1998
An Incident At Reading Station
Disaster struck at 0800 on July the 29th 1997 on Platform 9 of Reading Railway Station. That morning Gisella had received a birthday card from her Aunt and Uncle in which they had included an article about Munros that they had cut from The Times. Between changing trains, on my daily commute from Swindon to Slough, I plonked myself down on a seat and read the article. The article described how the Scottish Mountaineering Club had promoted eight previous non Munros to be Munro status and declassified one other thus moving the total target from 277 to 284. This in itself was a minor annoyance but then the real horror struck in that four of the 'new' Munros were on ridges that I had been on during the previous two months. I did not do these peaks, at the time, due to them being non Munros and therefore chose not to over stretch either my breathing or my knees. For the sake of a few extra hours on each walk I could have done these four Munros but now each one will be a separate daylong expedition. Legend has it that T.E. Lawrence lost an early draft copy of 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom' at Reading station. At least he had hope of finding it. The despair, for once, even made the arrival at Slough Railway Station bearable.
Munro Count: 127 out of 284
Life Sadly Moves On
During the winter life changed quite a bit for me. At Christmas Gisella and I amicably decided to go our separate ways. Around the time of the break up I began emailing with the lady that I had met at Killin Youth Hostel, Barbara. The emails started quite casually but after awhile we decided that perhaps a holiday together would be nice. Barbara said she could come to Scotland for three weeks in April.
On April the 9th we tackled Driesh and Mayar which lie up Glen Clova, a two hour drive from Aberfeldy where we'd taken a holiday cottage. These are two relatively straightforward Munros as you start from a good height and there is an excellent path, which we took quite by chance. Our early navigation let us down but we found ourselves on the Kilbo Path which looked to be a better route than that described in the guide book. There was quite a bit of snow about on the high ground but it felt quite safe and the sun made the day quite pleasant until the cloud set in on the approach to Mayar. It started to snow which made things a little miserable and we lost direction a bit on the descent and had to pick up a line of a fence to correct our path. During the winter I purchased a new Gortex Jacket which is gold and black in colour. I deliberately wanted something with better neck protection and something a bit brighter in case I ever needed to be rescued. However on the descent from Mayar I could not get the neck done up properly and, whilst attempting to adjust it, I lost concentration which contributed to us wandering off course. I really needed to adjust it but as Barbara suffers from Raynauds disease, causing her to cool down very quickly, we had to keep on the move. Therefore we were not a brilliant combination as I need more rests due to my asthma but realised that in the very cold conditions I could not do this due to the risk of Barbara cooling off. Barbara did try and help adjust the neck of my jacket for me and I said, "Thank you it's better," however in the strong wind it must have sounded like "can you make it better" because she immediately tried to adjust it again. I was too cold to repeat myself.
At the top of each Munro Barbara put a stone on the cairn and said "Ohm Mani Padmi Hum." I asked her what it meant and she replied "Hail to the Jewel of the Lotus," I left it at that. It is nice walking with somebody new as you pick up different techniques and ideas that you would not have thought of yourself. Barbara gave me some thermal gloves to go under my lined gortex ones. Not only did they give an extra layer of protection but they are also useful for routing about inside ones rucksack. The thick outer gloves have to be removed for essential rucksack groping which mean that your hands get very cold if bare, the thin inner ones are just good enough to remove the discomfort of the cold and just thin enough to enable mars bar shaped objects to be extracted from a rucksack. Also I was convinced to buy a chest strap for my rucksack which holds the two shoulder straps together across my chest. Often it is an irritation having to manually hold them in place to prevent them sliding on my gortex jacket. Finally I purchased a neck tube which is a tube made from thermal material to protect the neck from the cold.
On April the 11th we attempted Glas Maol and Creag Leacach but did not even get out of the car. The drive up from Aberfeldy was going well until we started to climb up the A93 at which stage the snow set in and any attempt at these two Munros would have been foolish. So our next attempt was to do A'Chailleach, Carn Sgulain and Carn Dearg on April the 13th. In the event we only managed A'Chailleach due to the conditions. The snow was thick on the way up and I had to follow Barbara's footprints up the slope to save myself from having to cut in. At the top we paused for just a few minutes before setting off down a steep gully for the climb up to Carn Sgulain. The downward slope of the gully was north facing and the sun-starved narrowness made it more dangerous because of ice. Sheets of ice, heading down into the abyss of the gully, which we had to cut across. We negotiated the first but when crossing the second Barbara slipped and with a cry out shot off down the slope towards the stream in the gully below. It is one of those things that you take a fraction of a second to take in the situation then decide whether you are going to dive after or wait and see what to do.
I dived.
After a few seconds I managed to catch her leg. In the event she had managed to stop herself which is probably how I managed to catch her up, if she had not stopped herself then we would probably have both slid for a few hundred feet into a freezing stream below. However even though she said that she was okay I still held onto her leg until she repeated to me that she was okay, I felt this irritated her a bit but I was in no mood for social pleasantries. At this stage there is only one thing to do, turn back. On the way up A'Chailleach we had seen some people ahead of us and they had gone on and we lost them in the gully. We had to wait a long time before we could see them emerge at the head of the gully and start the ascent of Carn Sgulain, they looked very slow and exhausted which backed up our decision to turn back. It is amazing how memories deceive as Barbara remembers that in fact we saw them turn back instead of making the ascent.
On the way back we had some fun jumping in the snow on the rather more hospitable south face of A'Chailleach. We also saw some arctic hares, which were nice to see. Barbara went up to her waist in a bog, on the way back to the car which rounded off a partially successful days walking. On the journey back Barbara's core body temperature began to drop, due to the Raynauds, so I had to put the heater on full blast and as I sweltered she slowly shivered.
To do this kind of stuff across ice you really need crampons and as soon as you see ice you should turn back unless you have a pair on. The other piece of equipment that is useful in ice or frozen snow is an ice axe.
April the 18th was the first trip to bag one of the newly promoted Munros, An Stuc on the Lawers ridge. We were late starting, at a little before 1430, from the Ben Lawers visitor centre. This took in a repeat of Beinn Ghlas a Munro that I had bagged last year. Repeating a Munro is not high on my list of priorities and, given how tough I find them, I find people's passions for return visits a strange and interesting concept. We were able to avoid Ben Lawers by traversing its snow covered westerly slopes. However after a long trip we found ourselves at the foot of An Stuc at a little after 1815 and decided to turn back. If we had done it we would have been still on the ridge as darkness fell when much of the snow would have turned to ice. So we did the sensible thing and turned back. On resting on the re-traverse of the westerly slopes of Ben Lawers Barbara got out her plastic bag of gorp (carefully mixed raisins, nuts, chocolate, peanuts and dried apricots which, when Barbara was not looking, I picked out the bits of chocolate from) and tossed it on the ground. It shot off into infinity backing up our decision to turn back before too much ice formed during the dark. We got back to the car at a little after 2045 (which would have been after 2200 if we had done An Stuc) after visiting the Munro of Beinn Ghlas for the second time of the day. During the final descent I enjoyed running down the snow slopes and jumping forward to be carried a few yards by the frictionless surface; it felt a bit like the dream of flying. Despite no new Munro to add to the tally it was a beautifully clear day, the fantastic views made up for the disappointment and we capped it all with a meal at the Ben Lawers hotel on route back to Aberfeldy.
photo © Steve Smith
April the 20th saw another failed attempt at An Stuc. We decided to walk it from the village of Lawers but instead of cutting up to the end of the ridge we decided to get onto the ridge between Ben Lawers and An Stuc. After much walking we headed up a steep slope to get onto a ridge spur which we thought would take us onto the ridge proper. Once on the ridge we were in complete mist and I took a bearing of 275 degrees and we set off on it up 'our spur.' After a while a path became obvious with marked cairns. It suddenly hit me where we were, not on the spur but on one of the approaches to Ben Lawers.
"Barb," I called back, "bet you a million quid that there is a trig point at the top of this path".
"Why?" she replied.
"Because we are on a path up Ben Lawers and no where near the ridge spur we wanted." Barbara said fuck four times in the space of a minute, being a lady that seldom swears I could sense her disappointment. The more obvious path and the frequency of summit cairns put the evidence beyond circumstantial. We both agreed to turn back as the walk on from the summit of Ben Lawers to An Stuc was quite far and would have left us finishing in the dark. I said I may as well just walk to the summit of Ben Lawers, so Barbara elected to stay put whilst I went on. I turned back after just a few minutes as the path narrowed and was very icy. I could just make Barbara out below me, so I called out "What begins in B and ends in S." A few seconds later came the reply "Ben Lawers." I said "Good answer, I actually meant Bollocks but Ben Lawers it is."
April the 23rd saw our final trip into the mountains taking in Glas Maol and Creag Leacach, these being the two that we did not even attempt on April the 11th due to the snow. The day was quite kind to us and the twelve days since the first attempt made such a difference as there was very little snow about this time. We had clear views from the tops which was a real treat with just a mild to strong wind to contend with. The final route back to the A93 required us to ford a stream, it was flowing quite fast with the melt water and it took me ages to find a place to cross, Barbara had crossed quite quickly but at a point where I did not feel comfortable. We got back onto the A93 at a point about a half hour walk from the car. Before I could drag my heels Barbara immediately started to hitch and literally got a lift within a matter of seconds from two Australians in a hired car. She picked my car up and came and collected me. All in all a much better day than our recent trips.
Between Trips
So that ended our trip away together and I thought also my Munro bagging for 1998. Barbara asked if I'd like to go to Canada for a holiday later in the summer and I said yes but I'd want to be in England for the World Cup which ran through most of June and early July. I decided to look for some work to take me up until going to Canada but started to encounter problems getting such a short contract and instead started to speak with Unisys, who I had been with from July 1997 to March 1998. They said that they would like me back for July to do some performance tuning. So that was brilliant, go back to the mountains for May and early June, watch the World Cup for the rest of June, work during July and go to Canada for August. So that is what I did and the following describes my four 'bonus' weeks in Scotland.
East of the A9
For this trip I decided to take my mountain bike. Some of the trails to the foot of the Munros are very long and to walk them can easily add six hours to a day. (I must add here that I find the English language very curious, how can you add six hours to a day, have you ever heard of a thirty hour day?). However with a mountain bike I figured that I could save this time and more importantly the effort. I spent a couple of evenings burning the midnight oil pouring over the Ordnance Survey maps of the remaining Munros and picked out 45 that would benefit from an approach via a mountain bike. It is amazing how some things can absorb you as at one stage I glanced up to see that the time was 0200 when I had last looked at the clock it was 2000.
I was due to set off on May the 13th but during the night of May the 11th I was kept awake with toothache. I phoned the dentist and they got me in and found a suspected abscess. I don't know what it was suspected of but nonetheless it was hiding beneath one of my teeth. Explaining my desire to head north they patched me up with a steroid dressing, a temporary filling and a bottle of penicillin a spare prescription and some good wishes for my trip.
Therefore I still made the trip on May the 13th. I had bought a rack for my car to mount the bike on the roof but, due to not wishing to try the rack out on the M5 and M6, kept the bike in the car until I reached Pitlochry Youth Hostel. May the 14th saw me back to the Munros with an attempt of Beinn Dearg. The day started slowly as I had to assemble my mountain bike after driving to Old Blair near Blair Atholl. I found a brilliant parking space and was immediately told off by a passing estate worker for using such a brilliant parking place and instead I was sent packing to the public car park some one mile back. However I managed to get going and had a tough bike ride of about two and a quarter hours. I found it very hard going as I think the abscess and medicine were draining my energy and I could feel that my throat was sore. I abandoned the bike where the direct track from Old Blair to Bruar Lodge crosses the Allt an t-Seapail stream and ventured across boggy ground made up of peat and small streams until I reached the path that climbs Meall Dubh nan Dearcag on the way to Beinn Dearg. I was fooled by a new track on the approach to the path that I have just mentioned. It has been bull dozed out of the hill swinging around below Beinn a' Chait. I found it a real struggle and it took the best part of four hours to walk from my bike to the summit. I took a lot of care, with the compass, on the walk back as I felt that I did not have any spare energy for mistakes. In the event I managed to get back to the bike in less than two hours and then converted the question as to whether the bike was worth the trouble into an emphatic yes as I hurtled back down the track. I had not realised how much up hill there was on the way in. I found it quite surprising how much of a dare devil I am on the bike in terms of going at a fast pace over rough terrain. I am normally a very cautious person and can only put this down to the fact that I did a great deal of cycling during my childhood so would therefore have confidence through cycling by instinct.
Apart from a quick chat with two guys at the top the only other person that I met was an old chap by a large cairn on the side of the track. He was doing a mammoth walk across the remote highland tracks with just his pack and tent for company. He had said that he had seen my bike and was tempted to take it for the ride. I had it well locked to prevent anybody from using it as an easy means of transport.
Back at the Youth Hostel I realised just how much I had struggled during the day and decided to take the next day off. Also I began to think the 45 Munros that I planned to get to the foot of by mountain bike might be a little ambitious. And perhaps I should consider finishing off all of the Munros to the east of the A9, which, of course, would include all of the Cairngorms. Most of these would require a mountain bike and the ones that did not would add to the variety of this trip. Although this plan would mean less Munros bagged it would stop having to come back to some areas which would involve long drives for just the odd Munro. Some people may think this sounds like a military campaign but what with my ageing Toyota and living in the South of England then sometimes it has to be that way. So with this slight change in plan I took Friday May the 15th off.
Saturday May the 16th brought another single Munro, Carn a'Chlamain which I tackled by cycling up Glen Tilt from Blair Atholl. Up this track is Marble Lodge which gets mentioned in many of the walking guide books. I looked forward to seeing the splendour of some glorious Scottish Highland hunting lodge. Unfortunately I was to be disappointed because Marble Lodge is a modest building but probably gets mentioned a lot due to it being one of the few buildings in the area with an easy to pronounce name. I padlocked my bike to a telegraph pole just short of the dwellings called Clachghlas and cut up onto the path which heads west then north east up Carn a' Chlamain. The day was hot with good views as I walked up a newly cut bulldozed track, which I can only describe as a bit of an eye sore. Still any estate owner reading this would probably bemoan walkers eroding their own paths.
I was quite pleased with the days effort, I still found it a bit of a struggle but nothing like the ascent of Beinn Dearg. The views were good and the mountain bike was very useful both on the cycle in and the cycle out. In the evening I phoned my friend from Glasgow, Willy Newlands, to see if he wanted to do some walking on the following day. Unfortunately his Mother was sick so he could not make it. However we had a good chat about things and soon got on to the subject of the forth coming World Cup and whether the Scots will always support whatever team England was playing.
"Willy, I guess you will be supporting Tunisia when they play England in their opening game?" I asked.
"Aye Steve aye" he replied. I had a hidden scheme here as I knew that Willy had been the victim of a terrorist incident in Tunisia and felt very satisfied with myself for having cornered him.
"Willy," I added after a deliberate pause "were you not on a bus that was blown up by a terrorist bomb in Tunisia?" I was left reeling to an all time Willy classic - "Steve, it was just a flesh wound."
Sunday the 17th brought my last daily commute to Blair Atholl to tackle Carn Liath, Braigh Coire-bhalgain and Carn nan Gabhar. It was very foggy as I parked my car at the end of the public road near Loch Moraig. As I lifted the bike off the roof I could feel that it was going to be a nice day. You start to be able to sense the weather when you spend a lot of time outside. I pedalled off down the track towards Shinagag but stopped after just over a mile and set off on foot for the summit of Carn Liath. I found the climbing tough but the fog started to lift to expose a glorious day. It was not long before a trail of people began to over take me. Initially by a middle aged woman and her two dogs who I walked and spoke with for about five minutes before I gave in to the inevitable and allowed them to walk on ahead. This walk is a classic ridge walk with ups and downs and changes of direction as the ridge plots its way between the three Munros. On the ascent of the second peak I was regularly being over taken and looking back I could see hoards of ant like figures marching down the ridge that I had recently descended.
On the approach to Carn nan Gabhar there is a point at which you can drop into the glen below. Unfortunately a dog called 'Becky' had decided that some interesting mountain hare lived down there and she had taken off after it. Her poor owners were standing at the top trying to spot their dog. After some further minutes one of them took the decision to descend 1000 foot to reclaim the beast.
I really struggled on the approach to the third Munro and felt ill a couple of times, the day was very hot but with that came some beautiful views especially over to where I had walked during the previous few days. I spent over an hour at the final summit chatting with a chap called Jeremy who was a structural engineer working on the design of oilrigs. We decided to descend together by going over Allgold Bheinn and cut round Beinn Bheag and rejoin the track where I had left my mountain bike. The summit of Carn nan Gabhar has three rises the most north easterly being generally recognised as the highest. As we descended a man was just settling himself down at the first summit so we had to wave him on by shouting out "that is not the highest point" and gesticulating off to our right.
The descent with Jeremy was nice as it was company and he set a better pace so I managed to save at least an hour on the route back. As we walked back up the track I was hoping that my bike would be okay as a great number of people had passed it during the day. Jeremy told me of a case where two guys had got benighted because some estate workers had loaded the men's mountain bikes onto their Landrover. A stupid thing to do as it would put their lives at risk. Luckily my bike was okay save for a direct hit by a bird on the saddle. I pedalled back to the car park area where my car had been joined by quite a gathering of vehicles. I spied a note on my car and immediately thought that I was being told off for having parked illegally or something. The note simply said 'That was a long walk - hope you enjoy rest of your holiday. Munro bag lady + dogs.' This was the first person to overtake me and it was nice that she had wanted to say goodbye by leaving me this most welcome note. I initially wondered how she knew my car but then the obvious struck me in that I was the only other car there when she had parked up. The entire day took just under ten hours and I was quite tired.
Braemar
I left Pitlochry Youth Hostel on the morning of Monday May the 18th and drove towards Braemar on the A93 and stopped just north of the Glen Shee ski area. From here I tackled Carn an Tuirc, Cairn of Claise, Tolmount and Tom Buidhe. It was another hot day with good views but this time I did not struggle so much. It was the first time that I had not needed the mountain bike, which may have had a bearing on things. I got good views on what really was a route march between four summits of a large raised area. I could see over to Glas Maol where Barbara and I did not even attempt to get out of the car just the previous month. Now it was all in sun and no sign of snow let alone a blizzard! After the days walking I arrived at the delightful Braemar Youth Hostel which is an old hunting lodge. I must have been hungry because some chap commented on the amount of pasta that I had piled on the plate for my evening meal.
I had a stroll around in the later evening and noticed that the Mountain Rescue Centre was right beside the hostel. It immediately reminded me of a rather funny story that I have heard about the Braemar Mountain Rescue Team. It involved an Irish climber who during one spring had gone missing on Glas Maol. A rescue mission was mobilised and he was located at dawn dug into a snow hole near to the summit. While the team was warming him up with hot drinks he asked which road they could see snaking its way along the floor of the glen below. On being told it was the A93 he commented that he had been down by it the night before but had become lost. He then remembered a training course that he had been on that said when you are lost in the mountains you have to dig a snow hole in which to keep warm. But he had to climb all the way back up the mountain to find snow deep enough to dig such a snow hole. I guess the Mountain Rescue Team was mad at him at the time but can only assume that over the years this has become a tale of almost folklore proportions. For myself I find it touching that in this modern world there are still people with such innocence.
The Botanist of Geldie Lodge
The following day I had to rest, the four Munros of the 18th having taken their toll. So Wednesday May the 20th was my next expedition into the hills. I teamed up with Tony Wood who was staying in the same dormitory as me. He was excellent company, a retired schoolteacher and like me he had brought his mountain bike up for the first time to try and pick off some of the more remote Munros. We started from the Linn of Dee and cycled out to the ruins of Geldie Lodge, a trip of something just short of eight miles which took over an hour and a half. We were treated to an eagle swooping low before us at one point. I have seen many birds in the mountains and always wondered if I had seen an eagle before. I had not, this was so obvious by its wing span that all the other birds would have been the more junior of the bird of prey variety. From there we took in Carn an Fhidhleir and An Sgarsoch. Carn an Fhidhleir was Munro number 142 for me, number 242 for Tony, and of course my half way point.
It was a relatively dull day with not much of a view until we dropped down below the cloud line on the descent of the north slopes of An Sgarsoch. Tony pointed out different types of bird to me, such as dotterel (a rare Europe-Asian shore bird) and ptarmigan (an arctic grouse with a silent 'P', presumably so that it is not eaten by a predator whilst it is relieving itself), and also various plant life as botany was his great love.
The walking part of the day was about another nine miles on top of the ride so the bikes really helped because it would have been a twenty five mile walk without them, pushing it a bit for one day. We had left our bikes chained to a fence close to Geldie Lodge, as we turned round the edge of the ruins, to reclaim them, we were presented with two guys standing by a four wheeled drive jeep type of vehicle. I immediately sensed that something was ever so slightly wrong. Initially I thought that perhaps they were estate workers waiting to tick us off for bringing our bikes along their track but as we got chatting it did not appear that way. One was middle aged, the other younger, perhaps in his early twenties.
"Are you estate workers?" I asked.
"No, I'm just the driver here for this chap who is doing a vegetation study" replied the older one, scuffing the ground and looking at his feet. This reply should have put me at ease, as there are notorious stories of hostilities between walkers and estate workers, but it did little to comfort me. After a few more minutes I was relieved to see them drive off.
"Tony, that did not sound very plausible," I said.
"No, for a vegetation survey you would need lots of people and various bits of equipment," he replied.
We reckoned that the most innocent explanation was that they used the vegetation survey as an excuse to borrow a key, from the estate, to the gate at the end of the track. And in fact they were confounded Munro bagging cheats not prepared to do the extra sixteen miles of the track by foot or by bike. Either that or they were international drug smugglers.
On the cycle back I tried to ford a stream, crossing the track, at speed. I failed and went in sideways, not a very good idea. When we got back to the Linn of Dee the two 'botanists' were stuck with their jeep as the key that they had used in the morning no longer fitted the padlock. Was the estate wise or was it just a faulty lock?
