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| The bench on Lime Craig where my phone spent the night |
The icy cold weather has persisted since the turn of the year. Unlike the south and north of Scotland, the Trossachs have been largely snow-free, although above 200 metres the ground has been covered by powder snow that is now crystallised from the night frosts. January can easily lull you into a litany of excuses for not going out but I have managed to go out every day climbing the micro hills and keeping my step count ticking along. As well as the Whangie, I have climbed Ben Gullipen and Lime Craig three times and had three walks in the Torrie Forest on days when either fog or nightfall made the trails to the hills dangerous on iced paths.
The glazing of the paths first thing in the morning on pristine blue sky days has meant that my trail shoes have been ice skates with no edges. On some days it was -5°C when I set out although the wind chill was only minor in the gentle breeze. The views were perfect, and as everyone I met agreed, winter on these days provides the very best walking conditions. There are two types of January blues, those that put you in the doldrums and these weather windows that lift you out of the doldrums.
I lost my phone yesterday during a late afternoon jaunt up Lime Craig although I did not realise until I searched for it to check on a delivery after returning home. I returned to the car park at Braeval where on getting down from the hill I had chatted to a couple who had converted an ex-army military landrover into a camper van. They were about to spend their first night in their Heath Robinson mobile home in the forestry car park. I figured I may have dropped my phone whilst sauntering back from them to my car so drove back out immediately, borrowed a torch from the Land Rover man and made a 15-minute search with no result. I decided to return at first light and retrace my descent of the previous evening. As I reached the summit with no sign of my phone a young couple were leaving. I asked if they had seen a phone. "It is on the bench where you must have left it," they replied sounding pleased but not as happy and relieved as I was.
The previous evening I had missed several phone calls, a WhatsApp message telling me the code to enter a Zoom meeting and my bus ticket to Glasgow for tomorrow. I realised my total dependency on the smartphone for almost every aspect of life: tracker, diary, newspaper, maps, photos, tickets, payment and the receptacle for hundreds of unwanted sales pitches and messages, It is almost impossible to access many services without a smartphone nowadays and that means that an awful lot of older people and technophobes are digitally excluded from society. This could extend to the irascible utterings of Musk, Trump and Farage, an advantage if it were not for the amplification of these by the mainstream media. Why do they persist in repeating the claims of these post-truth luminaries?
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| Loch Venachar and Ben Ledi from Gullipen |
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| Ben Lomond beckons - far right |
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| A little night walk in Torrie Forrest |
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