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.