Return to the Western Fannichs

If there is a finer sight in all the land than Wester Ross in blazing sunshine, I have yet to see it. Last weekend my wife and I enjoyed the rare collision of good weather and no work or church or parenting responsibilities and so drove North through lovely Ullapool to the Ardmair campsite, where we threw down our tent, brewed coffee and planned our adventure for the following day.

It's been many years since I have walked in The Fannish hills, that lovely range of mountains that appears to the left of the Ullapool road as it heads North through the Dirrie Mor. Countless cars see the graceful outlines of its' peaks and ridges, but very few people seem to venture up onto its spacious countours. Since completing the Munros, there have been several favourite walks which I have wanted to go back and share with my wife - and the Fannichs are right up there in the top ten.

After a fitful night (I never sleep that well in a tent),  we stocked up on coffee and filled our rucksacks. I have discovered that in order to feel OK, I need to carry a lot of fluid up the hills on hot days, and so my pack was heavy. Nevertheless, we strode down the track from the A832 to Loch a Bhraoin and following the 'Walk Highlands' route advice turned east and crossed the Alt Brebaig on a precarious bridge under the slopes of Meall a Chrasgaidh - our first hill of the day. A mile or so south of the bridge we turned directly west and marched up the relentlessly steep slopes to the summit - by which I had sweated my body weight in water and replenished it from my supplies.

It was good to spend some quality time with my wife, life has been extremely busy recently with work and family travel meaning that we have spent more time apart in the last year than in the previous 25! Realising that this wasn't really that great, we prioritsed some time together and ring-fenced it from other competing concerns. It's something that is really good for us and which we should do more often! 

Sgurr nan Clach Geala is a fine, high mountain, whose ridges are are untrammeled joy to traverse. From the airy walkways of this sculptured peak it seems as if half of Scotland is on show in all directions. Beinn Dearg, An Teallach, The Fisherfields, Slioch - all distinctive and each loaded with memories of hill days and companions. Last time I was on this hill was in June 2006 - and it was so windy that standing up was a real issue - I scampered off and back to Ullapool Youth Hostel as fast as I could. This time, the temptation to linger was strong - but we had a lot of miles and more hills to do. 

The next one was Sgurr nan Each, which from Sgurr nan Clach Geala looks tiny, is a good little hill in its own right. But where were all the people? It was a sunny weekend in the school holidays, Scotland was basking in light, it was stunningly beautiful and almost completely empty. Has hillwalking gone out of fashion? Was the weather too hot? Or do folks here in Scotland fail to appreciate the glory on our doorstep?

With plenty of food and fuel in the rucksack, we resisted the temptation to head Northwards to the car and instead hunted for the ascent track up Sgurr Breac. I remember finding this path in appalling weather in 2006, but here in sunshine it seemed to be well hidden - and only emerged further up the steep ascent. I was very up for more hills, and combining both the walks I had planned into a single day. My wife was inspired by the fact that she was on 98 Munros and that these two (which looked tantalisingly close) would clock up her hundred. But in the heat, towards the end of a long day, it was a fearful slog! In 2006 on this ridge I had seen nothing, in truly dreadful weather, so to repeat these hills in cloudless skies was a genuine delight. We went to A'Chailleach butr returned to Toman Choinnich to use it's long NW ridge as a descent route to Loch a Bhraion- descending the WalkHighlands recommended ascent path. It's steep and in places wet and slippery, but makes for a quick way back.

Sadly the extra two Munros meant we were not back in Ullapool before closing time at the Seafood Shack - which would have to wait until the following day! Not all hill days are this good - but this was as near darn perfect as it gets. Blessings duly counted and thanks given to God!

 

Return to Meall Chuaich

It's well over twenty years since I have been up this rather neglected Munro. After the experience I had back then, it's perhaps surprising that I ever went back at all! While I have three Munros left to do to complete my round, they are all in awkward places requiring overnight stays and so I never seem to quite manage to get up to the far north to do them! On the other hand, my wife is up to around 75 hills ticked off on her list, which means that there are always loads to choose from, within easy reach of our home in Perth. To be honest, we often just reclimb old favourites, and I could have completed the munros a long time ago if I hadn't been up Bern Vorlich at Loch Earn countless times, for example! 

Picking hills to re-ascend is interesting because the ones that grab my attention are those in two extreme categories; the first are memories of incredible days which I would love to relive (like climbing Beinn Alligin in blazing sunshine with the (long-since emigrated) Percy Cowpat. The other extreme are hills on which the weather was so dreadful that I saw nothing, and got cold, wet and grumpy. These hills, it seems to me, should be given an opportunity to redeem themselves for they cannot be held responsible for the weather!

Meall Chuaich (spellings of this hill vary, the OS maps render it differently on the 1:50000 and 1:25000 sheets), is worth reclimbing for the latter of these two reasons. It was before my oldest son was born that I climbed this hill, with David - a pal from Dundee days. He was optimisic that the abysmal forecast was too pessimistic and that we'd get a clear hour or two.... but his optimism was entirely misplaced. His wide didn't join us that daym because she was suffering from plantar fasciitis, and had by far the better day back home nursing her sore foot! We bagan our day cheerfully enough, but spent the latter half of it wrapped up in thermal layers and Goretex, trudging wearily through driving rain. Strangely I don't remember much else about Meall Cuaich! The last I heard, David had emigrated to work somewhere in the Middle East. I'm not saying that the weather was what drove him from the Highlands of Scotland, but perhaps that day in Meall Chuaich was the final straw. 

At the start of this year's walking, my wife and I have been out and about in Perthshire, enjoying some of the lower hills like Birnam and Obney. We especially like the silence, lonliness and wide views from Obney Hill, and had been up that the day before. But she's keen to get Munro-ing again, so a re-visit to Meall Chuaich was in order for me - and an easy start to the year's +3000footer's.

The Dalwhinnie Distillery is a famous landmark on the A9, where the Laggan Road from the West Coast meets the main North-South route. Apparently the distilling tradition here goes back centuries to a time when drovers would trade cattle in these parts. The international drinks conglomerate Diageo continue some of that tradition today, although malting and bottling isn't done here anymore. However a dram of Dalwhinnie 15yo Single Malt is a very acceptable way to end a day in the hills. Light, heathery and honeyed, Dalwhinnie was the malt that converted me into being a whisky drinker when I was young. My first taste of malt whisky was a neat Oban - and I couldn't understand why people liked it at all. Now, I can't imagine not loving the tongue-warming smokiness of a fine malt.

The route up Meall Chuaich begins just after the famous distillery. The highways people have recently taken to numbering the layby's which is very helpful and to start this particular walk you want #94 on the South bound side btw. Many years ago while climbing the two other Munros on the east side of the Drumochter Pass, I had a navigational nightmare which began because I started in the wrong layby and nothing made any sense! According to my very old OS map, I was to start by a phone box - which I did. But either the OS made a rare mistake, or BT had moved their phone! Either way, it was only when I got to the top and surveyed the whole scene that the problem became obvious and the dilemma solved!

No such problems faced us starting at Layby #94, and walking a hundred yards North and taking the bulldozed track east into the moors, and turning left and following the concrete hydro-aqueduct up the glen, almost to the foot of the hill. Despite having to scrape ice from the car in Perth, the sun was shining and warming the earth as we walked past the turbine house and up towards the dam. Heather fires were burning in various parts of the landscape, and there were plenty of grouse running about in the heather too. 

Turning right just before the dam and loch, we turned east again and followed the track to a bridge over the river after which a footpath struck steeply into the sides of the hill. It's quite a hard pull up in places, but the views open up, and up and up - in all directions as you ascend. Hillwalking books are somewhat dismissive of the merits of Meall Chuaich as a hill, but all rightly note that the views it provides are impressive. After a long slog, and few bogs to hop, a large flat topped hill is reached, capped by a massive cairn - which was hard to find in poor visibility last time but was visible from miles away this!

The gleaming white distillery was clearly visible to the SW, in front of a wonderful view down Loch Erivcht into the Ben Alder group of mountains - still clearly snow-capped. Then, the magnificent Creag Meagaidh on the Laggan Rd looked massive, and it's famous "window" still holding a lot of snow and looking very hard to climb. The villages of Kingussie and Newtonmore mark the route of the A9 North, and the Monadliath Hills looks great from up there too. Only when you reach the summit do the central Cairngorm Mountains come into view. Being a thousand foot or more higher than the other hills, these high plateaus still had a look of Arctic tundra about them. 

With a chill wind picking up, after the obligatory summit photos (including a nice one of my wife and I, taken by the only walker we set eyes on all day), we headed back the way we came, Once out of the wind, down by a locked bothy, we finished the flask of hot coffee and tore into the huge slab of Fruit and Nut we'd got left from our lunch - before the hour long walk back alongside the aqueduct.

To kick off a year in the bigger hills, this was a wonderful start! 4 hours of walking, a good workout on the climb, and views to savour for a long time. The aim for the year for me, is to do some (if not all) of the elusive three munros I have left. My wife hopes to get from 75 up to 100. With the kids now being self-sufficient, its easier to get away to the hills together than it ever was. I just wish I had the knees I had when I was 30!

Colorado #2

 

Ben Vorlich & Stuc a Chroin

 

Although I've been up Ben Vorlich many times over the years, I haven't gone on to the enjoyable scramble up Stuc a Chroin since July 1996! I remember that day clearly, as only a few days later I drove down to Stranraer to get the ferry over the Irish Sea to get married! This time with my older son, and Andy from work we took the usual route up from beautiful Ardvorlich and up the track to Ben Vorlich. The sudden explosion of a view as you reach the trig-point on this ascent is always a thrill and a delight. 

Trudging down into the bealach between the two Munros seemed to take ages, and lose a huge amount of height - however we were rewarded with a terrific ascent of the 2nd Munro. A path appears to veer to the left of the ridge, but we followed the book's advice and went right at the top of the boulder field, where the scratchy path led us over rocks, and along grassy ledges all the way to the top, While the summit of Vorlich was well populated, Stuc a Chroin - just that little bit further from the car - was deserted!

The traverse path around Ben Vorlich to get home was slow, boggy and long. Nevertheless a terrific hill day. It will also be remembered as the day that we started very late from Perth because of blocked drains... but that is another pungent story!

Staycation staycation staycation

Castle Stalker, Appin

Appin

 Jubilee Bridge, Appin

 The Jacobite, hauled by a a 'Black 5', heads west..

 Oban

Craignure, Mull

Balamory/Tobermory

Tobermory/Balamory

Calgary Bay, Mull

Calgary Bay, Mull

Calgary Bay, Mull

Calgary Bay, Mull

Iona

Iconic

Glencoe

The Clachaig Inn, Glencoe

Appin gloaming

Book Notes: The Last Wilderness by Neil Ansell

Neil Ansell's "The Last Wilderness" is simply a charming and rather wonderful book. There isn't really any kind of plot, there aren't any characters other than himself, and there aren't any pictures (not that you'd notice that). The premise is simply that Ansell took five trips to North West Scotland during a year, and walked through the landscape, recording his impressions of the landscape, the wildlife, the vegetation, the weather and his responses to all these various stimuli.

It is in reading books like this, or Jim Crumley, or Nan Shepherd that I realise that although I love long days spent in the Scottish Highlands, I hurry too much. My tendency is to plan a route, and demolish the miles to and from a goal, and as a result I often miss the richer experiences that are available. This is the sort of book in which the author describes picking his way slowly along an unpathed lochside, enjoying the shape of the trees, resting quietly, until otters tumble out from the rocks and scamper around him.

Ansell clearly has had a lifelong love of nature, and describes being the odd-one-out at school where team sports were the prevailing obsession. He, it seems, was happier wandering in the woods, watching, listening and learning. Writing in middle-age, that lifetime of absorbing knowledge is gently unpacked to the reader as he shares his insights into geology, conservation, history and the changing landscape. From time-to-time he wanders off into reminiscence, and tells whimsical and improbable stories from a lifetime of exploring landscapes all over the world, before resuming his narrative of trudging little-known backwaters around Loch Morar.

I was a little saddened when he threw in the comment about environmental harm, "It is a rather biblical outlook; to see the world solely as a resource placed there for our own benefit" (p83). While it is often assumed that the 'subdue the earth' text in Genesis and Peter's meat-feast vision suggest that the earth exists solely for human pillaging; this is a serious misreading of the text. In biblical terms the earth exists primarily to display the glory, generosity, and goodness of God to his whole creation of which we are a special part. The story starts with God making it, and ends with God renewing it. So, unless we are to suggest that the way to honour an artist is to destroy his art; this is a sorry slur on the bible's view of our environmental responsibility. (For more on this see arocha.org)

I especially loved the chapters about landscapes that I know, or have been in. As I said, I have marched through them too quickly, but his descriptions of places I know were especially pleasing. I found that I needed to read the book with a map in hand, to trace his routes and see where he had diverted from the busy, 'trade-routes' and just wandered. Like me, he usually walks in the remote parts of Scotland alone and positively enjoys this. Not that he is anti-social, he documents some lovely days spent with girlfriends, fellow-walkers and people he meets in Bothies or in the wilds. Rather, the landscape is the point of his adventures, not merely the context for a social activity. He is certainly a more courageous walker than I am, in terms of isolated wanderings when in ill health, far from help or rescue. While I would walk with a sniffly cold, Ansell was happy enough to wander far from home while awaiting heart-surgery!

It was only when I was about three-quarters of the way through the book that I realised that it was picture-less. That is a tribute to the wonderfully rich, and vivid prose which paints pictures in the mind, rather like the old adage about radio having better pictures than TV.

One of the most moving threads running through the book is Ansell's reflections on his declining hearing. He is aware that certain ranges of sounds are becoming lost to him, as time progresses, and that some of the bird-songs he has loved since childhood are now lost to him - in all but long-held memories. His adjustment to this sadness, as his world becomes progressively quieter is a beautifully observed lament, which partly explains the subtitle of the book: A Journey Into Silence.

This is the kind of book that makes me yearn to be in the hills. Sadly, I sprained my ankle rather badly on Sunday, and won't be there for some time. Thankfully though, even at home on a dreich grey night in May, with a dram in one hand and Ansell's book in the other, I am transported there in my mind.

Glen Feshie

It's many years since I have been down Glen Feshie, and I have few memories of it, other than thinking it was worth a re-visit. It wasn't just last week's Cairngorm epic, through the Lairig Ghru, which brought these glens back to my attention either. Scotland's weather conformed today to the traditional pattern, with the West taking the brunt of the rain, and the Eastern mountains hiding in their shadow. I have a friend who works in the hydro-electric industry, and when we talk about Scotland's Highlands, his vast knowledge of the West Coast stands in marked contrast to his relative unfamiliarity with the East. Rain is the resource he farms, and only goes where that is found in abundance. The opposite is the case when planning a short walk, especially with my wife and daughter in attendance.

My memories of Glen Feshie, (which must be fifteen years old, at least), are of a blazing hot summer's day; of the track by the river, and the two Munros, Mulach Clach a Bhlair (steep sided, broad summit, heathery), and Sgor Gaoith (magnificent views towards Braeriach towering over Loch Einich). These old memories are hazy at best, and so a re-visit was in order.

Unlike last week's route march, this afternoon's trek was a pleasant dander forFeshie proved to be an absolute delight however. The wide glen floor, once carved by ice; now has a wonderful river gliding down it, carving its way through the moraines. It is home to a dazzling array of wild flowers, and native natural woodland, which in turn is teeming with life. While the unnaturally tree-less glens are silent and empty; Feshie was alive with scurrying, buzzing, scuttling, with tiny birds on the ground, and birds of prey circling above. In a couple of places, it looked rather like a walk we did last year in the Canadian Rockies (smaller though!), and we recalled the bears we had seen there!

a few miles along the floor of the glen. Glen

Not a Munro, not an epic trek; just a great short walk - and my appetite for the outdoors, fed for another week or so.

The Lairig Ghru

The Lairig Ghru is a name which reaches back into my young childhood. Around the same time as my Dad read Tolkein to me, he also told me about the hillwalking trip he took through the Cairngorms when he was fifteen; back in the mid 1950s. Somehow the two things seemed to merge into my young mind, which filed all these mental images under the headings 'mythical' and 'wonderful'. Braeriach, The Forest of Rothiemurchus, Corrour Bothy, Derry Lodge or The Pools of Dee sounded as evocative and far away as Rivendell, The Lonely Mountain, The Shire or The Running River. These are names to enjoy pronouncing, conjuring up images of hobbits on quests or 1950s schoolboys on life-shaping adventures. Rather wonderfully however, The Cairngorms turn out to be real, and accessible.

The Lairig Ghru is described by mountain writer Cameron McNeish as "one of Scotland's truly great walks", and one I have wanted to do for decades. A 'Lairig' is a pass through the mountains, and this one, the Lairig Ghru, allows the walker to cut through the heart of the great Cairngorm range, the old Monadh Ruadh; from Deeside, near Braemar to Speyside near Aviemore. This great heart of eastern Scotland is unpenetrated by roads; even the estate tracks and engineered paths of the beginning and end of the route peter out in the high pass, and boots meet mountains directly without human intercession. It is not entirely natural land (left to its own devices it would be far more forested); but it is undeniably wild land. The mountain rescue service is kept busy here, and sadly not all their expeditions reach happy conclusions; these are not hills in which to get lost, cold, or injured alone. Yesterday, we faced a forecast which was wet and cold, but at the end of an unusually hot summer there was no chance of meeting any lingering snow - which seems to have caused the most problems over the years, lying deep in the Lairig until remarkably late in the year.

The great defile of the Lairig Ghru is visible from Aviemore, a great gash in the bulky skyline above the woods. Sadly, Aviemore is now visible from the Laiig Ghru, a particularly ugly concrete hotel dominates,  whose architect should win some sort of incongruity lifetime achievement award. The southern end of the Lairig Ghru isn't visible from any public road, because there aren't any there; the view up the pass from that end has to be earned by walking or cycling from Linn of Dee either via Derry Lodge and Glen Luibeg or via the White Bridge. I seem to have seen this great walk from all angles over the years, yet never been able to complete the walk, usually for logistical reasons - it's a two car effort, with a long drive in at the end of the day. I've seen it from Braeriach, from Monadh Mhor and walked down into it from the Chalamain Gap; but yesterday (at last!), I had the opportunity to do the complete Linn of Dee to Rothiemurchus route.

One of my neighbours, organised a group, and left a car at Rothiemurchus at the end of her family holiday in Aviemore. Four of us drove through Glen Shee, to Braemar and left my car at the big carpark at Linn of Dee (£3 a day, Pay and Display now!). From here the engineered Glen Luibeg path is well signposted, and snakes its way through the woods, meeting a bulldozed track all the way to Derry Lodge. Derry Lodge, all shuttered and forlorn, was once apparently a busy shooting lodge, full of Victorian and Edwardian hunting parties; busy with the sounds of dogs, the smells of feasts and whisky and adventure. Walking with friends old and new, we mused about what a melancholy sight it now is, and what a wonderful mountain bunkhouse it would make if someone had the time, money, inclination and could get permission. 

The footbridge at Derry Lodge has a signpost pointing westwards to the Lairig Ghru at the far end of it. I remember getting caught in bogs at the next section a couple of times, but it was  hard underfoot yesterday - despite the persistently falling rain. It needs to keep raining for a while yet, to replenish the deficit of a bone-dry summer. We had no need, in fact, to search for the 'hidden' bridge at Luibeg - the water was so low, we walked straight across at the ford.

(Looking into the Larig Ghru from a previous trip to Monadh Mhor)

It's here, beyond the Luibeg Burn, that the walk changes in character - and the excitement begins. As the path winds gently uphill underneath the Munro Carn a Mhaim, The Devil's Peal looms into view. Yesterday, it was magnificent, great slabs of wet, grey rock thrusting skywards into the clouds. Perhaps an appropriate metaphor for such a sight is Tolkeinesque. Either way, it is as the gentle and broad landscape of Glenn Lui is left behind that the Middle Earth of my childhood imagination is entered. Despite the rain, and the plummeting temperatures - it was really magnificent; I couldn't think of anywhere I'd rather have been.

The little bothy at Corrour is a well-known landmark; nestling in the Larig Ghru beneath the Devil's Point and the Angel's Peak. My Dad camped here all those years ago; I can only imagine what a tent made of heavy-duty canvas must have weighed! My kids have camped here on DofE expeditions too. I have previously passed this spot, in the way to and from the adjacent Munros. The usual loose association of good natured hill-folk were hiding in the bothy yesrerday lunchtime, travellers from Scotland, Wales and England - some staying the night, others just sheltering from the rain. We had a brew-up, a chat with the folks there, and layered up, before heading back out into the rain, and biting wind. The path is clear, and follows the east side of the glen floor, past a stone named as the Clach nan Taillear. A stone with a name, might indicate a memorial to some ancient tragedy - the hills and weather certainly looked foreboding as we climbed into the heart of the mountains. If we had felt large and confident, striding through the woods to Derry Lodge, we now looked like little hobbits beneath the huge peaks of Cairntoul and Ben Mandui looming either side.

The path runs into a boulder field by the Pools of Dee at the head of the Lairig. There are no problems here, other than a far slower rate of progress than is possible either side; and the path braids and re-joins repeatedly. Nevertheless it's a quick descent down to the trough where the Braeriach path drops in from the left and the Chalamain Gap path climbs out to the right. The time I walked through the Gap, on my own, very early one morning, the moon was huge - and eerily framed in the Gap itself.

The path descends rapidly into the wonderful Rothiemurchus forest. This living remnant of the Great Caledonian Forest is soft; teeming with life and aromatic. The midgies were in their element here too; and soon our party reeked with the ghastly odour of Skin-So-Soft; allegedly the best defence against the little pests. Smelling like a bunch of Grannies at a perfume convention, and surrounded by a cloud of swirling black dots we picked out way through the woods, to the landmark of the Cairngorm Club Footbridge and on towards the waiting car at the road by the campsite. The engineered paths here are well made and as a result bog-free. They are also rock-hard, and several miles of pounding them made my feet ache. My lovely old walking boots are in their last days of useful life, the uppers are wearing and the soles are desperately thin. They no longer grip much, or provide much cushioning from the relentless thumping, and will soon be put out of their misery. As a result, by the time we completed our 20miles, (47,000 steps according to a Fitbit wearer), I was glad to see the car and lift my feet from the boots.

The day was completed with dropping one walker to the station at Aviemore, while the rest of us drove via Tomintoul and the Lecht, to collect my car at Linn of Dee for the return drive to Perth. Sadly, the chippy in Braemar was closing so there was no fish, or pies, or haggis to be had; happily the owner was glad to hand us three portions of chips, completely free. It was past closing time, and they would be thrown out otherwise!

The Lairig Ghru is a classic Scottish Walk. I'm glad to have finally followed in my Dad's footsteps (and er.... those of Bilbo obviously); and walked all the way through. I love these mountains, and get there so rarely. The day was made complete by safe travels and great company. 

Book Notes: The House of Elrig by Gavin Maxwell

I have very distinct memories of reading Maxwell's famous "Ring of Bright Water", many years ago while sitting in the Arizona Desert. The intensely dry heat, the crumbly sand between my toes. the desert insects and the bold cacti, formed a strange accompaniment to Maxwell's easy prose, as he spoke of his life with otters, and the sea, and the lush green rain-soaked western isles of Scotland. I remember the book as disarmingly charming, whimsical - and creating in me a strange longing for the familiar shapes of Scotland; and for the sensation of cold rain on my face.

I picked up The House of Elrig, Maxwell's memoir of childhood, simply having enjoyed his other work so much. Although undoubtedly the work of the same writer, there is a vast world of difference between the two volumes. Bright Water is hugely enjoyable, and while it references a unique lifestyle - it does so in places I know, and takes place not that long before I was born. The House of Elrig, on the other hand seems to come from another time and place quite outside my experience, or really my understanding. That's not really the biggest difference though, which is that while Bright Water is delightful; The House of Elrig, I found if anything, slightly disturbing.

My initial impression of the book was that it was a window into a world I knew nothing about. I hadn't realised that Maxwell was of such aristocratic stock, and that he had grown up in a mansion in Galloway. The early stories are all of grouse-moors, tweed-clad shooting parties, servants, ghillies and roaming the estate in the company of a bizarre cast of eccentric titled relatives; some of whom I have stumbled across in history books, as they were members of various cabinets in Westminster governments between the wars. His yearly commute between great houses around the country, was described in detail - and something I found most odd. 

Strangely, Maxwell dwells little on the absence of his Father, who was killed in the opening salvos of the First World War. He tries to explain that this absence was simply his childhood normality, and that he thought little of it - other than seeing the physical memorabilia in the home. Yet - the absence of his father seems to be the unspoken central theme of the book, whether he intended this or not. His oddly intense relationship to his mother, was the first sign of this; followed by the separation from her for boarding school which reads almost like a bereavement. This reads like the start of a  psychcologists case-study.

I found the descriptions of the English public schools of the mid-Twentieth Century very weird indeed. As the product of a weak comprehensive education, I sometimes looked in envy at the perceived advantages of the exclusive education of the privileged elites who lived in our town. Maxwell's reminiscences of anxiety, loneliness, rituals and a veritable cast of misfits or weirdos amongst staff; make me think that Abbotsford Comprehensive, wasn't so bad after all. Maxwell's descriptions of what passed as 'sex education', which mostly amounted to veiled, incomprehensible warnings against masturbation; are beyond dreadful, and maybe as embarrassing to read, as they were for young Maxwell to endure. Maxwell's search for a father-figure amongst older boys, teachers, and uncles, again almost unacknowledged, seems to also be a profound, and unsettling subject in the book. He hints at, but simultaneously denies, that there was a sexual element to these relationships. It's hard to say whether he is inviting the reader to read more that he says into his words or not - what we can certainly say is that some of this (such as secret nighttime meetings with a teacher), would be absolutely in breach of current standards of child protection. His later teenage obsession with his sexual awakening might not be anything unusual, but he writes about it with a curious candour, perhaps telling us more than we might want to know in what sounds like catharsis.

While school was often miserable, Maxwell projected most of his longings on The House of Elrig, which represented belonging, freedom, home and the opportunity to spend time with animals (keeping them, killing them, catalogue-ing the, and drawing them). This love of animals which would so much shape his later life was formed here, in the Galloway Hills. The suspicion that he was more at ease with animals than people is also never that far from the surface of the narrative. School life came to an end after a life-threatening illness almost took him, as a seventeen year old. He was administered the last-rites as Henoch's Purpura gripped his adolescent frame, and internal bleeding sapped his energy. Surprisingly, he survived - despite the misdiagnosis of his birthmarks as ecchymoses by the celebrated Dr, Lord Horder! (Many readers of this blog will have come across Horder from the biography of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the noted Welsh preacher, who was Horder's assistant prior to his Christian ministry).

Lurking in the background throughout this strange tale is the family religion of the Maxwell and Persies. Maxwell makes frequent references to this, but doesn't name the sect in question until the very end of the book. What we learn is that his family, while happy to attend mainstream churches when away from home, were ardent adherents of a Christian group which was tight-knit, and specialised in producing ecstatic experiences, trance-like states, and strange prophetic utterances, in their congregations; they required members to pray from their incomprehensible prayer-books, and frowned upon such things as contraception. While basically orthodox in their core Christian theology, their innovation was an insistence that they were the restored supernatural New Testament Church, and their leaders Apostles. Bear in mind that this was home life, while starchy, formal, rigid stiff-upper-lip Anglicanism was Maxwell's term-time experience. No wonder, he found the whole thing mistifying! Only at the end of the book does he reveal that "our church", was the Irvingites (formally the Catholic Apostolic Church), a very eccentric and now defunct sect, which in some ways pre-figured contemporary Pentecostalism.

Finally, it's rather a sad book. Maxwell appears as a shy, embarrassed, confused, insecure, unwell young man who longed to go back to Elrig and ascend the moors. The glaring absence of his father seems to be the great elephant-in-the-room (or is that the elephant on the page), which would make Maxwell, another victim of the Great War. Although the book ends, with Maxwell and a friend, roaming the Elrig estate, it's hard not to imagine that the road ahead will not be easy for this youngster, after all that the War, the dreadful schools, the strange people, inflicted upon him.

An Lochan Uaine & The Ryvoan Pass

Lovely afternoon stroll in the Cairngorms, with old friends.......

Balhomish

On The Balhomish track, Murthly Estate, Birnam.