did not have a tent. The temperature was very low which meant that spending a night out would have spelt almost certain death from hypothermia. According to their map the bothy was the other side of a river but there was a bridge marked. On reaching the bridge their hearts sank as they discovered that all of its wooden structure had been swept away and all that was left were the two six inch wide iron girders. The girders were too far apart to straddle so it meant tight rope like skills were needed. Unlike a tight rope they were not hundreds of feet above the ground, but their danger was in some ways more sinister. The river was in very fast flow and had risen to within a few inches of the girders. I know what Willy meant by "fast flow" - raging torrent. They managed to make it across but the phrase Catch-22 stayed with them for a long time. It was either death by hypothermia or risk the girders and try and avoid death by drowning.

Now back to the Ben Challum story. Having crossed the "bridge" I headed north east on a compass bearing. This was the hard slog bit. Most Munros have a section where you are going up exceedingly steep slopes for about one to two hours and this was no exception. It was misty and raining so I had to keep taking a bearing off distant objects, walking to that object then striking out again to another object. The lower slopes of Ben Challum were quite generous because there were many boulders to take a bearing on and walk to. Finally selecting one I put my head down and marched forth. On one occasion I glanced up and was certain that the boulder I was heading to had moved. Indeed it had, it was a sheep. During the steep bits my age old question of 'Why do I do this?' came to mind. I reached the summit at about three in the afternoon, as there was no view I turned straight around and got to the car at about 1800. Sitting in the drivers seat with my feet swung out onto the ground I took my boots off and a cloud of steam rose from each.

I was quite pleased with my first days walk. On a couple of occasions it looked as if I would have to abandon it but it all turned out okay. My troublesome knees gave a couple of twangs but I pacified them with deep heat. It was also the first time that I had carried the emergency transmitter. Paranoia caused me to check it regularly to ensure the pin, which you pull out to activate it, had not become dislodged. I could imagine strolling along and thinking to myself 'There's a lot of helicopters about today.'

Killin

I arrived at Killin Youth Hostel to find it amidst renovation work. It was good to see that the Scottish Youth Hostel Association is putting money into this non-mainstream hostel. Over the last few years quite a number of hostels have been forced to close because of lack of funds. After showering and eating I spent a frustrating evening trying to extract the stuck batteries from my GPS. I failed.

Another debate that I had with myself during the close season was how many consecutive days walking should I chance on my poor knees. As I had bought the most expensive knee supports that I could find, in the hope this would alleviate the problem, I decided to do a second days walking and then take the following day off. Therefore on Monday May the 5th I set out from the hostel to do Meall Glas and Sqiath Chuil. These two Munros live at the end of Glen Lochay, north west of Killin. The first thing I found was that the recommended parking place in the guide book was no longer accessible, the popularity of the sport is clearly causing land owners to gate their private roads so I could only drive as far as the end of the public road.

I started walking at 1000 in poor visibility, the mist cleared from time to time revealing two peaks. I was confused as to which peak was Sqiath Chuil and took a gamble, which fortunately paid off. However due to the hard slog I did not reach the summit until 1400, quite late in the day for then striking out to Meall Glas. The weather was poor with really bad hail and snow, it felt as if my face was being sand blasted at times. It was also really cold, I only just managed to be comfortable by wearing a T shirt, a normal shirt, a thick jumper, a thermal fleece and my gortex jacket. At one stage the wind whipped my map and compass, which were held by cord around my neck, up into the air. I managed to catch the map case but then was in a panic as my compass was nowhere to be seen. I could not believe that the wind was so strong as to blow a compass away. It is always a debate as to whether it is worse to lose your map or compass, I think I'd keep the compass as you can just head in one direction until you find some known territory. As the visibility was so poor I really needed my compass. After a few more anxious minutes of panic I discovered it had blown around the back of my neck - out of sight.

About ten minutes after this incident the map case decided to change personality and become a kite, using my neck as an anchor. The scene must have been comical as I was desperately trying to catch it whilst its cord twirled around my neck slowly garrotting me. However I was playing to an empty stage as, like yesterday, I did not see a soul on the hills. A little further on the map case was again wrenched out of my grasp and the cord holding it around my neck ended up in my mouth cutting the join between my upper and lower lips. Things were a little against me and I seriously began to consider pulling out of doing Meall Glas. I pressed on and promised myself to seriously review the situation at 1600. When 1600 came I felt I had made sufficient progress so continued and reached my 68th Munro at 1720.

The walk back was tiresome as I misjudged a suitable crossing point over the river in the floor of Glen Lochay. I must have walked up and down for twenty or so minutes looking for a suitable place to cross. In the event the one that I plumped on made my feet much wetter than they already were. I got back to the car at 2000 damp and bedraggled but elated in having achieved the two Munros despite the conditions. I decided that the trekking poles were excellent and had vastly assisted my ascent and descent.

Arriving soaking wet and late at a Youth Hostel is not at all unusual so my appearance attracted no attention when I arrived back at Killin. On showering I discovered that I had a blister on each of my heels that had filled with blood. I popped them both and cleaned them up with surgical wipes and plastered them over.

Killin is a very friendly hostel and the new wardens made me feel very welcome. It was also a pleasure to encounter John Ward again. He was a chap that I had previously bumped into twice whilst staying at Mullardoch the previous year. Seeing a familiar face in unfamiliar surroundings always takes one a few seconds to place it.

"You are a retired school teacher," I said.

"And you are the man who hired a boat and took it to the bottom of Loch Mullardoch," he replied.

I did not dwell too long on the double meaning behind "the bottom of Loch Mullardoch."

The One That Got Away

I took the following day off and visited the Teddy Bear museum in Calendar and the Motor museum at Doune. It always takes me a while to adjust to the friendliness of people in Scotland. At both places I was welcomed and forcibly given a discount at the motor museum because they had the doors open and it was a little cold! I also phoned Cotswold Camping, near Cirencester, to ask about the stuck batteries in my GPS. They straightaway knew the problem so I arranged to post it back.

One thing that occurred to me on my day off was that I am not too good at enjoying the moment. Whenever I get to a place I immediately look for the next thing to do and forgetting to take pleasure from the present. Therefore I am always hoping that the future will supply the pleasure that I wish for. Ultimately it means that I rarely truly enjoy myself. This maybe is why I enjoy Munro bagging because'I am doing something for most of the day and therefore there is no opportunity to think 'now what shall I do next?'

It was on May the 7th that I took back to the hills taking in Beinn Heasgarnich and Creag Mhor. This is one of the frustrating groups of hills where they are close enough to do in a day but are on different maps. Being more relaxed about my possessions these days I cut the relevant part out of one map and stuck it to the other with sticky plasters. I also made an earlier start after my experiences of Sqiath Chuil and Meall Glas. Striking out at 0820 I reached the intricate summit of Beinn Heasgarnich at around midday, or so I thought. I was following two other guys up in the mist by tracking their footprints in the snow. Suddenly the footprints disappeared without trace, I could only assume an alien abduction had taken place. I was a little unsure about the peak so walked parts of the ridge and finally settled on a small cairn as being the summit. The trek across to Creag Mhor was much easier save for a very steep descent off Beinn Heasgarnich. I decided that by this stage my body was loosening up a bit. I arrived at the second peak at just after 1500 and back to the car just after 1700.

On the second peak I got chatting to two guys who were doing the same walk as me but in reverse. I bumped into them back at the car and they had managed to do the entire walk in over four hours less than it took me.

I chatted with John Ward again in the evening and he thought that perhaps I had missed the actual summit cairn on Beinn Heasgarnich as the one I described he thought just marked the west end of the ridge. Secretly I was thinking 'damn, he is probably right' but spent awhile in denial about the possibility that I had not bagged this one. All the while I had a nagging doubt that I should have to return to this peak to claim it as a true bag. John is one of the walkers that are very precise about the pronunciations. I am useless at the Gaelic phonetics so it seemed that every time I mentioned the name of a mountain John would repeat it but in a different way. I think the pronunciations can become a figment of peoples imaginations as I have listened to one person pronouncing it, then used that myself only to be corrected by somebody else. Obviously it's not how you pronounce it that matters it is just sounding convincing that is important. Personally I think all the mountain names were made up on the spot when the OS surveyors asked the locals during the nineteenth century. I'm convinced that some of the mountain names could be translated, from Gaelic, into such things as "Go away you silly little bald man with a theodolite."

I further chatted with John and mentioned that I had heard somebody scream in our dorm during the previous night. He said that it was because he had hit somebody who was snoring loudly. This was undoubtedly true as there are a few people, who I can only assume, are in the employ of the local guesthouses and hotels. They are deliberately planted in hostels to snore so loudly that they force other people to move out into a hotel or a B&B. Of course I jest but there definitely is a classic hosteller type who bores you to sleep all evening with tales of hostelling in the old days then keeps you awake all night by snoring and farting.

My First Walk On The Ben Lawers Ridge

The following day I decided to do Schiehallion but was thwarted by my trusty Toyota finally breaking down on me after 153,800 miles. I could have no complaints but by the time the 'very nice' man from the AA got me going again and I had arranged for the necessary spare parts to be sent up, it was too late to try for this mountain. This was the second time that Schiehallion had eluded me as I was due to do it with Willy Newlands back in 1991 but, for a reason that now escapes me, we failed to start it.

Therefore my next adventure to the hills was on May the 9th with a big plan of doing four Munros in a day. Near to Killin is the Ben Lawers ridge, which contains a total of six Munros. It was a clear day and I enjoyed the best of it with a 0815 start. I set off from the National Trust visitor's centre and followed the well marked paths up onto the ridge. After about half an hour of walking I felt that I was missing something. I suddenly realised that I had set off without my trekking poles; it was too late to return for them. I reached the summit of Beinn Ghlas at 1025 and Ben Lawers at 1130. At this point I had the choice of going on and completing the east side of the ridge or double back on myself and do the two Munros to the west of the visitors centre. I opted for doubling back so took in Meall Corranaich and Meall a Choire Leith. In the final descent I got bogged down in an intricate area and ended up in a hollow and felt a sense of panic when I could not focus on a point to head towards. I calmed myself and logic told me just to use my compass to rise up out of the hollow and find the final stretch of the walk, which took me along the minor road back to the visitors centre.

I tried to hitch a couple of times but with no luck. I looked a bit bedraggled and any tourist driving past in their brand new Rover 620 with optional leather interior with walnut dash was sure to give me a miss.

My Second Walk On The Ben Lawers Ridge

You may remember that in my escapades of the previous day I had the choice of four out of the six Munros on the Lawers ridge. Today I decided to finish off the job and tackle the two most easterly Munros on the ridge: Meall Griegh and Meall Garbh. The best place to start these is from the village of Lawers on the road between Killin and Kenmore. However the local inhabitants do not favour their community being regarded as a public car park for hill walkers. Therefore the signs vary from 'No Parking' to 'Daily Parking Fee - £ Astronomical.'

The problems of finding parking at Lawers are legendary - one chap, staying at the youth hostel, told me how he had once parked outside a farm at Lawers and on setting off discovered that the owners of the farm had a well rehearsed plan to corner any fiendish illegal parker. This involved employing two people and an easily bribed Alsatian dog. The victim would be allowed to park his or her car and ready themselves for the hills whilst the farm owners prepared the ambush. One particular farm building always had to be passed by the walker and it was here that any brief moments of parked car smugness were curtailed. On some form of cue the two people would run in opposite directions around the building whilst the third conspirator, the Alsatian dog, was set loose for the kill, preventing any break for the hills.

I could find nowhere to park so headed back in the direction of Killin and parked near a small hamlet. This substantially increased the length of my walk as I now had to spend the first few hours walking up a Landrover track to the shielings near some hydroelectric works. As I started out I noticed a Landrover parked about a mile or so up the track. I am always cautious and thoughts went through my head of maybe I'm in for a ticking off from the driver of the Landrover for cheating on the £:5 parking charges at Lawers and instead parking totally free at the bottom of his Landrover track.

As I got within a 100 meters he started the engine. Here we go I thought and tensed myself for an encounter. Instead he looked straight through me and headed down the track. As I approached the area in which he had been parked I noticed that there were a few animal pens. Curiosity got the better of me and I looked through the meshing of one of them to see the skin from the torso of a lamb. I reeled back in horror as I saw the rest of it, it had been delimbed and decapitated with its legs and head placed around the skinned torso in line with their original positions. Oh my god I thought, I've just encountered some inbred nutter who is doing tricky black magic with the livestock. The kind of bloke who reckons The Wicker Man is merely a documentary. I looked back down the track and the Landrover had parked near the bottom, near my car! Had he seen me look into the pen? What to do I thought, press on or go back? I decided to take the chance that there was some legitimate animal husbandry reason for performing this act on a lamb and decided to carry on. I kept the Landrover and my car in view for a long time until the gathering mist gave me some confidence that my Munro tally would not be halted at 74 and my delimbed and decapitated body would not be found in a few days time with my gortex jacket tossed to one side.

As I gathered height the wind reciprocated with ferocity. It began to become some of the worst conditions that I had ever encountered with the wind literally thumping the breath out of me and the snow and ice being whipped up into my face. I had to climb up a deep gorge of a streambed then negotiate a tall deer fence. Although I did not recall seeing any tall deer. Once on open ground I made for the line of an estate boundary fence. It was a fairly new construction but already was showing signs of the ravages of nature. I never understand why estates bother with fencing near the top of mountains. There are the remains of so many around the mountain tops that I would have thought the land owners would have got the hint that mother nature does not view them with anything but utter contempt. However they make useful navigation routes in poor weather so I shall say no more.

When I reached the fence I piled a few small rocks near one of the posts as a reference point for my descent and then struck out east for Meall Greigh, Meall Garbh being to the west. It was very difficult to find the summit as there were a few false tops on route and visibility was appalling. I was able to follow my fence for about an hour, only dispensing with its services to search for the summit. The search took up sometime and I was glad when my wanderings, in the mist, bore fruit in the shape of the top. Just an isolated point in space whereas the previous day, in the clear sunlight, it was part of a grand ridge.

Once I had taken the obligatory photograph I set straight off again, the conditions were so poor that resting meant I would get very cold. I made some mistake, I'm not sure where but I found myself not back at the fence as intended. Instead I was in deep mist with nothing to take a reference from. In these situations it is always best to take a compass bearing and head for it, I did this looking for my fence again. Still I could not find it and I started to have constant hallucinations that I could see it about ten meters in the distance but on getting there, each time, it had gone. This frustratingly continued for some time until I realised that my eyelashes were icing up and that every time I blinked it looked like a line of posts in the distance. After some further searching, both of the terrain and my soul, I found a fence, but not the intended one. Instead I stumbled across the tall deer fence that I had had to cross on my original ascent. Nonetheless it was a welcome sight and I was very relieved as I had started to become a little concerned that I was well and truly lost. I followed it around until I recognised my original crossing point. I struck north again and found the estate boundary fence with my pile of rocks still on century duty. Now I could follow it to the west with the confidence that it goes so close to the summit of Meall Garbh that I never need leave its friendly confines. As I plodded against the howling wind I noticed that ice spikes up to eighteen inches long had formed on the sheltered sides of each post. I also noticed footprints in the snow showing that humanity had been this way before although the fourth dimension, time, robbed me of any companion. I pulled the hood of my jacket as tight as I could to protect my face and eyes from the lashings of piercing ice that were being thrown at it.

The weather is lovely
The weather is fine
Apart from this blizzard
It's simply divine

I kept plodding, it was a trudge and my morale was low. Then all of a sudden there was a "Hello." I jumped out of my skin and turned and there was a young lady with a broad smile. A lovely Irish voice followed it up with "I did not know how to attract your attention without making you jump. I saw you away back and could not believe that there would be another soul out in these conditions." "That's okay," I replied as a wave of pleasure went through my body relishing the thought of a companion to share these atrocious conditions with. I privately hoped that she would be able to accompany me for the rest of the walk, not just because she was a beautiful young woman but because my need for company had suddenly become quite desperate.

"Heading for Meall Garbh?" I asked.

"Yes, then heading back to my car. I just managed to get parked at Lawers."

"Oh I had trouble parking there and ended up at Tombreck."

"If we stick together then I'll give you a lift from Lawers to Tombreck."

This was just brilliant, company and a lift. After finding the summit of Meall Garbh we managed to continue shouting out a conversation until we got back below the deer fence and to the relative calm of being able to speak without yelling at each other. I lapped up the company. Her name was Michelle she lived in Edinburgh and she had just done her 74th Munro which was my 76th. She started her Munro bagging career in 1994. It transformed the day as she was an excellent companion having done a degree in philosophy, a subject that intrigues me a great deal. The lift from Lawers saved me about two hours walking and perhaps a fate similar to that that befell the poor lamb. Also she saved me an extra hour by being so fast that I was almost jogging to keep up with her.

The Secret Road

I took a rest day on May the 11th and found a road that is not marked on any road atlases. It is a private hydroelectric road, stretching from Glen Lochay to Glen Lyon, which appears to be open to the public by the good will of the owners. I deliberately drove to the summit to get good enough reception to listen to the Monaco Grand Prix. Whilst sitting in my car a hairy motor biker pulled up and spoke with me. He had a wonderfully soft Scottish accent. We spoke for a while and on hearing that I was from the South of England and trying to get up to do the Munros whenever I could, he told me of a book he was reading called 'Burn on the Hill.' It is about a man called Ronnie Burn, from the South of England, who during the earlier part of the twentieth century did all the Munros by getting up to Scotland during his holidays. I resolved to locate a copy.

It was May the 12th when I set off to try and bag Schiehallion. Schiehallion is a famous mountain because in 1774 the Astronomer Royal, the Rev. Nevil Maskelyne Frs, used the gravitational pull of the mountain to try and estimate the mass of the world. Schiehallion is also famous for its pointy shape and its distinct features make it readily identifiable from many miles away.

The day was fairly uneventful with the weather being mixed and the pull up Schiehallion being long and tedious with slippy rocks. I re-christened it Ben Plod. It was a significant point as it was my 77th Munro with 200 to go. In all it took me five and a half hours, and I was disappointed when, back at the Youth Hostel, a chap told me he had done it in three and a half.

One sad thing about Schiehallion is that it is becoming badly eroded. The path is now so wide that it could now be better termed a motorway than a footpath. Being a walker myself, therefore part of the problem, I cannot grumble.

The following day was to be another epic with four Munros planned. I always look at the guidebooks carefully where routes taking in greater than two Munros are described. There is always the chance that the route was done by some incredibly fit person and a mere mortal such as myself would struggle to do half the distance in the suggested time. The group of four planned was the Carn Gorm group to the north of Killin. I took my recently discovered hydroelectric road to connect to Glen Lyon and parked at Inverar where the local authorities had generously provided a nice little car park to resolve the parking problem. I traversed the horseshoe in a clockwise direction starting with Carn Gorm followed by Meall Garbh, Carn Mairg and Creag Mhor. The pull up to the first Munro was laborious and meant that I had to walk into the mist line. Between Meall Garbh and Carn Mairg I followed the remains of an old fence across a few false summits. So indeterminate were the surroundings that I began to question whether I had inadvertently bagged it and missed the occasion. On one pause, to check the map, a chap called Hugh caught me up. He thought we still had a while to go which proved to be correct. Unfortunately in time honoured tradition he had set out two and a half hours after me and caught up with me within one and a half hours of his departure. This is where I get frustrated because people look at me as a tall slim male and cannot comprehend how I take so long over doing the mountains. Perhaps if I had only one leg I would 'get away' with it. We parted company at the top of Carn Mairg as Hugh wanted to go on and do the Meall Liath, which is only classified as a top.

I made a tough descent through a slippery boulder slope. I met up with Hugh again at the top of the final Munro, Creag Mhor. We walked together back to our cars, which were parked side by side. The company was good and as the weather cleared for the final Munro the day was finished off on a cherry note.

The following day was to be last at Killin Youth Hostel as I planned to move on to Oban the day after. I had just two Munros left in the area being Meall Buidhe and Stuch an Lochain. These are an extremely unusual pair at the bottom of Glen Lyon with the road being so high that you end up returning past your car half way through the trip. I took the opportunity of sitting in my car to eat my lunch which felt very strange as often lunch is grabbed on some wind swept summit huddled below a pile of boulders.

The day was sunny and clear so there were good views from both of the peaks. On the descent from Meall Buidhe I met a couple of chaps with a dog, dogs always run ahead and back again so I am convinced that all dogs do a Munro at least twice in any single ascent.

I was tinged with a touch of sadness on my last night at Killin. I had spent eleven nights there in all and the wardens had joked that I was their permanent resident although I did not stay so long as to come out with such expressions as "Burglars Fawlty." On this final night a group of us got chatting in the kitchen. One was a chap who had gone out to Australia in 1969 on a £10 passage and was now taking a holiday back in Britain at the age of 62. He was a keen cyclist and had been involved in an appalling accident a few years back in which he had lost an eye and damaged many of his joints. Nonetheless this plucky chap still rode a bike and was doing a UK tour. He told us that he had an 83 year old sister who had emigrated to Canada in the 1930s, he had met her only once but they still keep in touch. Also in the kitchen was a Canadian lady by the name of Barbara who joined in a general conversation about mountaineers and enjoyed my analogy that doing such mountains as K2 was like crossing the M1 on foot whilst drunk. Later I got chatting to Barbara outside and we went for a few drinks together. A week or so later Gisella was reading out my post to me over the phone when she said "Bank statement - you are in credit, junk mail, junk mail, letter from such and such oh and the love letter." "What?" I replied. "I'll read it to you." With that she put on a deep seductive Canadian accent. Apparently after I left Barbara had got my address from the warden and sent me a letter saying if I ever I was to find myself on the "other side of the pond" I would be welcome to stay. Lucky for me that Gisella totally trusted me that nothing that would cause her worry had occurred.

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