Sleepwalking is a dangerous occupation at any time but when you're on a high summit it brings with it all kinds of other dangers according to Dave Hewitt.
Regular readers will know me as a fan of the rhb newsgroup, to be found at groups.yahoo.com/group/rhb Whereas RHB stands for Right Hand Batsman in my copy of the Playfair Cricket Annual, here it's short for Relative Hills of Britain, this being a newsgroup based on Alan Dawson's 1992 hill-list book of the same name (and administered by Dawson himself).
The relative hills in question are more commonly known as Marilyns, and there are 1,552 of them - anything anywhere in Scotland, England, Wales or the Isle of Man with at least 150m of all-round drop. All sorts of familiar big hills feature (eg 205 of the 284 Munros are Marilyns) along with a large crop of entertainingly obscure smaller lumps, such that exploration and off-path far-and-widing is central to the whole business of RHBing.
Only a committed Marilynbagger, for example, would know that of the two 300m-odd puddings named Cnoc an t-Sabhail south of Tain, the one that looks easiest and least tree-covered on the map (Landranger 21, NH722817) is actually far more fiddly and twiggy than its green-swathed neighbour across the Rhanich glen to the south (21/NH694787). Indeed some of these lower hills are so heavily forested, and are such navigational nightmares, that the phrase "committed Marilynbagger" acquires a second level of meaning - we should perhaps be locked up for trying to climb some of these things. Someone has to do it, though.
It's an eclectic bunch of hills, easily giving the lie to those who claim to "know Scotland's hills" just because they've been round the Munros or even Munros plus Corbetts, or who "know the British hills" once they've tackled all the Welsh and English 2000ers. And it's hardly surprising that the rhb site is home to much eclectic hill discussion - including a recent thread on the pleasures and perils of falling asleep on the tops of hills. "Sleepwalking" is inevitably something of a fair-weather sport but I did once doze off on top of Beinn an Lochain on a distinctly chilly day and woke some time later to find myself worryingly nearer to the big drop.
One of the most interesting recent entries in this discussion came from Mike Knipe of Crook in County Durham, who posted the following under the heading Sleeping Dangers, "On one particularly warm but very windy day on Middlehope Moor I got behind the wall and pulled a bag over myself as protection against a bout of driving drizzle. It was quite cosy in the bag and, inevitably, I drifted into dreamland. I awoke about half an hour later, surrounded by members of a rambling club debating whether or not I was dead, and what they should do about it. There were just the boots sticking out from the bag..."
This rang a bell with me - not of course that I was one of the ramblers who discovered the "dead" Knipe, rather that I too had once woken to find myself the subject of scrutiny and near-forensic discussion. It was during a fairly hellish three days spent hitching down the west coast in the summer of 1983. I had been in Kintail and on Skye with my then girlfriend, and needed to get to Whiting Bay on Arran to help run a camp for some kids as I tended to do most summers back then. The west coast is a long coast and hitching that route isn't easy - not only are you forever weaving across the grain of the land (those damn east-west glens - why can't they just build a nice north-south tunnel?) but it was also in the pre-Skye bridge days and the Kyle ferry was notoriously hard to hitch as traffic inevitably came in pulses, eager to get away. (So there's at least one argument in favour of the bridge.)
I was also in dodgy health, recuperating from having fallen 200m down Braeriach the month before. Actually I was still ill - I'd rushed back on to the hill too quickly and discovered that the main wound had become infected. (I'll spare you the pustulating details.) This had happened halfway along the Five Sisters ridge - it suddenly felt like all energy had drained out of me, far more abrupt even than a case of cyclist's "bonk", such that a brutal descent of the western spur - I hesitate to call it a ridge - of Sgurr na Ciste Duibhe was called for, direct to Achnangart. This involved an 800m drop in just over 1km, interesting on the knees.
On eventually reaching Arran a few days later I had to be carved open at Lamlash hospital by a surgeon who did a good job but who - I later learned - was renowned for taking a drink. None of this seemed particularly traumatic at the time: the carefree days of youth, I suppose.
Anyway, the Braeriach accident and all that followed it is really another story. Back to the pre-Arran hitching. I was alone (Joan had headed home to Aberdeen courtesy of whatever ScotRail was called in 1983) and the journey took three days including three waits of over seven hours each. There was also an infuriating period of backtracking when I left my boots in someone's car at Onich, after a five-hour wait and on my birthday, too.
But the reason this all links with Mike Knipe's anecdote is that before the Onich incident I had already got stuck at the Fort with not enough money even for the hostel, never mind a B&B. It was late, so I dossed behind a bush in the stretch of municipal gardens that runs along the seafront as you leave the town heading south - one of those linear lawn-and-shrubbery mini-parks that often separate esplanade roads from shores and beaches. The weather was good - a heatwave in fact - but I was nervous and stressed from the dismal hitching and my arm ached from having been held out like a railway signal all day. It was hard to sleep but I finally managed to nod off at about 3am.
After what seemed like a mere two minutes of slumber - although it could have been an hour or so I suppose - two elderly dog-walking women appeared, prodded me awake with walking sticks and proceeded to have a conversation about me in the third person. "I think it's terrible, so it is," said Mrs Mad Dog Woman One, "tramps like him sleeping under bushes like that." "Aye," agreed Mrs Mad Dog Woman Two, "it shouldn't be allowed, so it shouldn't. Should be laws against it." And they prodded me again, although whether this was to determine whether I was alive or simply out of pure none-shall-sleep badness I was never sure. At least the dogs - horrible yappy poodle-ish things - declined to bite or urinate on me.
So having poked me and woken me, off the women wandered. Never mind me under my azalea, I thought, what on earth were they doing out in the park at that time? I know that old folk often have trouble sleeping but I hadn't anticipated encountering insomniac poodle-wielding vigilantes at four in the morning. I'm not in the habit of cursing my elders and betters, but must confess to having succumbed to a bout of Muttley-style muttering at their backs as wandered off into the dim morning light.
There wasn't a hope of returning to sleep and I writhed uncomfortably in my bivvy bag for an uncomfortable and dewy hour until 5am, when I dragged myself to the roadside in hope of catching a passing fish lorry. No chance. The first lift didn't come until early afternoon.
At least the journey had a happier conclusion. Not only did I make it to Arran OK but the last lift into Glasgow was a splendid affair. I had been stuck for ages somewhere near Ardlui when a tiny Fiat pulled in a hundred yards up the road. I heaved my sack on to a shoulder and Quasimodo-ed along to check whether it was indeed a lift. It certainly didn't look like a lift - the car had no visible space either in or on it. There were already six people inside and the roofrack bungees were fraying under the strain of the luggage piled on top. A complex tangle of bicycles dangled from the back.
It was an offer of a lift, however, and the next 20 minutes saw an astonishing rearrangement of the entire contents of the car. Amid much frenetic Italian speaking and gesturing, everyone got out, pretty much all the luggage was removed and then everyone - plus me and my large rucksack - crammed back in/on. It was only one stage short of those vans and trucks you see in news clips of India and Pakistan, with bedsteads and donkeys strapped to the outside and several extended families hanging on to the bedsteads and donkeys.
I got the feeling that had my new Italian friends been able to dismantle the engine and make it smaller, then they'd have done this simply in order to shove one of the children (none of whom were exactly wee) into the space behind the carburettor. In the end we juddered off down Lomondside with me in the front seat, a child perched on my knee, a suitcase balanced on her knee and the four folk in the back entirely hidden/smothered by the weight of rearranged luggage, my rucksack included. We drove right into the centre of Glasgow like this, and they sang Abba songs all the way.
Some years later I was offered another Italian lift, again when leaving Skye, this time from a couple who dismissed my argument that I only had enough cash for the Kyle ferry (as opposed to the longer Armadale-Mallaig crossing) by not only paying my fare but also buying me a large packet of salmon sandwiches in the CalMac canteen. So I won't hear a bad word said about the Italians and their driving - and they play some nice football, too.
Oh, and back to the rhb discussion. Another "sleeping danger" mail came in from the redoubtable Gordon Adshead of the Rucksack Club, who simply said this, "I was once having a lovely snooze in warm sunshine on the slopes below Ben Stack. I awoke to find (what appeared to be) a large bird of prey investigating my eyelids." Yikes. At least I don't have any equivalent stories to tell on that front (although I will one day tell of an eagle having eyed-up cartoonist Chris Tyler's dog on the Trotternish ridge). Has anyone else got stories of threatened eye-pecking by raptors? I think we need to know.
Finally and more topically than that ancient stuff, I feel strangely compelled to quote from a CairnGorm Mountain (ie funicular) leaflet that sits in front of me as I type. The main soundbite is from the skier Alain Baxter. "One of the best things about coming home," Baxter gushes, "is skiing with my mates in ski patrol." The leaflet itself carries the unfortunate headline "A natural high!" Any bets on how long it will be before CairnGorm Mountain nudges the remaining supply of these leaflets in the general direction of the shredder before heading to the printer for a new, revised batch?
Dave Hewitt
7/3/2002
