Torridon

Early next morning I quickly break camp and leave Applecross village. All night long there'd been gusting wind and squalls of rain. But I'd felt snug and secure in my sleeping bag. I love it when I hear the elements rage outside my tent. Inside I feel warm and safe. And always at peace - despite the proximity of a storm. It's a kind of thrilling peace.

I watch a flock of greylag geese feeding in the shallows of Applecross Bay, then drive north along the peninsula's narrow, twisting coastal road. This must be of the great roads of Scotland. To the west are dramatic views of the islands of Raasay and Rona across the Inner Sound. To the east lies the wild, treeless hinterland of Applecross Forest (there are lots of these 'forests' marked on the map - Kinlochewe Forest, Letterewe Forest, Fisherfield Forest - though the trees disappeared thousands of years ago). At the tip of the peninsula the road turns the corner and now heads south-east, winding back and forth, up and down, above the southern shore of Loch Torridon.

Torridon! Such a special, magnificent place. Here's my 1st proper view of its stunning mountainscape. (The promontory in the centre of the pic divides Loch Shieldaig from Upper Loch Torridon. The striking, craggy mountain on the left is iconic Liathach - at 3456 ft the highest peak in the Torridon range. Its ascent and ridge traverse is a challenging expedition, even in good weather. From the road its near-vertical terraces look practically unclimbable.)

Torridon has some of the oldest rocks in Europe. Some are a staggering 3000 million years old, a time span difficult to get your head round. Most of the rock you see however is Torridonian Sandstone - laid down a mere 750 million years ago, and capped by white quartzite, which gives some of the hills a light grey appearance (Liathach means 'The Grey One'). As in the Himalayas and the Pyrenees, the land hereabouts is on the up - it's risen 70 m since the last Ice Age.

Like so many parts of Scotland much of the ground is denuded of trees. But there's a long-term scheme afoot to allow natural regeneration of native woodland. Where this isn't possible, saplings are being brought in and replanted. So the landscape's undergoing an exciting period of slow transformation at present (though I suppose all landscapes are always changing and evolving). Eventually the deer fences - erected to protect the young trees - will be taken down, and mixed, open woodland of birch and pine, willow and alder, holly and oak will once again enhance the shorelines, stream banks and lower contours of Torridon. And of course the biodiversity of the whole area will be increased. But back to the route...

A single-track road leads up a bleak, damp Glen Torridon to Kinlochewe. It skirts the huge, complex massif of Beinn Eighe, then hugs the edge of Loch Maree as far as Gairloch, where I camp the night...

Applecross

North of Glenelg, and beyond Strathcarron and Lochcarron, there's an innocent-looking road to your left signposted 'Applecross'. But the heart beats slightly faster when you read the sign's small print: 'unsuitable for caravans and learner drivers, not to be attempted in wintry conditions...' This is the notorious Bealach na Ba (Pass of the Cattle), Britain's highest road, and the route which boasts the greatest ascent of any road climb in the UK - winding precipitously from sea level to 2054 ft. It's one of only 2 roads accessing the remote and beautiful Applecross peninsula. I set off up it.

Luckily my car was up to the job. Though the steeply inclined hairpin bends were a little scary, I must admit. I didn't look a deal at the vertical drop on the left hand side but kept my eyes firmly on the road. Which was narrow. It twisted and turned. It was single-track. There were passing places - but some of these were worryingly out of sight, hidden behind the next corner. What if some blasé local van driver hurtled round a bend straight at me? Reversing down a 20% gradient with a 500 ft drop on one side and a jagged, rocky mountain on the other did not appeal. However I survived without major mishap.

Stopping in a small parking area at the top, I got out the car and stomped around. A strong wind lashed mercilessly at my face. I walked up to a small cairn just above the road. From it the view was magnificently wild. The peaks of Meall Gorm (2328 ft) and Sgurr a' Chaorachain (2539 ft) dominated the pass. Further west lay the Isle of Skye with its outer islands of Scalpay, Raasay and Rona. After a further 15 minutes I'd reached the coastal village of Applecross itself and had pitched my tent on one of the most isolated campsites in Scotland. Yes, the whole place, the whole peninsula, was indeed wonderfully remote. But not uncivilized. For later that night in the lively and cheery Applecross Inn I ate one of the best fish suppers I'd ever had in my life.

Dun Telve, Dun Troddan

I left Sandaig Bay most reluctantly.... Sandaig, with its beautiful but tragic memories of Gavin Maxwell and Kathleen Raine...

... Sandaig, with its razorshells and coiled lugworm casts and enormous jellyfish (some of them 1 and a half ft in diameter) on the beach, and its rockpools, and islands, and hard clusters of baby mussels...

Before heading further north, away from the unspoilt, heavenly Glenelg peninsula, I took 2 more walks - the 1st in Gleann Beag, one of the loveliest of all the Scottish glens. Here you can find 2 of the best preserved brochs in the whole of Scotland, both within half a mile of each other. This is Dun Telve...

... and this is Dun Troddan...

Brochs are drystone, hollow-walled structures of circular design, found only in Scotland - mostly in the far north (lots in Caithness), and in the Northern and Western Isles. Their function is unclear to this day. Defensive forts? Places of refuge? Homes for those high up in the social pecking order? What's beyond dispute, however, is that they were built in the Iron Age - between 2000 and 3000 years ago. They're astonishing, atmospheric places (later I saw another preserved broch - Dun Carloway, on the Isle of Lewis). Another broch-visitor, whom I'd been chatting to earlier, suddenly called out from 50 yards down the road: "Look up!" 3 golden eagles were soaring majestically above the topmost crags of the glen, each in a different part of the sky...

For my 2nd walk I took an overgrown, little-used path which snaked north-east from the small watery settlement of Glenelg. First I battled through 7 ft high ferns (some plants seem to grow taller on this western coast - which is bathed in warm Gulf Stream waters). Then I squelched across high, boggy moorland. It was all unbelievably lonely and remote. I met no other walkers. Finally I joined a forestry track which led steeply down to Ardintoul on Loch Alsh.

Returning along the narrow strait of Kyle Rhea - which separates Glenelg from the Isle of Skye - I passed a solitary sailing boat drifting in the middle of the channel. Loud music blared from the boat and echoed round the hills - I think it was an Elton John song, played over and over - but I saw no one on board. It reminded me of the Mary Celeste...

I roamed through a paradise of wild flowers - tutsan, heath spotted orchid, eyebright, bog asphodel, ragged robin. A yellow mist of meadowsweet. A froth of purple-tinged wild angelica. Ravens cronk-cronked, oystercatchers piped and a stonechat flew out of a gorse bush. A seal barked from far away. Then the rain, which had been threatening for hours, poured down. I scurried back to the car under a dripping blanket of pines. It had been a tiring but wonderful day...

Only Words

It's only words, and words are all I have... BEE GEES

A game I play during walking's boring bits (and there are boring bits, though guide books and walking memoirs never seem to mention them!) is 'My Top 10' - compiling a list of 10 top favourites in a particular category. I'm sure others do the same. I did it when on my 2nd Camino walk last year here ('10 Things I Miss About England') and here ('10 Things I Don't Miss About England') and here ('10 Influential Walking Books'). And I had some fun in Scotland recently considering '10 Top Uses Of The Trekking Pole' with another walker I met (odd to meet someone else with such a strangely perverse mind as my own.)

Lying in my tent a few weeks ago, listening to the wind and rain harry the remote Applecross peninsula where I'd camped the night, I idly compiled a list of 'Top 10 Favourite Words'. (I did it as quickly and spontaneously as possible. I thought that too much premeditation would ruin the game by making it too 'intellectual' - you'd never choose even the 1st one if you thought about the whys and wherefores too deeply.)

This was my list:

1 Harvest 2 Moon 3 Summer 4 Autumn 5 September 6 Lovely 7 Nice 8 Camino 9 Redolent 10 Pomegranate

Of course this is only a game, and a bit of fun - tomorrow's list would be completely different from today's. And a list compiled the day after tomorrow different again. However, I think it's interesting that my initial, careless list features on the whole fairly simple words, not very polysyllabic - and contains 3 adjectives and 7 nouns. (Quick thought on nouns and adjectives: nouns are indisputably there - concrete, correct, defined; adjectives are frilly, slippery, quicksilver creatures, always begging to be improved, threatening to be discarded, afraid of drowning the reader in a flowery glut.)

Of course I'm aware that words tend to lose much of their meaning and resonance in isolation. They shine and make more sophisticated sense in the context where they're used - that is, related to each other in a cohesive sentence, paragraph or verse.

Some words surely have a more mellifluous (now, there's a nice word!) sound than others. But does 'mellifluous' sound 'mellifluous' because we know the meaning of 'mellifluous'? What if 'mellifluous' meant 'rancid' or 'jealous' or 'carbuncular'? Can words ever be divorced from their meaning? Yet certain words do have a poetry and a potency just standing on their own, unsupported by the structure of syntax, and valued for individual sound and symbol - as in some chants, runes, charms and spells. Hasn't the Buddhist 'Om' got a resonance and a meaning which is, well, almost beyond words?

Lots of thoughts and questions since my original, simple list of 10! Perhaps all words are 'beautiful' if used correctly, imaginatively, sensitively and thoughtfully. Perhaps it's how we use language as a whole - in synthesis - that matters most, rather than these poor, lonely, isolated words.

What's your list of 'Top 10 Words' today? (No reflecting, please... just scribble them out..!)

Ring Of Bright Water

He has married me with a ring, a ring of bright water/Whose ripples travel from the heart of the sea,/He has married me with a ring of light, the glitter/Broadcast on the swift river. KATHLEEN RAINE. From The Marriage Of Psyche.

This is Sandaig on the Glenelg peninsula - halfway up Scotland's indented West Highland coast. The writer and adventurer Gavin Maxwell lived here with his beloved otters during the late 1950s and 1960s. The old lighthousekeeper's cottage where he used to live no longer exists, for it burned down in 1968 (Maxwell's otter Edal died in the fire). The site of the cottage is the patch of long grass you can see centre-right in my 2nd pic. The 3rd pic shows a different view of it - the patch of long grass is now centre-left. (In Maxwell's day the slopes behind would not have been covered with larch and sitka spruce as they are now.)

Part of the time Maxwell lived here with the poet, critic and scholar Kathleen Raine. (The title of his famous book Ring Of Bright Water comes from one of Raine's poems, The Marriage Of Psyche. This 'ring' of water, made up of freshwater stream and saltwater sea, almost encircled their cottage - in my 2nd pic you can just make out the course of the stream, which runs behind the site of the cottage, beneath the grassy headland and into the sea.)

Raine was besotted with Maxwell - she's on record as saying he was the love of her life - but their relationship ended tragically. Despairing of his homosexuality, she laid down a curse: 'Let Gavin suffer in this place as I am suffering now.' Not long after that she accidentally 'lost' his otter Mijbil which he'd brought home all the way from Iraq. This led to Mijbil's death at the hands of a roadmender. And Raine also blamed herself and her curse for the cancer which killed Maxwell in 1969. He was only in his mid-fifties.

Forget the film starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna. Go back to Maxwell's book - it's a classic of natural history writing and romantic autobiography. Maxwell is an eternally intriguing and controversial character, a man full of contradictions: a loner yet possessor of numerous, diverse friendships; a despot whom many described as unfailingly generous and kind; a homosexual who was nevertheless drawn to women; a restless adventurer and traveller, who tried to create a permanent home for himself and his otters; a passionate conservationist ahead of his time, yet also a harpooner of basking sharks. (He once owned the island of Soay off the Isle of Skye, where he attempted but ultimately failed to set up a viable shark fishery business. Basking sharks are sadly prized for their their huge livers, which yield copious amounts of oil, and for their fins, which are used in shark's fin soup. Scotland's basking shark population has still not recovered.)

On the site of Maxwell's former cottage stands a boulder, scattered with shells and stones which pilgrims have placed there...

... and in the centre of the boulder there's a simple slate memorial...

Home Is Where Your Tent Is

I left Glen Nevis and drove further north, first alongside Loch Lochy, and then through Glen Shiel, which is dominated by the tall, shapely peaks of The Five Sisters of Kintail. I pitched my tent in Shiel Bridge at the head of Loch Duich. The campsite was small, cheap (£5 a night) and uncrowded. I soon made myself at home...

Shiel Bridge is the gateway to the lonely and beautiful Glenelg peninsula. Just one road leads in - a narrow, single-track road which climbs via a series of hairpin bends high up to the Mam Ratagan pass and down through Glen More to Glenelg. A little further south of here lies Sandaig, once home to Gavin Maxwell and his otters. In his book Ring Of Bright Water Maxwell disguises Sandaig under the name of Camusfeàrna (Bay of Alders). But, when reading the book in my early 20s, I quickly worked out its real location from clues in the text. And I've wanted to make a pilgrimage there ever since...

Grace Under Pressure

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. SUU KYI

Glen Nevis, Loch Nevis, Loch Morar

I camped 3 nights in Glen Nevis. The 1st day I climbed the Ben as I've related.

The 2nd day I took an easier walk up the glen. After the glen narrows you follow a delightful path next to a gorge, where the Waters of Nevis tumble over huge blocks of pink granite. This rocky, at times slippery path winds upwards through woodland. Sometimes it fords streams. You have to be careful crossing them - as there's a big drop on one side. Soon you've reached the top of the gorge and, once over the lip, you're deposited in a beautiful, broad valley with the Steall Falls, one of highest waterfalls in Scotland, revealed in front of you. The change in landscape is sudden and dramatic. The valley is enclosed by some of the highest mountains in the land - the Ben Nevis massif to your left, the Mamores to your right - but it's so wide it doesn't feel at all claustrophobic or intimidating. After the rushing water of the gorge, the silence and calm there is wonderfully restorative. I savoured the peace...

The 3rd day I went to Mallaig. I ate some take-away fish and chips on the harbour wall, sharing them with the seagulls...

... then took a small boat to Tarbet on the North Morar peninsula. The view across Loch Nevis was simply stunning...

The ferry stopped first at Inverie on Knoydart - a wild and remote peninsula wedged between Loch Nevis and Loch Hourn. (It only has one road, and this connects the two tiny settlements of Airor and Inverie - a dead-end in both directions. The only ways onto or off the peninsula are by foot or by boat.) Here box-loads of provisions were unloaded and a gaggle of walkers and wildcampers disembarked. Then the ferry chugged on up the loch to Tarbet, which was nothing much more than a jetty and a shed...

I left the boat...

... and made my way through a cleft in the hills to Loch Morar, less than a mile to the south. The weather was cloudy, with a few rain showers...

... but soon the sky cleared, and the rest of the afternoon was sunny and bright. I walked back to Mallaig along the northern shore of the loch...

Loch Morar is the deepest body of fresh water in Britain, with a maximum depth of just over 1000 ft. It also has its own 'monster', which is apparently glimpsed from time to time. Just as Loch Ness has its 'Nessie', Loch Morar has its 'Morag'. But I scanned the loch in vain for a sighting. The beast must have been in its lair, for the surface of the loch remained calm and unbroken. Eventually I came upon the ruined Chapel of Inverbeg, where I paused a while, and ate my sandwiches, resting my back against one of the old stone walls, the shoreline wavelets lapping gently at my feet...

Up The Ben

I was quarter way up the mountain and had stopped for yet another rest. I wasn't as fit as I thought I was. How we fool ourselves! However I'd lots of good excuses for pausing a while - for instance, to admire the wild flowers on the lower slopes: spearwort and buttercup, harebell and heather, the yellow-petalled tormentil; to take some photos before I disappeared into the grey murk beyond; and to drink in the view of Loch Eil meeting Loch Linnhe, a view constantly changing as sunlight interplayed with fast-moving mist.

The mountain was Ben Nevis (an anglicisation of the Gaelic 'Beinn Nibheis', which means either 'venomous mountain' or 'mountain with its head in the clouds'). I'd wanted to climb it for a very long time. At 4409 ft it's the UK's highest peak. There are only 7 other mountains over 4000 ft in the British Isles - all of them in Scotland, and 3 of them (Carn Mor Dearg, Aonach Mor, Aonach Beag) almost within a hammer's throw of the Ben itself. The other 4 (Ben Macdui, Braeriach, Cairn Toul and Cairngorm) lie 40 or 50 miles to the north-east in the Cairngorm range. (I've previously climbed Ben Macdui and Cairngorm, but would love to climb Braeriach and Cairn Toul. The Cairngorms is a special, unique place - its vast, bare, windswept plateau like nowhere else in Britain, resembling more an Arctic tundra landscape.)

Anyway, here I was, now nearly half-way up the Ben, at the Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe, nearly at the point where the Pony Track I'd been following begins the interminable zig-zags which take you lung-burstingly to the top. I'd deliberately chosen this easier and popular 'Tourist Route' up the mountain. Quite honestly, my present level of fitness would have been tested quite severely - possibly catastrophically - on any of the more strenuous and scrambly routes. As it was, I was still rather shocked when everyone from young kids with something-to-prove to skinny grannies with lethal trekking poles and state-of-the-art walking gear all seemed to race past me. (Hey! I'll have you know, this is no hill virgin, no rookie randonneur, this is a twice-baptised Camino veteran you're elbowing out of the way here! Respect!)

Near the top the steepness lessened. I crossed the corner of a small snowfield. A couple of high gullies were also filled with snow. On the broad summit, ghostly in cloud, stood a cairn, a war memorial and the stone ruins of an old meteorological observatory which had been built in 1883. (The Pony Track had been laid at the same time - so that ponies could bring up supplies.) A snow bunting (these rare birds are almost tame on some of Scotland's highest peaks - I'd seen them before on Ben Macdui) pecked at crumbs from walkers' packed lunches. A Dutchman offered me a celebratory swig of 50 year old malt whisky. Then it was down, down, down - back to Achintee in Glen Nevis where I'd started all those hours ago. (It took me 4 and a quarter hours to reach the top, and 2 and a quarter hours to return. I stayed at the summit three quarters of an hour. It was really cold up there.)

Here's a view of sublime Glen Nevis in the clear, rinsed light of late afternoon.

Guess Where?

Guess where I've been these last few weeks?

Double-click to enlarge photos.

A Case Of You

A Case Of You

(Sung by Diana Krall. Lyrics by Joni Mitchell.)

Just before our love got lost you said
I am as constant as a northern star
I said, constantly in the darkness, where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar

On the back of a cartoon coaster
In the blue tv screen light
I drew a map of canada oh canada
With your face sketched on it twice

Oh you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and you taste so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
And still be on my feet I'd still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those who who ain't afraid

I remember the time you told me
Love is touching souls, surely you touched mine
Part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

Oh you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and you taste so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you, I could drink a case of you darling
And still be on my feet, and still be on my feet

I met a woman, she had a mouth like yours
She knew your life, she knew your devils and your deeds
She said go to him, stay with him if you can
But be prepared to bleed

Oh you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and you taste so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
And still be on my feet, I'd still be on my feet