I Vont to be Aloyne...

I'm in the valley of the River Loyne, and totally alone. 

 

Crossing the bealach to Loch Loyne

 

The only evidence of other humans is the footprints that someone left in the muddy path, maybe three or four days ago. There are far,  far more deer prints than human prints. 

Barring an accident, which would be very complicated to resolve out here, I'm happy, alone. It's the distance, the repetition of foot after foot over kilometres of terrain, that has a calming, hypnotic effect, easing away worries about being alone. 

(If you like your glacial geomorphology, this is the place to be; U-shaped valley, misfit stream, roches moutonées in abundance, and a huge corrie at Coire nan Leac. It's absolutely spectacular.) 

West of Mandalay

I'm back on the road again after a few days of rest and recuperation (and some serious carbo loading) near Inverness. Tonight I'm camped near the river Garry, west of Mandally... which is a wee bit smaller, colder and midgier than its Myanmar nearly-namesake.

 

 

Tent on the beech...

This is the start of the long section West then North to join the Cape Wrath Trail. Heeding the advice I've had I'm carrying seven days' supplies, so my fat friend is fairly bulging, despite unloading as much unused kit as possible in Inverness. 

I have also changed out of walking boots and gaiters, and into light, quick-drying trail shoes. So many people - who have done Cape Wrath - said that leather boots simply never dry out.

So, heavy pack, lighter shoes... I'll probably imbalance... 

Bothy Blether

I'm now out of the Cairngorm, and having a wee rest in Inverness before tackling the big, boggy, Cape Wrath section of the Scottish National Trail, starting at Fort Augustus. 

For full disclosure, that means that I will skip a 60km section between Kingussie and Fort Augustus. Various reasons; my much-loved niece has just given birth to a wee boy in Inverness and I want to visit, I need to do a serious resupply because the next section passes through very few villages, and I'm physically pretty tired after walking here from the Borders, so I need a few days of recovery time. I'll do the missing section another time.

Back in the Cairngorm, after two days of rain, hail, fording rivers and plowtering through bogs (my daughter commented that Scotland is the only country in the world with bogs on slopes - how come the bog doesn't drain?) I reached the Ruigh Aiteachain bothy in Glen Feshie.

What a luxury! A stove with cut logs to feed it, a dry floor to sleep on, a fresh-water spring and composting toilets. I'm not being ironic - after days in the rain and the bogs these are real luxuries. 

But the best of the bothy is the people. Folk who have tramped up the mountain to get here; Charlie, cheery cyclist enjoying early retirement by taking off on long-distance mountain adventures, comes to Scotland regularly on the sleeper train. Dave, the ecologist with his lovely companion, a sheepdog who just lives for the sticks we can throw for him. And Nell, on a Mountain Leadership course, heading off just after dawn the next morning to climb another Munro. 

The relationship is ephemeral - we are unlikely ever to meet again - but it's instantly friendly, funny and warm. We blether about everything from the inevitable discussion about kit and how to get that rucksack lighter, to land management, Scottish independence, and the feeding habits of the buzzard. We can talk freely, taking care not to offend, because by the morning we'll be gone. 

The bothy levels us all out. It really does not matter where we come from, what we work at, or how much we have in the bank. We have all struggled to get here, and we'll struggle to go on. 

I know that I've been lucky with this, my first bothy experience, both because the bothy is unusually well equipped, but also because these three are all good people; there are grim tales of bothy nights shared with party-people on a mountain rave. 

But with these people, we created a bothy community in minutes, talking and sharing and looking out for each other. It's surprising that humanity doesn't do better at communities, and that we spend so much time, and so many lives, at war. 

The Clearances

On the rough path between Comrie and Loch Freuchie, there is a point (it's at NN 794 309, if you are using the OS maps), where the valley flattens out, giving a broad south- facing flood plain on the Invergeldie burn, sheltered from the west and east by ridges that rise to 700 metres. 

Today there are a few blackface sheep and a couple of grouse here. But if you look closely, you can see the outlines of at least six old black houses, the typical homes of the Highlands.

 

Remains of a Clachan in the Oykel valley

This was a clachan, a home for maybe six families. For a moment I imagine the children running and playing between the wee thatched cottages, the dark, squat Highland cattle grazing in the fields up slope, with tatties (potatoes) or neeps (turnip) growing in "lazy beds" in the in-by fields, and someone singing in Gaelic as they hang out the washing up from the burn. A tough life - there is no point in romanticising it - but a community. 

And then, probably around 1740-1850, the land on which these people had lived for generations was handed out, as an estate, to a man of wealth and power. He would win this privilege from the English conquerors or from their lackeystocracy, the Scottish dukes and lords.

The new landlord wanted the estate for hunting, and the clachan and its farming was in the way. So one night his 'factor' (estate manager) went up the valley with a few men and drove the cottagers out, "clearing" them from the estate. 

Some went to Glasgow, to work in the satanic mills, and maybe someone got a passage to America or Canada; she might be your ancestor. But the community was destroyed, as the colonial masters wished. 

I stopped in the clachan, trying to hear the old voices. And felt anger at the injustice done to these poor farming folk, the injustice of an English Empire determined to crush the Scots.

But later, calmer, I channel the anger into learning, and buy Sir Tom Devine's 'The Scottish Clearances - a History of the Dispossessed ". And learn - of course - that the story is more complex. Devine's history cures the anger, but leaves a sadness for that Gaelic clachan and its lost community. 

Catch and Release

I catch the cobweb spun between twig and bracken, sparkling with mist-dew

I catch the roe deer, hesitant, alert, alive

I catch the kite, swooping with long white-barred wings to hunt in the green field

I catch the red squirrel, scampering bushy-tailed up the spruce

I catch the olive speckled butterfly drawing nectar from the grey-pink flower, open this early morning

I catch, and remember, and in catching release myself

 

(She's Anthocharis cardamines, the Orange Tip butterfly)

 

On Comfort

I slept last night in a real bed, after dinner around a real table. Tonight I'm in the tent, and my bed is the grassy forest floor. I ate supper straight out of the pan, crouched by the tent. 

On the walk out of Edinburgh, I passed the bus stop for the Express bus to Glasgow. I could have been in Glasgow in an hour. But I've chosen to walk, and the journey will take me three days. 

Why do we do this? Why do we, the walkers, the long distance runners, the explorers, why do we choose discomfort, when comfort is so easily available? 

I'm walking, not catching the Express bus, because I want to meet the people, learn about Scotland, and because I want to go at Nature's pace, slowly through the countryside. 

Tonight, camping (and thus not in a comfy bed) a wee deer came by, grazing a lush green clearing in the forest here. I would not have seen her from a bus, or from a comfortable home. 

 

 

In the woods

 

And on the walk today I spoke to at least a dozen people, including a couple of guys using magnets to 'fish' metal from the canal, a fisherman who called me 'buddy' and someone who said I looked 'fresh' and ready for the rest of the Trail (that was at 5pm when I felt anything but fresh.) 

The deer, and the chat - that's why I take the rougher road. 

Mountains of Stories

On the moor between Galashiels and Peebles, there is an old carved stone signalling the "Cheese Well". 

It's a wee spring, clear, cold water gurgling up from a gravel bed under the heather, running over red-brown pebbles, and racing down the hill. 

I drank a toast to the fairies, because the Cheese Well was where people left gifts for them. There were fairies all over Scotland, living in the springs and the old woods. They seem to have been good spirits, so long as you kept them happy, so I wished them well with my toast. 

 

The Three Brethren have a story to tell, too

These moors are full of stories. There are the very old stories, of fairies and of stone circles on the hilltops, of the people who cut a living space out of the ancient Caledonian forest, and found trout in the streams and deer to hunt and eat. They would have felt blessed by the soft rolling countryside and the fertile alluvial soils of the valleys. 

Then there were the stories of the Romans, for their roads and camps are all about the moors. I met an elderly man with clear blue eyes who had been given a book on the Roman roads of Scotland '...fur Faither's Day. I'm no a reader, but I'm doing four pages each day before breakfast.' The legionaries, and their camp followers, meeting, loving, fighting, and listening to the stories of the Scots who lived in what was then, too, the Border between civilisation and the barbarians. (I've always been on the side of the barbarians… ) 

Later, the small, dark Scots and their small, dark cattle trudged along the Drove Roads to the trysts at Falkirk (I'll pass through there in a few days) and Crieff. These travellers must have told tales as they walked, about the bull that won a good price in the auction, and the drinking and celebrating that went on into the wee hours. Or about the ghost of a long-dead drover who visited them as they slept, delirious with hunger, wrapped only in a cloth plaid, on the heather. 

And then I reach Traquair, and my dad tells me a story from his school days about trekking across the Pentlands to this pub, the welcome beer, and the droll comment he made to his headmaster. In Peebles, on the next day, my cousin tells me that the big hotel on the hill, the Peebles Hydro, was the meeting place for respectable young middle-class men and women; her friend's parents met there. 

Like all stories, these get better as they grow older. As they are more often told, they become another foundation stone in one's personal culture, the stone-phrases passed on to the next generation, and the next (I'll be telling these tales to my grandchildren). 

These mountains are full of stories. 

Viure el Moment

Caminant, penso en el moment. El pròxim pas mentre pujo pel muntanya, aquell flor blanca-groga al meu costat, un 'grouse' (urogallo) negre que puja al cel quan casi ho trepitjo amb el seu 'ark-cabak-cabak-cabak', el plugim suau en la cara, i, sempre, aquell pròxim pas. L'esforç fa que no hi ha cabuda per un altre pensament, pels preocupacions del dia laboral, ni (ho confesso) per pensar del llar, de la parella. 

Mentre que estic caminant, tots els meus sentits son centrats en el lloc, en les pedres del camí, en els olors de l'all silvestre que creix per tot arreu, del cant constant de l'alosa (Alauda arvensis) que sobrevola el meu camí. 

 

 

Parat un temps, torno lentament al meu món amb les seves complexitats. Però la medicina de la caminada, aquell viure-moment, em cura de les preocupacions, reordenant la seva importància en la vida. L'amor, la salut, el llar… i, després, molt després, les altres. 

Viure el moment és l'estat pur de la humanitat, perquè (m'imagino) era la forma de viure dels nostres antics antepassats. Vivint amb l'esforç físic cada dia - per buscar el menjar, per moure pel territori - elles i els haurien de tenir els sentits enfocats en aquell moment, en aquell lloc. Preocupació és una malaltia moderna. 

Travellers

The Scottish National Trail starts in the wee village of Kirk Yetholm, two kilometres from the border with England. 

Kirk Yetholm was until the early 20th century, the 'capital' for the Roma people in Britain. It was where they crowned the "Gipsy" King or Queen, and the wee cottage where the Roma leader lived was called, with a nice sense of irony, "The Palace".

The Palace looks onto the village green and The Border pub (go there, it's really friendly). Camped on the green, exercising to the full his right to roam, was Jack, who is walking from John O'Groats to Lands End, four times the distance I will do in my Stroll. 

Jack travels light, with a tarpaulin supported by walking poles, and the minimum of kit. He wants to see life, escape from the claustrophobia of a planned existence and a career. He wants to learn how to do things, because he knows that there is a climate crisis coming and he does not want to be caught out. He is eloquent and an easy talker (he says it's because he worked in a bar, but I think it's natural).

In the hostel is Sue, who volunteers there. She's retired, but still runs at 1000Kw of energy, cycling, walking, scuba diving and travelling. She's firm with the hostel residents (she described one as 'gobby' after he objected to making his own bed) and travels to escape from rules and tedium. 

Sue and Jack have broken out of the conventions and borders that box us in, but have kept a strong sense of community and humanity. They are fitting people for a village where the Roma spirit lives on.

Stroll with Spring

I'm strolling up Scotland with the Spring.

Here in the Scottish Borders (I'm just South West of Galashiels, camped in a wee corner of woodland), Spring is the song of the skylarks who wake me each morning, it's the gravelly drone of the big bumble bee who inspects my tent for nectar, it's the egg-yolk flowering of acres of gorse, the delicate primroses, rich blue-mauve wild hyacinths, and wild garlic that line the forest paths, and of course here, in sheep country, it's the jumpy wee lambs, running to their ewe when a quadruped* human with his home on his back strolls past. 

 

 

Borders bluebells

 

It's Spring in the sky too, and in Scotland that means blue sky, immediately followed by a rain shower, a blast of icy wind, and then brilliant sunshine. Often in under 10 minutes. You end up putting on sun-screen and an anorak, just to be sure. Welcome to Scotland. 

*I'm using walking poles; what a great invention! 

I’m in a foreign country

I'm in a foreign country. It's called Newcastle.

I don't know the cultures, here. I can see tribes, flagged by the women and the alcohol (the men don't seem to differ much from tribe to tribe). The main station is where they gather. 

Passion Fruit

Tinned passion fruit martinis or mojitos from Marks and Spencer. Long prosthetic eyelashes and short skirts, tottery heels and dyed blonde hair, the natural brown growing out below. Their men, hard shaved and tattooed, scrubbed Sunday faces collapsing as the alcohol takes effect. In flocks of neon crop-tops and extended, arty nails, an impending riot of colour and curves. 

Doc Marten

Or the studious Durham intellectuals, bent over their laptops, their latest paper reflected in the sensible glasses perched on their noses. Brown coat, a short tear in the knees of their jeans and Doc Marten's to show that they are not conformist. No alcohol, but a refillable bottle of water, topped up at the station tap. 

Elderly Mute

The lumpy proletariat, waddling across the platform dragging an ancient trolley-bag, bent over with years of hard labour (and osteoporosis). Dressed down in grey, brown, maybe a muted red scarf, unnoticed except by the attentive station staff. These are the people who built the social stage on which the Passion Fruit now perform. Invisible ancestors of the nail-painters. 

Then there is a religious tribe, black hats and diminished women, and a sporty tribe, but I recognise these people. They are not strangers, even if I know nothing of their lives. 

This is Newcastle at four o'clock on a Bank Holiday Sunday.