Ben Vorlich

Ben Vorlich summit

Stuc a' Chroin from Ben Vorlich

Ben Vorlich on descent from Stuc a' Chroin

Looking south west towards Ben Venue

Looking west from Stuc a' Chroin

Stuc a' Chroin across Coire Fhuadaraich, ascent route on left

Monday,   23 January 2012, Self

Time:        5hrs 24mins

Ascent:     1240metres

Distance:  15km

m   Ben Vorlich     985m    1hr   42mins

M  Stuc a' Chroin   975m    3hrs 14mins

I am beginning to get a bit worried about the accuracy of the mountain weather information service, it has been my main source for several years but after predicting a glorious day on Meall a Bhuiridh and Creise, which turned out to be cold grey with low cloud, it gave a poor forecast for today. So much so that my original plan to climb these two hills based on the 'sun all day' BBC forecast was almost abandoned.  At breakfast it was dark grey to the west but clear blue skies to the north east in the direction of these two munros. They are prominent and seductive mountains viewed from Stirling on a fine day and there are many days when I was sorely attempted to leave work for them.

It was a later start than I had intended and it was still below freezing so the car had to be scraped before starting out. I guessed that this would be one of those adventures when I passed a large well fed fox sitting next to the road at Braes of Greenock just south of Callander. The journey along Loch Lubnaig was enticing as always on a bright morning but as I turned onto the south Loch Earn road I met black ice and waltzed along the unusually (for Stirling) smooth tarmac just managing to remain on the road. When I parked by Ardvorich House there were two cars there and it was after 10:30am before I started the walk.  The track up through the house grounds and then up Glen Vorlich is a glorious start with the first objective of the day, Ben Vorlich, baring its white shoulders at the head of the glen.

The micro hydro electric scheme that had been under construction when I last walked up this glen two years ago had been completed and a new bridge had been built alongside the upper holding pool.  It was cold and raw as the winds came in from the north west and the ground was rock hard in the icy conditions, I retrieved my walking pole from my rucksack for the climb along a well maintained path that climbs steeply towards the summit. Three walkers from Bridge of Allan were on their descent and they recognised me from work days so we had a catch up on all things from the new curling facility in Stirling to which hill has the most mountain hares - I am convinced it is Ben Chonzie but one of them thought Mayar.

The summit arrived shortly after the sun had been extinguished by cloud and the cold wind made it no place to linger.  I had been told by the Bridge of Allan party that another couple were attempting to go over to Stuc a' Chroin and on the descent to the bealach I caught up with them.  They were in two minds about continuing although they were wearing crampons and wielding ice axes neither of which I had thought about yet. They had become cold and asked me the way down to the bealach, all the paths were hidden beneath the snow, and whether the route up the face of Stuc a' Chroin was easy.  I had climbed it a couple of times in January and knew that it could be tricky so I told them it would add a couple of hours to their day.  I continued down and shortly afterwards they began to follow my tracks.  I stopped for coffee and a sandwich by one of the huge boulders at the bealach and they were arriving at the bealach as I set off again.

On the climb up the steep rocky face the snow had been converted to boiler plates by the freeze thaw process so it was time for crampons for the last 150 metres of ascent, it is fairly uncompromising through the rocks.  I was aware that the couple were following my tracks so I tried to avoid the steeper exposed gullies until two final sections just below the plateau.  On both of these sections I had an adrenaline rush with the exposure and rocks below. I kicked deep steps into the hard snow so they would be able to follow up.  Finally I had to breach the cornice and haul myself onto the ridge by the cairn at 961m.  There is then a walk of about 800 metres to the summit and once again the clouds rolled in and eliminated any views.

I took a few photos and then walked back north past the 961m cairn and along the summit ridge beyond the cornice until I could find a more secure route down into Choire Fhuadaraich.  I was worried about the two walkers whom I had not seen emerge from the rock/ice face of Stuc a' Chroin. However as I climbed out of the Corrie onto the north west ridge of Ben Vorlich half an hour later they were returning from the summit of Stuc a' Chroin along the edge of the cornice.  So although they would not be down until well after dark they were safe. I charged down Coire Buidhe until I reached a hard snow shelf which steepened as I descended,  my ice axe had to be rescued before I could continue to the frozen bog beyond.  It thoroughly tested my new boots as I sank ankle deep into the ice infused bog.  I rejoined the main path by the hydro dam and enjoyed the walk out to Ardvorlich House. It had been an eventful and taxing few hours in some real winter conditions.

Londoncentric Cloud Cuckoo Land

Norman Foster's Vision for the new airport

As yesterday's news about recession in Europe (-0.3%), unemployment in Britain (8.4%), retail decline and more austerity sink in, we were treated to the news this morning that Goldman Sachs had protected their employees bonuses by sacrificing profits. Stephen Hester, the generally well regarded CEO of RBS, is likely to be voted a £7m a year package by the RBS Board despite share prices plummeting by 40%.

The boardroom elite, a self perpetuating club which includes our pension fund managers, just don't seem to get it as they continue to live in a world where it is normal for the ratio of top pay to the lowest pay of full time employees to exceed 100. Even the much idolised John Lewis Partnership have a regressive ratio of 30 whilst most public services, which have a much less regressive ratio of between 6 and 12,  get routinely savaged for this profligacy by both the media and government.

Back on Planet Westminster our political leaders are competing today in a game of 'responsible capitalism' that is clearly aimed at pacifying disgruntled voters in the real world.  The prime minister is even talking about cooperatives.  Talk about shifting the director's chairs on the Costa Concordia.  Because I have little faith in the government doing anything about this I have decided to extend my portfolio of more responsible citizen actions instead.  I have closed my RBS account today on the back of the CEO's pay deal to add to my long term boycott of News International, Coca Cola, Ryanair, Paypal, PC World, Amazon, Starbucks, Asda, MacDonalds and any company that I discover to operate out of a Channel Isles tax haven.

George Osborne is meanwhile handshaking 'comrades' in China and looking for the Chinese to invest in Britain on the government's latest wheeze: a new airport in the Thames Estuary.  It is only a consultation exercise at this stage but it took our attention away from the triple whammy of bad news yesterday.  The gist of the idea is that all that accumulated capital in south east Asia would provide investment to replace government expenditure and this would enable the UK to remain at the epicentre of the world's financial markets by virtue of its mega hub airport.

It would have been a good idea thirty years ago, and indeed Foulness was considered in the 1970's, but that was before the Heathrow expansion and the building of Stansted. But does London really need 6 airports?  The nerve wrenching and time consuming scurry round any of Heathrow, Gatwick or a future Boris Island terminals - dodging through the shopping malls and queueing at Border controls - would make it even more likely for us to use regional airports or less confusing hubs such as Amsterdam or Paris for long haul flights.

The Londoncentric tendency of the government is palpable but the UK is a nation, with constituent countries and city regions, it is not meant to be a megalopolis. The proposed new airport is another example of burlesque gesture politics that suggests the government are creating a disunited kingdom with more than a twist of cloud cuckoo land about it.  A new airport in the Thames estuary with a planned turnover of 130million passengers a year and as far away from the proposed HS2 rail line as it is possible to get is bizarre and will no doubt be used to justify Crossrail 2.  What other country would want to build an airport in an estuary that is slowly sinking, on a protected bird reservation at the opposite end of the capital city than the vast majority of its and the nation's population.  As the tag line for the coalition policies goes  'you couldn't make this up'. The Lib Dems will never be able to live this down.

The posh boys crash hats look ominous

Meall a' Bhuiridh and Creise

Meall a' Bhuridh summit bid

Creise summit

Creise, top of the cornice

Scottish skiing

Saturday, 14 January 2012
Distance: 11km, 
Ascent:    1140m 
Time:       5hrs 16mins


Meall a' Bhuiridh     1108m     1hr  50mins
Creise                      1100m     3hrs 13mins

Apparently, South Africa has introduced legislation which allows independent weather forecasters to be charged for getting the weather wrong.  There were several times today that I thought it might be worth introducing something similar here, although to be fair it is seldom that the Mountain Weather Information Service get it this wrong.  After yesterday's sublime weather, we were told that the high pressure would hold and that it would be another glorious day with a 90% chance of cloud-free Munro summits.  Gregor and I examined our Munro lists and discovered that Meall a' Bhuiridh and Creise were the nearest Munros that we had both yet to do.  This is the location of the Glencoe ski area and much of the walk consists of walking up the ski slopes with the indignity of sedentary people passing you on chairlifts or ski tows.

The morning was grey and cold but we assumed that this would burn off as the day progressed so we arrived at the Glencoe ski area by 10:30 a.m. and began the walk up to the plateau along a new track that had been built with a reasonable gradient.  The ground was frozen hard and by the time we reached the plateau at 700 metres, there was a patchy covering of snow which hastened progress.  By the start of the top tow, the steep snow-covered slopes were hard and icy so it was time to fit crampons for the final 250 metres of climb through the cloud and mist to the summit. The day had not improved and even the skiers had that look of despair that is so frequent on the Scottish ski slopes - visibility of less than 50 metres, cold damp air and a patchy piste coated in fresh ice.

A flask of coffee at the summit was our only reward and then into the wind to cross the bealach over to Creise. The wind had blown away the snow so it was crampons off for the stony descent and the early part of the ascent until we reached the steep final snow and ice section of the climb to Creise through the cornice.  It is about 800 metres to the summit from here over rocky ground and we remembered the time when I had dragged an 8-year-old Gregor around these two hills and lost the car keys on a crazy descent from the nearby top of Stob a' Ghlas Choire.  We holed up in the Kingshouse for about three hours playing pool and darts with some soldiers on an army exercise whilst the spare set of car keys were brought out from home by Ailen after she returned from work. The soldiers treated Aileen with the same friendliness they had shown to Gregor as they taught him to play darts and pool. Aileen suggested to her workmates the next day that they should go to the Kingshouse for a fun evening.

On this occasion we decided against taking in the top and retraced our steps which meant putting crampons on again for the steep descent, taking them off for the return climb to Meall a' Bhuiridh and then on again for going down the icy ski slopes.  The visibility had decreased even more and there were very few skiers or snowboarders on the slopes even though it was not yet 3:00pm.  We walked down at the side of one of the ski tows to avoid the peat and heather and were politely requested not to do this again.  The final descent from the plateau was by a new cycle run which was steep, rocky and highly dangerous even when walking.  So the first Munro outing of the year had merely captured two hills and allowed us some practice with crampons and ice axes.

Farragon Hill

Farragon Hill and Loch Derculich

Route from Edradynate

Friday 13 January, 2012

Ascent:      595 metres 

Distance:   14 kiometres

Time:         3hrs 16mins

c  Farragon Hill     780m       1hr 46mins

After weeks of rain, wind and perpetual cloud, daybreak today brought frost and sunshine.  The moon had sidled up next to Ben Lomond and they gave a passable impression of Mt. Fuji. The berries on the tree in the garden twinkled in the morning frost inspiring a sense of feelgood. We had spent the night before with three old friends, former work colleagues who had all retired in recent months.  We talked about the transition from jobs which consume all your time to the structureless days of retirement and how best to fill them. Whilst there are always things to do, what is missing is the compunction to get out and seize the day. This morning I did just that and headed to a corbett that I had run out of time to climb in 2004.  I had run up the adjacent Corbett, Meall Tairneachan, on the way home from Perth one evening after a meeting about preparing for the G8 summit the following year.  Farragon Hill is craggy and laced with hill tracks some of which serve the Barytes mine which supplies a weighting agent for the drilling of North Sea oil.

I drove up to Strathtay by Loch Lubnaig and on to Killin, it was a privilege to wallow in the glorious winter wonderland on such a morning. I  travelled the length of Loch Tay unable to take my eyes from the hills and the loch and drove on to Aberfeldy. I crossed General Wade's bridge which famously linked the Highlands to Stirling and found my way to Edradynate from where I started the long trek up the south-facing slopes to Loch Derculich below Farragon Hill. The weather and Perthshire countryside were a perfect pairing and the woods were buzzing with red squirrels, pheasants and wood pigeons. As I parked I was passed by a convoy of land rovers carrying a shooting party of 'sportsmen'.  I asked one of them if it was alright to park there so that I could climb Farragon Hill.  He replied curtly that he had never heard of Farragon Hill, and to go and ask at the farm.  The convoy then proceeded to open a gate and drive up a field to be nearer the victims of today's shoot, I was glad that I was going solo.

The early part of the walk towards Loch Derculich was accompanied by a soundtrack of gunshots.  But the scenery was magical after recent weeks and Farragon Hill came into view resplendent against the azure blue sky. The farm track curved to the west and dropped to Loch Deerculich which nestled beneath the hills and was studded with Scots Pine. I skirted the loch to the south balancing my way over a small dam and then cutting across some new plantations to find a track leading northwards. At 550m and approaching the top of the ridge, I struck out for Farragon Hill. It was a stiff pull-through peat hag with the last 100 metres of climb through fingers of hard-packed snow. The summit was a knolly peak, like so many corbetts, with splendid views to the northeast and the Grampians and westwards to the massive bulk of Schiehallion.  It was warm and still and I had the unusual pleasure of sitting and soaking in the sun on a Scottish hill in winter.

I descended more directly down the snow chutes to the track at Loch Derculich and headed south through the forest for a few kilometres before crossing a new plantation which, despite new deer fences had several deer grazing on the saplings. Crossing the full Derculich burn was a leap of faith but I made the bank and remained dry before finding the farm track and descending the last kilometre to the car. Thankfully the sportsmen had disappeared with their bounty.  As an outing, it had been a near-perfect start to the year and I drove back to Aberfeldy and looked around this superbly located town.  A few years ago we had stopped at a Turkish restaurant, Checheks, for an evening meal on our way north to Ben Alder and then the Torridons for four days walking for the September weekend.  Checheks was still there and from the look of the menu worth another visit. The drive home was mesmerising. I watched the sun melt behind Ben More and Stob Binnein into the orange/red skies as I drove westwards along Loch Tay.

Somedays a walk in splendid solitude is the the key to happiness.

Inspiration

Schiehallion from Farragon Hill

Looking northeast towards the Grampians from Farragon Hill

HS2: too expensive and another procurement tragedy

HS2 when not in a tunnel

Some projects defy logic and they increasingly emerge as government policy. One such was yesterday's decision to spend £33bn on a High-Speed Rail Link from Birmingham to London (HS2). At a time when our existing infrastructure is crumbling from underinvestment and dozens of local contractors are struggling to survive, it beggars belief that the coalition government should choose this as a statement of UK growth. I am not against investment in rail or the railways. Existing fares are almost beyond the means of most people as ticket pricing has become market-driven and increasingly complex since rail privatisation. UK fares are several times higher than fares in the rest of Europe, which operate through integrated national railways, not service franchises. When trains are grossly overcrowded and unreliable in many parts of the UK, spending £33bn to duplicate an existing line to save a few minutes is surely not a priority. Many people from the southeast would probably pay more to spend 20 minutes less in Birmingham rather than be tunnelled like moles under the Chilterns and other parts of the Home Counties that aspire to be 'areas of outstanding beauty'.

There are a multitude of other rail or transport improvements, let alone other things, that would improve our lives a lot more than HS2. In recent years, air travel has become more time-consuming with ever longer security and check-in times and flight delays. It has become quicker and with a lot less hassle to travel by train from Edinburgh and Glasgow to the centre of London. This also has the added advantage of avoiding flight delays and expensive shopping malls that airports provide. Add the cost of the short rail commute from airports to central London, which is often as expensive as the flights and it should be a policy objective to reduce short-haul flights rather than allow further airport expansions. 

In the not-too-distant future all the evidence would suggest that people will travel to work less with flexible working arrangements (work is what you do not where you go) and super fast broadband will facilitate this. Supporting these changes would be a better investment and would reap rewards during the next five years not in twelve but more probably twenty years. Or the government could maintain disability allowances, encourage technical education and apprenticeships, allow the cost of living pay increases for public sector workers or improve the dreadful road and bus services that we endure. But none of these have the big bang effect of HS2.  Ministers are obsessed with the prestige that goes with these inglorious visions of 400kph trains tunnelling beneath their angry constituents and they have duped local politicians from Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester as well as Birmingham to go along with the fantasy of HS2 ever reaching the north-south divide. 

Most of the economic damage has occurred in the north but it will take at least another twenty years before Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds and maybe thirty years before Scotland reap any benefit from HS2. This will require more tranches of investment that have not been factored in yet. Surely the experience of the government's procurement debacles such as the aircraft carriers, the NHS IT system, hospital building and the Olympics should have taught us that prestige projects are as toxic for the government as credit cards have been for many young people.

But we have office blocks full of consultants and construction companies pushing the project. They realise that like defence contracts, big infrastructure contracts are cash cows. With school and hospital buildings slowing down and new runways for London airport on hold they need to provide the government with an excuse to transfer a large share of public expenditure to the private sector. This is necessary to keep their salaries at the level that PFIs and badly procured government contracts have guaranteed them in the crazy years from the Iron Lady to Irn Brown. Our finance and construction cartels are the modern equivalent of Dengue fever and just as likely to wreck the prospects of HS2 by escalating the costs until the government or its successor pulls the plug. 

Try downloading the documents, the Department for Transport HS2 consultation documents are at dft high-speed-rail for the proposals and the route has been mapped on the link High Speed 2 Rail Britain Mapped. 

2012 Performance Targets

Most years I set a few targets to make sure that I do not slack and do things that take me out of work mode.  I assumed on retiring a couple of years ago that this would mean lots more time to do these things without spending 65 - 70 hours a week at work. Well it doesn't really work out that way as will be apparent from my 2011 targets - although to be fair I did set the bar quite high in some areas not realising that I would spend so much time working.

So 2012 will hopefully bring more time to be active and run, walk, cycle and travel but that depends on taking the initiative and focusing my energy better.  So here is the list with progress defined through green - on or above of target, orange - slightly below target, red - not meeting targets. As at 31/12/12:

1. 24 books 
2. 60 blog posts - managed to complete 82, the Scottish Hill Blogs are now getting a lot of hits
3. 50 munros - made it just 
4. 20 corbetts - climbed 15, my best year yet but need to be more focused on the corbets
5. 500 miles of running - 1172 miles completed, the best since 1993 and more than 100 miles in 9 months 
6. 1000 miles of cycling probably achieved 250 - 300 miles but rebuilt 2 bikes
7. 40 days of work About 25 days in aggregate but after the last 2 years more like retirement. I am also completing a certificate in Mentoring which has taken quite a bit of time.
8. 3 new cities Vienna, London and Sheffield - the latter two getting to know again   
9. 6 weeks holiday just managed it with 2 holidays in Scotland, Lake District, France and Vienna
10. 2 long distance walks - West Highland Way and started Rob Roy Way
11. Welsh or Irish 3000' hills - managed the Three Peaks Event 
12. Complete Shetland Marilyns - only one to go but sadly I never made it up to Shetland

Certainly feel a lot fitter after all the running and a decent number of days walking. 

Browned Off

Gales massacred more local forests

Today saw the new year begin the way the last one finished with abrupt and violent gales of over 100mph. We were awakened by the house shaking and the trees in the garden were bending at right angles. Just the onset of another year of climate change weather and we have been without power all day yet again. Since the arrival of the new Scottish Government Transport Minister, Keith Brown, we have had more bad weather disasters than in the previous ten years combined. Any competent statistician would be able to prove that the correlation between this increased number of weather events and the minister is very high.

The daily utterings of the Scottish Government have a dated irrelevant quality about them.  Installed in the Civil Emergency Centre in Edinburgh they collect and disseminate information and tell you what has been happening on a macro scale. Fine for voyeurs of bad weather but not much use to people in communities who want to know is the school going to open? are the carers going to visit? is it worth putting out the wheelie bin? and when will we get the power or telephone/broadband connection back?  Fortunately, a transistor radio and local radio stations are far more useful as are the websites of the power companies and the councils. Life is a bottom-up process, not a top-down one but this does not fit easily with the power-crazed mindsets of central government mandarins or ministers.

By the time we heard the minister on the radio mid-morning, the wind had abated, trees were down, vehicles had overturned and electricity had long gone. He was peddling old news, not advanced warnings or useful information. In conditions such as these, it is communities that matter, they are neighbours and providers along with the local public services.  And if we want to watch or hear about what is going on across the country then there is a very fine institution called the BBC that does this better than anyone else. When you want to take your kid to school or discover if the local road is flooded or closed it is local information from the service provider that matters not more soundbites from Big Brother.

The return of power happened in the late evening after we returned from an evening meal in the nearest village with power. A gang of SSE engineers had been having a meal in the pub and they were able to tell us that they had now restored the power.  We returned home to watch the BBC Dickens season, it has served up some tasty television over recent days including Armando Iunucci's genuine and affectionate appreciation of Dickens as a radical campaigner for social justice.  Christmas Carols may now have given way to Hard Times but on yet another day lit by candles, it can appear that we are back to the times of Dickens. We are just as much in need of some social justice today as in the nineteenth century because avarice and the abuse of power are almost as devastating to people's lives as climate change.

Thankfully, Scotland has been closed for the second day of its new year public holidays whilst its citizens sober up so we have been spared the devastation that might have occurred had people been working and children at school. Let's hope that the minister takes a day off tomorrow so that the service providers can get on with sorting out the aftermath of the latest weather without having to waste time feeding the minister with generalised updates that he can broadcast to the nation.