Dave Hewitt discovers another estate making up its own rules on access and using dubious methods to convey them to walkers.
We are into the autumnal months and the absurd, ad hoc attempts at access restrictions north of the Highland line are still with us. For all that most problems are now to be found in quiet Munro-less backwaters, where relatively few walkers stray, there is also a straggle of dissuasive notices alongside the biggest and most important road in the Highlands, the A9 over Drumochter.
Between the Dalwhinnie turn-off and the southern end of the pass near Dalnaspidal, half a dozen large (A3 size) and very obvious dayglo yellow signs have been attached to gates and fences on the eastern side of the road. The full text of these is worth quoting.
"Important Notice," the signs begin, in hefty block capitals. "Thank you for your help in the last six weeks. We welcome you back to these hill (sic) but PLEASE, only access from Balsporran Railway Crossing on the west side of the A9 and the quarry track just south of the Dalwhinnie sign on the east side of the A9, where there will be a disinfectant pad and footbath.
"Please stick to paths and don't take dogs until the epidemic is over. Thank you. Please adhere to these rules or we may have to close the hills again." Each of the signs ends with a footnote enclosed in quotation marks, "Please don't spoil it for everyone else."
This is a perfect manifestation of pretty much everything that has been discussed in Scotland On Line's foot and mouth coverage over the past six months. The most obvious thing about the signs - as so often - is the total lack of attribution. There's absolutely nothing to indicate who put them there - no name, address, phone number or website and no date. Indeed, the opening sentence about "the last six weeks" implies that they're massively out of date, as the period referred to is surely March/April.
Andy Wightman's book Who Owns Scotland is of use here, as so often. Wightman suggests that these hills comprise a 23,400-acre estate known as Drumochter and Ralia, registered to Eira Drysdale. Ask around and the actual owner is said to be John Drysdale, a man who has kept a low media profile since being stung in a Channel 4 investigation a few years ago, when he was caught on camera appearing to enthuse about certain methods of trapping raptors. So could the Drumochter signs be Drysdale's handywork? We don't know - but what is certain is that they are not the work of some travelling billsticker, dashing off a few dayglos in an idle moment while hitchhiking along the trunk road.
The unattributable aspect of the signs is not the only odd aspect to this. Also strange is that the signs - certainly in their luminous, see-them-from-miles-away manifestation - only appear to have sprung up relatively late in the crisis. Some local Drumochter tramper might be able to provide precise dates but from the reports I've heard, combined with my own excursions up and down the road every month or two, I reckon they first appeared in June, well after the peak paranoia period when it was impossible to walk, cycle or drive anywhere without encountering a forest of such things.
This midsummer date would fit with the appointment of a new keeper to the Drysdale estate, with the well-respected Kevin Binningham having been replaced by new boy Stephen Mackinnon. So could the signs be Mackinnon's work - either in a burst of early-job zeal, or simply a result of him trying to keep his wet-behind-the-ears head down and doing exactly what his boss tells him to do?
Also odd is the imbalance between the two sides of the road. For all that both the western and eastern Drumochter hills are cited in the "rules", the signs only seem to have been posted on the eastern side of the road, beside the southbound carriageway. There is not even one in the large car park at Balsporran, the prime place for starting expeditions hereabouts. Of course it could have been that there was a Balsporran sign before someone removed it - but this doesn't fit with the signs on the eastern side having quickly reappeared when they were known to have been nabbed by some infuriated hillgoers a while back.
Quite why one side of the road is being treated differently from the other is a mystery - the foot and mouth virus doesn't have any qualms about scuttling across the tarmac - but some light is shed by a story from an access-related meeting back in 1999. Here, John Drysdale was noted as having been fairly relaxed about walkers visiting the western hills but noticeably agitated when it came to the eastern ones.
The theories about this tend to relate to the bordering estates, as on the western side the trench of Loch Ericht defines Drumochter absolutely, whereas the high eastern moorlands abut on to the Etteridge, Phones and Cluaich estate in the north and the Dalnacardoch estate in the south. These are known to be touchy about walkers - having complained about people on their skylines even when the winds have been blowing steadily from the east - and this could be a factor in Drysdale's lopsided touchiness.
Of course there's no legal requirement to keep off these hills at all (see the Scottish Executive website for official closures), let alone to stick to narrow corridor routes. As is often the case, the corridorisation of access seems to be the real agenda here, rather than anything to do with genuine concerns about disease prevention. It's now over two months since the disinfectant tyre-baths were removed from this very stretch of the A9 and it's highly unlikely that the estate will be telling its affluent stalking/sporting clients what they can and can't do with the same stridency reserved for walkers. No matter that the "sporting" set is much more likely to have come from a livestock-handling environment than is your ordinary hillwalker.
For all that the word "please" appears four times and "thank you" twice on each of the signs, it's the phrase near the end that conveys the real meaning, "Please adhere to these rules or we may have to close the hills again." That's not a polite request at all, it's a threat, one that makes the tired old mistake of implying that an estate such as this can close "its" hills whenever it likes. How many times does it have to be said? They might own the land, but they sure as hell don't own the access.
Then there is the "quotation" at the bottom. Again this is unattributed but it's given in inverted commas, so it must have been said by someone. Who could it be? Winston Churchill? Dorothy Parker? Oscar Wilde? Sven-Goran Eriksson? Neil and Christine Hamilton? Goodness knows. If anyone has come across this phrase in either the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations or the Bumper 99p Book of Pathetic Platitudes, then do let us know.
It's disheartening - and sadly typical - that the signs are littering Drumochter at all. A great many council vehicles pass to and fro along the A9, so it's inconceivable that people in positions of power don't know about this. The fact that the guilty estate straddles two administrative regions - Highland and Perth and Kinross - shouldn't come into it. Here of all places there must be plenty of inbuilt structures for cross-council cooperation. The snow ploughs don't turn tail at the top of the pass, do they now?
The most ridiculous aspect of all this, however, is one that became laughably obvious when I pulled in at the topmost layby to study one of the signs. Slap-bang alongside it was another, friendlier notice, for the Hillphones scheme. Sure enough, Drumochter has its name down for the arrangement whereby walkers and climbers can pick up a recorded message which will, according to the scheme's leaflet, "indicate where stalking is taking place and which walking routes will be unlikely to affect stalking".
Now it could be argued that the yellow anti-access signs don't contravene the formal terms of the Hillphones agreement but most hillgoers (at whom Hillphones is largely aimed) would surely see it as contravening at least the spirit of the thing. The essence of Hillphones is that trouble-free access is presumed unless there is a specific stalking/shooting related reason and this is plainly not the case here.
The Hillphones number for Drumochter is 01528 522200, so I rang this to hear what was being said. The message (updated at 7am on Monday 3 September) was rather rushed and garbled but I learned that deer are to be stalked between 20 September and 20 October while grouse will be driven on 5, 7 and 11 September. That's standard Hillphones stuff and helpful. The message then went on to repeat the "rules" about only accessing the hills from the quartz quarry track on the east side and the Balsporran Cottages route the west. Less helpful.
I contacted the Mountaineering Council of Scotland about this, as their name (along with the Access Forum and Scottish Natural Heritage) appears on the Hillphones leaflets as co-sponsors of the scheme. My understanding is that the MCofS will investigate the matter further, the obvious concern being that the Drysdale estate is failing to fulfil its obligations and is casting the MCofS and the other sponsors in a false light. It's safe to say that the fiercely pro-access MCofS would not wish to be seen as conspiring in a scheme to corridorise hill access - yet that is exactly what is happening here, as the Drysdale estate goes its own sweet way.
Just what will happen remains to be seen and the chances are that nothing much will change this time round, with the main stalking season already near its mid-point. But strong words will undoubtedly be uttered behind the scenes and it could be that Drysdale will become the first estate to be censured by the loose-knit alliance that oversees Hillphones.
The estate is unlikely to be kicked off the scheme entirely - that would do little to improve the overall situation. But it is possible that a warning will be issued as to the estate's future behaviour, the showing of a yellow card, as it were - which would be rather appropriate, given the colour of the signs that currently litter the eastern side of the A9 at Drumochter.
Dave Hewitt
6/9/2001
