Dave Hewitt holidays on the Uists to indulge in his unusual passion for trig bagging!
I've been on holiday this past while, away from it all on the Uists followed by a few days on Skye, which feels remarkably hectic in comparison. So before returning to the foot and mouth fray, it's time for a holiday report, a tale of something completely different.
Every now and then, for as long as the editor tolerates my tangents, I'll report on a couple of bonkers-cum-barking schemes - the type of illogical ideas which, if gone at with zeal, can provide a huge buzz and a real sense of adventure.
I'm embroiled in two such ploys just now and part of the reason for going to the Uists was to make badly needed progress with one of them. The basic idea is this. Scotland has around 2,200 Ordnance Survey triangulation pillars - more commonly known as trig points - built from the 1930s onward to provide accurate height measurements across the whole country.
Walkers are familiar with hilltop trigs - useful for cowering behind on stormy days and serving as excellent navigational aids - but I've developed an interest in those trigs which stand on lower ground. Although I wouldn't deny the trainspotterish tendency to this (but hey, when did spotting a train ever hurt anyone?), the main enjoyment comes via the exploration involved.
Whereas trigs as portrayed on maps look utterly trivial to find - and they often do stand starkly in fields or at roadsides - a great many can only be reached after raking through obscure corners of the landscape. Often there is a profound sense of no one having bothered to stray that way for months or even years - in marked contrast to the Munro mode of simply autopiloting along the path and to hell with any notion of having to think for yourself.
In fact, almost all of Scotland's trigs are neglected, despite providing ready-made targets for a near-endless series of offbeat, ad hoc adventures. Sure, a 104m pillar in a wood somewhere is hardly Beinn Alligin or Stac Pollaidh but it does provide a reasonable focus for an hour or two of an evening, away from watching the soaps and washing the dishes. No one seems to go to such places however - which is why, last summer, I began the slow process of visiting at least one Scottish trig of every different height, pretty much in order, from the bottom up.
This mad concept requires a paragraph or two by way of explanation. There are only, I reckon, 749 different metric heights of Scottish trig (no 1m, 3m, 56m, 271m and so on). Some heights offer considerable choice. For example 13 pillars at 107m, ranging from a remote Shetland headland to a roadside version at St Boswells. The idea of having a choice of targets is a pleasing one. I suspect we have all known days where a drier-weather clone of our chosen hill would have been gratefully climbed if available.
On Planet Trig, this is feasible. Come the time when, say, a 797m trig is needed, there's a straight choice between Beinn Dronaig up in the huge empty Monar-scape, or Cairnsmore of Carsphairn on the northern fringe of Galloway. The eventual choice will come down to a mix of mood, weather and logistics. Often, especially in the 100m-300m range, there are half a dozen or more options.
Getting the hang of it? Good. With the basics explained, I should make a couple of nods by way of acknowledgement. One is to a man I've never met, Tony Hawks, whose books Round Ireland with a Fridge and Beating the Moldovans at Tennis provide excellent examples of the joys of doing things which the world regards as utter lunacy.
Then there is Dave Purser, an Aberdeen based hill man who between 1992 and 1995 worked his way round the Munros in reverse order of height. This gave rise to some crazy and very happy hill days, adventures that would never have happened without the ostensibly "absurd" framework. Ever thought of climbing both the In Pinn and Lurg Mhor on the same day? Purser did this - and likewise with Buachaille Etive Mor and Mullach an Rathain. It doesn't bear thinking about - but it must have been a hell of a hoot to actually do.
Hawks and Purser were both in mind when, on 29 July last year, I strolled across a west Kintyre foreshore to kick things off with the 2m trig at Rhunahaorine Point. There had been an opposite-end-of-the-country alternative even then - Scotland's other 2m trig stands beside the Beauly Firth. Various single-figure expeditions duly followed, including two days devoted to finding the 4m Grangemouth landfill trig and a boat-charter to the 6m pillar on Lady Isle off Troon. To read more about these, go to Alan Dawson's website
Last year's activities ended with a visit to the 8m trig on Redkirk Point near Gretna - after which a considerable hiatus set in. The problem was that although there were again two 9m trigs, one was on the outer Orcadian island of Sanday, the other at the south end of South Uist. Neither impossible to reach but neither logistically simple either - and by the time account had been taken of work considerations, winter weather and foot and mouth restrictions, nearly eight months had brought zero progress.
This was obviously getting out of hand. Who ever heard of an expedition, no matter how ramshackle, knocking off for two-thirds of a year shortly after the start? Orkney had been my original preferred 9m option but attention switched to the less disease-panicked Uists and tickets for the Uig-Lochmaddy ferry were booked.
Trigs were never going to be the sole focus of the trip - my partner would have booted me in the shins had I tried to pull that one - but somehow, despite the wonderful ascent of Eaval (a mini Ben Stack), the excellent Triuirebheinn/Beinn Ruigh Choinnich pair above Lochboisdale and the profusion of waders, corncrakes and short-eared owls on every stretch of machair, still the big trig day held centre stage.
Why? Because it wasn't simply a case of parking near the pillar, strolling across a couple of fields, glad-handing the cement and notching up another conquest. Too easy. Serial trigbagging is a game with several rules, each designed to prevent the round from becoming a linear succession of single-trig traipses. The thought of 749 separate expeditions fails to inspire even me, so what could be called "combined tactics" allow trigs to be strung together to form decent-length days.
I won't bore you with the full details just now but the most significant rule removes the need to revisit far-flung locations more times than is economically and ecologically sensible. As well as the 9m outing, two more "teen trigs", those at 13m and 14m, required Uist trips - there being, as someone once said, no alternative. Similarly both Orkney and Shetland will need attention more than once, so it seemed sensible to invoke a "joker". On up to five occasions, any number of trigs on an island or conjoined islands can be chalked off in a single walking/cycling expedition.
And so it was that playing the first joker landed me at Pollachar at south end of South Uist armed not with the usual boots and rucksack but with my trusty, rusty racing bike. In a field nearby was the 9m trig, duly bagged within minutes. Excellent. Job done, sort of. Now I just needed to hop on the bike and whizz round the seven scheduled add-on locations.
There were only a couple of problems, one being the weather. The day in question, Wednesday 20 June, had followed an utterly diabolical 24 hours. Eight centimetres of rain dumped onshore by a full southerly gale in which no cyclist could have lasted five minutes before being flattened by some gale-propelled sheep. So I'd delayed until Wednesday, by when the downpour had downgraded to fierce squalls but the gale, while easing, had veered to a square westerly - far from ideal for pedalling north and west across near-treeless islands.
The other problem was that I'm scarcely bike-fit. I've cycled regularly for years and ten or even 20 miles is no problem but the 64 miles scheduled here would have been hard even on a day of tropical calm. I'm certainly not one of those dayglo-ed figures seen hunched over handlebars on country lanes every weekend, wiry and wily. Hardcore cyclists such as a colleague of a friend who pedals from Kilmarnock to Glasgow and back each day for work, come rain or shine. Or the fellow chessplayer whose arrival on a tourer for a winter-evening Glasgow League match prompted this exchange.
- Hi Joe, been out on the bike much?
- Just the usual spin at the weekend
- Anywhere interesting?
- Nah, just the slog down to Manchester and back with the boys.
And then there's the man with whom I climbed Ben Ledi. He had once cycled from Edinburgh to Ardnamurchan for the weekend - "but came back the long way round".
Anyway, that's more than enough preamble. The expedition itself? A bit of a treat and a bit of a nightmare, in that hollow-eyed, tunnel-vision, dig-deep, monomaniacal way more familiar to runners than to hillwalkers. Around halfway round you start thinking about chucking it, about lying down in a nice inviting ditch for a loooong sleep - but something primeval won't let you, so you push on and on. The water has all been drunk, the food all eaten and the legs are in wobble mode - yet to give up would be to admit defeat not just in the small, absurd task of trigbagging but in some wider all-of-life sense, too. Epics such as this may or may not be "character-building" but they sure as hell feel like metaphors for something bigger.
At first the trigs were reeled in efficiently. The 19m pillar tucked behind the cemetery wall beside Loch Hallan, from where I felt fresh - and cocky - enough to trundle across the machair to pop in on William Neil's studio gallery at Askernish (a fine place, if you're ever passing). Then came what was, in retrospect, a rash decision. I didn't strictly need the 7m trig out on Rubha Ardvule, having already chalked up a trig of this height near Glasgow airport last October. I fancied adding it anyway, for completeness but what should have been a 4km jaunt ate up close on 30 minutes, pedalling - pushing - into a square-set gale. Jeez-o. Already, with only three-eighths of the day's agenda done, I was trying not to think of how much still lay ahead.
Next came a long, meandering haul northwards, through Howmore with its hostel and thatched black houses, over the low pass to the turn for Sandwick. The 16m trig here was the only one on the east coast, a freewheeling breeze haunted by the knowledge that I had to reverse the route and get back west into the jaws of the gale. Target number five was the 14m trig on Ardivachar Point, the extreme north-western tip of South Uist. I'd been out close on five hours already and this long windward leg gobbled up a further chunk of time and energy.
There was always the scenery and the birdlife, of course - the beaches shone between the squalls and a thousand lapwings and oystercatchers squeaked and peeped as they spun away on the gusts. But it was starting to feel very insular and isolated, a bubble of effort and existence: me, my legs, the bike and that damn wind. Little else mattered.
The section back from Ardivachar was a joy, however - the wind in my back and the bike purring along on the top ring compared with the bottom-gear dredging required to head west. The causeway to Benbecula came quickly - the psychological boost of South Uist completed - and with it came another repeat trig, 8m this time, bang en route and the nicest of the lot - in someone's garden surrounded by a blaze of red hot pokers.
Now came another trek westward, through Griminish to an 11m trig near the coast. Grim indeed. All I wanted was my tea and my bed. Ronald Turnbull once wrote that dehydration doesn't feel like thirst, it feels like tiredness and his words were never more true than here, in this far-flung, wind-scoured corner of the world. Eventually the Balivanich pillar came - one of several where the need to walk the last couple of minutes provided a blessed change of leg-tempo. And from here there was only one more target, one more trig - ten miles away up at Claddach-baleshare on North Uist. In case you've got the maps out, this used to be the only Scottish 13m trig before being rounded up to 14m.
One last big effort, fuelled by the old ploy of breaking things down into psychologically manageable chunks - the main road, the causeways, the sight of Eaval - so distant earlier in the day - finally slipping past on the starboard bow. There was a final into-the-wind section but I could bully my way through that with the end so near. The brutal little hill beyond Carinish was no fun at all but from there it was flat(ish), the sun was out and I was a happy man.
Just under eight and a half hours overall and I hadn't felt nearly so weary in years. Plans to jot down notes and drink lots of beer were lost in a staring-at-the-walls zomboidal evening of water, food, bath, more water and then crashing out in bed. Had a glucose drip been to hand, I'd have used it. The real mileage, wind and all, was surely 80-plus and I couldn't have managed much more before finally succumbing to ditch-dossing. The job had been done, though - six "counting" trigs notched up and suddenly the game was alive again.
Did it feel like a hill outing? To be honest, no. The day's highest summit was a mere 19m and even on the roads I don't think the 30m contour was breached. But a low-lying trig is to a hill what a bonsai is to a tree and one aspect of the round is to see at what height the trigs start to feel like proper, if miniature, hills. My guess is not certainly below 30m and probably not until 50m.
I'm now left with the teen trigs partly done, partly undone - 10m and 18m will be easy, with various mainland choices, while 12m and 17m, although both "singletons", are no real hassle (Eascairt Point near Claonaig and Nether Unthank near Lossiemouth, respectively). The only 15m pillar requires a no-choice trip to Burra Ness on Shetland, while 20m will see me nervously eyeing the North Ronaldsay ferry timetable. The trig is a mere kilometre from the harbour but miss the boat and it's a week's wait.
These joys lie ahead and I'll keep people posted. There's no rush, this is a deliberately meandering plan with no fixed agenda. If it takes ten years to do the lot, then so be it. In an age of increasing regimentation, it's wilfully idiosyncratic, too. The prevailing mood, after the Uists day, was of quiet, quirky satisfaction. I bet no one has ever done that before. But they're more than welcome to try!
Dave Hewitt
4/7/2001
