Running on empty

A long evening run from Drum to Inverness as part of my training for the Highland Cross. I am not capable of running all 17 miles but a combination of walking the climbs and jogging the flats gets the job done. This type of distance begins to have both a physical and mental impact. After around 12 miles all the stored energy in the body is gone and you keep going on a combination of whatever you  can eat and willpower. When you add the isolation - I did not see a soul in 17 miles - and a bitter east wind it adds up to self abuse. By the time I reach the canal side in Inverness I felt hollowed out. Still, it does show that it can be done....I wonder if I could take it up to 20.....

A night under the err...star

God bless Her Majesty. For the mere price of an established hereditary principle and the upholding of 1000 years of subjugation at our own expense we get three holidays in just over a year. I have made good use of this royal bounty by hitting the hills on all 3 occasions. 

The Jubilee wheeze was a traverse of the north side of Kintail from Cluanie to Morvich taking in 6 Munros and 3 tops with a bivvy at the midpoint. While the hills were grand the bivvy was a new experience for me. We found a fine spot under Sgurr na Ciste Dubh where some small horseshoe rock walls indicated that others had had the same idea. It was sheltered from a keen north wind but it had little in the way of a view but we settled down for the night after a few brews and a wee dram. I snuggled down into my bivvy bag and looked forward to a fine night of stars and meteors.  It was 11.30 before the first star winked on to be followed by ...well...nothing. The night was too bright for any sort of display and even when I woke at the back of 2am only the major constellations like the Plough and Cassiopeia were out. The bright night was added to by a full moon which did not rise high enough to reach our bivvy sight but still cast a pale glow over the face  of the hill behind. 

A fine,comfortable night was passed and despite a frost settling I was so warm I had to rise to cast off layers. 

Bed, breakfast and boulders

In the morning we rose at a leisurely pace,brewed up and broke camp and had polished off three Munros by a shade after 10am. That's got to be a good day. I felt moved enough for a quick rendition of the national anthem but I could not remember the words.

Fannich forest again

We took the bikes in from the Achnasheen road up the long tarmac estate road to Fannich Lodge. In a similar fashion to Strathfarrar this appears to by a hydro road - publicly funding but access denied by the estate. Fannich Lodge proved to be a bleak outpost overlooking the dull waters of the upper loch. Even in the sunshine it seemed drab and grey. 

We dropped the bikes behind an outbuilding and struck up through the woods, completely missing the path until we emerged at the small stream half a mile up. A good stalker's path meandered up the broad ridge all the way to the stony summit of Meall Gorm. We sat for a while in a large rock shelter still filled with snow to eat lunch and take in the views. From there we wandered out to An Coileachan where we met an Italian woman who was faced with the walkout from hell north towards the Ullapool road (see Hills from Hell). Our southerly route was far easier even including the 15 mile round trip on the bikes. Our anticipated downhill freewheel to the car is somewhat spoiled by a ripping head wind which makes the ride out more uphill than the ride in. Tough day or maybe I am just getting old.

What season are we doing next?

I biked into Glen Einich in occasional snow snowers towards the northern corries of the Western Cairngorms. From Aviemore they looked like an advert for Lapland and as they got closer the illusion did not fade. From around 800 metres the snow cover was mostly intact - in recent years that's unsual for February but for the first week in May it is pretty unique.
I ditched the bike at the ford of the Beannidh Beag and strike out over the heather moors and glacial bluffs towards Braeriach. On the tundra like foreground I passed a small herd of reindeer which were a long way out from Glenmore but looked the part as light snow fell from the darkening sky. One of the hinds sheltered a tiny days old calf between its legs.

The ground steepened up to the snow line. Given that its May it would be reasonable to expect what the ski resorts call 'spring snow' or as it's also known slush. However, almost from the start the snow was bullet hard taking a good slash with the boot edge to get purchase before a steep, intact snow slope at 1000 metres forced me into crampons. I stomped upwards and on towards the summit as snow devils chased each other across the plateau. At the top the views encompassed the deep green spring of the Spey valley to the north and the massive ice age chasm of the Garbh-coire to the south. This might be the finest view in Scotland but it is no place to linger today as the ice age makes itself felt on the north wind. I retraced my crampon scratches over that wonderful white wilderness of the plateau and dropped down towards the Einich in thickening snow showers. Inside of two hours I was eating chips in Aviemore spaced out by the contrast of all the seasons in one afternoon and looking up longingly to the deep shadowed corries of Braeriach's late winter.

Nipping out for a quick pint

Our upside down spring continues with April resembling January with northerly air flows dragging snow showers down to low levels. The lengthening days mean warmth while the sun shines but when it drops below the horizon winter comes back. Interesting times and it makes packing for a 20 mile evening ride a bit of a challenge. 

I took to the south side of the river again up through the town and climbing out through a progression of suburban woods, farm land, forestry and then moors to a track high above the glen with unique views down the full length of the loch. The south side route meant maximum sunshine as I battered on through hypodermic gorse bushes. It cannot be long before the fashion for shorts in mountain biking dies a death but not before my shins are permanently skinned. 

Eventually, a path dives off to the right into the woods in the direction of the loch. A twisty, flowing singletrack plunges downwards towards Dores; it's a Goldilocks trail - not too hard,not too easy...just right and in the deep dark woods. After a glorious 5 minute rip I emerged grinning on the main road and cruise into the pub car park spattered in mud and a fair bit of gorse extracted blood. You really wonder what people think. 

The English based bike magazines always seem to feature beer but the opportunities on Highland night rides are few and far between. So sitting down in the beer garden of the Dores Inn with a pint in my hand and a view down the loch is a rare and fine moment. As I set out again the sun set over the steep hills across the loch and the temperature plummeted. From here the route roughly follows the River Ness through a mixture of estate roads, the odd baroque castle, some fine winding single track with nice short climbs and swoops through lovely open bluebell woods. I reached Inverness slightly blissed out - if you had a big box of trail building Lego and wanted to construct a perfect midweek ride from your front door this would be the result. 

A quick loop between worlds

On the long road from Glasgow, I dodged the vicious showers up the A9 before pulling over at Balsporran in the sunshine and took to the path up Geal Charn. I managed some wheezy jogging until the path got a bit upwardly angular and boggy.  The stony summit was reached in 50 minutes and I scrambled into all the gear I had to keep the oncoming hail at bay. I headed down to the south towards the col with AMharconich with brilliant but intermittent views through bruise black clouds to Ben Alder and beyond. At the col I could look left to the artics thundering along the A9 and right to the wilds of the Ben Alder forest. A massive land rover track had been driven up to the col and I used the intrusion to run back to the car through torrential rain. A Munro summit and grand if short stretch of wild achieved in less than 2 hours.

Village of the ghosts

The Highlands have more than their fair share of empty glens and crumbling ruins. The traditional view of this is to blame the ‘clearances’, a well-chronicled but poorly understood wound on our national psyche.

The catechism goes like this.  Massacre of Glencoe, Bonnie Prince Charlie, disaster at Culloden, tartan is banned (personally) by Butcher Cumberland,  collapse of the clans, evil English landlords, black faced sheep,  Patrick Sellar, letters from America, Battle of the Braes, gunboats, Consider the Lilies, empty glens. 

However, a short walk on the south shore of Loch Moidart this weekend has opened my eyes to a more complex reality of abandonment and renewal that continues to the present. 

We took the silver walk from Kinlochmoidart along the south shore to Port a Bhata – the village of the boats – where the remains of a crofting village are settling into the heather and bracken.  We sat in the sun on the step of a substantial ruin; its lintels were intact and some of the walls still had mortar.  It did not feel ancient especially the field system in front which seemed only recently abandoned.  The whole place hung heavy with human memory and from its state of collapse I guessed that it had been empty for a century or so giving the lie to the tag of clearance village which is applied locally to Port a Bhata  and to the nearby ruins at Braigh.  It was easy to compare this place to our own village a few miles around the scalloped coast in Ardnamurchan. It also has its old ruins mouldering into the peat but there also new builds, extensions to old crofts and all the signs of regeneration. However, this renaissance is a recent phenomenum  - the previous few decades saw serious and sustained decline as crofting became more marginal and families moved away to the cities. This slow decline is beautifully recorded for the ages in Alistair MacLean’s ‘Night falls on Ardnamurchan.’ However, a mix of dogged, determined locals, incomers with wealth and returning exiles have made the place live again. A new primary school and health centre give it a future. 

So what went wrong in Bhata and Braigh? A brilliant article in the local history website records the decline.  No callous landlords but a tale of determined and innovative highlanders trying everything to rest a living from the margins. Lazy beds, tatties, kelp, milling, sheep, distilling and even boat building were all tried over the 19^th century before they gave into the inevitable not so long ago in 1915. Perhaps the date hints at the final straw. The last resident was an elderly batchelor shepherd and it’s easy to see him amongst the ruins – a collarless shirt and waistcoat, moleskin breeks held up with string and big, clarty boots. It is easy because these characters still existed round the coast in living memory.

These thoughts do not seek to minimise the clearances.  A little known postscript to the crimes of Strathnaver and the failed trial of Patrick Sellar was his retirement to Morvern where he cheerfully cleared a few communities onto the boats.  

What a story these glens tell. So keep an eye out for the ghosts while you are in the hills – you will find them by the odd ring of stones, the leaning gable or the ancient crooked rowan.