Christmas Morning

Santas Bothy

Zip Wire to 2013

Great Chocolate Reading Granny

I was berated when the kids were young for insisting on a morning walk before any opening of presents. Today there was no complaint about a walk up the local hills by Gregor straight after breakfast. We even blagged some ghluwein from a party of festive walkers at the top of Lime Craig.

Granny stayed in bed until we returned for the present opening. She will no doubt finish the pile of books before the 2013 bells and chocolates well before that.

Craigmore, Aberfoyle

Craigmore

Loch Ard, Ben Lomond and Arrochar Alps from the summit

Looking northeast to snow-capped Ben Ledi

Ascent:              370 metres
Distance:           4 kilometres
Time:                 1 hr  5 mins
Craigmore         387m   35mins

Craigmore sits behind the village of Aberfoyle and beckons you as you arrive from Stirling or Glasgow. Its fine steep southern face was a former whinstone quarry that provides the blue-grey dolerite building stone for the traditional buildings in the village. To the north of the hill are the old slate quarries that provided the railways and much of central Scotland with their roofing material. I was told by the last manager that less than half the slate had been extracted when it closed.

There has been no attempt to reopen the quarries since 1996 when geologists from Glasgow University looked at the possibility of sourcing slate for the roof of the Great Hall at Stirling Castle. Alas, Spanish slate was chosen instead and, on the grand opening of the restored Great Hall on a blustery St Andrew's Day 1999, the flimsy Spanish slates were heard tippling down the roof to the palpable amusement of the Duke of Edinburgh as a young harpist played for the Queen and First Minister. Maybe the proximity of Tradstocks, one of Scotland's main providers of natural building stone, will prompt a re-examination of commercial extraction in the future.

The routes to the summit start from the David Marshall (DM) Lodge. The original path, which I normally follow, starts about 50 metres above the entrance to the DM Lodge on the right curve in the Duke's pass road. This path has become overgrown in recent years since the opening of the new route. The path cuts diagonally through the bracken and brambles and crosses the track leading to the old whinstone quarry. Beyond this, the path crosses an old fence and steepens. It is quite distinct as it climbs the shoulder of the hill. You pass a large boulder and a couple of fir trees before reaching the old tramway that brought slate from the slate quarry down to the village. An old stone-built section of the tramway is where the path crosses a channel and climbs steeply again. At the top of a ramp, it joins the new path which arrives from the Duke's pass. From here the path climbs and then follows a level section along a boggy ridge before dropping to a bealach and then the final ascent up a rocky path to the flattish summit. There is a small cairn overlooking Loch Ard with fine views of Ben Lomond and the Arrochar Alps beyond.

The more recent route follows the path to the waterfall from the DM car park and turns left to a path that keeps to the west of the waterfall and climbs through the birch forest to the Duke's Pass. Crossing the road here leads to a path which zigzags its way up the hillside for an ascent of 200 metres before joining the original path. The path also feeds into a short traverse parallel to the Duke's Pass and after about 400 metres the Craigmore path requires you to turn sharp left on the less travelled path that is easy to miss when the bracken is high in summer. If completing a circuit of the hill this is the better route for the ascent. The descent by the original route is far quicker and although steep gives splendid views of the village and the Forth Valley.

From the summit, the walk can be extended to Ben Venue but it is a long slog (2 hours) through bogs, tree plantations and quite undulating before it curves round to the superb summit of Ben Venue. It is better to treat Craigmore as a mini hill and an alternative to the ever-popular Ben A'an at the other end of the Duke's pass. If extending the walk, it is worth following the old tramway to the slate quarry which offers a dramatic examination of our industrial heritage. Craigmore is a good hill on a clear evening when there are views down to the hills of Arran as well as over the Campsies to Glasgow. But best of all is the arc of munros from Ben Lomond to Ben More - west to northwest. And the fact you can be down and home in 15 minutes if the weather or mood takes you and your legs are willing.

Schiehallion

Monday, 10 December 2012
Ascent:     805m
Distance:  9km
Time:       2hrs 58mins

m  Schiehallion  1083m    1hr  43mins

The pressure was rising, the temperature dropping and a cold day with a stiff northerly wind was forecast. A good day for Schiehallion with the possibility of a corbett in Glen Lyon afterwards. By the time I had assembled my winter gear, unloaded the logs from the car that I had collected the day before and filled up with diesel, it was 8:15am, about half an hour later than planned. The traffic on the A84 was light but slow in the icy conditions. Loch Tay was glorious and the slopes of Ben Lawers were amply covered with snow although the summit was in cloud. The drive through Fortingall and then over to Tummel Bridge was perfect, watched over by buzzards on telegraph poles and pheasants in the hedgerows. The final 3 miles of road to the Braes of Foss was on sheet ice and required patience and a delicate touch on the accelerator. It was 10:00am before I set out in winter boots, with ice axe and crampons strapped on my rucksack and with a walking pole to help me stay upright.

The car park was a skating rink and the path was initially an extension of this, it was like walking on Fox's glacier mints, even Peppy would have fallen over. After the flat section the path steepened and was a mixture of crunchy snow and gravel path which had been built by the John Muir Trust in 2003 on the first of their land purchases to safeguard Scotland's wild places. Before this there was an overused muddy path which had scarred the north face and made Schiehallion a must avoid hill. The reality is that it has an aura of magic, with its history of scientific discovery and the magnificent views in all directions. The long broad summit ridge is a jumble of quartzite boulders that lighten up the bleakest of days as well as testing your dancing feet.

I made good time up the path to the ridge at 700 metres where extensive snow cover meant crunching through the snow hoping that the sun kissed crust would not break. It was like walking over a meringue, or should that be a pavlova, because when it did collapse it was knee deep soft snow below. It was energy sapping as well as slow progress. A pure white ptarmigan appeared at about 800 metres and accompanied me for a few minutes, one of the simple delights of a winter walk. At 900 metres there is a cairn/ shelter and a lone walker appeared out of the mist on the descent. He was equipped for the worst of weathers although like me he had resisted the temptation to put on crampons. We chatted for a while, he had driven down from Inverness and was trying to make the best of the good winter conditions.

It was bitterly cold in the northerly wind and I regretted not having a hood on my down jacket. Although the lower slopes were blessed with low angled winter sunshine, Schiehallion was draped in cloud with visibility down to 40 metres or so. It is a long haul over the boulder strewn ridge to the summit which is a bit of a disappointment: a micro cairn on a small rock outcrop but with some good rock shelves which are south facing and sheltered from the northerly winds. I stopped for a drink and tried to capture the cold loneliness of the summit on camera.(see above) Last time I had been here I was accompanied by about 25 people and several bottles of bubbly.(see below)

The descent was tiring because of the concentration needed over the boulders at first and then the snow and ice on the path lower down. I met another walker on his ascent and he could have been dressed for one of Scott's expeditions. When I described this on returning home I was admonished for not taking sufficient clothing: an icebreaker base layer with a lambswool sweater and a lightweight down jacket was all I had. I was down by 1pm and after a coffee I had to decide whether to go up to the head of Glen Lyon to climb my last corbett in this part of the highlands. If the road was as bad as the Braes of Foss road it would take over 45 minutes before I could start walking and then 3 hours on the hill. Did I want to be out on an ice crusted hill after nightfall? For once logic prevailed and I drove home, although as I soaked in the bath at 3:30 it seemed a terrible waste of a good day.

And in more clement weather, 2008 compleation

London calling

Ice skating at the Natural History Museum   

Covent Garden

Pimlico skies

London was dressed up and gung-ho for Christmas at the start of December. Ice skating outside the Natural History Museum, carols at Covent Garden, the sky crisscrossed with jet streamers and even the  MI5 building glowing like a nuclear power station as evening sneaked in. As always the contrast between rich and poor was stridently evoked. London seems like another country and 'London calling to faraway towns' seems like an apposite invitation to a foreign city with the British-born population now in a minority in this cosmopolitan crossroads of corporate governance and cultural pollination.

Undoubtedly this diversity makes London an exciting city but there is a bubble of international wealth that has colonised much of the city centre whilst the centrifuge of the housing market ditches the low-income households off to the outer suburbs or beyond. Crossing the roads in Knightsbridge involves dicing with Range Rovers, exotic Italian jobs, blacked-out limos and the odd Boris bike. We were the only lunchtime diners in the cafe not drinking champagne or wine. The Oyster card allowed us to escape Harrods and its wannabes and join the thronging streets of shoppers and office workers east of Regent Street, where service workers on less than a living wage and destitute characters exist in a parallel universe to their fellow citizens.

Some of the inner suburbs such as Brixton and Shoreditch seem to have found a niche in this game of chance and with their vibrant melange of cultures and provision of services that accommodate every need, they are attracting an energetic younger population that will nourish their regeneration. I doubt that Chelsea and Westminster will evolve in the same way, it has priced itself out of the UK economy as a virtual tax haven and is now the only borough with a declining population - is this the start of London falling?

Leveson Inquiry: Jousting with Euphemisms

The response by the PM, David Cameron, to the Leveson Inquiry has been a useful gauge of the declining morality of Britain. The recommendation from Leveson was a statutory underpinning for a regulatory system to provide an "appropriate degree of independence from the industry, coupled with satisfactory powers to handle complaints, promote and enforce standards, and deal with dispute resolution". Cameron's response was obfuscatory, he has "serious concerns and misgivings" about legislating for a regulatory body and "the danger is that this would create a vehicle for politicians ...to impose regulation and obligations on the press, something that Lord Justice Leveson himself wishes to avoid".

In many ways, the PM provided the very evidence of why a statutory framework is necessary. Like the Press Complaints Commission who rejected many complaints against newspapers, he simply extracted what he wanted from the Inquiry Report. He ignored the key recommendation and then jousted his way through Parliamentary Questions with a pre-rehearsed set of euphemisms to imply that he agreed with much of Leveson.

He refused to stand by the recommendations of Leveson for a statutory underpinning and by doing so justified the imperative for a motion in Parliament to determine the need for legislation. The victims of Murdoch's invasion of privacy were not duped by Cameron's duplicity. The British public is angry at the latest evidence of the subservience of the PM to the press barons. There have been two petitions with more than 100,000 signatures calling for some statutory regulation. According to a YouGov poll, 79% of the public support some statutory underpinning for regulation. Cameron may sound reasonable (and even chillaxed) but his actions are unreasonable in his quest to bury the Leveson Inquiry recommendations.

Meanwhile, some of the more self-acclaimed 'ethical press' are arguing that it was the small minority of newspapers (Sun, Mail, Express, Mirror, Telegraph) who have misbehaved, regional newspapers never behave in such a manner and that to legislate for the crimes of Murdoch is an overreaction. Anyone who has personal experience of press reporting (national or regional) knows that the stories that emerge in the press leave out facts that do not fit their slant and emphasise those that do and by the judicious use of headlines and photographs to give the reader a very lopsided view of events.

Maybe the press is becoming an increasing irrelevance in shaping opinions but when it gets personal it does have irreversible consequences and people feel besmirched for life. This is why Leveson was right to stress the need for an independent body and his suggestion of Ofcom to oversee a revamped Press Complaints Commission was prescient in that this could be extended to the abuse on the internet at a future date.

The only conclusion you can reach is that the press has such a hold on Cameron that it is overriding his normal inclination, which is to sway with the public mood. This would surely tell him to implement Leveson. The counterargument advanced by Michael Gove, the Barclay Brothers, Richard Desmond, Lord Black and the hopelessly optimistic PCC chair, Lord Hunt, comes from a vanguard of characters who are hardly blessed with an independence of spirit. Nor do they have ethical standards that give them the gravitas or entitlement to convince the public otherwise, they are only slightly less toxic than the Murdoch mafia. 

Aberfoyle Deluge

Bank corner -  synchronised wading

Flood Sale

Flood and Rescue

Loch below the Covenanters, but the eyesore of the Covenanters remains

Coop closed

Another holiday for the school

Water sports centre, Lochard Road

This is the worst flood since 1950 said the man in waders climbing the steep path behind the school to access the Duke's pass in order to march right back down to the village. And so it was, the water had reached the bottom of the drive at Menteith House and was waist deep along Lochard Road. The school playground was flooded and the Main Street was knee deep with a strong current clearing the pavement of street furniture and almost floating the post vans. The roads service and the Fire (or should that be Flood) and Rescue service were distributing sandbags to the already flooded shops and urging shoppers and voyeurs to get back.

It is not unusual to have floods in November but the rains of last week had swollen the rivers, saturated the ground and a night of continuous heavy rain coupled with a high tide conspired to create a local harbinger of global warming. The minister was moving out today to her new parish in Perthshire, or at least hoping to, but god moves in mysterious ways. Hopefully she will not need to wait 40 days before the removal men arrive. The man in the waders regaled me with stories of the rowing boat that had acted as a ferry in 1950 between the Baillie Nichol Jarvie and Menteith House. A young woman reminded me about the time I dragged her and her brother through the flood in a rubber dinghy and then speculated on whether there would be a real flood sale at Guyana.

Meanwhile, several houses that had never been flooded before were sand bagging furiously as the water lapped up the garden paths in search of thresholds to cross. The early van drivers had been trapped and sat in their cabs, the post did not get through, the children had another day off school. Friends have been calling to check the flood levels. When will they build that levee that was proposed all those years ago?

Jimmy Quinn takes charge

November Nihilism

Blue skies and bare branches - a model for corporate tax evasion

 Commissioner policing - a single strand of democracy

Dying public services swallowed up by sphagnum outsourcing   

November is my least favourite month as the light fades, the leaves fall and the dreich damp days get even shorter. This autumn it seems that representative democracy is also dying. In recent weeks we have watched large corporations, which have cheated governments of taxes for years become global pariahs in the eyes of an increasingly energised electorate. The same electorate that has chosen not to exercise its right to vote for police commissioners or for the government for that matter, the Tories received votes from only 30% of the electorate in the last election.  

Elsewhere there are multiple stirrings of employees and customers demonstrating their opposition to the government contracting out services to global companies who reward executives and exploit workers in an exhibition of corporate greed. They bring along a rope of professionals who feed on the ever more lucrative processes of outsourcing and procurement. The time is ripe for a mass outbreak of nihilism against both corporate and political governance. Don't expect any outcomes!

It is hard to find a newspaper or a senior politician that is not appalled at the level and extent of corporate tax evasion. The same newspapers that have carried adverts to invest offshore, and the same politicians of all parties who have refused or turned a blind eye to the long-running scam of tax dodging. Amazon, Starbucks and Google may be getting the headlines for tax evasion but there is much evidence that the majority of FTSE 100 companies have engaged in the same ploys to reduce corporate taxes. Although the generally recognised ethical businesses like John Lewis, the Coop and even some of the big companies like BP have a more honourable track record. In the latter case profits, and with them go taxes, are needed if they are to pay dividends to sustain our pensions.

Despite attempts by several newspapers to expose the scale of the problem, it is difficult to unravel what is the level of the unpaid tax. In total it is generally reckoned to be of the order of £125bn per annum.  More than enough to refire the economy and protect many public services which are being devastated in all sorts of ways that are not yet understood. It would help if the Inland Revenue would cooperate to make the scale of the evasion (legal or not) more transparent so that there could be greater scrutiny by the army of investigative citizen sleuths. One thing is becoming quite clear, the public is seething and wants to use their wallets and their credit to punish the miscreants. Even the Chancellor seems to realise that the public has knocked down the door of corporate tax evasion and he would be foolish not to seize the day and rattle the cages of the global corporate offenders.

I watched the first Police Commissioner being interviewed after his election by the rag, tag and bobtail of electors that had bothered to turn out. "I will do everything possible to reduce crime", he said, "but it is not just a job for the Police, we must involve local councils and the public". Exactly, which is why the local police were established by and responsible to the municipalities in the first place. As they merged they became Joint Boards and the chairs became puppets of the Chief Constables whose ever-increasing operational responsibilities disallowed any interference from elected representatives. In the top-down budgeting regime of Cameron's Britain, it is asking too much of lone commissioners to understand let alone challenge massive police forces. They have become more insular to protect their budgets instead of collaborating with other services that are equally important in the drive to reduce crime.  The danger is that the commissioners will soon be house trained to voice the demands of Chief Constables.  

If success is measured in crime rates and clear-up rates then it is the smaller more localised police forces that are the most successful. They usually work closely with the local council at a community level. The Metropolitan Police is hardly a model for the rest of the country with a track record of institutional corruption and racism that is well documented and unenvied by the rest of the Police authorities. I have worked with well-governed police forces where informed and knowledgeable councillors encourage corporate working, community involvement and accountability in ways which the police commissioners will have great difficulty replicating. Perhaps the electorate intuitively felt this and refused to be conned by politicians who failed to make any case for this new form of autocratic governance.

The third strand of nihilism concerns the increasing scepticism of the benefits of outsourcing public services. The well-documented failures of G4S during the Olympics highlighted this but there are similar examples across a multitude of services from care homes to rail franchise operators. The police, NHS, further education and local government are being forced to transfer services to scavenging outsourcing companies, it is usually accompanied by rising costs and loss of local ownership. Localism is being sacrificed on the altar of mythical efficiencies. The sense of indignation by communities and their local representatives of all political parties is an anger that will not be easily assuaged. They did not want this but it was imposed by successive governments who have been too easily swayed by the vast array of lobbyists and professional service companies who have sponsored their way into the inner sanctums of central government. A central government that lacks any procurement savvy but also believes that their big-ticket procurement failures are endemic across all other public services. This is not usually the case with localised and competitive procurement, although there are some exceptions.

At the local level, local companies have lost business to national or global providers who are better equipped to play the complex procurement games invented by some of their numbers who have been seconded to the government and devise the rules of engagement. This is despite the fact that local companies usually have good relations with public services, they are likely to go the extra mile to deliver services in their own patch and unlikely to demand additional payments for unspecified activities. But this is the root of the issue, governments of all persuasions have hocked themselves to the outsourcing companies rather than trusting in localism with its values of community, trust and respect. The outcome is not just the loss of small local businesses with altruistic motives and good customer care,  but ultimately the long term cost of the service. To paraphrase Mrs T, this government is not for learning.

News International versus BBC

So Prime Minister Cameron has questioned the size of George Entwistle's payoff from the BBC at the same time as claiming that the government would have a "hands-off approach" to the BBC, which must resolve its own difficulties. A year's salary for being encouraged to resign from an organisation that he had worked for 26 years and a job he had held for 8 weeks is maybe generous but no more than sacking him would have cost. He has also lost his career and reputation all for displaying integrity and openness that was naive in the cynical world of the media.

Meanwhile, over at News International just three weeks ago, the Telegraph announced that Rebekah Brookes had received a £7m payoff after showing little integrity and no transparency during her 10 years as editor of the Sun and the News of the World and then as Chief Executive of News International. Currently awaiting trial for her role in the phone-hacking debacle, she was also responsible for commissioning and publishing stories that have damaged hundreds of lives. Did the Prime Minister pass any comment? It may be that integrity and transparency are debased values in Murdoch's world. It may also be that private sector payoffs running at more than 15 times the rate for public broadcasters are what the posh boys consider reasonable. It is after all pretty well the ratio of top salaries in the private sector compared to the public sector in the UK.

We instinctively trust the BBC because it acknowledges its mistakes and has been its own fiercest critic in the last month. But most of all it produces programmes on radio and TV as well as films and documentaries that are cherished for their quality and objectivity. It has a real-time website that is the first point of call for many of us during the day as we seek to keep abreast of world, national or local news. Yes, it is a loosely integrated operation with a lot of responsibility devolved to programme-makers who are expected to operate to the highest ethical standards. (Is this not the model extolled for the successful digital age company?) When they get it wrong, as they do from time to time, they are ruthless in reporting the criticism made of the BBC, even if at the same time they defend themselves as they did with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant which was celebrity-driven drivel in the rain.

All the BBC services together: radio, TV, film and media cost no more than £12 a month, an absolute snip compared to News Corporation's part-owned Sky packages that are three times as high at typically £37 -£41 a month with no radio, media or educational content, let alone a world service. Sky is also largely dependent on off-the-shelf programmes bought from more creative broadcasters like the BBC.

So why is George Entwistle trounced whilst Rebekah Brookes gets texted lol from the PM whilst taking a payoff fifteen times as much? News International has seized the opportunity to trash the BBC as have the government.  Is it just because the BBC is more progressive, ethical, transparent and egalitarian in its outlook? Or is it because News International and the government are fundamentally opaque, patronising, regressive, elitist and tolerate inequality as well as promoting it in its many guises?

Cycling Cornucopia

Sometimes you enter a world and you wonder whether it is real. It happened today; on the advice of  a couple of cycling friends I had taken four wheels to be trued or rebuilt. Wheelcraft is a remarkable cycle repair shop in the attractive hamlet of Campsie Glen and hosted by a master wheel builder - Big Al. It was like entering a tardis. I was sent through from the front of the shop which was looked after by three bustling mechanics to the 'workshop' behind where Big Al was sitting in the window spinning wheels and telling stories as off centre as the wheels he was truing. He was surrounded by a cast of customers and enough wheels and cornucopia of cycle components to save the world.

Customers are friends and friends are customers in what is really a front parlour. The patter was eclectic covering favourite routes, worst roads, characters, bike components and everyday life. Nothing was hurried and after he found my wheels he began to true the last one. Requests for sprockets, chain wheels, brakes, spokes were all met positively and usually found eventually which is more a testimony to Big Al's memory than his storage system. Coffee was made and drunk, metric diced with imperial measurements and the world was trashed and then saved. We were informed that one cubic metre of sea water can provide enough magnesium to build a bottom bracket.

The audience rotated as more friends arrived on bikes to request an improbable bike part, drink free coffee and listen to the stories. This was a real coffee shop collective with no tables or staff but a lot more guffaws. It was like a cyclists edition of QI with Big Al directing affairs in the manner of Stephen Fry. Just don't tell him he's a national treasure.

American Presidents and One Thousand Miles

14th Best President...so far

When I woke up at 5am, I decided to get up and check the American Presidential election result. I switched on just as the news agencies call for Obama passed the magical 270 mark. It was a relief, like most Europeans I have been concerned about the outcome of the Presidential elections. The optimism following the end of George. W. Bush's (Dubya) second term in office was infectious. This time we have watched two candidates spend the GDP of a medium-sized African nation mainly in trying to destroy their opponent. The American Dream that had inveigled our lives had been savaged by Dubya and further destroyed by the Tea Party and GOP's lurch to the extreme right. Best summed up in this authentic Dubya quote:

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

Romney's concession speech was gracious, he wished Obama and his family well and called for all the American people to work together. Obama took time to prepare his response and then gave his supporters and the watching world 25 minutes of rising rhetoric. Starting with an ode to Michelle, whom he claimed everyone loves and including a positive response to Romney's proposal to work together. Although the event did not have the epoch-making significance of 2008 it appeared, as if unleashed from having to consider how to achieve another term, that Obama was determined to tackle some of the wicked domestic and world issues. He even mentioned the devastation of global warming, the first time I had heard this recognised during the time and money-wasting months of the campaign.

He would be wise to stick to his promise to focus on rescuing the fragile economy. I have lived through twelve presidents and their legacies are often not worth more than a hill of beans.

• Truman ended the Second World War with atomic bombs but helped create the United Nations and gave us the Marshall Plan
• Eisenhower stopped France and Britain from behaving badly over Suez and put an end to McCarthyism
• Kennedy gave us the Cuban missile crisis
• Johnson prolonged the Vietnam War but started the journey toward equal rights
• Nixon was tricky and impeached
• Ford was not Nixon and could not chew gum and walk at the same time
• Carter was honest but damaged by the Iran hostages and a collapsing economy
• Reagan reduced taxes, introduced Star Wars and ended the Cold War although this legacy was mainly down to Gorbachev
• George Bush gave us the first Iraq war and the economy collapsed
• Clinton said it was the economy but was then diverted by interns
• Dubya gave us the second Iraq war and engendered disbelief in the American Dream
• and so far Obama has given Americans universal healthcare and shot Bin Laden

It is not a peaceful list of achievements and no President has allowed the United Nations to play its full part in peacekeeping either. They have used the World Bank and IMF to extend 'freedom' but really to allow American companies to invade many emerging countries in Central and South America, Africa and Asia to reduce budget deficits by outsourcing many public services. And yet as the exit polls showed yesterday, 60% of voters think the economy is the top issue, followed by healthcare. Only 4% now believe that foreign policy is the top issue. Since FDR Presidents seem to have swallowed the American Dream whole, Obama should perhaps take on the  challenge of Don DeLillo's observation in Americana that:

“It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams” 

After watching the results I decided to go for an early morning run in the steady drizzle. For the first time in months, I took the iPod with a playlist of running tunes. I passed the 1000 miles for the year during the run, the first time since 1994, and I was elated. It also may have been the drizzle, the iPod or the relief at the election result but I reached the 3-mile point a minute ahead of my PB and, by the top of the hill at 4 miles, I was 2 minutes ahead. I was on fire.

The iPod was on shuffle and by coincidence on came Bruce Springsteen.  Maybe it was because I had seen him with Obama the day before, but 'I'm on Fire' sounded like an abridged pastiche of Obama's victory speech as he emerged sweating and relieved from the stress of the election.

'At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the
Middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
I'm on fire
whoohoo I'm on fire.'

He's on Fire

Well, Mr President let's hope if you are on fire that this benefits the whole world and not just Michelle.  In the Historical rankings of Presidents of the United States, based upon the opinions of political scientists and academics,  President Obama currently lies 14th equal, the highest placing of any President since John F. Kennedy. He now has 52 months to make a difference and resurrect a nation in turmoil. Those ahead of him are:

1.  Abraham Lincoln           1861 - 1865
2.  Franklin D. Roosevelt    1933 - 1945
3.  George Washington       1789 - 1797
4.  Thomas Jefferson          1801 - 1809
5.  Theodore Roosevelt      1901 - 1909
6.  Woodrow Wilson           1913 - 1921
7.  Harry Truman                 1945 - 1953
8= Dwight D. Eisenhower    1953 - 1961
8= Andrew Jackson             1829 - 1837
10. James K. Polk                1845 - 1849
11. John F. Kennedy            1961 - 1963
12. John Adams                    1797 - 1801
13. James Madison               1809 - 1817
14= Barack Obama                2009 -

If he makes the top ten even Republicans may believe he was born in the USA.  On current evidence, it is certainly difficult to see the Republicans ever regaining the progressive policies of Theodore Roosevelt.

Rob Roy Way: Pitlochry to Aberfeldy

Pitlochry - River Tummel from suspension bridge

Fonab Wood

Leaving the forest, Strathtay  ahead

Descending to Strathtay

Grazing

Beached sheep

Beech woods

Tay at Grandtulley

Tay towards Edradynate 

Tay by Aberfeldy

Pitlochry to Strathtay/Grandtully         8km       2hrs 25mins
Grandtully to Aberfeldy                        7km       1 hr 40mins

The Rob Roy Way is one of a dozen or so long distance walks in Scotland that have been developed in recent years. Jacquetta Megarry was the driving force behind establishing the walk which traverses the Central Highlands from Drymen to Pitlochry. It is 77 miles long and, as well as crossing the Highland Boundary Fault, it passes through some of the territories that Rob Roy patrolled. I was invited to the official opening of the walk about ten years ago but forgot about it and went out hillwalking instead. Earlier this year it was accepted as one of Scotland's Great Trails following some much-needed waymarking. Today I decided to make my peace with the Rob Roy Way and headed up to Pitlochry so we could walk it north to south over six days in winter months.

The early morning frost and mists disappeared as we travelled up to Loch Tay and the hills were capped in a good layer of snow down to 650 metres. We parked at Aberfeldy but by this time the mists had descended and the cold air did not auger well. We caught a bus to Pitlochry via Ballinluig and prepared ourselves for a day in the clouds but the sun reappeared as we arrived in Pitlochry. We started out immediately dropping from the main street and crossing the river Tummel on the suspension bridge. Crossing the A9 is probably the most dangerous part of the walk with vehicles nose to tail at 70mph on a non-dualled part of this veritable death trap.  The traffic noise is soon left behind on the waymarked path to Strathtay. The path climbs through well-tended farmland and through the Fonab Woods to Fonab Hill with spectacular views back to Pitlochry and beyond that to the snow-capped Ben Vrackie.

There was a lot of harvesting of timber taking place and the tracks were heavily churned so we were pleased to exit the wood after crossing the ridge and gaze down into Strathtay with the mist still girdling the broad sweeps of the river. The descent over open moorland was a real treat, the slopes were festooned with pheasants, dotted with grazing sheep, traversed by rippling burns and lower down copses of copper coloured beech were enclosed by dry stone walls clothed in moss and lichen. 

In Strathtay we sauntered through the old village with its graceful stone houses; red squirrels were putting on aerobatic displays in the gardens. We crossed the Tay which was gurgling with a fast current through the rapids. Grandtully is a centre of canoeing and the reasons were self-evident. A stop for some soup at the enticingly named Chocolate Shop was probably a mistake, it is better to keep moving on long walks. It was cold and dank as we set out again just after 2pm, although the sun soon returned to warm the spirits.  Finding the railway cutting was not as simple as it should have been but once on the old track, the route to Aberfeldy was easy going. It overlooks the river and the specimen trees on the banks made it a delightful walk. Again we disturbed pheasants along the railway cutting and all along the trail the colours of the trees displayed their many hues.

Eventually, the path leaves the old railway embankment which veers to the south and follows the banks of the Tay. The Tay was a menacing sight, the current moving and eddying swiftly with a colour defying description. Dark but not brown or blue or green and not quite black either; not opaque but not transparent either.  We disturbed ducks and swans as we followed the path until reaching the cemetery at Aberfeldy where we had a brief altercation with some dogs before hitting the road. We were not tempted by Dewars 'world of whisky' as we entered the town. I was pleased to see that the cinema was undergoing a refurbishment following a grant from the Big Lottery to the community. This saga had been going on for years and the sense you get in Aberfeldy is that it is a once-solid market town that has lost its purpose. The cinema, the development of adventure sports in the quite outstanding surrounding countryside and maybe some Harry Potter wizardry from a local resident is needed to restore the fantasy realm of Strathtay.

It had been a good and easy start to the Rob Roy Way and arriving in Aberfeldy before 4pm allowed us to be home before nightfall. The next two stages may prove a little more difficult to execute unless we can find a B&B to split the walk between Aberfeldy and Glen Ogle.

Manchester revisited

Town Hall: Gothic splendour

Abraham Lincoln's statue in memory of the abolition of  slavery

 Arndale Centre but could be any city

I made a long overdue visit to Manchester on my way to Sheffield for a training event. My grandmother and father had been born here and it was the only city that I regularly visited as a boy. My great-grandmother's terraced house in Ardwick had been destroyed during the Second World War a few days before Christmas 1940. My father, only 18 at the time, travelled 35 miles to rescue his grandmother and mother's sister. He found them in a street of rubble, they had taken refuge under the kitchen table. Manchester seemed a grey dour place in the 1950's although this may have been the journey through Salford and the depressing digs where my great aunt lived. She compensated for this by having an optimistic and positive outlook on life that rubbed off on everyone and she further endeared herself to everyone by knitting jumpers for all the family. 

I was offered a place at Manchester University, which considered itself the best of the red bricks (Birmingham,  Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield) but I went to Sheffield instead. It seemed less austere, more vibrant and was further away from home. I did live in Manchester, staying with a friend for a few weeks during the four-week Easter break before finals but it seemed perpetually dull and wet. 

The vibrancy of the city only shone through as I visited its football grounds by virtue of having flatmates who supported Manchester City and Manchester United. I watched most of the Manchester United games as they progressed to the  European Cup Final in 1968 and saw them defeated 6-3 at the Hawthorns just a few weeks before the European victory. Despite all the eulogising of Best, Law and Charlton, I thought that the outstanding player of the era was Colin Bell of Manchester City. He had the complete set of skills and the energy and professionalism to display them in every game. On other occasions on travels to and from Sheffield, I used to stop off at Old Trafford to watch County Cricket with my friend Phil Ellitson whose father was on the Board and got us in to watch the wonderful team when Lancashire had Clive Lloyd in his pomp.  Even seeing Clive fielding with his panther-like speed and ability to hit the wickets with laser-like precision was to appreciate a wonderful skill that scared the hell out of batsmen.

It is over twenty years since I spent any time in Manchester when speaking at a conference on regeneration at a time (1988)when Manchester was down on its heels and Glasgow's regeneration was seen as a template. Since then it has blossomed and the numerous new developments along the canals near Salford where the BBC has relocated seem to bear this out. Whatever happened to the Salford of Don Whillans?

I got off the train at Deansgate so that I could walk across the city.  Deansgate is the sort of shopping street I like and is a rarity: specialised shops with well-represented outdoor shops and a smattering of old-style shops like newsagents and tobacconists. I happened upon a splendid statue of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Square, commissioned as a result of the support of Lancashire cotton workers for the abolition of slavery in the United States. I walked through the lanes between Deansgate and Albert Square, the setting for the magnificent Gothic Town Hall. The Manchester of the Victorian era produced some splendid buildings that gave the city centre civic dignity and the feel of a big city. This and the arrival of the BBC are playing well as other contenders for the second city such as Birmingham seem to have lost impetus as the UK economy continues to decline and city budgets are slashed. 

And then into the modern shopping centre which was flush with shoppers even on a day when Manchester was under a canopy of dark grey, nothing had changed there. Piccadilly Gardens and the Arndale Centre were a bit naff after Deansgate and the Town Hall so I continued to Piccadilly station. It is not one of Manchester's finest walks and the station is a hotchpotch of different styles without any of the magnificence of terminus city stations. Manchester had disappointed me although I had only observed a cross-section of the city centre. As a venue for events, Manchester has much to offer, but is it as much fun as it was in the days of going to the fairground, the zoo or watching stock car racing at Belle Vue?

When I arrived in Sheffield, the water features, Andrew Motion's poem on the high-rise building in Sheaf Square and the welcoming Millennium Museum did more to lift my spirits in an hour than Manchester had managed in over three hours. I spent 20 minutes at the John Ruskin exhibition which had a fine display of paintings of Venice and American birds as well as more recent additions in the eclectic Ruskin Collection which was established for the education and to nurture the creative juices of the Sheffield metal workers. I treated myself to an hour in a bookshop, something that eludes me nowadays with the Kindle by passing the tactile temptation of books.

From Piccadilly

Belle Vue Dodgems - Ena and Minnie

Renewable Energy

My renewable energy roof

In recent days there has been a deluge of reports and counter briefings on renewable energy. Proposals for wind turbines in the Monadhliaiths, west of the Cairngorms and turbines off the Angus coast would double Scotland's capacity of wind power. In addition, the government are inching towards the next generation of nuclear reactors. These announcements have brought out opposition groups who seem to believe that electricity can be generated by some process which requires none of the above options nor, indeed, any upgrading of the transmission lines that feed electricity into the customers.

Scotland is already generating 35% of its electricity through renewable sources. The huge post-war hydro schemes were a substantial part of this and wind turbines and solar have made up most of the rapid increase over the last decade.  There are also an increasing number of micro-hydroelectric schemes that I have discovered during walks in remoter glens. The great potential of wave and tide power has yet to be harnessed on a commercial basis and current estimates are that it will be 2020 before this is possible.

I remain open-minded on the environmental impact of wind farms having seen the devastation of landscapes in the United States. We must protect our sensitive areas but there are many unpopulated areas of unproductive land and no intrinsic landscape quality that might be enhanced by some brutally functional renewable engineering totems. Just as steam locomotives, bridges, viaducts and reservoirs captured our imaginations in the past.

I remember as a student in Liverpool walking the bleak seafront at Bootle and Crosby prior to the Burbo Bank offshore wind farm. This has been transformed by the wind turbines as well as Andrew Gormley's statues of bathers. Crosby is now an award-winning beach with distinctive features adding interest to the bleak vista across the Liverpool Bay.  The proposals for wind turbines in the Forth estuary, east of  Angus, the central belt of Shetland and the Monadhliaths, an empty wilderness seldom visited by anyone, would add interest to these land and seascapes. In the way that the existing Burra Dale turbines in Shetland give a sense of pride compared to the incongruous industrial oil-fired generating plant a couple of miles down the road in Lerwick. Conversely, I was delighted when the proposals for a massive wind farm on the flat peatland moors of Lewis were turned down in 2008, this landscape is far too sensitive.

Ten years or so ago I was involved in identifying locations for new wind farms and negotiating with energy companies. One of my main concerns, apart from protecting the outstanding landscape areas, was to encourage community involvement in the planning and ownership of wind farms and ensure a funding stream for the benefit of the local community. Landowners have benefited hugely from the rentals for wind farms and capturing some of these income streams for the local communities is vital to prevent the exploitation of customers that is endemic in the private provision of existing energy sources.

Competition has rewarded the companies significantly at the expense of consumers who are forced to 'go compare' the devious tariff games played by the big six providers. I don't want to change my energy provider in the same way I don't want to spend hours trying to finesse my way through rail ticket scams or bank savings rates. I want honest and realistic pricing from companies that I can trust. Some ownership by the consumer usually goes some way to achieving this, which is why nationalisation is no longer the bogey it was painted in the Thatcher years.

At the more mundane local level, the most frequent question from my neighbours is how much electricity am I generating from my solar panels. The first year is just complete and the 16 solar panels have managed just short of 3000kWh during a largely sunless year. This meets about 75% of our needs over the year although we export most of the electricity generated in summer and are dependent on other sources at night and in winter. My estimate is that with the feed-in tariff it will take 7 or 8 years to cover the capital cost but the sense that we are doing a little to reduce the need for carbon-based electricity is perhaps the most important feel-good factor about the installation.

Another beach, Crosby -  Burbo Bank turbines

Burra Dale windfarm, Shetland

Monadhliath plateau

Women's Timber Corps

Women's Timber Corps bronze statue

I have been mesmerised over the past week with the splendour of the autumn colours this year. The same thoughts were echoed in a feature on the news this morning.  It prompted a morning walk round some of the local forests and the results were spectacular. The colours on display were pure genius: copper, mustard, vermilion and fading greens all set against a cloudless autumn sky.

Rowan

Larch and Spruce

Bare Birch 

Oak - the Duracell leaf

The native oak and birch woods were surrounded by the planting of conifers in the inter war period. In 1942 the Women's Timber Corps was re-established and made a huge contribution to the management and exploitation of the forest resources. The 'lumberjills' were trained in a fortnight to wield axes, operate sawmills, drive the tractors, haul logs with horses and transport the timber by truck to the railways. It would take at least that long to do the health and safety training alone nowadays. They were then billeted in the main timber producing areas of Scotland where they felled trees and made pit props, telegraph poles, ship's masts, railway sleepers, timber for road blocks and wooden crosses for war graves.

The Corps was disbanded in 1946 and they were finally recognised in 2007 by the commissioning of a bronze statue which was erected by the David Marshall lodge. The bronze was in harmony with the autumn colours and provided a powerful Boadicea like image in morning sun. It prompted the thought that had the Women's Timber Corps been responsible for planting they might have tailored the conifers into the landscape far better than the men of the Forestry Commission, who seemed unable to think outside straight lines and blocks when planting the undulating hillsides with platoons of conifers.

At least that phase is over and Forestry Enterprise are making great progress in replanting some of the native species as the conifers are harvested across the vast Queen Elizabeth forest park. I am just hoping that the replanting will not need to extend to the shapely ash trees that are found randomly around the edge of the forests and at the end of the garden.