A Winter Weekend in the Highlands - and the Imperative of The Good Day

It wasn’t a difficult decision, either get off and push the bike up the final rough climb - or vomit, and then do the former for a slightly shorter distance anyway. Mark and I were five miles along the private, doggedly uphill, single-track road to Loch Fannich, pedalling in full waterproofs, heavy winter walking boots, and lugging dense rucsacs laden with winter ironmongery, while being pelted by rain from an ominously dark cloud. I could see about two yards ahead with my head down and hood up, but still caught the ear-to-ear grin of an estate worker in his snug 4x4 as he waited for us to grind past, wishing us a good day with undisguised glee.

But we knew better, we knew this was indeed The Good Day of our long weekend in the winter hills; we had faith in the forecast and we were committing ourselves to a full day. Unfortunately it was also my first day in the bigger hills this year, and the urgent need to forgo any gentler warm-up days was rather an uncomfortable shock to the system. No amount of walking the South Downs in preceding weekends prepares you for this level of effort.

Locking the bikes to a deer fence a further mile on, the rain eased off and the sky became broken with increasing brightness cracking through as we began our walk – a simple but fine anticlockwise circuit of the two easternmost snow-plastered summits of the Fannichs. After an hour and a half slog we reached the top of An Coileachan, and in so doing became part of an elegant blue and white world with wispy clouds occasionally coming and going, where we remained for the next couple of hours. After a necessarily brief rest/snack stop, since the sub-zero temperatures with added wind chill tend to keep you moving, and donning crampons due to the harder frozen conditions underfoot, we savoured the two mile crunch along the undulating ridge to Meall Gorm.

Mark heading NW from An Coileachan, above Loch Gorm, in the Fannichs (7Feb14)

 

Looking NW along the Fannichs towards Meall Gorm, with Sgurr Mor at right (7Feb14)

 

Mark heading NW towards Meall Gorm in the Fannichs, with Sgurr Mor at right (7Feb14)

 

Remote Loch Fannich from Meall Gorm, with Fionn Bheinn behind (7Feb14)

The subsequent descent to Fannich Lodge, and along to the bikes was all too quickly done, with great views across Loch Fannich and the hills to the west. A terrific six mile whizz back down the track to the main road in less than 30 minutes completed a memorable eight hour day. We had done justice to The Good Day, knowing full well the following couple of days the weather would be much less friendly. And so it proved, with a tough outing on Beinn Loinne above Loch Cluanie the next day (Saturday), where we climbed into increasingly dense and wet falling snow, only to emerge all the soggier some hours later with poor views and no photos to be had. The Sunday was an even worse forecast and so we chose to have a recovery day, saving ourselves for the final day - and planning a trip to the dry, warm, sunny Pyrenees later in the year into the bargain! (Oh, and did I mention going to the pub?)

The Monday forecast was no better than Saturdays, yet the fickle nature of Scottish mountain conditions is such that we had a much more satisfactory day – it often pays to call the forecasts bluff, sometimes it comes off (err, and sometimes it doesn’t). This was not the idyllic conditions of The Good Day, but a more typical fast-changing winter day with solid high-level cloud cover, rain and snow showers but enough lower-level cloud breakage to get interesting, if fleeting, views. The temperature had risen over several days so the steep slopes of Sgurr Mhic Bharraich above Loch Duich at the western end of Glen Shiel were covered in soft wet snow requiring care. It’s an exceptionally fine viewpoint in good conditions, but the weather only allowed us carefully edited highlights – sometimes we were completely clouded in, then we had snatches of views in various directions for seconds at a time. Very tantalising, but engaging enough to keep us on the summit until our fingers had gone numb trying to grab photos.

Grinning or grimacing? Mark at the summit of Sgurr Mhic Bharraich (10Feb14)

It was the final act of another great long winter weekend, which has become a highly rewarding if demanding annual fixture for me. The success of which is always almost entirely down to having extraordinarily generous, selfless friends and hosts with an equally ferocious appetite for “getting out there” in all winds and weathers. Thanks again Mark and Lorna.

When Music and Mountains Meet - The Strathglass Trilogy

There’s something special about finding an unexpected connection during the course of pursuing two apparently independent activities – a glimpse perhaps of some deeper personal motivation that underpins the various things one feels passionate about…

Ten years ago this summer I camped for four nights at a midge-infested site on the outskirts of the small highland village of Cannich in Strathglass, 12 miles west of Loch Ness. Over three consecutive days there, I drove up each of the three parallel glens stretching west (Strathfarrar, Cannich and Affric) in turn, to park up, shoulder my rucksack and take in as many of the highest mountain ridges and summits as I could in a single days circular walk. The net result was a particularly satisfying and continuous appreciation of a sizeable chunk of the Highlands; the stunning glens, their rivers, birch, birds and squirrels, and the airy perspective from the mountains of the full spread of the land and the many large and deeply embedded lochs. On the third morning, I set off on foot from the Mullardoch dam (the largest in Scotland, half a mile wide in a distinctive V-shape, and completed in 1951) which defines the point beyond which the upper ten miles of Glen Cannich is now submerged. Despite some urgency to stay ahead of forecast incoming bad weather I was almost immediately stopped in my tracks by a striking cairn overlooking the north side of vast Loch Mullardoch. This turned out to be the Chisholm Cairn, commemorating 700 years of the Chisholm clan living and working the glen and surrounding lands, and also marking a spot near a now submerged clan gathering point. The cairn had a number of intriguing Moses-style stone tablets (albeit lacking text, being either blank or of sparsely abstract design) embedded in it, the symbolism of which still escapes me, but its strange nature stuck in my mind, along with the name of Chisholm.

 

Fast forward to a month ago, when I obtained a copy of the very fine recent album Affric by Scottish fiddler Duncan Chisholm. I was slow to register the implication of this combination of names, perhaps because I was initially so blown away by the music, but a read of the sleeve notes had my eyes widening. Duncan is something of a Scottish Sibelius in that his modus operandi is the evocation of specific wild landscapes and its associated history through his original compositions and exquisite playing – in his case a seductive and addictive mix of beautiful slow airs and compelling energetic pieces that stir the emotions at every turn yet are extraordinarily easy on the ear. He is of course a Chisholm rooted in the very area I explored, and currently based in Inverness; and it further transpires that Affric is simply the final splendid act in a multi-year project to evoke the three glens running west from Strathglass in three albums, the others being Canaich (2010) and Farrar (2008). Having now tracked down the latter two and confirmed that they match Affric for sheer quality, diversity, listening pleasure and raw evocation of some very special places, I find myself sitting back in admiration at the scale of his dedication and musical achievement. The music has been variously described as cinematic and semi-classical, but the traditional basis is all-pervading - but highly accessible. This may even be fiddle (and viola) music for the person who avowedly protests they don’t like fiddle music! 

It was fitting that the completion of the Strathglass project was celebrated last January with a concert on a stormy night at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow at the Celtic Connections festival, where pieces from the entire project were woven together into a coherent whole, the Strathglass Suite. Reports from attendees are that this was a very special occasion indeed where performer, audience, music and sense of place and history connected marvellously – and fortunately for all it was recorded and has recently been released. That’s one I have yet to savour...

Perhaps I should have included some of my photos of this landscape of Duncan’s that I explored and am now anxious to return to, though currently they languish on 35mm slides in a draw, yet to be scanned into the digital era. There again, the images will come to your minds eye easily enough if you simply listen to the music – it’s that good. And the evocative imagery in the album sleeve notes, by local artists and photographers, are both original and beautiful – a further manifestation of the dedication and love that is everywhere in this project.