Carn an Righ and Beinn Iutharn Mhor

I've heard many people complaining that Spring in Scotland this year keeps providing us with "all four seasons in one day". That may be the case down in the cities, but high on the remote mountains of the Cairngorms National Park today I encountered only one: Winter. Thankfully I had checked the Mountain Weather Information Service last night, and so packed all my winter walking gear, thermals, hats, gloves, full Winter waterproofs, and extra layers. The MWIS often errs on the side of caution in its estimation of weather severity, but they were spot on with their warnings of high winds, hail, sleet and sub-zero temperatures. All of these assaulted me in succession all day long, making the completion of what should have been a simple round into a significant challenge.

These hills are often approached from Deeside to the North by means of Glen Ey, but  I decided to reach them from The Spittal of Glenshee to their South East. Parking up by the old stone bridge at the Spittal, I was shocked by the sight of the charred ruins of the Hotel/restaurant complex which once dominated the hamlet. Externally it was never a beautiful building, while inside it was designed to cater for the coach-tour market with garish tartan carpets and shortbread for sale by the metric tonne. Despite this, it was always a place to stop en route to Braemar and fill up with coffee. The mangled and blackened remains of what was once a little hive of activity was a forlorn sight indeed.

The Shee Water is a substantial river which flows South-Easterly out from these hills, feeding into the great River Ericht further downstream. At The Spittal it has tracks running up both its banks. The West bank has a road which leads up to the Dalmunzie House Hotel, which is an impressive Victorian pile tucked away in the hills. I began my day cycling along the track on the other bank, which climbs steadily up Glen Shee, and then turns Northwards into Gleann Taitneach.

Looking back towards The Spittal of Glenshee

The high winds funnelled down the glen into my face, making progress very difficult and very slow indeed. I dumped my bike just before the end of the bulldozed track, and followed the scratchy path up the river past a series of waterfalls. The battle against the wind didn't detract from the beauty of the great glacial formations through which I was travelling. The flat, plateau-like summits were decorated with ice, which were a reminder of the great ice movements which scoured out this flat-bottomed glen tens of thousands of years ago. Rather disturbingly, I found myself singing, Flat-bottomed-glens you make the rockin' world go round!, perhaps imagining what might have transpired had Freddie studied Geography instead of art... 

The Allt Easgaidh is the outflow of the Loch nan Eun, a magnificent little loch tucked high in the mountains at the head of a lonely glen. It is so lonely up there that I didn't set eyes on a soul all day - the only evidence of other humans were three mountain bikes locked together by the side of the track. One of the many curious complexities of my personality is that when surrounded by noise, people, busyness and housework I find myself longing to be alone in the hills, experiencing real isolation and alone-ness; yet when I get there I so often wish that it was possible to share this experience with someone.

From the western corner of the loch, in driving snow and poor visibility (the above photo was taken on my way back down!) I struck South-Westerly in seach of the stalkers path that would skirt the obstacle of Mam nan Cairn, and lead me to the slopes of Carn an Righ. Despite the snow, the path soon appeared to my right, and I crossed the boggy, snowy and tussocky ground to gain it and half an hour later it brought me to the foot of the hill. The OS Map has the path turning Northwards past spotheight 771 on the 1:25000 map. However, in practice it bifurcates, the right hand fork being as shown on the map, and an unrecorded path heading for the mountain. It's a tough slog from the col at 771m to the summit, marked as 1029 (although bizarrely my GPS thought it was higher than that!), which was make infinitely worse by the deteriorating weather. The snow underfoot made going hard, but the biggest issue was the icy, driving wind which was relentless and hard to manage. Thankfully at the summit cairn a small dry-stone wall has been constructed which provided some shelter, but even here it was a struggle to put on my extra layer, and read the map.

I had decided to abandon the walk at this point and simply retrace my steps. I knew that once in the shelter of the valley-floor I'd get some respite from the Arctic-blast, and thought that the tops were becoming unsafe. Happily however as I made the col, the weather changed, the wind and snow dropped, and the route across the Mam nan Cairn to Beinn Iutharn Mhor appeared. It looked too tempting to miss, and so I began the climb. I took too low a traverse around Mam nan Cairn and ended up pulling myself up a very steep climb to the ridge through snow deep enough to make my knees and leg muscles burn. Once on the ridge, the pull up to the summit of Beinn Iutharn Mhor was hard, but satisfying. The views were magnificent however!

Carn an Righ from Beinn Iutharn Mhor

Descending around through the gap between Beinn Iutharn Beag and Mam nan Cairn, it was a wet and slippery descent to the loch, around to its outflow, and back alongside the river to my waiting bike, and the long pedal home. 

Descending to the Loch nan Eun

Looking through my photos I realise that they are rather unrepresentative of the day. They were all taken in the few minutes when the sun shone. For most of the time, the little camera was zipped tightly into my rucksack, because of the conditions - and this is the last day of April! Putting the route on the computer tonight, I was astonished to find that it was only 20 Miles - I feel as if I have done twice that!

Giant's Causeway II

Giant's Causeway

Dunluce V

Dunluce IV

Dunluce III

Dunluce II

The Two Towers

Dunluce

Dunluce

Downhill and Musenden

(click on images to enlarge)

Downhill House

(click to enlarge image)

Goodnight

Last tide

Castlerock

Last Glimpse

(click to enlarge image)

Mussenden Twilight

Castlerock Sunset

Reekie Linn

All 24 metres of Reekie Linn, near Alyth, on the River Isla.

Kite Flyer, Benone Beach

Book Notes: In Struggle - SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s by Clayborne Carson

"In Struggle" is Clayborne Carson's book, chronicling the rise, achievements, development and disintegration of SNCC (known as "Snick"), the Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee. SNCC was a unique member of the cluster of Civil Rights groups which fronted the African-American struggle for justice in the 1960s. Carson's work is meticulously researched drawing on both written and oral records, and his research is presented in passionate and eloquent prose. The story of SNCC itself was explosive and provocative, so it seems appropriate that Carson's scholarship is not dry and detached fact-collection, but embraces the turmoil of those times with academic history which is as compelling to read as a thriller.

The book opens in 1960, by which time the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing, with the campaigns against segregation across the American South bringing names, places and events like Rosa Parks, The Montgomery Bus Boycott, The SCLC and Martin Luther King Jr to prominence. The first stage of the movement was dominated by Christian-Gandhian non-violence deployed as a fundamental belief (not merely a tactic), and sought to appeal to the conscience of America to allow full participation in American life of all its citizens. Crucially the movement at this stage was interracial, and drew many Black and White idealistic students to the South to join lunch-counter desegregations, and other protests.

Among the bravest, most committed of these activists were those of SNCC, whose unashamed militancy took them on an inevitable collision course with entrenched white powers structures. While King and the SCLC used protest as a powerful negotiating tool, seeking to draw first Kennedy, then Johnson into enforcing violated federal desegregation laws, the SNCC staff threw themselves into projects like Black voter registration projects in rural Mississippi. SNCC was encouraged into life by SCLC staffers life Ella Baker who insisted from the start that this new younger movement be separate from the older clergy-led organisation. From the start SNCC produced undoubted heroes of the Civil Rights Movement, of whom the most well known is John Lewis. Lewis' work as an activist earned him countless beatings, imprisonments, and troubles, from being amongst the first of Freedom Riders, to being photographed while State Troopers cracked his skull with their nightsticks on Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge. (As I write, I have a framed print of that sobering image up in my study).

In Struggle contains a quite breathtaking account of these struggles, and SNCC's unique ability - not just to take huge risks in confronting injustice, but in grass-roots community activism. While other organisations had the ear of politicians, others worked with businesses, and others brought charismatic leadership to the movement, SNCC had a remarkable ability to develop effective programs in some of the most dangerous counties in the South - with an emphasis on individualism, and community-led (not leader-led) organisation. 

Carson reviews the different programmes and struggles which SNCC faced as they sought to educate through Freedom Schools, register Black voters in Mississippi, challenge the Democratic Party in Mississippi and seek economic gains from the freedoms achieved. His book does not present a one-sided glowing account of SNCC, as alongside his obvious admiration for these activists he recognises their struggles and limitations. The Freedom Summer voter registration projects in the deep South are rightly celebrated as major achievements of the African American community for democracy; but the book also examines the tensions within the movement, between the locals and incoming activists, and between Blacks and Whites.

Throughout the book Carson emphasises SNCC's radicalism and unwillingness to compromise on its goals of African-American advancement. It was SNCC's John Lewis who had to be restrained from an overtly militant speech which threatened to de-rail the great March on Washington. The militancy commitment of SNCC's staff often came with a huge personal cost attached too. Many SNCC staff operated in great danger from the authorities, Klansmen, White Citizens Councils, and sometimes all of these in cahoots. They were also barely paid, and so legendary SNCC community organisers such as Charles Sherrod, Bob Moses, or Bob Zellner lived on very little, as they worked.

Having read several histories of the mainstream Civil Rights Movement, such as "Bearing the Cross"; David Garrow's history of King and the SCLC; it was interesting to read something about their more radical critics from within the movement. Repeatedly, interpretations of the same events were handled differently. One example is their relative responses to the Albany Campaign in Georgia in 1961 when SNCC, SCLC and others mounted a massive campaign to desegregate the city - against determined opposition from the City and its police chief Laurie Pritchett. Andrew Young of SCLC, refuses to see Albany as a 'failure' despite its huge hopes and limited gains; saying on the "Eyes on the Prize" DVD series, that what they learned there was critical in future successes such as Selma. Carson on the other hand sees Albany as sounding the death-knell for non-violence as a belief, rather than as a tactic. He charts the way in which young angry Black people saw Albany as not frustrating but enraging; spurring them on into increased militancy which found a growing resonance within SNCC.

It is that rising Black militancy which occupies much of the latter half of In Struggle. Carson describes how SNCC moved out of the South and engaged with Northern ghettoes, and a younger generation of predominantly secular leaders largely displaced the likes of Lewis. The changing attitudes within SNCC start extremely early in Carson's estimation. While the early movement wanted equal participation in multi-racial America, by the end of the decade SNCC was a Black-separatist organisation, hostile to white America, demanding a new version of segregation, having expelled all its white staff. Carson examines why the rising generation took this militant direction, and why such extremism was a logical outcome in the context of ongoing Black poverty and powerlessness which the much heralded gains of the movement, like LBJ's Voting Rights Act, simply did not address. When Lewis was removed and Stokely Carmichael became chair of SNCC, the quiet, determined, Christian-orientated leader still pursuing a version of the 'beloved community' was replaced by a fiery orator whose use of the "Black Power!" slogan electrified his audiences. Later leaders such as H. Rap Brown further upped the militancy of SNCC, as anti-American, anti-Capitalism, Pan-Africanism, ghetto riots and opposition to the Vietnam war came to symbolise the second stage of the movement as The Freedom Rides had the first.

The final part of the book describes SNCC's complete collapse by 1970. Repeated ideological battles, internal feuds, personality cults, loss of white-liberal funding and police harassment, led to the organisation fizzling out as an effective civil rights organisation. Carson's response to this is interesting however. He repeatedly castigates SNCC for losing their great history as grass roots community organisers - in favour of demagogic orators seeking to give voice to what they perceived as an emerging worldwide revolutionary Black consciousness. SNCC died, finally because it lost touch with its grassroots, with its communities and had fired, or lost all its best community workers and programmes. What Carson does not do is to subject the ideological trajectory of SNCC to much critical evaluation, apparently seeing it as an inevitable consequence of the context in which African Americans found themselves in, and the multiple-failures of liberalism to deliver jobs, housing, healthcare, and the profound psychological need for Black-Power, by people who had been repressed by White Power all their lives. He doesn't explore why SNCC took to Black Nationalism as a response to these pressures, when not all African Americans did. Furthermore, he does not ever suggest that even the most extreme of these ideological emphases actually damaged SNCC as a viable entity. My personal view is that at its best SNCC embodied the finest and most courageous traditions of the pursuit of democracy and human dignity of the last century. But the tragedy of the end of SNCC is not just an organisational one - but also an ideological one. One of the few forces which can subvert the moral quest to better the lives of the least in society is nationalism, and separatism, which merely accepts what divides us an inevitable thing, to be first tolerated and then celebrated. 

Finally, the concluding part of the book summarizes the work of SNCC, and looks at the ongoing legacy of the organisation and its contribution to African American history of which it is undeniably a major factor. In Struggle is a brilliant history book, carefully and vividly exploring an essential element of the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s which is so often overlooked by the mainstream media. Carson writes with great insight and sympathy with his subjects. It is stimulating, highly revealing, brilliantly educational and very readable. In short, this is what historical writing is supposed to be like.

Eddie Cadman: Royal Engineers 1939-1945

I spent some of today searching for some missing keys. Inevitably they were inside the shed which was locked securely! What I initially found instead of keys during my scouring the house, was a large dusty green folder which I haven't set eyes on for decades.

The dark green "Surrey County Council" folder contained my Grandpa's medals from WWII, and a series of photos he brought back from the end of that war.

Some of the photos are unmarked, while several of them contain his comments in very faded ink, on the reverse side. The captions read things like, "Some of my mates", or ""Keil from the power station" describing a view of a war-torn occupied German city. Where comments appear, I have put these under the image, and where the ink is very faded I have also typed out what he wrote.

This appears to be an earlier photo, possibly taken on enlistment into the Army.

While the other campaign medals and stars are definitely his, and are well-known campaign medals, I am not sure about this last one. If anyone knows what this badge/brooch is, I'd be grateful if you could let me know.

My Grandma served in the Women's Auxilliary Air Force, before my Mum was born in 1943.

For the Royal Engineers, duties changed at the end of the war, once the Third Reich had fallen. The tasks of driving an army forwards over new bridges, and along new roads was replaced with many hours of guard duty. These young SS trainees were held by my Grandpa's unit in 1945. He later remarked that guarding Italian POW's in Scotland was much more fun, because while the young Germans were ideologically motivated and determined to cause problems; the Italian POWs were happy to sit in Scotland playing cards, cursing Mussolini and waiting for the war to end. 

Sky on Fire