Sgiath a' Chaise

Sgiath a' Chaise at far right from the Glen Ample track

Wednesday 23 January 2019

Ascent:      573 metres

Distance:   8 kilometres

Time:         3 hours 34 minutes

Sgiath a' Chaise     645m      2hrs  12 mins

After the first snowfall of this winter and with the mercury showing -5°C, the skies were clear and the hills were calling. I decided to climb a nearby Graham, a hill between 2000 and 2500 feet with a drop of at least 500 feet to the next adjacent hill. There are 219 of them and as I have almost completed the Corbetts, they should provide some sport in the next few years and help me recover some fitness in the meantime. Sgiath a' Chaise is one of the nearest Grahams, a mere 11 miles from the new house. It sits above Strathyre and the most usual route is from Ardchullarie Mor on the A84 midway along Loch Lubnaig. This large stone lodge is where Jim Kerr of Simple Minds lived with Patsy Kensit in the early 1990s.

Conditions were perfect but extremely cold as I set forth and climbed the steep path through the forest plantations that runs through to Glen Ample. There were quite a few trees that had fallen and blocked the path but eventually, the path joined a landrover track and continued to climb at an easier gradient to a gate leading to the open hillside. A burn had to be crossed and it was sheet ice skimmed with freezing water that made it dangerously slippery. I had to grab some protruding rocks in the burn  to inch my way across. Beyond was a picture book signpost directing the routes to Glen Ample or Beinn Each, the nearby Corbett. A couple were digging out their crampons for the ascent of Beinn Each, we eulogised about the perfect winter conditions. I continued for another 400 metres to the watershed of the track that coincided with the boundary of the plantations west of the burn.

I had the map on my phone but it wasn't loading so I decided to head directly up the snow slopes to gain the long ridge that runs south to north. A collie dog bounded up behind me and we began the climb together. Its owner was about 300 metres behind and was following my tracks. The snow was a foot or so deep and every step was a contest with gravity augmented by soft snow. I fell into my often used technique of climbing for a hundred steps and promising myself a break but then making it two hundred steps. The dog was shuttling between myself and its owner, who was falling behind. After twenty minutes of effort, I had reached the apex of the ridge and I headed for Meall Mor, the nearest top on the ridge and then Creag a' Mhadaidh. It was an extra kilometre or so from the direct ascent and a bit of a slog. The dog and its owner had given up and retreated to the glen.

The views across to Beinn Each and Stuc a' Chroin were quite spectacular against the clear blue skies to the east but clouds were heading in from the north and west. Despite the flatter terrain along the ridge, the snow was still a pernicious obstacle to progress. I continued northwards using some old fence posts to guide me on what may have been the route of a path. There were lots of deer tracks and three or four deer appeared and quickly scarpered. A couple of ravens were patrolling the top of the hill and made a couple of flypasts squawking at me with menace. The summit was flat and a lone iron post had been installed at what I took to be the high point. I sat on my rucksack retrieved my flask of coffee and regretted that I had brought no food or even chocolate with me. I had wrongly calculated that the walk would be less than 3 hours but it had already taken more than two hours to reach the summit. Tramping through the deep snow seems to double the time during ascents. Conversely,  it sometimes speeds the descent.

Having taken a longer route to the summit than necessary, on the return I headed straight down to Glen Ample from a dip in the ridge before I reached Creag a' Mhadaidh. There were large rock outcrops and the ground was full of lumps and hollows but they were deceptively lubricated with soft snow. After quite a bit of rolling and tumbling I reached the drystane wall that runs down to the track. A landrover was parked at the highpoint and two men were admiring the views but they had left by the time I reached the track. The descent was quick and easy, the landrover had broken the ice in the burn so I paddled across between the chunks of broken ice that were about 3 centimetres deep. I entered the spruce plantation through the gate and sped down the needle covered path to Loch Lubnaig. It was a mere twenty-minute drive home, a pleasing variation from the usual three hour drive from Munro bashing trips.

Track to Glen Ample at the watershed

Beinn Each

Stuc a' Chroin and Beinn Each

Stuc a' Chroin

The Last Leg

From summit to Loch Earn

Blue Monday DisMay

Blood Moon rising on Blue Monday, a wrecking ball for democracy

The blood moon had fired up the night sky but the day dawned grey and damp. It was Blue Monday, supposedly the most depressing day of the year but I still felt optimistic despite a dental appointment to extract a tooth following a ten-month wait for root canal treatment. By the time the dental hospital got round to giving me an appointment, it was too late to save the tooth. The dental hospital had still not yet sent a letter to my dental practice to explain the diagnosis so the dentist suggested holding off for a couple of months until she had the letter. So another morning wasted and the pain postponed.

On getting home 200 hedging plants had been delivered but they were four days late, the last three days had been perfect for planting but the ground was now frozen and would be until the weekend. So my frustration was ratcheted up another notch as any Blue Monday afternoon activity was postponed.

I decided to watch the prime minister make her statement on Plan B for Brexit, which turned out to be Plan A again. It was an irrefragable confirmation of Blue Monday. Mrs May utterly fails to get it and the MPs of all parties must have felt like lemmings at a cliff edge as their requests to make progress or consider alternatives were summarily dismissed by the PM in her inimitable style of reciting a clutch of oft-repeated meaningless phrases. As always, John Crace got it right in his parliamentary sketch.

"Which bit of the EU saying it would not renegotiate the backstop hadn’t she understood over the past 18 months? The time had come for her to drop her red lines and adopt proposals that could command the support of the majority of MPs.

"La, la, la,” May snapped, sticking her fingers in her ears. She had her plan. And just because it had failed once there was no reason why it should fail a second time. Hadn’t she always said that a bad deal was better than a no-deal?

Thereafter a succession of MPs from both sides of the house became increasingly exasperated as they tried and failed to talk her out of her madness. The more rational they became about the need to consider a customs union, extending Article 50 and a second referendum, the more adamant the prime minister became that the road to glory was paved with failure. 

Labour’s Barry Sheerman tried to instil a note of optimism. Today was Blue Monday. Officially the most depressing day of the year. So could they take a rain check and come back tomorrow when they all might be feeling slightly less bleak. May declined. The very idea was an affront. She hadn’t got where she was today by doing anything to give people cause for optimism. There was no situation she could not make worse. And she’d started so she would finish."

I now believe in Blue Monday.

Ben Gullipen

Ben Gullipen summit - radio masts and generators

Ben Gullipen     417m    52minutes

ascent:       249 metres
distance:    5 kilometres
time:          1 hour 21 minutes

I managed my first short walk up a hill in 2019 today. After moving into the new house in December I have spent most days lugging furniture and boxes of stuff from room to room, installing a wooden floor in the roof void of the garage, clearing builder's rubble off the site and shifting over 200 barrowloads of topsoil to prepare for sowing grass and creating the odd flower bed. As a result, my knees are aching for the first time in my life and previous back pain has flared up. I have only managed one run since Christmas. As I was about to set off hillwalking last week at 8am on a perfect winter's day, the joiner arrived to carry out snagging repairs so the walk had to be abandoned.

Today was dry and the light was good to the north so I drove half a dozen miles to climb Ben Gullipen, the second-highest point on the Menteith Hills overlooking Loch Venachar. I followed the track from the high point of the A81 at Cock Hill. The first kilometre is a steep climb through the forest and then after a gate, it is open hillside with highland cattle grazing and superb views to the north. It is an easy walk but just what I needed to get back into regular running and hill walking.

I met Alison near the summit, she is a local legend who runs every day and walks Ben Gullipen regularly. We blethered away for 15 minutes and even ventured into a discussion about Brexit. I guessed I was on safe ground as she has two daughters who live and work in Europe. I am surprised but pleased to say that I still have to meet anyone who thinks Brexit is good. Admittedly most of my acquaintances are in Scotland but even when visiting London to see our daughters and their friends I have yet to talk to anyone who believes in this crazy stunt and that includes a senior civil servant at the Treasury who tells me that virtually all other work has been abandoned to prepare for Brexit. Do I live in a parallel universe?

It was cold in the breeze as I continued to the clutter of radio masts and equipment that decorated the summit. Alison had advised me to go beyond the radio masts where there is a boggy path that takes you to a viewpoint overlooking Loch Venachar. I could spot Blairgarry where Aileen's parents had had a cottage for forty years and where we had spent holidays when our children were young and visited most weeks when we lived nearby. The cottage looked south over the loch to Ben Gullipen. It was said by locals that the forestry plantations on the northern slopes of Ben Gullipen had been laid out to replicate the British and French battalions during the Battle of Waterloo. If so, the Ben Gullipen viewpoint is located where Napoleon began the charge through Charleroi to humbug Wellington.

The views of Ben Ledi and Stuc Odhar to the north of Loch Venachar were perfect and in the northeast, Ben Vorlich and Stuc a' Chroin provided a familiar skyline. The clouds were closing in from the west as I began the descent but it had been the first of what will be many trips up this local landmark, it is about the same height as Lime Craig, the hill near our previous home that I have climbed over 400 times. Ben Gullipen will become a similar prop for exercise and I will be running it in the future.

Cattle on the ascent

Loch Venachar dam

Loch Venachar looking west

Callander from summit

Towards Stuc a' Chroin and Ben Vorlich

Is Parliament now taking control?

The antics of the government in Parliament over the past few days has been an abject lesson in vindictiveness and callous irony. They have frittered away 30 months in negotiations with the EU and have used every parliamentary procedure to deflect debate and refused on numerous occasions to share information with parliament. This culminated in a deferral of a vote on Mrs May's deal at the end of a so-called meaningful debate in December.

Because of the lack of progress, transparency, lethargy by Brexit ministers and internecine warfare amongst the Tory party, the government have been made to look unprepared and wooden by the EU negotiator, Michel Barnier, who exudes a calm and courteous manner in the face the UK's shambolic manoeuvrings.

Having finally reached a deal that has had no input from Parliament and with no time left for a proper meaningful debate; the government heavies, backed by the usual pro-Brexit press, are now calling out the speaker for allowing Dominic Grieve's amendment to speed up the process. The former Solicitor General, who considered that the UK was marching into a disaster, managed to secure the votes that prevented Mrs May and the leader of the House, Andrea Leadsom, from repeating yet another of their delaying tactics.

Parliament is now attempting to take control of the process and sidelining the febrile Brexiteers who have stoked the myths and provoked the animosity that has swept through the country since dodgy Dave Cameron called the referendum and failed in his attempt to get the changes from the EU that he had promised when he called the referendum.

What happens next is anyone's guess, although it is likely that the Teflon coated, inflexible Mrs May will continue to resist any alternative to her deal no matter what the outcome of the vote. It is encouraging that following the lamentable leadership of the process by Mrs May and in the absence of any alternative strategy from Jeremy Corbyn that a formidable posse of women MPs from across the parties that are leading the parliamentary rescue attempt. Caroline Lucas, Nicki Morgan, Yvette Cooper, Anna Soubry, Sarah Woolaston and Stella Creasy have all made significant contributions that may just stop Brexit becoming the disaster that the panglossian Brexiteers and Mrs May would unflinchingly impose on the UK. We have been reminded by the more astute commentators that it was Keynes who pointed out that if facts change then you can change your mind. Democracy is a fluid process, not the means of enshrining decisions at a point in time.

What No Deal may look like

Good Reads 2018

2018 was generally a bleak year for reading rescued only by a couple of books over 50 years old and several about the malfunctioning of politics in the UK and USA.

I eventually got round to reading Nan Shepherd's inspirational book The Living Mountain. Its description of the constituent elements of air, light, water, rock, plant and animal life in the Cairngorms is a love letter to the Mountains where she spent her time walking and being spellbound by the magic of the elements. The language is very unusual in the way she captures the mood and the feelings of those open to being inspired by nature's fickle ways, as can be seen in the following abstract. "The sustained rhythm of movement in a long climb has also its part in inducing the sense of physical well-being. This bodily lightness, then, in rarefied air, combines with the liberation of space to give mountain feyness to those who are susceptible to such a malady. For it is a malady, subverting the will and superseding the judgement: but a malady of which the afflicted will never ask to be cured." So that explains why I have spent so much time pursuing my mountain habit!

On moving house in May I discovered an Upton Sinclair book that had languished in a box of old books since I cleared my parent's house ten years ago. No Pasaran! is the story of an American German Jew who went to fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Upton Sinclair wrote this novel with the dual purpose of informing American readers about the events on the Spanish battlefields, as well as warning the rest of the world about the danger that fascism's triumph in Spain would stimulate across Europe. Sinclair's writing is distinguished by that rare characteristic, American Socialism, it references the main political events in the USA including the New Deal.

This book inspired me to dig out Upton Sinclair's World's End series of books and to begin rereading them. There are 11 books that include over 7000 pages to digest. They are less wooden than No Pasaran and I have so far revisited the first two books. They were instrumental in shaping my views as an impressionable teenager. During the year that I was to take my 'O' grade exams, I read the books as an interesting alternative to revising. The black covered hardbacks with red titles had been gifted to my father during the war by an army major. They were always shelved prominently in the living room. The World's End series embraces the period from the outbreak of the Great War to the rise of Hitler through the eyes of  Lanny Budd, a wealthy young American. He spends much of his childhood and youth in Europe before becoming a geographer and art dealer. His contacts include many of the key political actors of the period including President Woodrow Wilson, whom he works for during the negotiations to establish the League of Nations. The books provide a fascinating account of the outbreak of the Great War, the machinations of the munitions industry, the 1929 crash, the New Deal and the rise of fascism in Europe. The books must have had quite an effect on me and even my 'O' grades did not suffer as a consequence. I hope my second reading inspires similar outcomes.

More fun was John O'Farrell's Things Can Only Get Worse, his latest epistle on the awful effects of the Cameron years. It also contains a pithy critique of Blair's Education policy on the introduction of academies. As a Labour Party activist, he dissembles Blair's obsession with academies with the practical experience of being the chair of school governors. Never have I read such an elegant defence of local education authorities.

I was pleasantly surprised by Jon Sopel, the BBC American correspondent's account of the descent of the American dream. If Only They Didn't Speak English sets out to answer questions about "a country that once stood for the grandest of dreams, but which is now mired in a storm of political extremism, racial division and increasingly perverse beliefs" as the Trump years began to take their toll. It is about time that more BBC correspondents started writing like this. They are obviously under threat of showing no bias in their 'on air' reporting. This strips their reporting of the larger truth and devalues the BBC as an informative source of news. You could never accuse the Channel 4 news of not allowing their journalists to call out injustices when they discover them.