Summit Talks this week is by David McVey who urges all of us to become master walkers.
Football and hillwalking are joint passions for many. Even the most glittering mountaineering superstars, though, can't hope to trouser even a fraction of the booty raked in by Figo, Zidane or Beckham. Even so, the two pursuits have their similarities. We who bumble along Scottish ridges are perhaps the equivalent of the full-bellied pie-quaffers who turn out in the local pub league. In both sports there are concerns about commercialism at the top level and skill shortages at the grassroots. And TV mountaineering documentaries would benefit greatly from replacing the usual voice-over with an Archie McFarchie-type commentary, "And he's stretching for the foothold...WHOOF! He's missed it!"
But fitba and hill-bashing differ greatly in their attitude to age. Oor verra ain Berti "Jimmy" Vogts has been widely praised for his policy of blooding youngsters in the Scotland team. On the same night as our moral victory over Nigeria, Sven-Goran-Eriksson made Michael Owen the youngest captain of Engerlund since, probably, Henry V.
Fitba prizes youth. Billy Dodds was recently described in newspaper match reports as "Rangers' veteran striker" - and he's a mere lad of 32. But surely it's different in the hillgoing game? No age limits there. Many of us begin in the hills as kids or teenagers but the mountaineering ranks are packed with those well-stricken in years. Go for a walk in the Lake District hills on an off-season midweek and you'll see.
But I wonder do outdoor people lose something as they age, just as footballers do? Are younger hillwalkers better - fitter, sharper, keener, more enthusiastic - than their grizzled elders, the Sir Alex Fergusons of the outdoor game?
Rewind 25 years - three 16-year-old lads approach the summit of the Meikle Bin in the Campsies. No worn path from the forest track, in those days. They meet an elderly man, perhaps 70, leaving the summit: he's bald but thin and wiry, carrying an old blue canvas knapsack.
They fall to talking. "Do you often walk in the Campsies?" asks one of the lads.
"Oh, aye," says the man, "My wife says I live up here."
They part and prepare to go their own ways. Before they do, the old man says, "It's good tae see young lads like yersels getting oot intae the hills." And off he goes, never to be seen by them again. But as one of the group can tell you now, the influence of that old boy is working yet.
It had been another over-60 Scotsman, Tom Weir, whose TV programmes had first interested us in the hills. Unlike footballers, walkers and climbers have no reason to pack it in once they pass the 40 mark. Yes, your aches and pains make you stop and ponder a bit more but keep fit and active, eat and drink sensibly, and there's no reason why you can't go on enjoying the hills indefinitely. But more than just fitness and strength are age-related for the hillwalker. There's another aspect that has to do with innocence and magic.
Many walkers report how the sense of newness and wonder was at its most alive during youthful wanderings. The colours of hill and sky and water, the tang of an April breeze on the tops, the sudden revelation when cloud is ripped from the summit, the breathless dawns and the golden sunsets seen from a remote campsite - they're freshest and most vivid when they're new, when we've no need to cultivate the ability to be surprised. It's the kind of experience you associate with Tom Weir's Highland Days or Alistair Borthwick's Always a Little Further.
It's more than just the kind of nostalgic fiction that always suggests the sun shone longer and more often in the past. In Tom Weir's Scotland, the bobble-hatted guru quotes his pal Matt, who puts it nicely. "You can never recapture the thrill of those first days. It only comes once and the mere act of repetition tarnishes it. It's something in yourself..."
As your hill experience grows, there's less that's new. Familiarity takes the bloom from the scenery. And return visits to special places can hurt - a broad path now scars your ascent, the summit is crowded, the estate has bulldozed a track or the lochan is edged with litter.
So are we doomed to experience diminishing returns the longer we keep banging away at the hill thing? By no means. It's still possible to cultivate wonder and expectation and even surprise but increasingly we have to work at it. We need to choose routes that stimulate these qualities, approaches that are unfamiliar, unorthodox, possibly just plain silly. We need to learn to profit from the our increasing knowledge and understanding about the landscape, the history that shaped it and the elements that make it up. Hamish Brown's classic Munro walk was necessarily, he said, "the outcome of decades of knocking about in the Highlands." And the resulting book was, of course, as fresh as anything ever written about our Scottish hills.
I once overheard a thirtysomething hillwalker announcing, sadly, that at her age she was no longer physically capable of the big jaunts she had done in her youth. Nonsense! Brown's marathon was carried out in his 40s. The Imperial Viceroy of British Mountaineering, Chris Bonington, still expeditions at way past retirement age.
Another image comes to mind, from the end of a short, wild day when walking was limited to a stroll over Loughrigg Fell, a fine wee hill in the Lake District. As the weather eased, I descended to Loughrigg Terrace, a broad, level walkway (created for Victorian visitors) with a heartbreakingly beautiful outlook north over Grasmere lake and village. Coming towards me I saw a group of three - a couple, well into middle age and a man I took to be the father of one of them. Thin, gaunt, clearly substantially paralysed by strokes, he was inching painstakingly forward using a zimmer.
They were perhaps ten minutes walk at usual pace from the roadside but I shudder to think how long it had taken them to get there. On he went, determined, indomitable.
I hope that courageous man can be an inspiration to every walker - never complain about aches or ailments or failing strength. For as long as you are able, make the effort to enjoy the hills, retain that willingness to be surprised and never, never give up.
But a bit of flattery to end. A friend belongs to a swimming club for over-25s only, who compete regularly with similar clubs. These swimmers are known as masters. It's a phrase that's in vogue - football matches between retired players (which I remember being billed as "old crocks" games years ago) are now being rebranded and sold as "masters football".
Getting on a bit? Conscious that mountain rescue members, like policemen, are looking younger? Don't worry. It just means you're a master hillwalker.
David McVey
25/4/2002
Dave Hewitt will return next week.
