London: home of the Money Tree

St Pancras

My first trip of the year was to visit family in London. It was to be the anniversary of Aileen leaving us. My daughter had proposed coming north but with her work and family to consider, I thought it better to go down to London. The LNER train arrived ahead of schedule and I had to decide how best to get to the new house, I would no longer be greeted by the happy drumming at Brixton underground station close to the old house. I decided to travel overground from St Pancras, one of my favourite London buildings and terminals. I crossed the road from King's Cross and entered the magnificent Victorian building, its roof vault encasing many high-end cafes, bars and shops. It was probably a mistake, Aileen and I had whiled away part of an afternoon in one of the cafes with a live pianist a few years earlier, but no, it rekindled a fond memory. I caught the Thameslink train from the expensively modernised station below St Pancras terminal station. I arrived at their new house that was undergoing a major refit, I had been warned but not expected the construction site that the house had become.

The next morning, I left early and travelled across London by overground train to Chiswick where my friends from France have an apartment. It was a 4-kilometre walk from the station to the apartment, mainly along the north bank of the Thames. It was grey and cold and the tide was out as I arrived at Hammersmith Bridge, it looked strangely familiar although I had never ventured here before. I then realised I was standing where the body had been found in an episode of Silent Witness the previous week. 

We had a long brunch, Ian had unwittingly introduced me to Aileen 45 years ago and we had seen him often since and Beatrix too for the past 30 years. They were life friends. During Aileen's final weeks, Ian and Beatrix had flown over from Marseilles to visit her and they FaceTimed every few days. Aileen had always been besotted by France, Beatrix understood this and sent postcards of typical French scenes almost daily. They were stacked on her bedside table for constant viewing. Ian and Beatrix were only over on a short visit to the UK so I left them early in the afternoon and caught the underground to Green Park. 

I was heading to John Lewis in Oxford Street, one of the few department stores left in Britain worth visiting. It also gave me the chance for a meander through Mayfair. It never ceases to amaze me how many top-of-the-range diplomatic cars are on the streets in this part of London. Apparently, the United States has over 600 diplomatic vehicles and both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have over 300. They mostly have high-powered Internal Combustion Engines (ICE), receive tax concessions and seem to dominate parking places in this part of London. It is allegedly a low-emission zone, an area where most of the taxis are now electric vehicles but the diplomats and non-doms are excused from saving the planet. The garage franchises for Bentley, Ferrari, Bugatti, and Aston Martin suggest that Mayfair really is the UK's epicentre of untrammelled wealth and mega carbon footprints and not only diplomatic ones. Even wine sellers acknowledge this by trading under the name Hedonism Wines. 

I stumbled through the streets, agog at the widespread upgrading of immaculately maintained buildings, the blue plaques festooning the buildings were even more common than Ferraris. Mayfair was a veritable money tree. I was heading for John Lewis for some food and a chance to browse in a proper shop. Carrie Johnson doesn't agree, she thinks John Lewis is a nightmare, not expensive or special enough to furnish the PM's flat. I thought John Lewis was spot on for most people, more like Jurgen Klopp than Jose Mourinho.

We went to a local pub on Friday evening for a fine meal. The extensive range of eateries in London is one of the examples where competition between small businesses seems to work to the benefit of customers, I just wish the government realised that this type of competition didn't extend to the large corporations, privatised companies and monopolies who were more concerned with wiping out competitors and ramping up prices for their clients. The good food theme was repeated the following evening when a carry-out from a local Indian restaurant produced the best Indian meal since pre-COVID days. The rest of Saturday was spent visiting the excellent library and workspace that hosted a community-run coffee shop, taking grandchildren to various activities and exploring parks near the new house on a day when temperatures barely exceeded freezing levels and that included the house that was awash with plumbers and builders.

The next day brought some sunshine and we worked all morning in the garden taking down overgrown trees and bushes and running garden rubbish to the local tip. And then a walk for lunch at a favourite Italian cafe before exploring Dulwich and Sydenham Hill where we happened on a blue plaque for the man who invented Bovril. My step count in London had mounted without any mountains. I returned home the next day, and London was sparkling in the morning sun as I crossed the Thames. It was another comfortable train journey and on time. As we crossed the River Tweed at Berwick, I felt a pang of joy to be almost home alone again.

The Thames at Chiswick

Mayfair toys

Hedonism in Mayfair? Who'd have thought

Ten

Thames from Blackfriars Station

 

Crossing the River Tweed at Berwick

Winter on Lime Craig

Lime Craig ascent

It was so cold that the bins could not be emptied, the lids were frozen. The predicted heavy snow had not arrived, just a fine sprinkling like icing sugar to sweeten the walk. I left it until 11:00 a.m. The roads were mainly cleared but devoid of traffic. As I entered the Braeval car park there was only one car and it belonged to a friend who had just spent an hour and a half on the trails without seeing anyone. We chatted for a while and as I set off up the hill my hands were already numb from the cold. The grip on the thin layer of snow was good but I walked at a more sedate pace than usual, enjoying the spectacular scenery. It was a joyous blend of blues, greens and whites with only the occasional robin and buzzard to highlight the tranquillity.

Occasions like this, still cold air and amazing clarity are the perfect conditions for thinking. I replayed some memories before focusing on how best to set up a new blog on behalf of some colleagues. I pattered around the summit for a few minutes, soaking up the midday sun before a relaxed descent. Unfortunately, I arrived down as the 1 p.m. news started for the short drive home. It was yet another day when the UK's rag bag of a government was repurposing its wretched Rwanda policy, giving a good impression of its suicidal tendencies. Has there ever been a government that has spent so much on so few and achieved nothing at all? Well, perhaps Rishi Sunak's £2bn spending on crony VIP contracts for PPE but at least Lady Mone got a yacht out of it.

Looking north-west

Ben Lomond and Ben Venue

Braeval

 

Dumyat and the University

Dumyat across Airthrey Loch at Stirling University

Sunday 7 January, 2024

The New Year was getting old and I was stuck in a rut, the miserable weather was not helping. I had only made a couple of attempts to get any exercise all week. I noticed there was a Munro exhibition at the MacRobert Centre so decided to pay a visit and perhaps take a walk around the beautiful campus grounds of Stirling University. An overnight frost and blue skies hurried me on and I arrived before the exhibition hall opened. I decided to take a walk up Dumyat, the 419-metre hill that provides an excellent viewpoint of the Forth Valley and the Highlands to the northwest.

I had not been to the University Campus or the MacRobert for almost two years, and it was over ten years since I was last up Dumyat. Both places bring back strong memories. I first climbed Dumyat as a competitor in the annual hill race the year after I began hill running. It is a fairly steep ascent through a forest and then onto the open hillside, I was 12th out of about 100 competitors at the summit but descending was my weakness and I drifted backwards 10 or so places as I negotiated the rocky sections and the tree roots in the forest before gaining places on the road for the last kilometre to the finish. It took 41 minutes for the 6-mile route up and down the hill from the start by the Pathfinder Building. I was due to have an interview for a job in Stirling the following week so I was also checking out the local runs. I got the job and Dumyat became a lunchtime training run with a colleague who was also a keen hill runner, it took us about 1 hour and 15 minutes from the office. By this time I was more involved in Munro bashing so I never repeated the hill race.

In December 1996, a Social Work colleague who had had a breakdown following the Dunblane shootings was off work and he had not been out or seen anyone other than his family for several months. I was contacted by his brother, a Professor of Psychology, who explained that his brother would like to speak to me. I arranged to visit him but he wanted to go on a walk up Dumyat after dark, it was not a surprise, we were both keen hillwalkers and I presumed he wanted some privacy for a conversation. It was a cold December evening, I collected him from home and we climbed the hill. He was silent in the car and on the ascent, only his headtorch confirmed his presence as I related to him what had been happening at work during his absence. We reached the summit and as we started the descent he found his voice and opened up about his trauma. He invited me for tea with his family and it became a regular event every couple of weeks until he returned to work.

After retiring I made another late evening visit to the hill with an ex-work colleague who was about to move on and once again it was dark as we descended and retired to a local Indian restaurant. All of these events had been forgotten until I started the ascent today and they came alive as I rediscovered familiar routes that triggered evocative memories. The walk around Airthrey Loch and the start of the walk on the route of the hill race raised thoughts of how the hell did I ever manage to run this? 

As I left the steep climb through the forest I could see lots of people walking from a car park on Sheriffmuir Road, they had 200 metres less to climb. The footpath through the forest was veneered with icy mud and then, after climbing a fence, there was a frozen grassy path across the open hillside until I joined the main path from the car park that had been gravelled and was smeared with dangerous ice in places. Being Sunday, there were lots of families trailing children and dogs on leads and, being Bridge of Allan, there were lots of university types in the mix. 

It took longer than used to be the case to reach the summit where there must have been 30 or 40 people circling the large cairn, taking photos and admiring the exceptional views. I had always admired the cairn at the summit which is topped by a beacon that was used as a signalling point. It has been joined recently by a large pale blue monument for the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, an incongruous addition to a fine summit. Along with the Staffordshire Bull Terrier that was roaming freely, the monument made me want to escape as quickly as possible.

The descent was reasonably quick and I was able to see the Munro exhibition which was a fairly limited affair, although I did learn about Professor Heddle who had made a list of 409 hills that were 3000-footers and climbed 350 of them by 1891. This was before Sir Hugh Munro, drawing on Heddle, produced his list and the credit for creating a sport that has mesmerised mountain lovers ever since. The MacRobert Centre also brought back another pile of memories: watching the Boys of the Loch in the 1970s, the Singing Kettle and Pantos when the children were young and dozens of films that Aileen had taken me along to see in the intimate small cinema. 

I also walked around many of the buildings that had appeared on the campus. At work, I spent quite a lot of time working with three of the University Principals and staff as we successfully bid for the Scottish Institute of Sport to be based on the Stirling campus and secured funding for the Stirling Management Centre and the Innovation Park. As I left the campus I felt privileged to have been able to have been involved in so much work and enjoy leisure time on such a beautiful campus. I will be back again to renew my acquaintance with this place and its nearby hills

Airthrey Loch

Stirling and the Forth Valley from Dumyat

Looking northwest from the summit

The path up Dumyat - Ben Ledi in the centre distance

Monument and Beacon

Looking south-east

Whiskey Bonds

Ochils

Airthrey Loch and Wallace Monument