Sauchiehall Street?!

When she reaches a certain age and her children no longer need her, except for those all-important things like cooking, laundry and chauffeuring which don't take long in themselves but require her to be around at awkwardly frequent intervals, suddenly a woman looks around and finds she has no substance, she has no shadow - she has become completely invisible.

Ladies, there is an instant solution! Buy yourself a business-like back-pack - the full 50+15 litres with straps for your ice-axe etc but nothing extraneous otherwise; don a pair of muddy trousers and a battered pair of leather walking boots, tie your hair up in a windblown tangle, get your nose a little sunburnt, and take to the trail.

Within minutes you will become a folk heroine.

On your first day, you approach a family where young and rather hunky dad is reproaching small son for complaining about a hill.

"Just imagine how it would feel if you had 15 kilos on your back and you were crossing rough terrain!" he chides.

He looks up, and there you are, on cue. He'll reel back, Disney stars spinning from his eyes. "That lady's not complaining," he'll utter weakly, "and she's got a pack!"

A week or two later, you encounter an outdoor-type in a bit of woodland who greets you heartily.

"You'll be the first to use our new kissing gate!" he'll say triumphantly, waving towards the top of the hill, where you will be greeted with cheers and cups of coffee and ginger biscuits, the redundant-stile-revamped-as-a-bench hastily cleared of these morsels so you can sit down. You rather feel they've spent the last few weeks working on this new kissing gate just for you. If they had cloaks, they'd be spread in the puddles round your feet and on your shoulders, and it will be with a lot of effort that you persuade these Galahads that you would really rather they didn't call the BBC there and then, as you are trying to keep a low profile, being a lone female walking through Britain's empty quarters.

(Actually, when you started out, you felt safe in the conviction that no woman who has reached the great age of 50 will ever be considered worth molesting; but that was before the back-pack - but the pack in itself also gives you divine protection, it seems).

In Sauchiehall Street, hard-nosed retailers will offer you discounts and beg you to return home via their shops to tell them of your adventures. In Inverlael, as you limp down off the hill and know you cannot walk any further tonight, you will stick out a hesitant thumb at a passing car. Hitching! You've never had the courage to do that before; and as the first car swishes past you know you'll never have the courage to do it again.

But wait! That car is reversing at speed towards you. The driver has looked in his rear mirror and seen that underneath that massive heap of healthy-outdoor-living gear is a diminutive female!

In the cities, men walk down the street backwards, staring at you. I think it's a Lara Croft thing. I'm hanging onto that illusion, anyhow; because by 50 illusions are surely all you've got.

But it's not just the men: it's the women too. In Inverness post office the clerk ignored the queue weaving out onto the street to ask about my adventures; as did the checkout girl in Morrisons. People want to hear your stories, know your name, live your adventure vicariously.

Here, hang on... Sauchiehall Street? Isn't that in Glasgow?

And surely Inverlael is north of the border? Inverness certainly is. Isn't this part of the tale supposed to be about rural England? Wasn't its beginning in Portland? And now a mere 4 weeks later, suddenly we're talking 600 miles away?

Well, rural England did me well for a while. In Gloucestershire, every village had a church, a phone box, a post box - and a bench. That bench made all the difference; even in the rain. But the moment I crossed the border into Warwickshire, all that changed. Not so many villages; hardly any churches; and never a bench. Heathen lot.

The roads irritated me the whole time. I fell in with a young vicar on the Macmillan Way down in Somerset, and he said "My car's waiting in South Cadbury. Envious?"

He had no idea. Envious, indeed. But also sickened by the sheer weight and volume of the shiny, expensive automobilious hardware in Middle England. Here I was, homeless and unemployed, and they drove me into the gutter with vehicles that would have fed and housed me for several years. Not that it really was that desperate, of course; but after days in the torrential rain, with nothing to view but hedges, clotted mud and shoulder-high rape fields (of the crop variety), it felt it.

In addition, the rural roads were turning urban and the only pleasure I was getting out of the whole enterprise by now was that moment each evening when I unrolled my tent and knew that the struggle was over for the day.

Lichfield was redeemed by Sylvia, a fine artist of some standing, who had an aged orphaned lodger whom she'd rescued, and photographs of fairies. In the same way that her God had sent me to her to show her that she need not be afraid of being a woman alone, He had also sent her out to my tent with a plate of spag bolog. It was my first proper meal in two and a half weeks, and with that gurgling gently inside me, as well as a beautiful spot for my tent under a spreading conifer in her garden, I was even able to smile wryly at Jim's kindly text warning me of a 100-mile band of raincloud heading my way.

It gave me enough fizz to stumble through the next (very wet) day or two; but I was flagging. I'd been given a Millets voucher for my birthday, and I'd lashed out on a couple of pairs of expensive walking socks. Mistake. In the past I'd walked hundreds, possibly thousands, of miles in stripy Primark 3-pairs-for-a-pound socks, and I'd never had a blister; but the real McCoy had lacerated my feet from the first day. By the time Toni met me at Westonbirt with a couple of pairs of bog-standard footwear it was too late; and it became a 10am treat to stop at the roadside and wash down a couple of painkillers with a swig of water.

Staggering along a perfectly flat road towards Cannock Wood, after miles along a perfectly flat and beautiful canal (which had even moved me to take a photograph), slowly and gently, like a balloon quietly deflating, I ran out of steam. I sagged into a holly hedge (no, it didn't hurt) and had a little bout of self-pity. Then I drank a lot of water and ate a lot of dextrose tablets. After that, I decided to rearrange my pack, which was a little lopsided, to see if that would help.

Sadly, I'd forgotten the raw eggs at the top of the pack. When I tightened the strap vigorously...

Well, two raw eggs spread through the entire contents of my pack and trapised through the day would make for great camping for the rest of the trip, that was for sure.

I spent a good half-hour sorting out the disaster; by which time I was clean out of steam again. But no rescue here: even in the middle of urban England, a couple of miles outside Drayton Bassett, there were no buses, no big settlements, for several miles in each direction. And here in urban England you couldn't just put up your tent at the roadside as you could in Scotland.

I trudged wearily up towards the crossroads. A car glided past.

But hey! This car was still up at the crossroads when I got there.

"Forgive me for asking this," said a pleasantly straightforward woman who turned out to be weeks away from emigrating to Bulgaria, and who was living with another woman in a motor caravan in the woods meanwhile, "and I know I shouldn't: but do you need a lift anywhere? It did look to us as though you might be limping and ... ?"

I almost fell into her arms, crying. I certainly fell into her car and dashed a tear from my eye. "Please!" I begged. "Where can I find the nearest bus to Scotland?"

A New Journey

"Episode one - a huge success!" e-mailed friend and former colleague Colin.

It was what Neal had been saying when I fetched up on his Glasgow doorstep, lame and numb, my dreams in shreds.

A charismatic man receiving much acclaim for leading a school expedition into uncharted territory in Greenland, he was a generous host who gave as much to waifs and strays like me, in need of rescue, as he did to his many properly invited guests who arrived clean and tidy and capable of intelligent conversation.

"It's not a failure," he insisted with typical energy, googling Easyjet for me as he cooked dinner, ironed a shirt for the next day and kept my drink topped up, "it's an achievement! I read your e-mail; and your five days up there were harder than my five weeks in the Arctic."



What a surprise - an e-mail from me! (Just as well - no mobile access here).

I am in the most amazing place at just exactly the right time - someone loves me! I arrived here at the Inchnadamph Lodge in the Assynt at lunchtime, a day and a half early on account of weather-enforced shortcuts (perfectly legitimate ones, and I've walked every inch of the 55 miles so far!) and it looks like I may need to batten down the hatches for a minute. The wind's howling and the rain is persistent - the mountain weather forecast gave 2-4" rain for this morning, and I think that's what we had - and most of it landed on me or in my rucksack! In three hours I and everything I own (or have borrowed!) was drenched...

When I woke at 6 this morning it was dry, so I had a lie-in till 8 (cos I wanted to confirm this bunkhouse before leaving) - and guess what? - it started to rain. Striking camp in the rain is foul - as fast as you dry your tent it's wet again, and carrying the rainwater as well as the load is no joke, not to mention pitching a wet tent at the end of a hard day. I am SO grateful to the good fortune that led me here at just the right moment!

Fortunately I knew it would be an ... easy? - no, there aren't any of those here ... a short day, only a few miles from last night's desperation campsite in the only dry two square metres in the whole of North West Scotland I think.

I also had the good sense in the last couple of weeks before I left to divert my route to here because I knew I'd need to regroup and I found this amazing place quite by chance on the internet. Nothing is too much trouble - their drying room is full of my tent, rucksack, entire contents of rucksack and pockets, freshly-laundered clothes, etc etc, I've raided the help-yourself-to-people's-leftovers box and had the first real meal for a week, I've got a BED in (at present) a dormitory of my own (and who's going to turn up in this weather?!) Here I am sending you all an e-mail, then I'm going to stretch out on a flat bed (haven't yet found a flat place to pitch the tent, so I always end up in a huddle in a corner of the tent!) with yet another cup of Horlicks and count the muscles and joints that are aching (how come I didn't notice till now, when I have the luxury of being able to indulge them?) All this for £15 for the night (extra for the laundry and internet, but who's complaining?)

The nights have been ok. The first was in a small dry patch in the middle of a very wet marsh that turned out to be the local sheep's nocturnal retreat, so they spent half the night complaining at me and then kept me awake with their snoring!

The second night was on a bare mountain when the midges laid siege to the tent, so I was unable to enjoy the sunset... I did enjoy the RAF Tornado which screamed by, though (having sons gives the weirdest things sentimental significance!). The wind got up in the night, and I spent a lot of time checking tent pegs, meanwhile being awed by the huge mountain towering over me, and me alone in its shadow, apart from the weird birds that come squabbling into the mountains at nightfall (no idea what they are - any clues anyone?)

The third night came after a very bleak moment wandering through a tiny hamlet with no succour for a traveller, (only a school - no comfort there!), when I sat on a wall and wondered what the hell I thought I was doing and how I could find the nearest bus to get home. Then a passing motorcyclist gave me a cheery wave, and that turned things. I turned up onto my hideously steep path away from the shelter of the hamlet ... and found myself in a gorgeous woodland full of larches (which is one of the things I wanted to come to Scotland for). In the lee of an awesome precipice I found the perfect campsite (but only 2 square metres between the trees, so still no comfort!), and bedded down under the conifers while the wind rushed through them and they filtered the rain into enormous drops (but the tent kept them out just the same!)...

Last night was in another bog under a mountain, and I shared this one with something bovine (aberdeen angus I assume, but when I remembered the tale of 5 Cape Wrath Trailers who were chased into A&E by these, I didn't get out to see!). These complained at me all night, just like the sheep had, and I worried about them blundering over my tent, so I only slept fitfully, despite my exhaustion!

The walking? The walking is hard. Very hard. I think I'm just getting used to the weight of the rucksack, in that so long as there's no ascent or rough terrain involved I can traipse a few miles without stopping to groan; but you always have this old man of the sea on your back, and you always have to drive yourself onwards, sometimes inch by inch practically, and it takes forever to find anywhere to put the tent...

And as for the food - would you believe it, I have to force myself to eat, because I know I must? - does that sound like me?!

I'm learning a lot. I don't think I'll bore you all with the details now, but I'm surprised at what I'm finding out about what's really important in a world where every little detail of what you do is going to affect your safety (or at least your comfort) in some very important way. I'm learning about major objectives and middle-distance objectives and tiny little objectives like "can I make it to the next boulder before I collapse in a heap?" I'm finding that in the shadow of spectacular landscapes one nonetheless gets caught up in trivia like "which is the best way round this puddle?" I'm also learning a doggedness I really don't have. Every morning I've had to force myself out of bed to face the day, but it's never so bad once I'm togged up and ready to go. Yesterday I even found myself talking to myself, for the first time; though I shut up again at lunchtime when the going got tough again!

Sorry - rambling on here. I have had people to talk to on the way, though of course not many: even here in this amazing landscape they're all whipping by in their cars, securely locked away from the real world.

Will catch up again at some stage. Thank you everyone for all the texts and good wishes and kind thoughts and loaned gear and everything else: I am very lucky to have so many people who care. Family and particular friends - I will try to keep texting, but don't worry if you don't hear from me: the signal comes and goes through the Highlands. I've had lots of e-mails back from mountain rescue people who are all out there for me - and anyhow, I'm paying particular attention to staying safe to come home to you all.

Loads of love
Ruth x



Lee was saying the same thing when he rang me the day after I arrived home. Speaking from his mobile as he walked through the early-morning streets of Taunton, he too was most insistent that it was no more than a setback.

"May I make a suggestion?" he finished. "You did it the wrong way round: you did the hardest bit first. Go out again in the spring, and this time go south to north. That way you build up your fitness, and you've got better weather coming in before you all the way."

It made perfect sense, as had everything else he had recommended since he had volunteered himself as my mentor and adviser, right back in the beginning when I first voiced the idea I'd been toying with.

Everything is budding around me, the blackbirds are in full voice, and the trail beckons again. Even better, this time I have a Plan B, which I actually prefer to Plan A: so if things go wrong again it will be a positive bonus!

Thank you to everyone; and watch this space...

The Story So Far ...

The plan was to walk from Cape Wrath on the far north coast of Scotland to Portland on the far south coast of England, hiking alone along Britain's long-distance trails and carrying everything I would need for the next three months. By leaving in September and walking from north to south I hoped to stay just one step ahead of the encroaching winter.

Winter had other ideas, though, and encroached early. After a week of being driven relentlessly onwards through a waterlogged North West Sutherland by horrendous weather conditions, which reportedly had even the army calling off an exercise in the same area after the first day, a knee injury forced me to retire and regroup.


NB Blogs build up from the bottom, the most recent post being the one in view. To read the posts in chronological order, navigate to "1" under September, and follow them upwards from there.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Grateful thanks to all the following:

Lee Woodward, for his help and kindness

Lesley Dalladay, for all her practical assistance and moral support

Philip Jones, David Dean, Sue Hill, Alex and Ineke Weber, Moira Beales and Chris Norman, Joyce Loosemore and Maria Loosemore, for their interest and encouragement

Neal Gwynne, for inspiration and generosity

Lairg Police and Health Centre, for rescue and hospitality

Guy Mansford and Mike Saul, for advice and information

Chris Pearce, for saving the day in Achfary

Family, of course, especially Jac and Morgan

Mike Reed, for picking up the pieces

Colleagues at Eaton Aerospace, for restoring my faith in the working world when I flitted through

Jim Fraser, for reminding me of things I should never have forgotten

Paul Jennings, for all the climbing

In memory of Leona Knowles, who was so alive right up to the end, and of Jim Hill, who was such a good friend and mentor. RIP

...

8 Life's Rich Tapestry

"Are you staying tonight too?" asked the man who'd greeted me on my arrival at the hostel yesterday. He must have had a good night's sleep, because he'd softened up today and was much more inclined to smile back.

I'd had a very spaced-out, tranquil evening myself. When I woke up, an hour or two after dropping off, I wandered downstairs to retrieve all my gear from the drying room. A blast of heat greeted me in there, and I took my time packing up the tent, folding my clothes and gathering all the other sundry items. I could see now why Jason hadn't been at all ruffled at my bedraggled state yesterday: the drying room was heaving with other people's wet tents, waterproofs, gaiters, wetsuits, all steaming gently in this tropical heat. Arriving here in a head-to-toe puddle was clearly the norm.

I made some coffee and had a few learned conversations in the kitchen with various geology students here on a Birmingham University field trip, one of the hostel's main sources of income. I didn't know a lot about what I was discussing, but thanks to the Knochan Crag noticeboards I knew all the keywords like thrust plains, Torridon sandstone and Lewisian Gneiss, and I feel sure I held my own.

Emboldened, I peered over the shoulder of the man poring over an Explorer map of the district, GPS and compass at his side. He'd highlighted an impressive route around Glas Bheinn and I nodded knowledgeably.

"Are you camping up there?" I asked.

"No, I haven't got around to trying out wild camping yet, though I keep meaning to," he said. "I just thought I'd take a little stroll round there tomorrow," he added complacently, tapping the map with the end of his pen.

I hate busybodies who tender unsolicited advice; but an exceedingly small part of his route was the path which I had found so arduous in the morning, and we'd had even more rain since then. I had to say something.

I'm not sure he was at all interested in my information about the state of the path; but at least I had cleared my conscience, and we moved on. I listened politely while he told me at length about brown trout and Scottish lochs and why he didn't approve of coarse fishing, and I tried to look impressed when he wove it into the conversation that he had to be back in London for the breakfast studio on Tuesday morning. Perhaps I should have known who he was; but not being a lover of either tv or radio I had no idea.

I moved to the computer in the reception area and sent some e-mails back home announcing my arrival in this paradise and singing its praises as I had promised myself I would. Then I took my coffee upstairs and spent the rest of the evening gazing dreamily out of my window at the wet, misty world around the loch and marvelling at the knowledge that I was in here, warm and dry, with a bunkroom to myself and a flat, spacious bed to sleep in.

When it finally got dark I went to bed; because that's what you did once you had become part of the living world out there.

In the morning I woke with the first light, as had become my wont, and I gazed out at the still very wet world with mixed feelings. When Jason asked me at breakfast what my plans were, I was completely undecided.

I had a day in hand, I could spare the time, it would hardly break the bank, it would really recharge the batteries, and he was smiling winningly himself now.

Balanced against that, I wanted to keep that day in hand, I was afraid of losing my perilously new trailworthiness - and if I gave in to the feeble desire to sink into the featherbed luxury of being in such a place today, how much worse would it be to go back out onto the trail tomorrow?

"What's the forecast?" I asked helplessly.

He grimaced. "Go and have a look," he suggested, gesturing towards the mountain weather forecast pinned up on the noticeboard. "It's going to get a lot worse."

"But will it be any better tomorrow?"

He shrugged and shook his head. "They're even talking about snow," he said.

Snow?! This early in September? But I could feel it in the air - the rain had been feeling icy yesterday. Glancing through the forecast for the week, it was certainly not going to get any better: but how long could I hang around here waiting for it to change? I could be here all winter, and the trail was calling.

"I've got to go," I said finally. "I'll be back," I added with another quick burst of yesterday's fervour. "One day when the weather's a bit kinder!"

He gave a hollow laugh. "It doesn't happen here," he assured me, and suggested that perhaps I ought to hitch on to the next hostel, some 23 miles by road and in the wrong direction, rather than return to the wilds, but of course that was entirely against the spirit of what I was doing. Screwing my courage to the sticking point, I togged up and set off out there again.

It was shaping up to be a good day. At last I had the fitness I'd been needing to carry the weight without having to force myself almost every inch of the way: now I was breezing along the road, including the uphill sections, and most of the people passing seemed to recognise me and were waving to me. I was a minor celebrity and things were looking good. I had cracked this backpacking thing, I had overcome my fear of doing it alone, and I was enjoying myself.

Towards the end of the morning I was feeling triumphant. I had reached Loch Awe, a particularly beautiful loch dotted with tiny islands bearing clumps of Scots pines, like a kind of wet and windy Caribbean lagoon transported to this stark northerly mountain region.

I had gazed at the loch from the bus on my way up to the north coast, still 70 miles of hostile trail south of the starting point and on a particularly grim grey day, and it had seemed impossible to me that I would be able to walk this far in such an inhospitable land. There didn't appear to be any way you could plough through the swamps, and where would you camp?

And here I was! I had walked the 70 miles, somehow staggering through the cruel terrain, I had found somewhere to sleep each night (although usually on water, it had to be admitted), and Loch Awe was as stunning close up as I thought it would be.

"Isn't it amazing?" I enthused to an angler kitting up from the boot of his Volvo estate in a layby.

"What, the way the weather changes?" he asked.

Um, well, yes, I suppose after yesterday's deluge today's mere rainclouds were an amazing change. "And the landscape," I suggested, waving at the loch and the continuing outcrops of geologist heaven.

"Oh yes," he agreed, and we talked about midges. He proudly showed me his netting midge hood. "You should get one," he advised me. "I bought it from Mr Simpson in Lochinver."

It sounded brilliant. The only trouble was, Mr Simpson in Lochinver was well off my route and when you're already planning 1100 miles you don't readily take on too many more. Anyhow, rain is a good midge deterrent, and I was by now very confident of finding plenty of that without any detours.


"All the locals use Avon Skin-So-Soft," he added. "That works too."


I'd read debates about midge deterrents on the climbing website, and had already marvelled at the way all these hardy outdoor rock-climbing tarzans could discuss this product without a trace of irony. Maybe you can when you know you're all-male, I mused.


Unfortunately there weren't any Avon ladies on the lochside, but as there were no midges either I continued unbitten on my way.


By lunchtime I had done 10 - 11 miles along the road and had got back onto the trail. My right knee had started to hurt after all that roadwork, so I figured I'd drop into the woods which were a feature of the next few miles and find another lovely woodland campsite. During the latter part of the morning the landscape had softened, and it seemed to me that the bleakest, most remote part of the trail was done - life was about to get a bit easier.




Huh! It was a forest plantation, and part of the husbandry obviously included carving waterways every half-metre or so, in between the knee-high tussocks of grass, so that getting into the woods in the first place was a nightmare, and camping in them was out of the question.


I staggered back onto the trail - a very swampy, boggy, peaty, soggy, horrible fisherman's path along the River Oykel, famous for its salmon fishing. Like the rest of the journey to date I was not walking so much as wading and plunging, never sure what was underfoot and how far I could trust it not to pitch me headfirst in a totally unexpected direction. The river was in full spate, and had I fallen in I would undoubtedly have drowned, so progress was particularly intensive for the next few miles.


My knee was by now very painful, but I couldn't stop: I had to get onto the unmetalled track at the end of the path. Even there it was still 5 miles to the nearest habitation, (a particularly expensive anglers' watering-hole, but maybe they'd be compassionate), but at least it would be on a decent surface and away from the river.




Around teatime (not that mealtimes played a part in my new life) a wooden hut appeared on the horizon, which I calculated must mark the end of the path. It was a particularly commercial anglers' path, with formal beats marked out at intervals along the bank (but no anglers out in these conditions), and I thought maybe the hut was another fisherman's hut like the one I'd passed a few miles back, which had been padlocked. I was desperate enough now to consider breaking in if I could, as I knew that going much further would put my knee out of action completely and finish my trek altogether. If my burglary skills fell short, maybe I could sleep underneath the hut for the night; but if I could not I would at least shelter from the rain behind it and use the tent in some tarpaulin kind of way.


I didn't need to: only a sliding bolt secured the hut, and apart from the fact that there was no way of closing the door from the inside it was perfect: the wooden benches along the sides were wide enough to sleep on (just), there were lots of nails to hang up my wet gear, and there was a table to spread out my maps and sort out the next day's agenda before settling down for the night.


Ten minutes after I'd got settled, the heavens opened and the wind rose, and as I listened to the weather bombarding the hut I was exceedingly grateful to whatever fortune had brought me there when it did. Every night I had fallen asleep to the sound of rushing water (it's amazing how much noise the tiniest of mountain streams makes in the night), but the Oykel outside was a deafening roar to add to the tempest.


I buried myself in my sleeping bag and tried to ignore the open door banging to and fro (there was no way of securing it - I'd tried). There was a shovel in the hut, so I armed myself with that against any possible intruders and assured myself that no-one would be out in these conditions; but it worried me that if you were a poacher you might come out just the same, the price that salmon fetches, and there was after all a lovely unmetalled track all the way to the open hut door if you had a 4x4.

I woke at some stage in the darkness to find my worst fears realised. Someone was leaning over me and pinning me down; but they didn't move, they didn't say anything, just held me very still. I tried to say something, but as in nightmares no sound would emerge. I croaked soundlessly a few times and thought "So this is how it ends" in that abstracted way that you do when going beyond fear to that moment that looks like your last.


After some indeterminate length of time, when my attacker still didn't move or say anything, finally I reached up and touched what I guessed to be a soft walker's fleece; and the feel of it somehow gave me courage to speak.


"Who are you?" I asked in a surprisingly steady, unemotional tone...


The sound of my voice woke me up properly, and I realised I had dreamed it of course. There was no one there.

I was sufficiently used to the wilds by now, too, to know that the piercing screams which cut through the night at regular intervals after that (always in threes) were not from the chambered cairns and burial mounds across the river, but from some miscellaneous water-bird.

I did manage to sleep the rest of the night, but it was a little fitfully. It would surprise a lot of my more urban friends to know that it's possible to feel a lot safer totally alone on a bare mountain miles from people than it is at the end of a road.

At intervals through the night I had taken Ibuprofen for my knee, and I thought that combined with a good night's rest it should be enough to sort out the problem; but when I climbed out of the sleeping bag at first light to answer the call of nature I realised it was not. Every time I stood up I fell over again, and when I tried again a few hours later it was worse, not better.


I had enough food for a few days anyhow, since this was another stretch of 5 – 7 days in the wilds, and of course I was fully equipped to deal with any emergency, including one such as this; and I imagined that sooner or later someone would want to come and try their luck with the salmon; but there was no guaranteeing that my knee would get better within that length of time if it was badly damaged.


I looked at the situation from the viewpoint of Assynt Willie, the local mountain rescue contact whom I'd e-mailed so breezily before I left just to say I'd be passing though but not to worry about me, I'd be fine. I thought perhaps Assynt Willie would be more pleased to be dragged away from his day job at 9 am on a Monday morning to someone still reasonably okay than to be called out in the middle of the night later in the week to someone who was in a state. I also figured that if I left it too late this morning Assynt Willie and his mates would be on their way to work and harder to assemble. At 7 am I dialled 999.


I dialled it again about 20 more times in the next half hour, most of them outside in the desultory drizzle, and finally got a signal for long enough to speak to an emergency switchboard. After another half hour and a lot of fragmented conversations there had been a signal for long enough to transmit at least where I was and what I needed.


A little while later, when there was enough signal again for them to do so, the noble might of the Lairg Constabulary rang me back to try and ascertain where I was. I repeated my grid reference, and identified a few features on the map just to be certain that there was no mistake; but after further convoluted conversation it seemed to me that Assynt Willie would have made a much better job of understanding the technicalities of my location than the official assistance which had been sent my way instead. Not that I was complaining - this was rescue, after all; but when the network cut us off again I dug out the next few pages of my map and worked out the "turn right at the next junction" way of locating me that the seventh cavalry obviously needed.


It seemed to do the trick. "Ah, I think I know the track you mean!" said 7C during our resumption of the conversation. "I just didn't want to take the wrong one and end up in the wrong place. I'll set off now then and see if I can find you."


A very long time later I began to wonder which track 7C had actually taken, because it clearly wasn't this one. How impertinent would it be to dial 999 and start the whole process again?


Reinforcements arrived at Lairg HQ at 9 am, and a sergeant rang to ask if I was all right. Rescue was on its way, he assured me, there had just been a few delays with ... did he say gates?! What sort of trouble did gates give you, in the middle of nowhere when as often as not they were secured with a bit of binder twine?


When 7C arrived and turned out to be a bubbly blonde, she enlightened me instantly.


"Did the sergeant tell you about the cows?" she asked. "One of the gates was blocked by cows, and I used to be married to a man from farming, and I know all about cows - I wasn't going to take that kind of risk!"


I couldn't get a word in edgeways anyhow to suggest that surely, of all people, a man from farming might know how to deal with cows?


"I'd rather face an angry man on a Friday night than cows!" she assured me.


It was a line she was to use half a dozen times in the next half hour on the track down to Oykel Bridge, and all the gamekeepers, ghillies, stalkers and anglers loved it, coming as it did from the bubbly blonde in a uniform who was keen to share with them all the details of the Exciting Event which had befallen Lairg Constabulary that morning.


"There you are!" she said merrily, turning to me. "You would have been rescued after all!"


Not that she minded being called up for action at last. She was a town policewoman at heart and reckoned that she had been posted to Lairg to punish her for refusing to go to the Shetland Isles on account of her status as a single mother. The empty countryside didn't get her pulses racing the way town crime did; and as she detailed over the next 30 miles some of the things she'd witnessed in Inverness I could see her point. I began to be very grateful I'd emerged unscathed from my one night in the town on the way up, with all that going on around me!


The sun came out as she talked, and now the countryside did soften a little; and I felt distinctly uneasy as I was transported off my route and away from my three-month venture only a week into it. Every mile away from the trail in the warmth of the police jeep through the sparkling autumn sunshine hurt quite as much as every mile had along it in the most foul of conditions, and I found myself desperately hoping that my knee would miraculously have fixed itself by the time we reached the health centre in Lairg. I wondered whether I could find the nerve to ask her to bring me back to Glen Oykel if so.


I would have been astonished, a fortnight ago when my heart was in my mouth the whole week before I left, to know that I would be feeling this overwhelming sense of insecurity at actually leaving this wilderness and facing the prospect of travelling home to the civilised world. In the space of six days alone on Britain's hardest long-distance trail in the worst of all possible weather conditions, in a bleak remote swampland where I didn't see so much as a tree for the first 30 miles, somehow I had come to regard physical hardship and danger as a much more acceptable way of living than the petty traumas of the comfortable existence which had brought me uncomfortably close to the edge.

"Work is bedlam," texted a former colleague. "You're better off in a tent!"


He had no idea how right he was ...

7 Paradise Lost and Found

It was afternoon by now, and I was on a road again for the next six kilometres. I was still well ahead of schedule, I was tired and I wanted a break. I began my customary afternoon's pastime, hunt-the-campsite. My afternoon responded with its customary refrain: far too wet round here, girl!


I trudged through Unapool and Newton, two tiny settlements with no more than a dozen houses between them. Lochs and rocks ... at least there were rocks; and had I been more clued-up I might have got excited at this point.


Another helpful noticeboard from the Knochan Crag Rock Trail told me why. Across the wind-ruffled waters of Loch Glencoul, staring me in the face and me so oblivious, was the Glencoul Thrust Plane. And there beyond it, look, was the Moine Thrust Plane! Geologists go weak at the knees at the mere mention of these diagonal strata of ancient rock sandwiches, the first thrusts in the world to be recognised as such, and here I was gazing dully at them as though it was just another view.


I sharpened up and took a photo. By the time I'd unwrapped the camera from all its waterproofing and wrapped it up again I had already forgotten the name of the thrust plane and why it was so important. I really needed a break.



It was sunny for a change, and there were no midges. A flat dry spot away from the road would have had approximately the same effect on me as the landscape had on all those geologists; but their grail was much more attainable than mine, and I muttered grumpily on into the Assynt. The road was deviously ascending, very craftily just inching up through a couple of hundred metres over the space of the next five kilometres. There was no obvious sense of achievement in terms of height gained, just a debilitating fatigue that wasn't quite enough to bring me to a halt but was plenty enough to sour my progress.


In order to reduce the gradient to the slouch it assumed up here, the road-builders had carved their route in a tortuous snail trail back and forth up the hillside, and a crow would have flown the distance in moments - in fact one did. A line of three cars went by, their drivers caught up in the you-needn't-think-you're-going-
to-pass-me game, and it was discouraging to see how long it took even these guys to wind their way to the top.


The rushing river of Unapool Burn cheered me up. It was another torrent of foaming water hurtling down a rocky hillside and it was a very welcome change from all that saturant, lurking stuff that seeped and soaked and generally made life a misery wherever you tried to rest. Not that I could sit in the Unapool Burn, of course; but at least it reminded me that I was alive.


There was a useful-looking shed beside it that could well have been the waterworks; but as there was also a useful-looking pick-up truck parked there I abandoned the idea of checking it out as a place to hole up for the night.



Round the corner the road flattened out for a minute, although I could see that it made up for it further on by climbing sharply. I would worry about that later. The hills either side of me flattened out, too, and there would surely be somewhere to put a tent along here.


Er - where, exactly? The entire plateau shone in the sun's lengthening rays as the standing water reflected its light in one huge mocking mirror.


A wicked thought struck me, and I caught my breath. Well, I had always said that I wasn't going to be purist about this whole enterprise, and that I would do whatever I needed to do in order to achieve it...


The bus was due along here any time soon, and it went right past the Inchnadamph Lodge, tomorrow night's scheduled stop. Needs must - and the devil was certainly driving! ... I could, couldn't I, if the situation was desperate enough?


Well, maybe; but the situation wasn't desperate enough. I still had two legs, my lungs were doing their bellows stuff soundly enough, my heart was feeding my organs and muscles the things they needed to keep going, I had everything I was ever going to want during the next three months safely stowed on my back. How could I possibly say I was desperate?


If the bus had stopped beside me where I stood at the roadside to watch it approach, I have no idea whether I would have summoned the willpower to resist the temptation. I would certainly like to think so. Fortunately the situation didn't arise: without even slowing it swept on past me.


Very character-building, this trek. My character would be so built by Christmas I would never get it through a doorway again, and I would have to spend the rest of my life in a tent. Though of course it would have to be a tent with a large door...


As the road began its ascent at the end of the plateau, suddenly the hillside to my left plunged abruptly down a cliff, surface water from above thundering down a waterfall to flow away as a river under the road.


Now these rocks I could get excited about. Fascinated, I blundered down through the swampy vegetation to the water's edge and gazed ecstatically at the rockface. I even took my rucksack off, meaning to spend time here just working out all the different ways you could climb the crag; but as there was nowhere dry to put it down I shrugged back into it again. I stood and figured out my routes instead; and then I decided I would camp right here under the cliff: here I could be happy, whatever the night chucked at me.


Wrong. I paced the tiny valley repeatedly, sizing up its miniscule acreage from every which direction; and the best maths in the world wasn't going to find me a space large enough to put my tent. Making a mental note to bring a water butt instead of a tent next time I tried to wild-camp in West Scotland I wandered sadly away, turning every so often to gaze mournfully at my paradise lost.




Once again I was starting to get worried. If I didn't find anywhere to stop soon I would run out of daylight, and then I stood no chance at all of finding a reasonable place to spend the night. Here I was on a road again, and this one was far busier than the Durness Highway. Given the same ratio of axe murderers to civilised citizens, it would sport many more bloodthirsty villains out to rain on my parade.


Actually, I had stopped worrying about axe murderers. There were far worse things out here than imaginary dastardly deeds. Waterlogged wildernesses, for example.


Until three weeks before, my intended route at this point was going to take me off into the sticks again. I would walk past Eas a Chual Aluinn, a spectacular waterfall four times the height of the Niagara Falls, and from there through a picturesque landscape of lochans and outcrops to Glen Oykel.


I had been very uneasy at the thought of up to twelve days' wild camping before I could come in out of the cold for a night in my first bunkhouse, at Kinlochewe. With no knowledge of how diabolical I was going to find the conditions, nonetheless three weeks ago I had diverted my route to Inchnadamph, where to my delight I had found there was a bunkhouse.


I had been disappointed at the idea of missing the waterfall, though; and I had brought the original route with me as well as the diversion, with the intention of making up my mind when I arrived here.


Well, here I was, and as I surveyed the cross-country route on the map I knew exactly how it would look on the ground. On paper it was pretty similar to Ben Strome, but higher, rockier, generally more extreme, and much, much wetter. (Is it possible to cap a superlative with a relative? - certainly is when your sentence includes both Sutherland and water).


So along the road a little further, and then onto a path that would meander around the front of the Glas Bheinn massif, instead of risking life and limb in its hinterland.


It was a clearly marked path to start with, snaking its way up the foothills in chunks of glistening white quartz. At least navigation wouldn't be too demanding; although yet again if I didn't accidentally blunder up over the mountain (which was unlikely, since it was some 500 metres higher than the path) I couldn't go too far wrong anyhow.


I once ascended Snowdon in heavy rain, which turned torrential as we turned to go down again. The paths we had taken to get up there were fully-formed rivers as we descended, and had it not been for the cairns alongside we would have had grave doubts about our mapwork.


I assumed from the layout of the stones making up this riverbed by Glas Bheinn that it was indeed the path marked on my map; but it splashed and gurgled down the hillside as unambiguously as any waterway inked in blue. It wasn't much drier either side; and we were back to heather and soggy, boggy moorland.


Again I had come much further today than I had intended, or felt able to, and wherever I camped now, it would be a short distance tomorrow to Inchnadamph. It was almost within reach tonight; but not quite, not by daylight; and this certainly wasn't the kind of terrain you'd want to cross by torchlight. A short day to look forward to tomorrow, at least, then; and a bed, a meal, a washing-machine, somewhere dry to sit ...


I slowed to a thoughtful crawl and rubbernecked my way up the riverbed, scanning every inch of land (using the word loosely, as a sailor might, not as a farmer would) for a possible campsite. Just two square metres of flattish, dryish, shelteredish land: not too much to ask, surely?


Of course it was too much to ask. In the end I simply straddled the riverbed at its shallowest point, offering a silent apology to David, the friend who had lent me his beloved mountain tent in all good faith, with no idea of the indignities I would inflict upon it the moment his back was turned.




I still didn't know what they were, but this time the ptarmigans' racket didn't faze me. The cows were a different matter, though.


By day I don't have a problem with cows, though their habit of following you through a field, at speed if you too are going at speed, intimidates many a would-be walker. They are very easily handled: if you turn around suddenly and wave your arms threateningly, they back off very quickly.


More than once I've come unexpectedly face to face with a bull, and I've learnt the trick for that one too. You amble along with your hands clasped behind your back, gazing innocently at the sky, and you sing quietly to yourself. Works every time - although I haven't tested it to the limits, it's true: given a choice I, too, will avoid a field with a bull in.


But these cows, complaining like the sheep up north about the intruder in their night pastures, were alarmingly close to my tent, and I did worry about them blundering into it and over me and leaving me in a bemused, bedraggled heap or worse. I also remembered the recent posting on the Cape Wrath Trail website about the walkers who were chased by a herd of Highland cattle who were protecting their young. Two hikers ended up in A&E with sprained ankles, although presumably not too badly since they were able to finish their trek.


After yet another hard day, I shouldn't have had any trouble sleeping; but every time I dozed off, a bovine alarm would bring me smartly back to consciousness, and it was not a good night. At six o'clock I gave up the idea of getting any more real rest, but I stayed there in the warmth of my sleeping-bag, knowing that today there was no rush. I had all the time in the world to get to Inchnadamph, and a comfortable afternoon off awaited me once there. I stretched and luxuriated and then lay with my hands folded behind my head, reflecting that this wasn't such a bad way to live after all.


Sometime just after seven the rain began. Cursing myself for not having got up at six when the tent was dry, I waited for the rain to stop.


At eight o'clock the rain was heavy and persistent and a glance out through the tent door persuaded me that it wasn't going to get any better. The clouds were thick and low and hung around the mountain in that menacing way that means they're not going anywhere else in a hurry. I was going to have to strike camp in a downpour - oh whoopee!


I am by no means a tidy or orderly person, and much of my life is conducted at a run, grabbing things in and chucking them out as I pass, cursing myself for never being able to find what I need but not having either time or inclination to set up systems and methods. Out here in the wilds, though, I knew that my safety - or at least my comfort - depended upon being careful and thorough and not losing important things, and I had perfected an efficient morning routine by now. Everything was in its allotted place in the tent from the previous day, following my equally efficient evening routine, and the chores ran like clockwork. To my astonishment I even derived a certain pleasure from carrying out these deadly dull procedures.


Eat breakfast while still in sleeping bag, put pan and spoon aside to wash out in a moment, wriggle out of sleeping bag and into clothes. Roll up sleeping bag and shove into stuff sack. (I had spent four nights in the summer sleeping on my son's floor, and he had found my daily struggle with my recalcitrant sleeping bag hilarious, especially when he remembered that I was about to spend three months having this battle in a tent every day. But out here the slippery red nylon behaved itself perfectly).


Open tent door, grab socks from where they hang to dry and put them on, thrust feet out into walking boots in porch. Crawl out into hostile world, put on waterproofs, take pan and spoon, soap, toothbrush and toothpaste, and water bottle out to water source. Do washing-up, perform ablutions, top up water bottle.


Perform crucial pre-flight checks: GPS, camera and compass in coat pockets, today's maps (wrapped) in trouser pocket, inhaler, mobile, mountain whistle in trouser-leg pocket, chocolate and dried fruit in remaining pockets.


Then the complicated bit. I couldn't stow all the rest of the small stuff in the rucksack until I'd stashed tent, sleeping bag and roll-mat; but I couldn't do that until I'd got the small stuff out of the way. There never being anywhere flat or dry to put them meanwhile, I had a bin bag for this purpose, a second one to stand the rucksack on, and a cloth to hand to dry things.


Roll up roll-mat, stow in rucksack, empty all other items from tent into bin bag. Wipe down tent if wet (as it usually was, of course), collapse it, fold flysheet into groundsheet, wipe down groundsheet, rolling it meanwhile, stow all tent parts (counted) in tent bag, stow tent and sleeping bag (double-wrapped in waterproofing) in rucksack with roll mat.


Base layer, spare clothes, emergency rations and supplies, all shoved to the bottom of rucksack (again double-wrapped, like everything else I carried - a very necessary precaution out here, even without the possibility of falling into a stream). Notebook and maps behind tent or roll-mat, hygiene/medical items, miscellaneous kit, additional food, torch and fleece in the remaining space inside.


Water filter, gas stove and pans in side pocket, some food in there, remaining food in the other pocket. First aid kit, hat and gloves in top flap, wipe down bin bags, wring out wet cloth, stow cloth in bin bags and stow bin bags in rucksack pocket. Strap water bottle to rucksack (there being no space anywhere else to store it).


Stand up, massage aching back, wriggle shoulders to savour their last few moments of freedom, glance at the sky, scan terrain for route, sigh heavily, pick up rucksack, stagger, sigh even more heavily, put on rucksack, stagger, grit teeth and face the day. Smile. (This is freedom, you could be at work!)


This was the fifth day, fortunately, and everything I did was slick and rapid. Even so, it all took time, and the rain was thundering down at a rate of knots. (According to the mountain weather people, we had 2 - 4 inches in the space of the morning in the Assynt that day, but I'm not sure of the maths to work out how many gallons per second that represented in the small space I occupied on the slopes of Glas Bheinn. Several hundred, it seemed). As fast as I dried anything it got wet again; and even I had to laugh at myself as I tried desperately to wipe the tent dry before I dismantled it. In the end there was nothing for it but to pack up all the rain into my rucksack as well as all my gear.






I hate the restriction of a hood, and it's about time someone invented something you can wear on your wrist that is simultaneously highly absorbent to rainwater on the face and completely water-resistant to rain falling on your wrist between times. (Is it just me, or is everyone allergic to rainwater on the face? Perhaps it's acid rain?)


Other than that, I don't mind walking in the rain if I'm kitted out for it. I possibly even prefer it to walking in the heat, which was one reason why I was out here in September, not in the summer, which is when most people would do their trekking.


There's rain and there's rain, though. This was the latter kind, the sort that gets inside your waterproofs and down the back of your neck and inside your boots, the sort that seeps through your rucksack to meet the water seeping out from the wet tent and other sodden cargo and doubles the weight of everything you're carrying, the sort that streams off the mountain slopes in sheets and swells the moorland marshes to ponds and lochans.


My quartz path/riverbed disappeared abruptly into the swamp I found myself wading through, and the tussocks and clumps of heather grew thicker and taller as I reached the top of my route and started picking my way perilously downhill towards Inchnadamph and salvation. Even in all its waterproofing my map, so carefully researched, constructed and printed off back home, soaked up vast quantities of water from somewhere and smudged and turned into a very pretty but completely useless piece of brightly-coloured artwork.


The going was particularly treacherous now: there was no identifiable path, all the vegetation was at least ankle-deep and so thick that I had to kick my way through it, and the ground even beneath all that undergrowth was saturated and very slippery. I lurched and plunged and slithered for what was only a few kilometres but seemed like half a continent, and finally came to a vantage point from where at last I could see the tell-tale signs of approaching civilisation: the very rich green which implies human intervention, and a metalled track which confirms it.


This last hillside was even worse than the territory I had already crossed, however, as the sedge and heather grew higher and thicker and were interspersed with waist-high thickets of bracken, rushes and brambles, as well as gurgling streams and invisible gullies and craters. For the first time on the whole trek a sense of panic assailed me, and I could feel the skin prickling on the backs of my hands as my blood raced and my heart pounded. Whichever way I stumbled, it seemed to be the wrong way, and I was staggering helplessly all over the place, wondering how on earth I was ever going to get out of this mess. I badly needed to get a grip.


I got a grip. There was a fence to my right, and although I had to cross a couple of streams and a gully to get to it, once there I could see that it would be possible to follow it all the way down the hillside to the metalled track. It wasn't what the map had said, but it was what common-sense said, and I crossed the streams and gullies to the fence. From there I made my laborious way down the hillside to the bogland at the bottom and painstakingly tiptoed my way across to the very green grassland only a couple of hundred metres away.


Once on the track I stood still for a very long time and pulled myself together. Then I hitched my rucksack higher on my back, registering that it was now exceedingly heavy with all that surplus water, and shuffled off down the track and onto the road to Inchnadamph.






I gave the man at the reception desk at Inchnadamph Lodge my most appealing smile and spread my hands helplessly as I dripped all over his lovely polished wooden floor.


"I'm sorry," I said as meltingly as I could manage. "Do you still have space even for an exceedingly wet backpacker?"


He didn't seem to be particularly melted by it; but neither did he bat an eyelid at the state of me. Giving me a registration form to fill out, he started to tell me about what was where in the hostel. Bunkrooms, kitchen, dining room, lounge, showers - excellent, wonderful, and it sounded as though I would have the bunkroom to myself - bliss! But he just kept listing things: drying room, washing machine, tumble drier - swoon! - luxury! Satellite tv, internet access, bookshelves, unlimited tea and coffee, a box of food jettisoned by previous guests and up for grabs, a well-stocked wine cellar ... I'd wandered into a five-star hotel on a backpacker's budget, in the middle of this outrageously wet wilderness!


Had I not quite been so waterlogged I'd have lurched around the reception desk and hugged him. "I think I shall probably stay here forever!" I breathed ecstatically instead.


He returned my gaze, quite unmoved by my instant love for him and all he represented here and not looking at all overcome at the idea of my promised permanence; then he came around to my side of the desk to show me some of these amazing facilities. Once there he realised that the most sensible thing to do after all, for the sake of his high-gloss floors if nothing else, was show me to a place where I could dispose of some of this water. "I'll give you a tour later," he suggested, leading me directly to my room and the showers.


I spent a blissful afternoon spuddling around doing domestic stuff. Spreading the bin bags protectively on the bunkroom floor I peeled off the outer layers and rummaged inside the rucksack for my spare clothes. Showered and changed, I padded downstairs in my best pink mountain socks and drank three cups of Horlicks and cooked a huge plateful of pasta with tuna. (Numbers one and two by a long way on the list of foods jettisoned by hostel guests are pasta and tuna, it seems. Is that because that's all they bring, or is it because that's what they really don't want to take away?)


Eating my very late lunch at the table overlooking Loch Assynt I struck up conversation with an anaesthetist from Edinburgh, who'd moved there from Cambridge because she wanted to be nearer the mountains, and her companion, a mountain man from Inverness. I compared notes on Cambridge with her, it being a place I know well, and on backpacking and wild camping with him; and for almost the first time in my life I felt sufficiently qualified to hold my own in both discussions, with none of my usual bashfulness at having an opinion at all. Could it be that I was growing up at last?


Once I'd washed up I took a cup of coffee upstairs, pausing on the stairs for a long chat with the woman washing down the walls after a two-day geologists' conference (though I don't think the wall-washing was necessarily directly connected with the geologists). Back in the bunkroom I set about sorting out my wet gear, mopping up the puddles it had left everywhere despite my bin bags.


The young Australian girl now down at reception took my washload out to the machine and I proceeded to take over the entire drying room with my bits and pieces. Despite all the layers of polythene securely tied throughout the rucksack, absolutely everything I owned (or had borrowed) was soaked, and I spent an hour sitting on the bunkroom floor with a handful of paper towels, wiping down everything that hadn't gone into the drying room. Then I retrieved my washing and hung it in the drying room with everything else, made another cup of Horlicks, and went upstairs to stretch out on my bed.


Only now, on the afternoon of the fifth day, did I notice that every muscle in my body ached. My knees and hips were really stiff, too. Had it been like this all along, and I simply hadn't noticed, or had it just happened today because of the extreme demands of the morning's walk?


I had been taking great care all along not to engage too intimately with how I was feeling about doing this trek now I was out here. It was something I had to do, even while it was something which I had known all along would terrify me; and the only way I could unite these two sentiments was by assuring myself that everything was just fine and not looking too hard, like not glancing around you when you're afraid of the dark and out in it.


If I had been aching while I was doing the hard stuff in the mountains, it was possible that I wouldn't have permitted myself to notice; but I decided that the aches and pains were probably more to do with the rigours of the morning. If I hadn't diverted to this amazing place, God knew what would have happened to me that night, out on Ben More Assynt. No doubt I would have survived, and probably even come up smiling fixedly; but I couldn't think that it would have been an experience I would care to repeat.


I resolved to spend the rest of my life loudly extolling the virtues of the Inchnadamph Lodge to anyone who would listen; and then I fell asleep.

6 Kylesku

It still wasn't the perfect campsite, of course. Everything squelched underfoot, even here, and the trees were so close together that I had to wind a guy rope around a larch root before I could peg out one of the corners.


I'd also had to pull off the track and find a good hideaway, because my axe murderer could drive all the way up here and beyond if he chose to, even without a 4x4. For all that Achfary could only have about ten inhabitants, and there was no other settlement for miles around, those lager cans at the bottom of the forest worried me. Also, coming from a rural area myself, I knew all about solitude and isolation and in-breeding doing people's heads in: back home we had the occasional bizarre murder or suicide in a remote farmhouse. Cheerful thoughts when you're alone in a forest like Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel.


But again the weather gave me the reassurance and comfort that I needed. Firstly, no-one would come out in these howling gales, with the rain bucketing down too, on the off-chance that Little Red Riding Hood might be tucked up fast asleep in a little mountain tent. Secondly, once I'd convinced myself of the first, it really was very snug in here with the wind and rain making such a racket out there. One of my all-time favourite situations is lying in bed listening to wild storms; and it's amplified a thousand times when you're out in it but still warm and dry.


In the morning I was astonished at the volume of water rushing down yesterday's little mountain stream: today it was a gushing torrent and I could hardly hear myself think as I packed up to go. I gathered a few centilitres in my water bottle as I passed, as a safeguard; but one thing I could be sure of hereabouts was a ready supply of water, and with the amount of rainfall we were having there was no such thing as standing water: it was all on the run, all the time.


The path out of the forest and up to the top of the mountain was as steep as I'd anticipated; and since it was at the start of the day it was also rather hard. I did it in very short bursts, bent double under my pack like a stunted little hunchback; but the views back down over the forest each time I paused for breath reminded me of my beloved Pen y Gadair Fawr, back in the Black Mountains, and it made me feel much more at home. Furthermore, they were getting further away at a surprising rate, given how frequently I was stopping.


Normally the summit of a mountain is an elusive thing, always tucked out of sight behind what you thought was the top but definitely wasn't; but this one hit me in the face before I'd even dared wonder if I was nearly there. The cliff to my left flattened out and burrowed under the sparse vegetation, the corrie to my right beneath Ben Dreavie suddenly gave way to daylight and the track I was following turned a corner and pulled out into the wind.





If yesterday's wind had been strong, this one was a killer. Even laden as I was I staggered all over the place while I was adjusting to it; and I was decidedly unsteady even after I had found my wind-legs.


Fortunately I had learned how mountain winds behave in my apprenticeship down on the Welsh mountains, and I was able to anticipate the raging fury screaming down each col, the brief moment's peace in the shelter of a hillock. Anticipating it didn't make me any weightier or stronger, however; and when it was at its fiercest I couldn't move: every joule of the energy I pitted against it went into just holding me upright, and all I could do was fight to hold my place until a tiny let-up allowed me to totter forwards into the next battle a step or two beyond.


The landscape up here was like nothing I'd ever seen. It was a vast plateau, scantily clad in raw yellow moorland, pitted and cratered like the surface of the moon, water pooling in every hollow, mounds and hillocks liberally scattered around and forcing the track to wind back and forth, up and down.





The shieling on the map was indeed a sort of mountain shelter, but it would have been pretty draughty in last night's gales. It was a tumbledown stone hut, its roof long gone and its walls rotted down to stumps; but there was a tiny, cramped little area partitioned off by another crumbling wall, and someone had fashioned a roof there out of sticks and stones. It could possibly have enabled you to spend a night on the mountain without having to peg yourself down, but it would keep you neither dry nor warm.


Since someone had gone to the trouble of making it, however, I sat in there and ate some chocolate. While I did so the sun came out, and my heart soared. My next objective was Kylesku, and it was downhill all the way. To be sure, downhill all the way was the broad overview: the detail was that there would be lots of little hauls up over all these mounds and hummocks. In addition, I was expecting to be there by lunchtime, which meant an afternoon's walking after this. Nonetheless I'd done today's hard work, and I felt my strained and burdened little soul stretch and yawn and risk a glance out through the curtains for the first time since I'd left Durness.


This time when I picked up my pack and walked on I scarcely noticed its weight - indeed within minutes I forgot it was there. I had also got used to dealing with the wind and was able to observe and respond to the shape of the landscape and the effect it would have on my stance and balance without needing to use vast reserves of mental resources to do so. For the first time on this trek, too, I started talking to myself.


One of the chief virtues of wilderness is that you can hold very impassioned debates with yourself without any fear of an audience. You can harangue yourself and argue back, you can gesticulate wildly, you can stamp your foot and t