Back to Lime Craig

Ben Lomond from Braeval

The first blue sky in February prompted me to make my first attempt on Lime Craig for nine months to test my new hip. I made it, although it took 45 minutes, about 15 minutes longer than it used to take on cold winter days. The shock was the devastation caused by recent felling operations; the planting had been carried out in the 1930s, so by now the steep slopes were smothered by giant spruce and pine trees. I suppose I have been lucky over the past 38 years to have enjoyed the protection of the trees on wet and windy days. I have made the best part of a thousand ascents during this time; the birdlife and red squirrels have made every excursion a treat. How they will fare in this coniferous holocaust is another matter.

The well-graded trails have been churned by tree harvester machines and lumber lorries, creating a veneer of undulating mud and timber debris across the logscape. On the ascent, I met a couple teaching their one-year-old daughter to walk; her smile was almost as wide as her parents' pride. On the descent, I met a lady dressed totally in pink with a nervous four-year-old greyhound. The lady was as desolate as I was about the felling, and her dog could no longer chase the squirrels, which were as elusive as electric hares.  I am now aching, but happy and celebrated with my first beer of the year.

Logscape

Pine Relief

Balquidder Munros

Ben Vane and Ben Ledi

 

199 and Out

It was another gorgeous morning, cool but still, blue skies patterned by nature's artistry of the cirrostratus clouds, creating patterns that blow your mind. It was a significant day; I had finally come to terms with my age and condition. I have always been an optimist, believing that I should be able to continue to do things I had always done.  Running all the way up my regular hill, Lime Craig, was proving tricky. I last did it in 2020. After the lockdown, it was difficult to build up the fitness to run up the steeper sections of the 300-metre hill. I continued to go up three or four times a week once they removed the tapes that prevented people from going up hills. Unlike golf, sailing, and other high-end outdoor sports that had convinced Boris Johnson to allow them the freedom to roam with impunity, hillwalkers and runners were still deemed a danger to social isolation.

The result is that I have been stuck on 199 runs up Lime Craig since my first ascent in 1988. I had intended to donate a bench for the summit on reaching 200 so that I could have rest there during my dotage. I had even spoken to the Forestry Commission to see if they would allow me to transport it up the narrow private track. As it happened, they decided to provide a bench in 2021 and by serendipity, I was there on the morning they were installing it. At the time, I was going up the hill four or five times a week for my morning exercise. I helped the two forestry workers find the best position so that visitors could enjoy the views westwards along Strathard, Loch Ard and towards Ben Lomond. 

I had started to run up the hill from Aberfoyle in 1988 when we moved there from Glasgow. I was a road runner but training for the Snowdonia (Eyri) Marathon, which involved 3061 feet of ascent in three major climbs. Two laps of Lime Craig gave me 1800 feet of ascent and 13 miles, and became one of my training runs. A year or so later, I started hill running and began to run it on Sunday mornings with Matt Ogston, the secretary of the Scottish Hill Runners, who lived nearby. He would sometimes invite his club friends from Hunter's Bogtrotters or Westerlands to join us. They would return to have tea, toast and showers at our house afterwards. 

The ascent of Lime Craig became quite competitive, and I managed to set the record from the house, a distance of 5.54 kilometres to the summit via Dounans Camp and Braeval. I brought the record down to 23 minutes 42 seconds in 1990 when I was running it 20 times a year. The first section, from the house through the village, Dounans Camp, and along the rising trail above the golf course, was 3.56 kilometres and featured a 95-metre climb at a pace of 3 minutes 42 seconds per kilometre. The final steep 2-kilometre section from K corner above Braeval was achieved in 10 minutes 29 seconds at a pace of 5 minutes 15 seconds per kilometre for the 190-metre climb.  

Had Strava existed then, it would have been a crown. My time of the final climb from K corner remains only a few seconds short of the present Strava crown held by Gregor. The descent was a different matter. Matt and some of the hill runners were fearless on the initial steep stony path towards the David Marshall Lodge, and I lagged behind until the long, gentler descent trails when my road running pace allowed me to catch them.

After I gave up racing in 1994, Lime Craig became more of a run for a good day or when I was feeling frisky. The frequency dropped to 5 or 6 runs a year, and the 200 mark became elusive. I ran it occasionally when John visited for the weekend, or with my old hill running partner, Keith.  After retirement, on Tuesday evenings,  I sometimes ran it with Angela Mudge's running group; we even ran up on Boxing Day morning when I took a flask of hot mulled wine to the summit. 

Lime Craig was also a place to walk the children, take visitors or go for an evening walk if I was not feeling like a run after work. Over 300 excursions were made during the 30 years living in Aberfoyle.

Post-COVID and after the move to the new house, Lime Craig became the main objective for my regular exercise, but from the Braeval car park. It is a 7-mile journey from home and only  2.5 kilometres to the summit, although it includes the same final section from K corner. I have made another 400 walks/runs up the hill in the last five years to add to the previous ascents. They are timed, and with four or five sections of running, I was breaking 30 minutes until the end of last year and managed a best time of 25 minutes. I usually run down, taking around 15 minutes at a pace of 5 minutes 30 seconds for an extended route down that is twisty and involves some steeper sections.. 

Today was different; I had decided to forget about the time and just enjoy the remarkable Spring scenery. Bluebells, gorse and broom were in flower, the birds provided the chorus, and the skies were a kaleidoscope of images. I took photos of the route as a perpetual memory of the backdrop of the run/walk that I have done the most times in my life's journey. Lime Craig was where I went to exercise, to reflect, to write talks, to release my endorphins and where I went to find solace on the day that Aileen died. 

Despite the perfect morning, there was no one else on the hill today. I reached the top in 39 minutes; it was a breeze, and time no longer mattered. This was the day I accepted that 199 was just another number and there was no need to add any more.

The photos below are in order of ascent and descent.

Start of the steep path from Braeval

K corner

Recent tree felling has opened the views

Craigmore ahead and turn right

Keep going, the halfway mark

Broom and Gorse Glade

Pine skyline

Looking south to the Campsie and Whangie

Patterned Skies

Final section

Path to the summit looking down

Summit 

Summit Bench and Ben Venue

Craigmore to Ben Venue

Ben Ledi

Ben Lomond and Craigmore on descent

Winter on Lime Craig

Lime Craig ascent

It was so cold that the bins could not be emptied, the lids were frozen. The predicted heavy snow had not arrived, just a fine sprinkling like icing sugar to sweeten the walk. I left it until 11:00 a.m. The roads were mainly cleared but devoid of traffic. As I entered the Braeval car park there was only one car and it belonged to a friend who had just spent an hour and a half on the trails without seeing anyone. We chatted for a while and as I set off up the hill my hands were already numb from the cold. The grip on the thin layer of snow was good but I walked at a more sedate pace than usual, enjoying the spectacular scenery. It was a joyous blend of blues, greens and whites with only the occasional robin and buzzard to highlight the tranquillity.

Occasions like this, still cold air and amazing clarity are the perfect conditions for thinking. I replayed some memories before focusing on how best to set up a new blog on behalf of some colleagues. I pattered around the summit for a few minutes, soaking up the midday sun before a relaxed descent. Unfortunately, I arrived down as the 1 p.m. news started for the short drive home. It was yet another day when the UK's rag bag of a government was repurposing its wretched Rwanda policy, giving a good impression of its suicidal tendencies. Has there ever been a government that has spent so much on so few and achieved nothing at all? Well, perhaps Rishi Sunak's £2bn spending on crony VIP contracts for PPE but at least Lady Mone got a yacht out of it.

Looking north-west

Ben Lomond and Ben Venue

Braeval

 

Aberfoyle Trail Half Marathon

Podium with Craig Mhor behind

Outsider Events had organised a Trail Half Marathon in Aberfoyle, the route was a loop in the forest south of Loch Ard, including my favourite section of trail alongside the southern shore of the Loch. I have not been running races since Covid but I was sorely tempted. It covered the routes that had been my staple runs for over thirty years; I must have run the various sections of the trail on over 2000 occasions. Gregor entered the race; he has only been running seriously for 8 years, but has built impressive palmares in recent years. I collected him and drove him to the start, and whilst he registered and started the race, I took myself up Lime Craig on the steep path that begins at Dounans camp. 

Lime Craig is the other run/walk that I have visited on over a thousand occasions, either as a run, a walk with the children or in recent years as a fast walk ascent and a run on the descent. I never tire of the exercise it gives, the forest and mountain landscapes and the wildlife. Today, we had the first frost and one of the rare days of sunshine in the last month. The conditions were sublime, and the autumn colours were making the views spectacular. Ben More and Stob Binnein were capped in the first snow of winter. I ran down the longer route to the David Marshall Lodge, overtaking a cyclist who was gingerly negotiating the gravel track damaged by last week's floods. I was back in the village twenty minutes after the race had started, so I decided to visit some old neighbours, whose son was Gregor's best friend at school. He was also running the half-marathon. I was provided with a coffee and enjoyed playing with his two young children before taking them to watch the race finish.

Gregor won by a few minutes despite having been knocked over by a dog during the run and losing a couple of minutes whilst he was checked out by a physio, the friend of the dog's owner. He and another runner had been going too fast for the bike rider, who was supposedly leading the race but could not keep up with them on the undulating terrain with over a thousand feet of climbing. He saw the funny side of it and apologised to them after arriving a few minutes after them at the finish. 

I had first taken Gregor out on these trails as a six or seven-year-old for two-mile runs. He shares my love of them and seems quietly determined to secure a victory on the trails that have kept both of us happy and relatively sane for most of our lives. 

Approaching the finish on Manse Road

The lead cyclist apologises to the lead runners

A family affair

Craig Mhor and Aberfoyle from Lime Craig

My bench at the top of Lime Craig

Ben Ledi and Ben Vane from Lime Craig

Storm Frank floods Aberfoyle

Forth floods Aberfoyle from the flank of Creag Mor

Main Street Grand Canal

Police Scotland without a motorbike??

Water junction

Land Rover delusions

Another one bites the dust

Well, that was an eventful morning. After a night of Storm Frank, formerly known as torrential rain, the flood levels had reached their highest levels by mid-morning, and still, the cars tried to get through. A timber lorry hauled out a car that was bobbing about between the hedgerows and towed it to the road opposite the Baillie where it was then dunked again as the river levels continued to invade the village. Then a brand new Range Rover Evoque was driven at speed into the deepest part of the flood before it began to float and then waltzed around in the swirling floodwater by the old post house. I have seldom seen such a carefree or careless, you decide, exhibition of driving.

We entertained a young couple from Aberdeen who had sensibly decided to wait for the floods to recede and needed a restroom. They are hoping to attempt to return home later but they may have to wait a few hours, or maybe days, before they can escape. Meanwhile, they have left their car in the drive and we have escorted them through the woods to beyond the floods where they can catch a lift back to Forest Hills to spend time with their family.

The views looking down from Creag Mor showed that Aberfoyle had acquired a couple of new 'Frankwater' lochs on either side of Manse Road. The main street was flooded, and bags were being dispensed as part of the usual belated and often pointless but nevertheless ritual celebration of flooding. Richard wore his waders to get through to buy his paper but even the co-op was closed so no crossword only cross words. The flood damage to the shops and Forth Inn could be substantial and expensive to rectify as was the case following the Aberfoyle Deluge three years ago. Maybe the Woollen Mill will be having a genuine flood sale!

Meanwhile, we are still waiting for the go-ahead for the ever-so-expensive flood prevention measures. They could have been constructed years ago (2002-2003) but for the onerous and time-consuming bidding process set up by the Scottish Government to evaluate proposals for grant assistance. The outcome of the Scottish Government's obsessive control of capital spending has been an over-ambitious and the costly designed scheme by consultants, who alone cost far more than the total cost of the council's original scheme in of c £300k. As soon as government funding is set aside for any development, it attracts a queue of financiers, construction companies, and engineering consultants eager to play for high stakes in the complex bureaucratic process that is endemic with centralised government funding regimes. £12m is a high cost for the Aberfoyle flood prevention measures and with Dumfries and Aberdeenshire now propelled to the front of the queue following Storm Frank, it may be a long time for any approval, if at all.

And so it came to pass, the Scottish Government published its National FloodRisk Management Plan on 11 January 2016. It contains 42 schemes costing £235m and there is no mention of the Trossachs or Aberfoyle although elsewhere in the three-part report it acknowledges that the annual cost of flood damage in Aberfoyle is up to £500,000, not nearly enough to justify £12m on the cost-benefit analysis. Sadly this takes no account of the lost days of education and this must be running at 3 or 4 days a year for the 90 children. There was another day lost to flooding on 26 January that made the national news when the Fire and Rescue team sent out a boat to belatedly retrieve the children from school, they had already escaped by the path through the woods behind the school but some teachers were floated through the village to waiting taxis. The days when professional staff lived in their communities are long gone, their commuting must contribute considerably to climate change.

Storm Frank enforces parking restrictions

Feral Goats and Heil Gove

Right to roam stops at the wall 

The chase

As I returned from my morning run I was surprised to find 8 feral goats nibbling away in the garden. Fortunately, they seemed averse to snowdrops and there was not much else to sate their appetites. I have always enjoyed watching feral goats although they have usually turned up near the summit of remote mountains and they quickly make themselves scarce. This was different, they had invaded my space, stared me out and threatened the garden. Their right to roam was getting personal.

I retrieved my camera from the house and returned to find them disappearing into the next garden over a wall I had rebuilt last year to keep out the wildlife. I followed them into the woods as they herded along with no particular hurry but always managing to keep 20 metres ahead of me. Their oversized horns made me think that this was about the right distance. I eventually gave up the pursuit as they went to inspect the primary school grounds. I returned to check the damage in the garden, it seemed minimal and the heathers that they had been grazing on had needed a trim anyway.

But thinking about why the goats had gone along to the primary school prompted a thought about another feral fiend, the inexplicable Minister of Education, Michael Gove. His activities are indeed feral and he also sports a set of horns, in the form of glasses. He has been invading state schools recently trying to make them more like public schools, by which he means private schools. He was not content with ditching the building or rebuilding of 700 state schools that were in the capital programmes of education authorities and ready to roll. Shortly after being installed he offered bribes for schools to become academies, which is no more than a dastardly form of privatisation and, incidentally, a way of opting out of the national curriculum. He has castigated the performance of state schools, got rid of his independent inspector and offended the majority of teachers as this Heil Gove video implies. And still, the more populist national press humour him, this parody provides a bit of balance.

Do not trust this feral politician

Running Groups

Outdoor gym equipment

I always assumed that I would be able to spend more time running after retirement, but it has not quite worked out like that. I did make a determined effort for the first three months and managed to achieve my fastest times for five years, but then I had a self-inflicted back injury, which stopped me running for six months. Last year, I had a heel problem that took away another 4 months, so my mileage for the last two years has been less than I would normally do in a year.  I recovered from injury in November, and since then, I have managed to run regularly three or four times a week. 

I was already well ahead of my monthly target for January, with nine days to go, and whilst running in the forest, I was stopped by a woman runner and asked if I would like to join her local running group.  I was too polite to say no, and I was intrigued by the prospect of running in a group again. I had spent eight or nine years in running clubs when I was racing regularly but I have run almost entirely on my own for the past twenty years.

So on Tuesday evening, after a hard day in the hills the previous day, I was invited to turn up for some group running therapy. Almost all my running is first thing in the morning, running in the dark in the forest with the temperature having dropped below freezing was hardly inviting. But I went and joined a group of four, including Angela, who had invited me along. We set off at a reasonable pace and headed into the depths of the forest, our head torches vital on trails which are free from light pollution and are harbouring fallen trees.

I ended up running along with Angela, who was running well within herself but slowly increasing the pace. After a mile or so, we decided to take an extra loop than the other two with the intention that we would catch them up after we got back on the main trail. After a couple of miles, I began to lose ground in the pitch dark of the forest, and, unlike other parts of Scotland, there was no aurora borealis here, so Angela had to stop to let me catch up a couple of times.  I was slightly perplexed because I thought I was going quite well, and we certainly caught up with the others, having done an extra kilometre.

When we caught them, I fell into the easier pace whilst Angela went off with one of the other runners for the last mile.  We had run 8 miles, my longest run of the year, and I felt good at the finish.  I came home and looked up Angela on Wikipedia - I knew she was a top hill runner, but she is a legend.  I felt privileged to train in such an exalted company.  Later in the week, I met an old running acquaintance, Peter Cartwright, whom I used to race against twenty years ago.  He subsequently became the world over-50 champion for 1500 metres.  He turns seventy this year and is still training two or three times a day, intending to set some age-level records.  He runs about 2500 miles a year with a pulse rate of 38 and is as hard as nails. He is more than likely to succeed, as he did when he became a top mountain bike rider in his fifties.

The effect of meeting these two dedicated runners was just what I needed. I have now run for seven of the last eight days and managed my highest monthly total for six years. I had fallen into the easy trap of believing three or four runs a week was all I could manage but after nine miles last night with the running group I was out again this morning at a pace I could enjoy on a perfectly still, sunny but freezing day (it was so bright that we generated 6kWh of solar electricity).  Later on, I decided on a 7/29 fitness campaign for this month and took my outdoor gym equipment for a ride in the dark

Forth Floods

G'day cobber

Marcia  wellies her way through

Not the Yangtze just the River Forth in spate 

Lochside residence

November is the month of floods and these last few weeks the road has been closed three times.  As always there is a huddle of cars parked outside the house waiting for the waters to recede before they can get through to Stirling or Glasgow.  We may be 30 miles away from the sea but the river is still influenced by the tide and the waters back up two or three hours after high tide in the estuary of the Forth. When working I was faced with returning home to a flood at least a couple of times a year.  

About fifteen years ago I arrived home with a friend who had just sold his house and was staying with us for a few days, the flood waters were thigh-deep and we simply took off our shoes, rolled up our suit trousers and walked through with briefcases held high above the waters. A neighbour described it as the photo of the year but she did not have a camera handy. It was different today, I decided to collect a newspaper or if truth be told I fancied a paddle. Another neighbour was amused by me wading through the flood for a newspaper and asked me to pose knee-deep in the flood with one leg and running shoe out of the water in ministry of silly walks style; she publishes a daily photo so who knows where it will turn up.

When I returned home three cars had failed to get through and had been pushed out of the flooded section of the road, their engines damaged by the water.  It used to be possible to get through by driving on the pavement which is 6 or 7cm higher than the road surface but traffic calming bollards put paid to that, they were placed near the low point of the road.  I passed several frogs swimming for their life and two fish swam past me exploring their new domain. The current was quite strong and may hopefully one day sweep away the bollards. 

I went in to dry off and then went out again to take some photos, and spotted an acquaintance wading through the floods looking as though he was on his holidays.  He was on the way home from Australia and had travelled 10,000 miles in 36 hours only to be thwarted a mile from home by the River Forth which looked more like the Yangtze; I was happy to give him a lift up the road once he had crossed the deep section.  Later our house became a restroom for the drivers who were waiting for the motoring organisations to rescue their cars outside the house.

Why flood protection measures have not been implemented constantly frustrates me; it requires a retaining wall, no more than a metre in height and stretching for up to 200 metres. Dozens of cars/vans would be saved, the school could be open for two or three days extra each year, many houses and shops would be spared their largely ineffective sandbag defences and far fewer working days would be lost.  By any cost-benefit analysis, it would be a cut-and-dried case.  Instead, it has become caught up in the indeterminable evaluation of priorities set by the Sottish Government based upon hydrologists modelling the floods and then consultants producing an engineering solution that is beyond the declining capital programme of the Council.  If it was a farm track a JCB would sort out the problem in a couple of days as I have seen on dozens of occasions when walking in all parts of the highlands.  It would also mean that the waters of the scenic temporary loch that appears across the road could be retained in the field instead of damaging the roads, the drains, cables, some houses and writing off perfectly good vehicles. Whatever happened to intermediate technology?

Snow in November

Yesterday we had the biggest dump of snow since moving here 20 years ago, it was about 40cm deep by late evening.  Gregor had taken 10 hours to get from Aberdeen to Perth, which was as far as he could get. He ended up sleeping in the mini under a duvet that he bought at the 24/7 Tesco supermarket.  The next morning very little was moving,  the garden birds had moved in under the car which was a virtual snow cave.  Several trees had lost branches under the weight of the snow. 

When I arrived at the co-op to buy a paper and some milk I was told I was the only one daft enough to come out looking for a paper.  The post office was to receive no mail for the first time in the memory of Ros, the postmistress, and she has been there 25 years at least.   There was slow progress on the roads which had been ploughed but the virgin snow pavements were impassable. 

We dug out the drive and eventually managed to drive over to Loch Venachar to take provisions to Granny, who was in good spirits.  We saw two buzzards feasting on road kills and two pheasants sheltering in a roadside bush looking like baubles on a Christmas tree.  Travelling back we watched the sunset over the Lake of Menteith and I made a surprisingly good curry from the contents of the fridge.  Winter!



Lake of Menteith



Creag Mhor from the play park



Baillie Nichol Jarvie