A Northern Bog Trot
by A. H. Griffin
August is undoubtedly the worst month for visiting the Northern Highlands of Scotland. In the first place, there is the incessant rain (or at best a clammy Scotch mist which reduces visibility to about five yards), secondly, there are the midges, and third — in the second half of the month, at any rate — there are the deer-shooters crawling over many of the best mountains.
I have long known about all these snags, but until the Ministry of Education does something constructive about school holidays I am committed to this shocking month if I wish to take my family on holiday. This year I wanted to take my family with me for two very selfish reasons — first, because my 13-years-old son actually enjoys carrying a heavy rucksack, and second, because you have to cook for yourself in remote Scottish Youth Hostels or take your own cook.
Unless you are a director of several flourishing companies and can afford to pay quadrupled hotel bills, or you really enjoy camping out day after day in the vilest of weather, youth hostelling seems about the only way to “do” the Northern Highlands with a family in August. One great advantage of Scottish hostels over the English variety is that you are permitted to arrive in a motor car provided the vehicle is “garaged” at least 15 yards away from the hostel, and the motorist is accepted as a normal human being. There are of course no garages and the car stands out in the open in the pouring rain, often up the fell-side half a mile from the hostel. A possible disadvantage of living in these hostels, depending upon whether or not you really enjoy cooking your own dinner when you come down from the tops wet through and hungry, is the self-cooking clause. My plan, when I had studied the form, was for my son — who fancies he would make a Sherpa porter — to carry the rucksack and for my wife (assisted by my small daughter) to prepare the evening meal ready for the mountain heroes upon their return. And everything — callous brute that I am — worked exactly according to plan.
At the outset, I listed three major snags which you meet in these parts at the end of August, but if you are lucky enough to pick the sort of weather we had, these snags are reduced to one, and life becomes just bearable. We fortunately chose the wettest fortnight of the year — of the century, I should say — with a result that the midges were washed away and the deer shooters were trapped in their lodges, unable to stir. All we had to put up with was the rain, and I had had plenty of training for this in the Lake District.
One meteorological feature which helped us to secure this fortuitous weather was the fact that the previous few weeks had been extremely sunny and warm and the midges were said to be operating in record numbers. It was even reported in the daily press that the workmen on the Garve Road had downed tools and gone home because somebody had forgotten the Dimp. Undoubtedly, on the occasion of our visit shortly afterwards, millions of midges were lurking in the heather waiting to beset us as soon as the rain stopped, but fortunately, from this point of view at least, it kept on raining.
On our way north to the wet lands we did a training walk over the Cam Dearg range and Ben Nevis, and found this good practice, for although we picked up four tops considerably higher than Scafell Pike, we never saw one of them. This was our first wetting, right to the skin, but before the end of the fortnight we were quite accustomed to this, for it happened every day except one: it was good compass training for the boy. On the way up to the Ben from the Arete we bumped into a man coming down who informed us that he had spent ten minutes on top trying to find the Observatory. We managed to take rather less time, but it was not too easy finding the beginning of the broad metalled highway leading down from the summit to the glen.
The compass, I should say, served us very well. Having lost my own earlier in the year I was, I suppose, extremely fortunate to find one lying at the top of Walker’s Gully on Pillar a few weeks later. As it would not work I presented it to my son, and then, of course, I forgot to get one at Black’s when we called there on the way through Glasgow to buy a milk can. In the meantime, however, Robin had dropped the compass several times and this must have done the trick for when we suddenly remembered it before our first walk we found it had started working again. It only really failed us once and that was on the top of Liathach. It was the usual kind of day, pouring with rain, sleet as well, with the mist down to about 500 feet or so all day. We found the first summit, traversing the mountain from the east, and, with a certain amount of difficulty from a navigational point of view, made our way along the whole ridge with its six or seven tops. It was at this point at the far end of the ridge that the compass began to be temperamental and we were alarmed to find that by turning it round we could get the needle to point in any direction we wished. Probably the rain had got in, for it was in two halves which you had to hold together. The result was that we made what might well have been the first descent of the north side of Sgorr a’ Chadail — no person in his right mind would normally dream of going down there — landing, in our stupidity, a long way up the trackless Coire Mhic Nobuil instead of in Glen Torridon. It was six or eight miles back to the car. This was trying enough but the really irritating part of the day was when the Torridon postman, giving us “Good evening” as we squelched along, with my precious matches limp as wet macaroni, thought fit to add “Rather showery, isn’t it? “
An Stac (or Stack Polly) went easily in a short morning. The occasional view of a spike of rock along the summit ridge from its adjacent spike was quite interesting, but that was all we ever saw. It was good to note how well vibram soles stick on Torridon sandstone when the water is streaming over your toecap.
I thought Suilven a particularly hard day. We made the mistake of calling at Glen Canisp lodge — braving the warning notices about the danger of stray bullets — to ask for permission to go on this particular deer forest. Here we were informed that we must not go along the track which continues past the lodge and ultimately goes quite close to the northern side of the mountain, but that we might go along another track to a keeper’s cottage. Thinking in our ignorance that this might be a better route we did not bother to consider the Fionn Loch route to the south of the mountain, and I believe I even went so far as to thank the people at the lodge for their kindness. I found we could get the car to the keeper’s cottage, but having arrived there we had to ask the occupants in which direction our mountain lay, for as usual, the mist was more or less down to the deck. We noted the direction on our invaluable compass and marched — not that this is the word — along this line for what appeared to be several hours. There was not the vestige of a track at any time, and never a distant aiming point on which to set the compass.
The situation was complicated by the fact that having ascended each of the innumerable hillocks which lay between us and our distant and unseen goal we found that we were separated from the next hillock by a depressing looking lochan which had to be circumnavigated on a different compass course. It was, needless to say, pouring with rain, the going was appalling, and we never seemed to be getting any nearer to anywhere, particularly as each hillock seemed exactly the same as the one before. At times we wondered, like Mr. Tilman, whether we were even holding our own, and then, just when we were debating whether we were still in the same county — a reasonable point, if you look at the map — we more or less walked slap into Caisteal Liath, and we knew that the day would eventually be ours. We managed to find our way round to the northern side of the mountain and when we thought we had gone far enough we crawled up the steep heather and scree — we could now see about three yards ahead — and at last found the summit ridge. It was then an easy matter to turn sharp right, squelch up to the highest point and enjoy the experience, for a few drenching seconds, of standing on the summit of the mountain which some people declare is the best viewpoint in Scotland. All I could see was my very wet son, in my second best anorak, standing about three feet away, with the rain streaming down his face and bubbling out of his boots.
We reserved, however, the wettest day for An Teallach. The night before, I rang up the noble baronet who owns this mountain, and for all I know, several others, and asked him whether he would be shooting deer the following day. He replied that that was his intention, and that, in any case, An Teallach was impossible in bad weather. He was kind enough to suggest, however, that I telephone him again the following morning. The telephone is only fifty yards from the hostel but when I reached it after breakfast the next day I was already wet through. It was, in other words, a perfect non-shooting day, and the baronet was able to tell me that his shooting trip was off. His suggestion was that I should come to do An Teallach next May, but when he realised how determined we were he was extremely pleasant and co-operative. He recited a list of the people who had come to grief on the mountain in bad weather, suggested a route well away from his deer, asked us to do as little shouting and banging as possible, and finally gave us his blessing. Sir Michael Peto is obviously a gentleman worth cultivating.
I will not bore you with an account of the day. We never even saw Loch Toll an Lochain which is the celebrated viewpoint from which to photograph the numerous summits of An Teallach, although I believe we stood on its shores. Without any exaggeration I think the fells were wetter that day than I have ever seen them. The water was running an inch deep off the slabs in the corrie and we were over our boot tops at nearly every step. We reached the ridge in the end, but did not traverse the mountain, being content with one out of the fourteen summits. On the lower slopes when we emerged from the worst of the mist we saw ptarmigan and then, very low down, about fifty of Sir Michael’s deer, but, as requested, we passed them without a sound, save from that of our squelching boots.
There was, of course, one consolation for all this bog trotting— a most remarkable day. The torrential rain one morning, following about ten other similarly wet mornings, must have made us lazy and we idled and made, I believe, some food purchases. About 2.30 p.m. we set off gallantly in a heavy downpour and thick mist to deal with the Ben More Coigach group. The compass got us to the top of Beinn nan Caorach and we were plotting the direction to the next top, when, almost miraculously, the rain stopped and the mist began to lift. We pushed on with all speed fearing the mist would come down again, but for some extraordinary reason the sun came out — the only time we saw it on the mountains during the holiday — and we reached the top of Sgurr an Fhidhleir in the most perfect weather. From this remarkable summit from which drops a 700 feet high precipice, we saw An Stac, and beyond it Suilven, beyond that again the most northerly mountains on the Scottish mainland and, in between, dozens of lochans and a wild lovely countryside.
With our wet clothes steaming in the sunshine we hurried on to the top of Ben More Coigach itself and then along the rocky ridge to the last peak overlooking the sea. And this was the view which made the holiday worth while. Far below us, sparkling in the evening sunshine, and so close we felt we could have dropped a stone into the depths, was the deep blue sea, the waves breaking white on a dozen yellow beaches fringed with grey, brown rocks, and the sea birds wheeling and screaming over the tide. Just off the coast, like great ships at anchor, lay the Summer Isles, beyond we could see the magic outer islands and far to the south rose the dark spires of An Teallach.
We trod down through the heather with the smell of the peat from the crofters’ fires in our nostrils, the whirr of a million insects in the undergrowth in our ears, the sight of sunset over the Atlantic to enjoy, and the thoughts of a good dinner to keep us going.