I apologize to those of you who have some interest in my life and are trying to keep track of it. There is yet another twist in the tale, so you will all have to reset your Dave radar once again to show the little green blip in the fair town of Canberra, with any luck attending a tertiary institution.
In order to make my time in the UK feel less like a cunning plan to avoid winter I decided to throw in my temporary catering job and take advantage of my remaining few weeks in the northern hemisphere by seeing some of those things that I meant to see in my previous three year stint. For some reason the Scottish highlands have always pulled on my heartstrings. I don’t know whether this is because my heritage lies there if you travel back far enough, or simply because it is the home of whisky, but I’ve always wanted to go and now seemed like the perfect opportunity.
So this is why I find myself sitting on a park bench in Kelvingrove, Glasgow, under grey, spitting skies. Glasgow is the stopping off point for Fort William and Ben Nevis. I could have gone to Edinburgh again, the two cities are not very far apart, but my natural curiosity rose to the surface and I had an urge to add to my slim file of knowledge on the Glasgow. I know that they used to build a lot of ships here, it’s a predominantly working class town, it gave rise to Billy Connoly and that Glasgow used to have a huge heroin consumption. I now know that I understand German more clearly than the Glaswegian accent, it doesn’t rain here all the time, and that on a Friday and Saturday night the city centre is dominated by 15-year olds wearing slipknot shirts.
It would be easy to paint a grim picture of Glasgow. On Sunday morning I was walking along the banks of the Clyde and came upon a group of tramps that had formed a lounge room of discarded armchairs under a bridge. One of them was holding his own form of communion by shooting up next to the main road, only a stones throw from the local church. There’s no doubt that this city has seen some hard times, but the locals meet it with a resilient humour that tries to laugh in the face of adversity.
The city doesn’t compare well with Edinburgh in the natural beauty stakes. It is an industrial place, but there are parts of it where you can escape the city and disappear into another world. The river Kelvin winds up through the suburbs, and following it takes you on a walk that captures the essence of nature within a city, much like Central park in New York. Of course, I’m not claiming that Glasgow is the New York of the north, but it’s refreshing to be able to walk through a city while being totally enclosed within the confines of a wooded valley and with a stream burbling along next to you. When I climbed out I found myself in the Botanical Gardens with just the faint hum of traffic in the background. Admittedly, they are the worst Botanical Gardens that I have ever seen, with a smashed glass-house slowly being overrun with ivy, but it was good while it lasted.
Fort William is a town groaning under the weight of the tourism industry. Every second house seems to have been converted into a B&B or hostel, and the high street is littered with shops selling Scottish trinkets that only Americans would be stupid enough to buy. It’s easy to see why Fort William warrants all this accommodation. It leaves behind the sprawling southern Scottish cities and seems to embrace the towering mountains that surround it. It’s the largest town in the highlands and, located halfway up the west-coast, it lies in the shadows of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the UK.
It is an amazing feeling to hoist your pack on your back and start walking, soon to find yourself alone but for the company of the streams and hills. The stroll on my first day took me underneath Ben Nevis and along the Nevis river. I squelched along the riverbank enjoying myself thoroughly, even when I almost lost my boot in deceptive mud a few times. While the abundance of water did make for soggy progress it brings the countryside to life with countless little trickles happily letting gravity do the work. After struggling along next to the river for a while I decided to head uphill. I followed a waterfall upstream and sat next to it on the brow of a hill, enjoying the warm sunshine and letting the scenery work it’s magic.
As enjoyable as that day was, it was just the prelude to the main event. The climb up the godfather and mother of all British mountains, Ben Nevis. In my usual manner I made very little preparation for this walk, but learning from my earlier mountain hiking experiences I decided that taking some water and a change of shirt would be a good idea. This proved to be a fortuitous decision as within minutes of setting off up the path I was drenched in sweat. I put this down to a combination of the facts that I was walking directly into the rising sun and have a general lack of fitness.
The Scottish highlands are a rocky part of the planet, so it was no surprise that the path was like walking on a dry creek bed, or that sometimes it actually became a creek. It’s a spectacular path that winds its way past a loch and a waterfall before starting a long and twisting journey to the top. It’s the kind of mountain where the top appears to be close but keeps shifting further up. As soon as you get to a point that you thought might be the top you can see the mountain stretching onwards a bit further. My decision to reread ‘The Lord of the Rings’ was proving a good one, because as long as I ignored all the German tourists I could imagine myself as Frodo on his tortuous journey and stride forward with righteousness on my side.
It sounds funny to say, but I found the top of Ben Nevis to be a slight anticlimax. I don’t think the view from the top is that much better than the view you get on the way. Also, after three hours of struggling up loose rocks you start to yearn for a change, which makes the fact that the top of the mountain is a flat football pitch sized area covered in loose rocks slightly disappointing. But you forget all that once you plonk your weary ass down and take in the view, which stretches away into mountains on all sides, with the odd loch glinting in the sunlight. It was a perfect day with the odd cloud rolling over the top just to remind you how high up it was.
The next day I felt like I had just climbed the highest mountain in Britain. I hobbled down stairs of the hostel, my boots stained with the white salt of evaporated sweat, my movement impeded by blisters, and my calves feeling like they were made of a new type of wood that is capable of feeling pain. Not one to be seen lying idle when I could be toughening my feet up, I took an aimless wander, the sort that I specialize in and that quite often lead me somewhere interesting. It wasn’t looking promising as I attempted to reach the other side of the u-shaped lock that Fort William is situated on in order to look at some uninspiring houses. My every turn was being met by the sort of housing that give beautiful landscapes a bad name. I found myself walking along a path that went past the railway yard, a deserted oval, and an electrical sub-station. By this stage most normal people would start listening to their aching feet and go home, but my perseverance was rewarded when I stumbled across a castle.
Australia is not blessed with a large amount of old buildings, which has probably increased my reverence for them. I find it staggering that a 15th century castle can be surrounded by the most ordinary, boring places imaginable and only be marked by a sign 100 metres from it’s entrance. Admittedly, it’s not a very big castle or in good condition, but it goes to show how lightly history is taken in this part of the world. If we had a castle in Canberra it would be sign-posted from 100km away.
I whiled away a pleasant hour sitting in a crumbling tower, which in better days was the king’s chamber, by reading my book and taking the odd warming sip of incredibly cheap whisky. It was the kind of whisky that needed to be sipped carefully as with overindulgence you ran the risk of waking up in the morning to find your head neatly split in two and your brain writing around in agony on the pillow.
My next move was to head to a place called Mallaig, which is where the Inner Hebrides begins. The night before I left the hostel I experienced my number one hostel hate in a disturbingly aggressive form. I refer, of course, to snoring, a sound which has the ability to drive me to murderous thoughts. This particular night I was stuck in a dorm room with not one, but two snorers. One of them had a whistling undertone and the other sounding like a pig that had been shot in the throat. I’m planning to start an association that will seek out and brand snorers, thus herding them all together into the same sleeping quarters. I think this is the only way that I will avoid committing a pillow-related homicide at some point in the future. Even so, I am considering getting some earplugs and ramming them up the nose of the next person I hear snoring.
The train journey from Fort William to Mallaig is reputed to be one of the most spectacular in the UK, and my journey had the added poignancy of being driven by a bug old steam engine, the last running of it for the summer. It certainly adds to the fun of a train journey to have those chugging sounds coming from up ahead, and to watch hordes of trainspotters train their expensive cameras towards you. The scenery is magnificent, with majestic mountains dropping away into deep lochs. It is the only place that I have been in the UK that feels like wilderness, not just countryside. There are”t any little farms dotted about, just mountains, water and sky.
Apparently the small fishing town of Mallaig only took off in 1901 when the railway arrived. I can only imagine how small it was before then as it barely rates a mention now. There is a smell of smoked fish hanging heavy in the air but the town is dwarfed by the surrounding terrain. A vast mountain range that ends abruptly where the sea begins. There is no gentle introduction to one another, they just collide. It is the most rugged coastline that I have ever seen.
This natural beauty is enhanced by the sky, which alternated between thunderous clouds and clear blue sky in the blink of an eye. Occasionally the clouds break and the sun will shine like a spotlight on one particular mountain. ‘Do you see the light’?” I cocooned myself in a hotel room with a westerly view and watched the clouds roll by. Presently it looked bright enough to go for a walk, but no sooner had the thought entered my mind than rain started hammering into the window, making me feel glad to be inside. When I did get out the Small Islands poked out of the sea like mountains that had accidentally wandered off. All the sky was dark with the exception of the horizon behind the islands, which glowed with an eerily bright light.
That night in the hotel room, just as I was just drifting off to sleep, I heard a strange sound. It was as if someone was moving in the bath or scraping a chair across a wooden floor. With sudden dread I realized that I could hear snoring, presumably coming from the room above. It appeared that there was no escape.
The next morning I brushed weariness aside and caught the ferry to the Isle of Skye. I stood on deck as the cold wind slapped my face and made my eyes water. Being in the middle of the Sound of Sleet, the name of the passage of water separating the Isle of Skye from the mainland, gives you a better view of the surrounding mountains, but there are no words to do them justice. It is an amazing part of the world. I didn’t have long to spend on the island, and didn’t explore enough of it to do it justice, but it’s a good excuse to come back to this part of the world someday.
Dave out.
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