Perfect Skye

Old Man of Storr

What else is there to say about Skye! The weather was to be fine but not this good. The hills beckoned as we drove past the Red and Black Cuillins towards Portree. We spent the afternoon walking up the Storr and enjoying the sanctuary. In over 40 trips to Skye, including some near-perfect days, I have never had visibility as clear as this. The air was cool but still and zinging with freshness. There were still lots of visitors from all parts of the world, all amazed at their luck. I had the family to share the privilege as I remembered my last visit the Storr with Aileen and Gregor two years ago.

Welcome to the Pleasuredome

Ben Tianavaig and Portree Bay

The Storr

Old Man and Needle

Old Man

The Sanctuary

Munro Cornucopia

Descending from the Storr

Torridons over Rona

Red and Black Cuillins and Loch Leathan from the Storr

Red Cuillin from Glen Varragill

Marsco

Glamaig

Forever Memories

Shieldaig 

The day was fine so we spent a day revisiting some of Aileen’s favourite places around Shieldaig and the Torridons. We had spent a week at the cottage here in October 2020 during an interlude between lockdowns and made the best of every day. We decided to reprise the best of them, a drive over Bealach na Ba to Applecross and Shieldaig involving the spectacular coastal road. In the afternoon we walked out from the primary school in Shieldaig to reach the overlook of Loch Torridon, this was Aileen’s must-do walk.

The forecast had been for sunny periods but they were interspersed with unpredicted odd showers. The winds were a reminder that winter was pressing in. First up was a drive to Bealach na Ba, one of the UK's highest roads. Gregor had managed to record the second-fastest run up the road during the last visit and Aileen was immensely proud of his achievement, whilst Gregor was quite nonplussed as he began the run down towards Applecross as his warm-down run. We had taken a socially distanced lunch in the Applecross Inn. Today was back to normal and the Inn had had a refurbishment since our last visit. We contemplated going to one of the beaches to the south but the threat of rain suggested it might be better to head off on the magnificent coastal road to Shieldaig. 

As on previous visits we were compelled to stop every few miles to enjoy the views across to Raasay with the northern Skye skyline from the Quiraing to the Storr visible behind the long intervening islands of Raasay and Rona. There is an overlook just before the coastal road joins the main road and we stopped to enjoy the view. I teared up, Aileen and I had often stood at this very spot mesmerised at the splendour of this view, a forever memory.

We walked out to Camas Ruadh, the peninsula north of Shieldaig, and inhaled the freshness of the air and the never-forgotten views of the Torridon Mountains across Loch Torridon. The walk never ceases to lift me, not least because Aileen found it equally inspirational.

Bealach na Ba

Raasay and Skye from the coast road

Rona and Skye

Loch Torridon and the Torridons

Beinn Dearg and Liathach - my final Corbett and Munro respectively

Shieldaig as a shower rained in

 

Lochalsh

Skye Bridge from Kyle

It rained for most of the morning as I waited for news of my daughter and family who were flying up to Inverness from Luton. There were the inevitable delays as air travel had been disrupted by Storm Babet and a couple of planes had skidded off runways when landing. I had expected them to arrive at about 1 p.m. but it was unlikely to be before 3 p.m. by the time they landed,  hired a car, and travelled 75 miles to the cottage. I had always wanted to walk across the Skye Bridge and I needed one or two provisions so I drove to the Kyle of Lochalsh. I parked at the newish Coop at the start of the road to the bridge and started the walk from there. It was cold, damp, and windy but the bridge was preferable to a hill walk.

The Kyle and Lochalsh Community Trust has built a centre along the road to the bridge and there were some odd-looking characters standing outside. They may have been the drivers of three STO category 2 lorries that were towing massive black speed boats that were parked across the road. I thought about asking but decided to keep walking, there was something ominous about the boats . There is a low-level bridge that crosses Eilean Ban, and the tide was ripping through faster than the South Esk River. Then the steep climb to the the main span of the bridge, high enough to let sea-going vessels through. I reached the high point and took photos of the Red Cuillin, Kyleakin, and back towards Kyle of Lochalsh. Even on a grey day, the views were impressive. 

Arriving back in Kyle I made a tour of the town with various marine vessels from Shetland and Orkney as well as the Hebridean Princess, the cruise ship on its penultimate tour of the year. I explored the railway station at the end of the most remote line in Britain. An old diesel multiple unit was ticking over but no passengers were around. Together with the throbbing diesel engines of the three vessels, it made me contemplate whether if we are to achieve net zero this would still be possible in 2030?

The family arrived after 4 p.m. along with the late afternoon sun. We unloaded and had a drink and I suggested a walk on the nearby stony beach at Fernaig. It was a revelation, the sun was setting over Plockton, wader birds were patrolling the shore, and a heron kept ahead of us as we beachcombed and engorged the refreshing sea air. "To think that we started the day in Luton", summed up the sense of scenic tranquility perfectly. It was holiday time.

Looking back to Kyle

Skye and the Red Cuillin

Kyleakin

Marine vessels

Kyle of Lochalsh Station and the Hebridean Princess

Fernaig Beach

Waving goodbye to Luton

Evening Mood

Storm Babet

Five Sisters, Glen Shiel

I had arranged to go north for a few days before Storm Babet was predicted. The Met Office put out a rare red warning for the east of Scotland from Perth to Aberdeen. It would be close and my daughter and grandchildren were flying to Inverness to join me. They were worried because they had heard that the Scottish Government were urging people not to travel. In my most optimistic manner, I reassured them it would be ok where we were going although they might get some heavy rain in Inverness.

I watched the Scottish Government Depute First Minister announce the arrangements to cope with the emergency, stressing the roles of the Police, Fire and Rescue, SEPA and Transport Scotland. The Scottish Government operate from the Resilience Centre in Edinburgh and they have always assumed that they are the main player in emergencies and that the above centralised organisations are the key actors. The reality is that flooding emergencies are very localised and it is the councils that are the first responders. They have the local intelligence that is crucial to coping with emergencies. They have to advise households and businesses to evacuate, set up rest centres, provide sandbags, provide 24/7 support and carry out road closures which are almost always local roads, not trunk roads,. 

The Resilience Centre obtains updates on what is happening on the ground drawing information from the councils as well as the police but this is usually retrospective whereas the local council emergency teams are operating in real-time. In 14 years of operating such a team, I can never recall any pertinent instructions or advice arriving from the Scottish Government although resources were made available for serious incidents and payments made after the event. Mutual aid was usually arranged by the good network of support that existed between councils, this was particularly the case with major incidents such as Dunblane and the Foot and Mouth outbreak in Dumfries and Galloway.

With all this in mind, I checked the Met Office forecasts for my route north and council websites for road closures before deciding to travel as planned. I had established that Storm Babet was unlikely to have any impact on my journey. Flooding and extreme weather are after all very localised.

It rained on the journey to Fort William but traffic was lighter than usual probably as a result of the Scottish Government urging people not to travel., From Fort William to Kyle of Lochalsh it was mainly sunny with a strong wind that made the trees shed their leaves and the late season Winnebagos sway a bit on the road. I was at my destination ahead of schedule. After unpacking, I watched the evening news and the impact of Storm Babet on parts of Angus. It had been a local tragedy, 400 people had been evacuated, three people had died from the South Esk river bursting its banks and trees falling in the wind. Rest centres were operating, local roads staff were closing roads and with Fire and Rescue helping frail residents. The Scottish Government was meanwhile treading water as it provided a commentatory on recent events.

The Resilience Centre was issuing news statements that had already been covered by local radio, council websites and User-generated content (USG). I became aware of the significance of the latter when I had a couple of hundred hits on an eight-year-old post, Storm Frank-visits-Aberfoyle following flooding there a couple of weeks ago. The same had happened earlier this year when some climbers were killed on Aonach Eagach Ridge and my posts on the climb went ballistic.  It is more evidence why the centre cannot hold. The genius of social media and artificial intelligence is that they draw on the knowledge of people at the scene, they deal in local detail and operate in real-time. These are the things that matter to those subjected to emergency events. 

Over the sea to Skye

Applecross Hills

Aberfoyle Trail Half Marathon

Podium with Craig Mhor behind

Outsider Events had organised a Trail Half Marathon in Aberfoyle, the route was a loop in the forest south of Loch Ard including my favourite section of trail alongside the southern shore of the Loch. I have not been running races since Covid but I was sorely tempted. It covered the routes that had been my staple runs for over thirty years, I must have run the various sections of the trail on over 2000 occasions. Gregor entered the race, he has only been running seriously for 8 years but has built impressive palmares in recent years. I collected him and drove him to the start and whilst he registered and started the race, I took myself up Lime Craig on the steep path that begins at Dounans camp. 

Lime Craig is the other run/walk that I have visited on over a thousand occasions, either as a run, a walk with the children or in recent years as a fast walk ascent and a run on the descent. I never tire of the exercise it gives, the forest and mountain landscapes and the wildlife. Today, we had the first frost and one of the rare days of sunshine in the last month. The conditions were sublime, and Autumn colours were making the views spectacular. Ben More and Stob Binnein were capped in the first snow of winter. I ran down the longer route to the David Marshall Lodge, overtaking a cyclist who was gingerly negotiating the gravel track damaged by last week's floods. I was back in the village twenty minutes after the race had started so decided to visit some old neighbours, whose son was Gregor's best friend at school. He was also running the half marathon. I was provided with a coffee and enjoyed playing with his two young children before taking them to watch the race finish.

Gregor won by a few minutes despite having been knocked over by a dog during the run and losing a couple of minutes whilst he was checked out by a physio, the friend of the dog's owner. He and another runner had been going too fast for the bike rider who was supposedly leading the race but could not keep up with them on the undulating terrain with over a thousand feet of climbing. He saw the funny side of it and apologised to them after arriving a few minutes after them at the finish. 

I had first taken Gregor out on these trails as a six or seven-year-old for two-mile runs. He shares my love of them and seemed quietly determined to secure a victory on the trails that have kept both of us happy and relatively sane for most of our lives. 

Approaching the finish on Manse Road

The lead cyclist apologises to the lead runners

A family affair

Craig Mhor and Aberfoyle from Lime Craig

My bench at the top of Lime Craig

Ben Ledi and Ben Vane from Lime Craig

Rachel's Organic Growth

Iron Duchess

I must get out more but I had already done my morning exercise and the rain meant that the garden could wait. Coffee and the TV called. I was surprised to find Rachel Reeves giving her speech at the Labour Party Conference. Whilst I normally find her thoughtful if a bit dry and bossy, there was something different about this speech and I was drawn in by her oratory, directness, and comprehensive actions that she would take if she were to become Chancellor. 

It sounded more like the speech of a Chancellor in touch with the issues that needed addressing rather than the moribund promises that were seldom even delivered by the clutch of Chancellors since 2019. Sajid Javid, Rishi Sunak, Nadhim Zahawi, Kwasi Kwartang, and the current incumbent, Jeremy Hunt have all contributed to the current state of the economy and the cost of living crisis. Jeremy Hunt had only been allowed 10 minutes to explain his part in the downfall to an empty hall at the Conservative Conference. Rachel Reeves was still firing out proposals to a tsunami of happy clapping after an hour. 

It felt like one of those moments when we had entered a new era. The hall had been full, conference delegates were locked out and the business delegates were there in spades and appeared to be won over by the speech. Even Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, a darling of the media and the financial sector, released a video giving his endorsement for her.

"Rachel Reeves is a serious economist.
She began her career at the Bank of England, so she understands the big picture.
But crucially, she understands the economics of work, of place and family.
And, look, it is beyond time we put her energy and ideas into action."

On any other day, this would have dominated the news headlines but the Hamas attack on Israel and the declaration of war by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, dominated news coverage.

It was the range of issues covered, the acknowledgment of problems, and the clarity of intent by Rachel Reeves that was so refreshing after the Panglossian claims of  Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak and their acolytes. There was no attempt to paint a brighter Britain, she stressed that it would be a hard slog to turn things around. She wanted growth but it should be organic, harnessing the skills and inventiveness of the British people to build a greener and better Britain. It is a big ask but the impression was that she could become the Iron Duchess by defeating the terminal decline of the UK.

Local Climate Change Arrives

My gently gurgling burn

Copernicus chart of temperature change.

Earlier this week we heard that the average temperature change had increased by 0.5°C this year and on 86 days it exceeded by 1.5°C the pre-industrial average set as the threshold by the Paris Agreement in 2015. It is quite an exceptional acceleration in global warming. All year we have been seeing evidence of fires, floods, droughts and damage to nations across the world. In Scotland, the most noticeable change in recent years has been almost frost and snow-free winters, record hot spells in summer, forest fires in early summer when we have drier weather and even hose pipe bans. The last week has been a reprise of recent autumns with heavy and continuous rainfall leading to floods and travel disruption.

It rained much of yesterday and all night, this morning we were warned that there could be up to 7 inches of rain in the central belt. The burn at the side of the house, normally no more than a modest gurgle has become a raging torrent, whizzing down empty plastic fertilizer containers from the farms upstream and tearing out soil and autumn foliage. I squished across the garden and into the gully and watched the burn breaching the banks. It is by some way the highest it has been in the almost five years since we moved here. It is still a good 10 metres below the house but a worrying indicator of the damage that must be taking place across much of Central Scotland today. 

Two fire appliances and an ambulance have hurtled past already with their sirens wailing. Aberfoyle must be suffering yet again, the previous flooding events have resulted in lots of consultants' reports but no action. Yet more evidence that our centralised government in Scotland is out of touch.

Oh, What a Mess

!

I had not intended to listen to or watch the Prime Minister's performance at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. It was just difficult to avoid. I was driving back from Stirling, the radio was on and Rishi Sunak was delivering something at last even though it was only a speech. His predecessors had established a custom of focusing their key conference speech on the truth, Johnson junked it and Truss didn't trust it, she constructed a parallel narrative. Sunak was more subtle, he twisted the truths and claimed that he was the great redeemer, the game changer for long-term growth. When the PM said he wanted to increase funding to towns, not cities, I thought that perhaps we should have kept Stirling as a town, it would have saved lots of time and anguish back in 2002, but then I remembered that Sunak is swift on promises but slow on delivery.

The speech had obviously been rewritten many times and polished by his backroom truth fairies. The speech was meant to be a paean to his lovely government. I was more intrigued by the subplot, his polemic against most of the things the government had done or not done over the past thirteen years. Arriving home, I switched on the TV to continue the compulsive agony and to observe the syncopated clapping from the audience who were on their last warning to behave themselves. I realised that this was a seriously slick performance, a play that Joan Littlewood would have been proud to present, the script was split into many acts and laced with irony. He made sycophantic shouts for his disloyal cabinet colleagues Suella and Kemi and even named Ian Duncan-Smith. He then segued into a passage transferring blame for the failures during the 13 years of Conservative Governments. It was the EU, Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer, devolved governments, Labour-run councils, environmentalists, and woke liberals that were responsible. The HS2 debacle was the fault of HS2 Ltd, a quango sponsored and funded by the government. He and the government were blameless. It was time for change for the long term and he was the person to make these changes. 

There were lots of policy changes he could have chosen to announce: housing, social care, climate change, school investment, benefits, reforming democracy, planning and building regulations. Little chance of that happening, "this is what I believe in and is what the country wants" he claimed: - smoking bans for young people, a new exam system, and abandoning HS2. I happen to agree with the latter decision but he could have done that several years ago when he was Chancellor and the costs were spiralling out of control and before construction began. Even eleven years ago this was a procurement tragedy waiting to happen.

The reasons for the escalation of costs and delays were obvious from the start. First, it should have started from the north where costs were less, and the tracks were in greatest need of upgrading to improve both the capacity and speed of trains. The huge difference in the train speeds and the age of rolling stock in the north compared to the southeast has been palpable and unacceptable for decades. Second, the massive compensation to land owners, building tunnels under the Home Counties to meet the outcry from Tory MPs, and the 4 miles of tunnelling under London to connect to Euston had never been properly costed. Third, the Finance and Construction contractors had cynically gamed the government procurement procedures. The government claims that HS2 is key to levelling up of the north were spurious. All the spending in the first ten years would be in the southeast to midlands section giving no immediate benefit to the north. This should have been called out from the start, the political leaders in northern cities were duped into supporting a scheme that was duplicitous and ultimately damaging to the prospects of improving rail travel for the many as opposed to the business elite. HS2 has been the vehicle for another dose of levelling down.

The future of HS2 will be part of the political battleground for the next twelve months. I would happily take the switch of funding to modernise and improve the capacity of the rail network in the north. Still, I would be sceptical about the PM's claims that all of the £36bn savings will be redirected to transport infrastructure schemes. I have no doubt that the savings will dwindle as claims for terminating contracts multiply and many of the list of schemes that Sunak recited to the conference had already been announced in previous programmes or will be too expensive to deliver. I would also ask the question of why bother continuing with the HS2 line from Euston to Birmingham? This is the part of HS2 where the most money is to be spent and where there is the minimum gain in speed. 

The UK is a small country and travelling at 300 kilometres per hour (186mph), the HS2 proposal does not justify the extra specification and cost of the track and trains to achieve this. Achieving an average speed of 200kph (125mph) would give a nonstop travel time from London to Manchester of 1 hour 36 minutes, reducing the existing fastest times by 30 minutes. If this more modest average speed for trains was extended to Scotland it would reduce the travel time from London to Edinburgh or Glasgow to 3 hours 30 minutes. This is well over an hour quicker than the fastest existing trains. It would be hard to justify travelling by air to London from any part of Britain other than from Aberdeen and Inverness in these circumstances. The quickest time from parking at Glasgow or Edinburgh airports to arriving in central London is about 5 hours including the painstaking rituals of airport security and this does not take account of the regular delays. Reducing air travel should be factored into the benefits of rail investment

Meanwhile, in much of the north, including the Manchester to Leeds and Sheffield routes, even achieving an average speed of 100 kph (60mph) would be a game changer. It is hard to argue against the priority of creating a modern and efficient rail infrastructure in the north. I would expect any detailed cost-benefit analysis would prove this to be a better value than an abridged HS2.

On the effectiveness of government, it is vital that we need a change after 13 years during which our public services have been trashed and infrastructure expenditure has been subject to multiple delays and overspends. I doubt Sunak will fare any better than his predecessors in achieving this. Remember he was the Chancellor who approved 'Eat out to help out', a Covid spreader that cost £846m, and Track and Trace that cost £37bn for a service that never delivered its objectives. He also approved £2.7bn that was spent on unusable PPE items, many of which stemmed from fast-track bids from friends of the government and then cost a further £737m to store them.  Rishi Sunak's CV suggests he should never be allowed any responsibility for the long term. A brighter future for Sunak and the country would be for him to call an election and escape the opprobrium that will continue to be heaped upon him by his party as well as the electorate.

Strathcarron Hospice 10k

31:59

It was a year since Aileen was diagnosed with Type 4 cancer. After a harrowing six weeks in Forth Valley Hospital and eventually an exploratory operation that discovered the extent of cancer, she came home a fortnight later so we could care for her, We were greatly supported by the palliative home carers from Strathcarron Hospice who came every morning. They were always positive and established a wonderful rapport with Aileen as she prepared for the day. Aileen was transferred to the hospice at the beginning of January 2023 when it was no longer possible to administer the medication and 24-hour support at home. Again the care was of the highest standard by the totally committed staff in the Hospice.

Today was the Strathcarron 10k race and Gregor entered as a way of repaying respect to the staff and remembering his mum. We had gifted donations to Strathcarron following the funeral and have since donated many boxes of clothes and goods to the Hospice shops. Earlier in the year, Gregor and I had discussed the idea of him running the Great Scottish Trail from Hadrian's Wall to Cape Wrath for the Strathcarron Hospice. He had to postpone the idea when he moved house. He won the 10k race in a record time (31:59) and when interviewed by the radio station he mentioned his hope to do the Great Scottish Trail Run to raise more funds for Strathcarron. 

Whilst waiting for the race to finish, I noticed that Dennis Canavan, the MP for West Stirlingshire for 34 years was sitting near the finish. I had known of him as a committed and hard-working MP but never met him. I struck up a conversation. I knew that he had connections with Strathcarron Hospice, his son Paul had been supported by the Hospice and Dennis had run the Strathcarron 10k for many years, he was a sub-3-hour marathon runner. 

It was an inspiring conversation with someone who had devoted much of his life to helping the communities and people of West Stirlingshire. We drifted onto politics and he told me that his record time from his house in Bannockburn to the House of Commons was faster than his marathon time taking only 2 hours and 50 minutes.  Commenting on HS2 and the likelihood of cancellation, he said a taxi to Edinburgh airport, boarding the plane 10 minutes before take-off, with no security checks and then riding on the old Piccadilly underground line allowed him to get to the Westminster 2 hours faster than you could today despite all the infrastructure investments in airports, new underground lines and IT ticketing systems. I think he was making the point that local transport links are just as important as the big-ticket infrastructure projects beloved by government ministers.   

Start

Collecting the Prize