Spring might be here....

A 10 mile 'long run' taking in the same trail as the post titled 'White woods'. 

However, tonight it was 12 degrees. Shorts on for the first time this year and and out into the twilight for a balmy spring run. The weather almost made it bearable. The wee guy on the BBC weather is going mental about the Fohn effect in which air heats as it moves downhill - the same effect was also highly evident in my shorts after 10 miles.

That's as much training as I intend to do for the half marathon - my time won't be great but I should finish.

Urban biking highland style

I just did not fancy heading out of town or uphill tonight so I took the bike for a quick blast along the tow path of the Caledonian Canal. This involves following Telford's finest from the swing bridge at Tomnahurich out to the seagates where the canal meets the Beauly Firth about quarter of a mile out from the natural shore. The path and the waterside are trig and well maintained with gates and bollards painted in the house colours of black and white. On a fine night like this its a great place to be - a bit like San Francisco Bay but without the gun crime. 

This is what passes for urban riding in Inverness - just how lucky am I to live here?

A long run in the white woods

Winter is back for a short while.

Occasionally, in amongst the long miles and sore legs there are some sublime moments. 

The reality of running in the Scottish winter is often mud and glaur but sometimes the woods dress up like Narnia and your heart beats that wee bit faster.

Out with the owls again

Another beautiful day given up to work motivated me out for a 6 mile run at dusk up onto Saddle Hill. It felt spring like in the lower woods but winter returned in cold gusts as I gasped up the steep line of the track to the flat hill top, hands on thighs and lungs burning. The oncoming darkness and a sudden rain from the west caught me on the top of the hill. I jogged down into the smirr with the headtorch showing morse code rain drops across the black sky. Down by the road, owls screeched to each other - spring soon but I will miss these mad twilight outings.

A night run with Nessie

I spent the working day window gazing as the February sun made a short arc across a sky of clean, inviting spring blue. On such a day the only answer to the tedium of work is to plan your escape and shortly after 4pm I was in my running gear and in the car.

I pulled up at the Clansman with a full 60 minutes of daylight for an 80 minute run but with the insurance of a really, really bright headtorch. The path climbs up steep and straight through beautiful winter woods of oak, pine and birch in a diagonal rake for just over half a mile before it opens out on the right to views of the loch below. Beyond the loch a creamy three quarter moon had risen over the Monadliath and was starting to cast light and shade through the trees. Not a breath of wind stirred the woods as I jogged up the green path.

A rougher section followed, snaking a steep but simple path through the low crags at the top of the wood ending at a grassed over track where the climbing stopped for a while. I could run for a few minutes until a right turn onto a footpath pointed me upwards again, climbing with hands on thighs and burning lungs. The path was wetter now and ice cold melt water seeped into my shoes. Then across the fire track and onto a rough path across the open hillside where views of the deepening shadows down to the loch and out towards Dores opened up, The blue above deepened as first Venus and then Jupiter winked into view. Head down and feeling good I battered on for the top of Carn na Leitre ignoring the broadening views to secure the big reveal at the summit. I made an effort up the last slope and then stopped the watch, got jacket, hat and gloves on before I looked around.

Half the Highlands were laid out around me – Wyvis floated in the north, a white whale in the ink blue shadow ocean of the Aird. To the west the usual jumble of peaks were silhouetted against a thin strand of yellow horizon beyond the cloudy edge of the warm front forecast for the weekend. To the south Orion had risen with Sirius snapping at his heel. Silence thickened around me with the gathering dark. I tore myself away form it all and ran down towards the Great Glen Way where a thin layer of hard snow still lay across the trail. Ten minutes on I had to accept that night had fallen and turned on the torch where the path left the fire road and dived down into the wood of Corryfoyness.

Five minutes running under full beam brought me out at a small bench seat poised on the edge of the crags above Loch Ness. I sat down and took the night in. The moonlight fell unimpeded on the rumpled blanket of black water. It was 6 o'clock on a Friday night in February and absolutely no one else was out here. Inverness showed orange beyond the northern arm of the loch where people were making meals, gathering in pubs, driving home. I had this glorious place completely to myself with the likely exception of whatever was causing that wake across the water 1000 feet below. But night running makes any such view a cold comfort so I shivered off down the rocks into the trees where the mineshaft steep path led me down into the dark woods to the lochside.

Up the long path to Catalonia

There is a place were the yellow and red ribbons of the Catalans flutter in the high sunshine round a statue of the Virgin. This is the story of how we got there and of the fireworks that followed.

We reached the Pyrennees by train mostly, a track bound journey split only by the Channel, but at Tarascon the rails stop and at last the paths point up. So we teetered off with our big rucksacks sometimes hitching and sometimes walking, down the road and up the valley, through the empty village with its boarded up cafe to the foot of the zig-zaggy road which on average at least aimed up the hill towards Spain. We slowed the pace to a plod on the steep grades, hands on hips and leaning forward to avoid being nailed to the cross of the big sacks. Then at the end of a 1500 mile search for sunny hills the sky darkened to a deep grey and it began to rain. Not just a shower, but a persistent hill rain we both knew from the sacred ground of the West Highlands - this was definitely not in the plan. The drizzle seeped through us until we reached the hanging valley at the top of the zigzags where we camped. To the south, lightning flickered around the hidden peaks that we aimed to reach the next day. It did not look promising.

But the morning and the day that followed were flawless. Guinness ripped open the tent door and my eyes opened to the darkness of the flap against the hard stars. He groaned and coughed and retched and spat the stove into life filling the tent with the odours of meths fumes and powdered milk. The smell drove me deeper into the sleeping bag and when eventually the steaming bowl was placed on my chest I could only demure and reach for the tea instead. “I’ve put in apple flakes to give it some taste.” My dirty look made no impression but once the tea was down and the fur was out of my mouth I could stand outside for both the oats and the apple flakes. There was enough light from the stars to make the head torches pointless and when I did turn it on it seemed intrusive, bouncing light off the weird shapes of the beehive shepherds huts of the Orris de Pujol. We had considered spending the night in them from the safe distance of a Glasgow pub but close up they were sheep fowled and spooky. By the time I had finished the oats, his impatience was the only thing not packed and he boiled slowly as I bumbled into my climbing clothes and threw my gear into my sack. But when I eventually shouldered the pack he beamed broadly at me. “Are ye right?” Aye, I was right. Today had been a long time coming.   

We walked up the deep, blue shadowed valley at dawn as the pink light touching the spires above turned to bright white and scrambled up shallow rock ribs to a snow filled cirque. We stopped and snacked on cheese and bread while still in the cool shadows and watched the sun slowly flood the snow bowl. Then we unstrapped the axes, shouldered the packs and struck out across the snow. We climbed over our first, tiny bergshrund onto the face of Montcalm which continued at a comfortable angle of rock and grass for a  couple of thousand feet before easing out to the granite boulder field of the summit. The air was thin and the rocks glared in the sun making the top hard to obtain but at last after five hours we were there on the summit of Montcalm complete with its fibre glass bear and bear cub. You wonder who thought that one up.

Then we were off -  the usual story of a summit hard won and quickly discarded - down the back of the hill to a high stony col and then slowly up the narrow ridge of Pic d’Estats before crossing at some undefined point into Catalonia and Spain. On the summit, we flew the Saltire in the sun and carried out our usual ritual of Calvinist handshakes but the experience was different to all those other narrow places we had aspired to in our own country. Here the sun shone with an anger and the people who came before had erected crosses and a tiny statue of the Virgin, all decorated with yellow and red ribbons. There were plaques and photos and prayers. The Catalans celebrated their summits while we revel in the dourness of our hills decorating them with either funereal cairns or strictly functional trig pillars. 

But you can only stay for so long and take so many photos before you have to leave and we quit Catalonia after less than an hour. Our route led back over Montcalm and at the col we met a large family of Catalans dressed almost entirely in black. There were young boys and girls, middle aged men and even an old woman. Perhaps a funeral party perhaps carrying a plaque to the summit for a newly lost brother but whatever the reason the grandmother had trekked to a height of 3000 metres in the heat of August. We could only exchange puzzled greetings and pass on by.

So that was Spain - hot and full of tourists.  

Our descent reversed the ascent - down the rocky face of Montcalm, over the snowfield, down the rock rib and then a quick jog down the valley to the tent. It was hot and still in the valley and I had fantasised hard about the stream by the tent. It had been freezing when I collected water the previous night but now it would be just right. I reached the tent first, trotting happily down the path and dumped my rucksack at the tent door. By the time I reached the stream I had stripped to the waist and was seductively removing my sweaty bandana for my date with the wee burn. It was still cold. In fact it was way too cold for anything other than a token immersion of the top of my head. Luckily, Guinness was far enough behind to miss the pathetic spectacle and I was able to get away with a quick “very refreshing” through clenched teeth. The tent was packed away and we headed down laden once again with huge sacks. Our new smiles and suntans made them more bearable but no lighter.

We veered off from the zigzags to follow a path down through the woods. The late sun dappling the path ahead and the living greens of the leaf canopy above. We reached the road as the sun dipped behind the hill and the shadows brought out a horror of clegs - massive horseflies with green eyes. We still had shorts on and had to resort to waltzing down the road together, turning in circles and slapping clegs from the others legs. So it was that as the first car came round the corner  we were slapping and stamping and leaping about with our huge rucksacks on and screaming ”Die ya wee numpty” at the surface of the road. I stuck out a speculative thumb but was greeted by a look of horror from the young woman in the car as she accelerated passed. You could not blame her. When we heard the next engine we got our act together, smoothed down our hair and smiled. The white Renault van screeched to a halt and we piled in the back. The guy driving had very little English so while Guinness tried to chat to him in pidgin I concentrated on the big wolfhound which had got up of the floor of the front passenger seat. It kept making a low, throaty growl when I moved so I adopted the policy of shrinking and staying very still. After a long mile or so it seemed to succumb to my limited charms and jumped over the seat and laid its head on my lap. Nice doggy. Very nice doggy. Any move still resorted in a growl but I was more concerned about the latest insect experience of the day which were making themselves obvious on the dogs head. Eleven scratchy miles passed and we were dropped in the middle of Tarascon outside a cafe.

“Nice guy” said Guinness as the van departed. “I’d love a wolf hound.”

“Aye, right enough” I replied wiping the slobber off my bare leg to look for fleabites.  

We drunk the two best beers that have ever been drunk and headed for the campsite. I was dead beat and with good reason and my feet were beginning to throb so badly that I swore I could hear them. Bed seemed like a good option.  

But Tarascon was in the grip of a summer festival and the day was not over.  As we neared the campsite we realised that entire town was blacked out and suddenly we were in the middle of a huge, silent crowd. From the direction of the wee castle on its rock in the middle of the town came a booming voice with a long stream of French in which I thought I caught the words “Star wars” or even “Sterrrgh Werrrghs” Then the music started and the Force was definitely with us. A single stream of sparkles flew up from the castle ramparts and ended in the most almighty bang and then all hell let loose. If fireworks are your thing  then the Tarascon Festival is the one for you. Never mind that it’s a poky, wee French town - they are more than happy to send their entire annual budget up in smoke in one balmy August night. It was awesome. The whole thing lasted an hour and was accompanied by a bizarre soundtrack which was lost on us tourists. “Look Skywukerrrrgh ... Obee - wchann Kenobee... Le Force” The show got even better when the big rockets started falling to earth and set fire to the scrub on the castle rock. Pretty soon there was a good blaze going right under the castle walls and it looked like this was the start of a night to remember. Then the sirens started and fire engine appeared and a wee guy could be seen flitting about in the light of the flames battering at the burning bushes. The hero of the hour but the surreal commentary still continued

 “Crhann seuluu...bang.. Derth Vederr ...bang”. What a night - we decided to go for a beer.   

And so it was that at somewhere around two in the morning we got reached the campsite with a half empty bottle of a last very expensive biere and a tricolour to go with our saltire. It was a fine tribute to the Auld Alliance that had required Guinness to swing from it with all his weight before it gave way. The French had actually padlocked the ropes so we had no choice - have they no sense of tradition?

So that was Tarascon and the wee, winding path up to Catalonia. It was a good start.

Feeling gravity's pull - Skye stories

Druim Hain late on a summer’s night. The Cuillin are introduced to me individually across the table of Coruisg. The shadows are deep in the corries and the noise of water falling reaches me from a hundred burns.  I turn back for Sligachan in some confusion. How I am supposed to do this?

From the connecting ridge the path ran out across the face and round a corner. A foot wide with broken crags above and a long, invisible drop below. I steeled myself and walked out along it.  At some point around 100 metres out the path disappeared at a step where the scratch marks showed its upward progress out to a corner perched above that drop.  Crouched in the gully below the corner I could sense it still... maybe 50 metres to the screes somewhere below. Eyes closed I could see the arc of my fall, like a tear drop down the face with maybe a single glance or a scrape off the rough gabbro. Roy stood above the corner urging me on but sensing the inner debate. ‘It’s easy – just move out and up. Then it’s straightforward from up here.’ I thought of the rope, useless in the sacks discarded below the summit of the previous peak.  ‘I am not doing it’ I said with growing relief.  He persisted and protested but he had seen the wobble and then the resolution before and he knew I had already turned round.  In my head at least. So that’s Skye for you  - scree or scary.

The day was perfect – warm in the sun and cool in the corries. The Cuillin gives that wonderful contrast between sun-warmed and cool shadowed gabbro. The rough rock varies in texture and temperature endlessly as the day progresses linking your senses to the hill through your slowly bloodying finger tips.

The path ran up past the gorge and up through the outer corrie to the rocky inner corrie which itself gave up under the long scree gully  up to An Dorus – visible above as a notch of deep blue in the skyline.  I reached the narrow notch quickly despite the backsliding on the scree , enjoying the evolving rock scene and the texture of the rough gabbro under my fingers.  On the right stood the scratched rock wall blocking progress to Greadaidh and slightly up and over the col was the route to Mhadaidh – up a gully above a remnant of snow running down the first few metres on the east side. I picked slowly up the gully looking deeply and breathing deeply at each hold . After the few short metres it opened out and I was up onto a flattish area where low stone walls have been built as bivouacs. An open face leaned against the main ridge and stretched away to the summit. I picked my way up the briefest scratches of a path and suddenly emerged on the summit with its wild eastern exposure. Coruisk, massive and grey in the sunlight echoed far below.  South down the ridge lay my way to Greadaidh – foreshortened, black and threatening. Any confidence I had built ebbed away into the depths of the corrie below and I clung to the rock and my rucksack as I ate a quick meal. No place for me to linger.  But in retreat, the pitch was less intimidating and the dark shadow of the gully faded to a reality of easy moves above a manageable drop.  

Round on the Glen Brittle side I examined the climb out of An Dorus with a calmer eye. Doable and not exposed – my kind of bad step. I was up the difficult 10 feet quick with some minor scraping and wheezing  and got a clearer view of the route ahead – less scary, less foreshortened. The day was coming together and my confidence was building. I traversed up some open, shallow slabs with the deep sword slash of the Eag Dubh still holding snow in its depths and then up and round the Wart to the ridge itself.  The next short section was straightforward and reminiscent of other narrow places on the mainland with a clear path working through boulders. I reached the cairn in good humour with only a small amount of fearful hand scrabbling and shuffling. To the south and to my alarm stretched a long saw tooth ridge topped at the far end – maybe 200 metres away by a second cairn. From here it looked higher. I sat down by the northern cairn and racked my brains. The guidebook was safe in the car but did it say the northern or southern peak was higher? I knew that I could sit here until the next ice age and not know for sure.  No option but the traverse out and back along the roofline of Skye to that distant cairn.  I dumped the sack and set off. The shuffling reached critical levels after a few minutes tottering along the edge and I resorted to au cheval bum shuffling before finally panicking and heading down to a small rake on the Brittle side which led with some difficulty beyond the south peak to the south ridge.  As I scrambled own to the rake my self-loathing of this gripping fear reached new levels. You complete dick – this ground is far more difficult than the ridge itself. But I could cope with more technical ground as long as the exposure was reduced. 

I doubled back along the south ridge which yielded easily to the cairn above. The reverse view of the Greadaidh ridge clearly showed the north peak to be higher. This was a double blow – not only was all that faff and fear to reach the south peak unnecessary but so was the current prospect of the return and the possibility of a screaming descent into the depths of Coruisk.  You complete and utter dick.  Bring the guidebook.

Rain on gabbro and slick scree and steep grass. Somewhere above us in the deep mist the pinnacle sat leaning back against Sgurr Dearg. About 2000 feet up under a vague crag we thought better of it and turned back down. The wind blew squalls and showers into our backs all the way down Corrie Lagan and the sheep fouled path to the Hostel. 

Pinnacle Ridge on a day of swirling mist. The first three pinnacles yielded to easy and relaxed scrambling before we gathered ourselves above the big drop and uncoiled the rope . The climb went by quickly before I found myself tottering on exposed slabs high up on the summit peak of Gillean. The world sloped downward at a constant angle all around me. Anywhere else it would have been horrible but the combination of sticky gabbro and mist obscured exposure made it work for me and shortly the summit somehow appeared on my left. Given that the ridge was taken head on we must have been hugely off route but I did not care - the top was tiny but reassuringly flat.  We scrambled down the West ridge and descended to the screes down some slimy chimney since the continuation of the ridge was designated as dangerous after the recent suicide of the Gendarme.  Understandable – the exposure maybe got to him.  We reascended to Am Bhastier and trod the ridge ahead nervously waiting for the tricky section to appear.  I climbed down into a notch and scrambled up the other side. Once back up on the ridge we chatted across the narrow gap and agreed that the hard bits must be further on. Guinness took three steps back and then launched himself across the gap landing with a sprachle at my feet. ‘Easy’ he said. The top of Bhastier came with no further bad step but half sensed and awesome exposure down through the mist. Swirls of cloud moved verticality up the crags below the summit before curving and breaking over the top. Back down at the gap we concluded that he had in fact jumped the crux. Back on the screes Bruach na Frithe was now in sight beyond the vertical black monster crags of Bhastier. It would be my hundredth Munro so there would be no turning back today. The hill is an easy walk in comparison to what had gone before and for the first time the mist lifts to reveal the sea and rock of Skye. Unique and surreal scenery stretched down the spine of the Cuillin to its terminal peak pointing out towards Ardnamurchan and Rum.  Only the pterodactyls were missing.

The day of the pinnacle and the first surprise was immediate. The first few moves off the ground felt like real rock climbing. In fact all the way to the first stance seemed like a regular pitch.  Maybe it was the polished dolerite – if you ignored the exposure it could have been the crag outside Glasgow where I used to go top-roping.  As a strategy for the day that worked well for me -  ignore the exposure and think about top-roping.  Standing on the stance is a study in focus. On the screes below Roy had said ‘ keep the ball on the deck’ about 100 times and I repeated it as a mantra.  I can see the mainland from here – keep the ball on the deck – I can’t see the bottom of the Pin on either side but I can see straightdown to the corrie floors on either side – keep the ball on the deck.....

The last pitch is closer to horizontal than vertical but the sense of exposure is overwhelming.  The view stretches to 60 miles in all directions and is not obscured by anything other than a couple of feet of rock leading up to the bolster stone.   At the top there was a short wait on the flat while Roy sorts out the abseil and I concentrated on screening out my peripheral vision.  He called me down to the stance under the summit and clipped me to the nice sturdy chain. I assumed I was going first so when he set himself up and leaned back I felt the ball rising from the deck. 

‘You canny leave me up here, wee man – surely I should go first?’

‘Me first and then I can protect your ab -  or d’ye fancy swinging out round the face?’

‘Fair enough........’

He reached the slabs under the pinnacle and after a while shouted up for me to ab when ready.  I checked the descender  and the screwgate again and then again and then leaned back gingerly.  One or two scrabbly slips on the upper slab created the picture in my head of swinging free in space round the steep side before I reached the steeper rock beneath and then finally the terra firma of Sgurr Dearg.  The ball was back on the deck.  A pinnacle no longer inaccessible but I still had a lingering sense of my own unworthiness, a certainty that I had borrowed the bottle for the climb. Still this is how I would do this.

So these scattering of days on the ridge above the sea have taught me the Cuillin. I have the gabbro scars on my fingers and I have seen the roseroot on the screes. My boots have left careful prints in the black sand on the lochan in Grunnda and I have heard the eagles echo in Coruisk.  But I have also learned that my place is not here amongst the pinnacles and sparkling rocks of the Cuillin. All this is alien to me and I cannot love it - this other place of gravity between the sea and the deep blue Cuillin sky.

8 hours in Eden

The ridge is broad but rocky with a sinuous path winding through small outcrops. Somewhere in the last few steps it becomes transcendent and the summit itself seems in another place with different air. I climbed the big, haphazard cairn and took a breath – it seemed to have substance and nurture. I said aloud – ‘I will not leave this place.’ 

 

Glengarry has a thin surface of civilisation which extends for only few feet either side of the ribbon of the road and it took me only minutes to reach its edge at the forest gate. I peered into the dark green tunnel ahead as I footered with the gate’s catch and chucked the bike through. The wood was open enough to let the high sun in for most of the ride and so the forest felt close and warm. Squadrons of dragonflies followed the bike as I crested the hill and dropped down a rough section of track to a big bridge over the River Kingie. So far, so good. The empty sylvan forest alive with the sound of insects, hung with dripping green mosses and with a deep carpet of pine needles had moved me away from that ribbon quickly and into a wilder, lonelier place. I said to the bike – ‘where next?’

I knew the answer and the bike and I proceeded happily in the growing silence to the path off to the ruin at Loch. A previous visit here put the old croft in a dim light of spooky shadows and terminal decline, but on this day the sun was high and the hoverflies were buzzing. Loch appeared to doze in the sun although its remaining gable leaned away to the east.

The path became rougher and wetter, the bike flowed less and I was working harder. This was still pleasure but I said to the bike ‘Tell me when.’

The forest became scraggier and the trees less overbearing as we moved up the valley of the Kingie. The river was now visible on the left, wide and meandering in a broad green strath. To the west the mountains reared up in the clear air with just the slightest shimmer of heat on their high ridges.

About a mile after the forest gave out I sunk into a deep rut, struck the pedals and the bike said when. I found a dry yard of path, sat down and threw my legs out across it to chew through a piece and take a drink and stock. This was a fine place. The empty glen stretched out in swathes of yellow grasses towards the bothy at Kinbreack, its proportions defined by glacial perfection and ringed with ridges - I laid the bike reverently against a bank and took to my feet up the path towards them.

It aimed gently up to the glen between Gairich and Sgurr Mor and I left it at a small bridge and struck out through the bog cotton towards the east ridge. Things went slow in the heavy afternoon but there were flowers in numbers and peat in depth to look at and wonder. Dwarf cornel, tormentil and spears of marsh orchids had to be avoided as I traced a spidery route upwards. The upper mountain had a sharp transition to boulders and short heather and no obvious path to be found. The light changed from noon-time to afternoon before the trig point was made. Then there was nothing to be done but to descend to the col and climb the east ridge of Sgurr Mor through the swarms of desperate, dying crane flies to the summit ridge...

I said again – ‘I will not leave this place.’

The ridge stretched out from my feet through a land of stone and water towards the western seaboard and its quilt of islands. A snaking wave of tops and bealachs ran on to the middle distance ending in the cathedral spire of Sgurr na Ciche. Now the pap of Knoydart is a high point for most but not for me. For from here I could see the Feadan na Ciche for the first time in many years. It is that place – the chanter of the peaks – which holds a special place in my heart and a strong grip in my imagination as the heart of the wild. My only visit to the chanter was at the age of 18, descending from the Sgurr in a daze of excitement after climbing my second ever Munro. That short November day we walked from Sourlies to Strathan along the ridge, watching as a snow squall first covered the distant Ben and then departed leaving behind the first cover of winter. As far as I could see there were only peaks, endless and ‘filed on the blue air.’ I was overwhelmed by this far country and knew that it would take a lifetime to know it properly. I did not know then how willingly I would give it and the deepness of what it would return.

So this is where my mind goes in the darkness of winter to imagine the Chanter of the Winds deep in snow and droning with the west wind. I can stand in the centre of the Infirmary Bridge, where the Ness first meets the tide and look up the river seeing the long, lonely flow all the miles up to this Eden.

 

I lay on my back and said to the cairn – ‘I will stay.’

But I knew from many summits that you cannot stay. I shouldered my rucksack and turned my back on the wild. I walked away altered – stretched, deepened and at peace. I retraced my footsteps to the deep valley as the sun reddened and the flowers hid their faces from me.

The bike waited by the path. ‘I’m back’ I said, remembering other stories and we bounced off down the path to that last gate where the wild ended and the road began.