End of a Dystopian Year

The future is here

The last journey of 2017 on mid afternoon, 31 December, perfectly summed up a tragic year. The no. 2 bus was crossing the Vauxhall Bridge between the MI6 building and a platoon of multi-storey flats that looked bereft of inhabitants. The harsh urban landscape was vacant of people and traffic and dulled to death beneath the grey cumulus clouds. It conjured an image of the distempered politics and society that the first viral flush of Brexit has produced in 2017.

It echoed with the views of a senior civil servant that I spoke to yesterday and what the papers have reported today. Few civil servants believe that Brexit will work but nevertheless all other activities by departments have been sacrificed by ministers on the altar of a trivial pursuit for a false sovereignty.
R.I.P 2017

Stronachlachar

The Arrochar Alps over Loch Arkaig

After another night when the mercury almost disappeared we drove up to Stronachlachar. It is always an inspiration with the Arrochar Alps beyond Loch Arkaig luring you onwards towards Inversnaid before the alternative attraction of the road to Stronachlachar pier on Loch Katrine. There were quite a few cars parked but everyone had retired to the excellent cafe. We strolled along the lochside taking in the scintillating views and admiring the Victorian engineering that had provided Glasgow with clean water since 1852.

The by-product was to make the Trossachs a favourite tourist destination for the central belt residents in the Edwardian era. It prospered in the days when the ferries and railways provided a fine round trip for walkers or cyclists from the railway station at Balloch by ferry up Loch Lomond to Inversnaid and then to Loch Katrine. There were youth hostels and hotels on the approaches to Callander and Aberfoyle from where trains were available before these lines closed in the 1950s and 1960s as road travel ruined the sort of sustainable tourism that we yearn for today.

The area has become a mecca for the sort of coach tourism where visitors are held captive in group hotels and trailed round the so-called 'woollen mills' that are sourced with cheap imports. There has been far too little attempt to attract the energy and enterprise of younger visitors and residents. Cyclists and adventure racing events are beginning to exploit the natural advantages of the area including the hundreds of miles of forest trails, proximity to the main centres of population and potential for outdoor activities and promoting local arts and crafts.

The Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park has been notably poor at encouraging creative enterprises utilising indigenous produce and materials to entice visitors or at facilitating new housing and environmental developments with distinctive sustainable designs. The National Park has been too wedded to conservation, there has been no encouragement of development and the main centres of Ballat, Callander, Aberfoyle and Killin have stagnated since the inception in 2002. It has failed to take advantage of its designation to the extent that the Cairngorms National Park has achieved since it was designated at the same time. The Cairngorms has had a more open approach to developments, this maybe because responsibility for planning was retained by Highland Council. There has been a resultant strong insurgence of younger people keen to live, work and promote an outdoor lifestyle in the Cairngorms national park.

View down Loch Katrine from the pier cafe

Loch Katrine from Stronachlachar

Tourists

Loch Katrine and Ben Venue

The pier cafe at Stronachlachar

Boxing Day, a whiter shade of blue

Snow melt

Apart from the big freeze of Christmas 2010, I cannot remember when Christmas Day was not a grey day during our thirty years here. It was the same again this year but there was an overnight snowfall to brighten up Boxing Day.

Boxing Day is normally a day for some outdoor activity to recover from the Christmas eating fest. Unseasonal sunshine gave us chance to enjoy a walk up Lime Craig before abandoning our attempt to cross the waterfall above so we could climb Craig Mor as well. We decided on dry feet instead and returned to enjoy the Christmas leftovers.

View from the house

Queen Elizabeth Forest from Lime Craig

Ben Lomond top right

Ben Ledi

 Thirty years ago this would have been normal on Christmas day

Winter Solstice

Warning skies

The past fortnight has given us the coldest spell for several years with temperatures down to -7°C on most nights. Over the past week a veneer of sheet ice has been welded onto the pavements and tracks. Running was out of the question until this morning and even then I had to walk a good mile or so as some trails in the forest were sheathed in lethal wet ice.

There have been some gloriously bright frosty winter days between the darkness that descends with an ominous gloom by 4pm. The garden trees have taken on new colours, almost festive with their frosted profiles etched in the cobalt skies. These days have encouraged walks in the immediate vicinity but I am struck by how few people seem to venture out to experience the raw beauty of the winter solstice. I understand why hibernation seems like a good idea, doubly so with the continuing political travails that exist at the global, national and local levels. 2017 will not be missed.

Lake Hotel for lunch

Loch Ard as the sun sinks

Creag Mhor

Ben Lomond

Frosted Silver Birch

Cotoneaster waiting for the redwings 

Magnolia

Polyshambles, the Brexit negotiations

Unwitting Saviours of the Customs Union?

Brexit, don't you just hate it and all the confusion it causes as well as the all-encompassing damage it is imposing on so many aspects of life from inflation, failure to tackle real issues, political hatred, and the mood of despair. This week has been both the worst of worst weeks and, just possibly, the best of worst weeks.

One of the frequent phrases thrown about by Mrs May during her ill thought out General Election campaign was that "we have a plan for Brexit", unlike the Labour Party who were dismissed as being all over the place. Six months on, she is still claiming she has a plan. No one has seen it and, sadly for her sake, it is not shared by many of her cabinet, or the age advantaged ranks of the Tory party, or the DUP, or the civil service.

This week started with yet another collapse of negotiations as the DUP called foul on Mrs May in her attempt to obfuscate the proposals to have no border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and to remain outside the customs union. The chief negotiator, David Davis, made another bored cheery chappie appearance at the 'Exiting the European Union Parliamentary Committee' and showed no remorse for having misled the Committee into believing he had impact assessments for 58 industrial sectors. Nor did he have a contingency plan if there was no deal or know what day of the week it was tomorrow. Four days later Mrs May returned to Brussels in a pre-dawn sortie armed with words trawled from a thesaurus by her team of advisers that were designed to confuse the DUP, amuse the EU and create a temporary truce in the cabinet, who then hailed her as the new Boadicea.

I have really struggled to understand the implications of the agreement after watching several news programmes and reading numerous articles. Then a friend sent me an article from the Irish Times, Ireland has just saved the UK from the madness of a hard brexit, by the excellent Fintan O' Toole. It seemed to shed some light and also gave some sense of hope that the hard brexiteers may have been wrong-footed. This was confirmed when the serial duplicitous brexiteer, Michael Gove, claimed that we could change the proposals agreed by voting to change them at the next general election.

Meall Buiridh, Glen Ogle

Radio Mast below Meall Buidhe, Ben More behind

Wednesday, 29 November 2017
Ascent:    475 metres
Distance  8 kilometres
Time:      2 hours 35minutes

Beinn Leabhainn    709m   1hr 10mins
Meall Buidhe          719m   1hr 29mins

The cold spell had continued for  a whole week and today promised to be sunny albeit with cold northerly winds. With no munros or corbetts within 3 hours of home and still suffering from a heavy cold and a bark of a cough, I looked out a reasonably close and easy Graham to climb. Meall Buidhe seemed to meet the criteria, a 40 minute drive away and only 3 hours including the adjacent hill Beinn Leabhainn. The start of the walk at the top of Glen Ogle is where a RAF Tornado jet had crashed in 1994, an event that led to a new manual on Emergency Planning procedures that was not much use for the next emergency, the Dunblane shootings.

There are 320 metres of ascent by a good track to a massive radio aerial. From here the going gets tough but today the boggy ground had been frozen hard and there was a good sprinkling of fresh snow. I decided to climb Beinn Leabhainn first so that the wind would be behind me for the walk over to the higher twin summit of Meall Buidhe. The going was not easy with wind, snow, icy patches and heather conspiring to make each step a bit of a lottery. Still, it was probably preferable to the bog that would prevail at other times of the year. The views opened up as I clambered upwards. The Ben Lawers range was partly in cloud, Ben More and Stob Binnein were shimmering in the west and the long ridge of Breadalbane hills looked tempting in the snow. There were a few grey clouds about to give the day a feel of deep winter. 

I reached the summit and for the first time all year celebrated with a flask of coffee. It was too cold to sit for long and the summit of Meall Buidhe looked very distant. I had to check the map on my phone to make sure of the route across. It involved a walk across a frozen lochan, a steep drop and then another 50 metre climb. The views towards Ben Vorlich and Stuc a' Chroin at the summit were good although the late morning sun was directly above them.

The descent to the track was more tricky with some rock bands to negotiate and the snow lying deep between the heathers. I decided to head back to the radio mast rather than take a more direct route and enjoyed another 10 minute break for coffee once I was protected by the hillside and regaled by the sun. I was back at the car just after noon. The A85 was clogged with lorries driving slowly so I listened to Prime Minister's Question Time that was thankfully Brexit free. I have never known such a pathetic palaver as the government's attempt to deliver its divorce papers to the EU but today the depute prime minister, Damian Green, came close in attempting to defend the government's management of the NHS, it will not end well if there is ever a pandemic.

Breadalbane Hills from Beinn Leabhainn

The Lawers range across Loch Tay

Ben Vorlich and Stuc A' Chroin across Loch Earn

Looking north to Beinn Leabhainn

Cold feet guaranteed

Tarmachan in winter

Sgiath Chuil across Glen Dochart

Rob Roy Way: Strathyre to Callander

The start of the section at Strathyre

Thursday, 23 November 2017
16 kilometres, 3 hours 10 minutes

My attempt to walk the Rob Roy Way has been abysmal. I started about 4 years ago and completed the fifth section today(Two more to go). I treat it as something to do on the odd half-day when I do not have the inclination to go hill walking. I had a dreadful winter cold and cough and had been struggling to summon the energy to even walk to the shops. I had spent a few days moping about the house, sorting out accounts and watching the budget. The early morning fog had cleared to reveal a good dump of snow down to about 400 metres on Ben Lomond. I needed a walk so drove to Callander and caught a bus to Strathyre so that I could walk back the 16 kilometres to Callander along the west side of Loch Lubnaig. It was 12:15pm before I started the walk by the newly refurbished Munro Hotel.

The low angle of the sun meant that most of the walk would be in shadow but the compensation would be the scintillating views across the loch. The primary school at Strathyre was undergoing a major refurbishment. It had been one of the better primary schools with about 40 pupils and excellent staff. It had taken a lot of effort to close the nearby Lochearnhead Primary School which had only 7 pupils, most had already elected to go to the Strathyre school. What should have been a logical and straightforward decision was delayed unnecessarily by the new Scottish Government in 2007. They believed that all schools should stay open and that decisions like this could be centralised with little understanding of the local issues such as the inclination of the headteacher to retire. Most parents considered the 4-mile journey by school bus to a high-performing school with 3 teachers and a wide range of activities preferable to being taught by a single teacher for 7 years in a school in need of a refurbishment that was unlikely. Devolution was never supposed to be about the accumulation of all decision-making in Holyrood.

The narrow road leaving Strathyre passes a lot of former Forestry Commission houses, some of which had been extensively modernised, others lay empty. Eventually, the cycle and footpath leave the road and by a series of zig-zags descend to the old railway track. Most of the going from here is relatively flat as you pass Laggan House, where a lot of construction is taking place. A micro-hydro scheme has been installed and the generator was buzzing. I had estimated about 3 hours for the walk and was halfway through before passing the first person, a teenager who was pedalling his mountain bike at speed from the south. The sun had disappeared for a while but reappeared to spotlight the opposite shore of the loch where Ardchullarie House stood proud. This was where Jim Kerr of Simple Minds and Patsy Kensit had lived in the late 1980s.

I was halfway along and the path on the former railway line that cuts through the conifer plantations with a dogged monotony. As I approached the Forest Holiday chalets, 44 of them, the pedestrian traffic increased with dog walkers taking their afternoon stroll in the sharp winter sunshine. A couple of professional dog walkers from Glasgow told me that they came every year, and loved the location but felt it was becoming too corporate with prices to match. The cafeteria welcomed passing visitors and the offerings were tempting but I didn't need any refreshments.

It was still a couple of kilometres to the Stank from where the path to Ben Ledi starts. I scanned the snowline above and decided not to today. I continued along the footpath to Kilmahog realising that I would pass the Lenny Falls. Although I have lived, walked, cycled and run in the area for 30 years I had never been to see them. The river was in full flow and the falls impressive as they gouged their way through the rock bands. Approaching Kilmahog I was feeling the effects of the walk but I managed to keep a decent pace across the meadows to Callander. I had organised a charity run along this section many years ago but like all of the paths from the Forest chalets south, it was now a tarmac trail, easier to maintain but less forgiving on the feet.

It was just after 3pm when I entered Callander. Two Police Scotland vehicles with four officers were patrolling the car park for what reason I could not fathom, it was fairly empty apart from a mother and her children feeding the ducks. When policing was local it would have been a foot patrol but nowadays Police Scotland is for most of the time absent and when on a rare visit they are hermetically sealed from the local population by their vehicles. I have seen few if any benefits from the creation of a national police force. The police have lost their formerly close relationship with communities which was the essence of effective policing. Instead, the closure of local offices, putting officers in cars, driving with sirens blazing, arming an increasing number of officers and getting rid of civilians from back offices have not endeared them to the public, or local or national politicians. All of which was predicted when the changes were mooted. The Police Board have not exactly distinguished themselves and they seem to be trapped between the extensive operational powers of the Chief Constable(s) who rotate as quickly as their local superintendents at the Council level and the interference from the Scottish Government.

I strolled down Callander's main street aware that it had lost much of its charm since it was absorbed into the National Park in 2002. The loss of many local shops and the Royal Bank and the decrepit state of many commercial buildings together with the woollen mills and charity shops on the main street have damaged the viability and vitality of the town. The steady stream of commercial and tourist traffic on the A84 heading north to places that have exploited their attractions with more finesse is a warning that has not been heeded by either businesses or the National Park. The investments by the NHS in a new Health Centre, together with the Council's refurbishment of primary and high schools, the building of a new sports centre and proposals for a new cemetery are the only signs of progress in the town.

Forgotten logs

Loch Lubnaig from north

Across Loch Lubnaig to Stuc a' Chroin

Ardchullarie House

Looking back up Loch Lubnaig from south

Beinn Each and Ardchullarie More

First snow

Forestry Chalets

Lenny Falls

Kilmahog crossing

Callander Meadows

The budget

Brexit mutineer captured

They just don't get it. Phillip Hammond gave an upbeat performance for someone with a reputation of having less charisma than a spreadsheet. Not that it made a lot of difference. Like all Chancellors, he threw out a lot of positive-sounding figures, most of which were repeats of existing spending plans but were being reduced (although this was not mentioned) because of falling productivity and income streams.

Whilst some effort was made to make a case for housing investment and extra money for the NHS, the proposals were soon exposed by the political analysts as political hype. Even the right-wing commentator and bruiser, Andrew Neil, skewered the lamentable Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss, by showing that on any measure things had just got progressively worse since 2010. For example, social housing had fallen from 36,000 houses a year in 2010 to just 5600 a year in 2016. Even the extra money for social housing would only support an extra 3000 houses per annum and her claim that they were building more houses was simply preposterous.

A great play was made by Hammond of the investment in HS2 and Crossrail, the two biggest infrastructure projects in Europe but both further concentrating investment in the southeast. Meanwhile, the TransPennine route may get some cash for broadband on the trains. That's the extent of government priority for the northern powerhouse for you.

The main omission of the budget, as in every year since 2007, is that local government and public services have been sacrificed on the altar of treasury ignorance and ministerial incompetence. Ten years of austerity has resulted in many services barely functioning. 25% of staff have been lost through retirement, redundancy and non-replacement of leavers. Buildings and land have been sold off, supplies and services cut back and important regulatory functions are failing to meet the schedules required to maintain standards. The remaining staff have had 7 years of pay cuts in real terms. Many developments and local initiatives that were dependent upon Councils have been abandoned or simply not emerged from the tunnel of despondency that the government has pushed local government into over the past seven years.

It needn't have been like this, I remember attending meetings with the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, in 2008/2009, he was determined to invest in local developments to bring us out of the recession. Looking back at the economic performance since the recession, his strategy had started to work before his successor, George Osborne, stamped on the brakes of austerity. It is worth noting that the total national debt has grown from £1010bn to £1729bn (88% of the GDP) at a time when the principal objective was to pay off the debt. As the graph below shows the experiment in austerity has not been the answer that Cameron and Osborne promised and not unexpectedly Keynes was right.

If we add the centralisation of functions by both Westminster and Holyrood governments over the same period, and their innate ability to micro manage (witness Police Scotland or school funding), we are watching a nation in freefall. All the evidence suggests that this is now being exacerbated as the uncertainty about Brexit deters future investment. What was remarkable this afternoon was the similarity of criticism of the budget from the TUC, the Institute of Directors, small businesses and public services. The Chancellor was trying to do too little too late and the consequences are dire.

Toledo

Alcatraz from the river

Tiles in Santa Cruz

El Transparente, a skylight to bring shafts of sunlight into the cathedral

Dome of San Blas chapel in the cathedral

Cathedral of Toledo

Moorish buildings

Alcatraz

After 4 days of walking the streets and parks of Madrid, we decided to take a train to Toledo. It is a mere 32 minutes away on the impressive high-speed train run by the state-owned Renfe Operadora. The popularity of the trip was apparent when we found that all the morning trains were fully booked. We had to kill two hours before the midday train left. This is no problem in Madrid, the Parque del Buen Restoril is across the road from the Ashoka station and on a bright Saturday morning it was throbbing with people of all ages doing all sorts of fun things in the park from cycling, and roller skating to skulling with all types of informal games being played by groups of families and friends. Several street bands were playing, the solo saxophones were purring and the hawkers were selling.

We returned to the station with 10 minutes to spare but all travellers for any train had to be security screened so we spent 15 minutes queuing and then running to catch our train. Dozens of others had been caught out as well so the train was held up for twenty minutes to allow the security channels to be cleared. As the train eased southwards we witnessed the ever-expanding developments on the outskirts of Madrid. It was blighted with lots of commercial developments, housing schemes, new roads, and pylons and beyond the city, the yellowish plain of Spain was mainly lacking any rain. Toledo arrived quickly, and the impressive Moorish inspired railway station echoes the architecture of the ancient city built on the hill. We had a mile or so to walk, crossing the bridge over the river and then climbing numerous flights of the steps to the fortress-like pyramid of buildings.

Toledo is known as the Imperial City and was the capital of Hispania following the end of the Roman empire. It is now a World Heritage Site and like all such tourist meccas, was buzzing with weekend visitors. We visited the Museum of Santa Cruz with its collection of El Greco paintings and after a drink in one of the many plazas, we headed to the magnificent gothic cathedral of Toledo. The diversity of architectural styles, as well as the influence of different religions, meant it required a couple of hours to absorb the many splendours. We walked around the densely developed streets before s navigating across to Alcatraz, now a military museum.

We retreated to a nearby terrace for a drink and to watch the sun sink below the horizon before sauntering back to the station. Toledo had been worth the visit but like so many tourist haunts the ambience was too hurried and manic to absorb the full impact of its history.