A cross border drive prompts a sense of deja vu for Dave Hewitt while multiple compleaters have definitely seen it all before and there is an new ticket to ride on the Cairn Gorm funicular.
I've written before about hills which feel like other hills and areas which feel like other areas - Eaval on North Uist, for instance, can seem distinctly Ben Stack-like with its wedge of ridge rearing above the muddle of lochans. This thread of thought returned on Tuesday while driving home from a couple of nights B&Bing in the quintessential picture-postcard Dales village of Reeth. Rather than doing the standard thing of heading west across the A66 and then up the M74, we stayed on the east side of the country and worked northwards over the grain of the valleys and moors, through Stanhope, Belsay, Longframlington and so on.
Twice this brought the geographic equivalent of deja vu - not so much reruns of earlier events, more snapshot-style reminders of other places seen at other times. The first came on the high roads over the Weardale moors, either side of Stanhope. These felt uncannily like the crossing of the Lecht landscape from Tomintoul to Deeside: the same up-down-up, the same snowdrift marker poles, the same tangled-heather moorland rolling gently-but-roughly away on all sides, the same occasional oozy tracks leading off for no obvious reason.
Up above Weardale, as on the Lecht, there are hills aplenty but few walkers spend much time there. These are high ground landforms which produce only occasional summits and not much in the way of ridge or plateau, so the list-lovers tend to steer clear while even the hardened (softened?) bogtrotters tire of terrain where the only real landmarks are trig points or lines of grouse butts. Eventually, perhaps, such landscapes become just a bit too bleak for most people.
One day I'll go back to Weardale and walk about a bit, but this time the need was to press on, as we wanted to be home by early evening and the journey up the east side takes much longer than its western equivalent. I'm not one for spending overlong in the car however, so we did eventually stop for a break, in the hills west of Alnwick. (Actually, this was the second stop; the first had come much earlier, at the otter sanctuary just west of Bowes. Recommended. Costs £4.50 for adults, and when the man in the overalls lobs chunks of fish at midday, the otters perform endearingly.)
The walking break was 80 minutes spent on Long Crag, at 319m the highest point in the mini-range north of Rothbury. Again there was a sense of recognition. These are tree-blanketed hills but the Forestry Commission has adhered to its taxpayer responsibilities and maintains a variety of good ways through. The path along the ridge between Long Crag itself and the optimistically named Coe Crags (more like a Peakland edge than Churchdoor Buttress) was remarkably bare and eroded, a mix of slabby bedrock and soft white sand.
This must be as much a consequence of thinness of soil as of human erosion, and was again very reminiscent of the Scottish north-east, particularly the Bennachie satellites such as Millstone Hill, Cairn William and so on. The cloud was down on the higher hills inland, but it would be interesting to revisit in clear conditions to see how much (or how little) the great mass of the Cheviot range echoes the similar bulk of the upper Donside hills when seen from the Aberdeenshire outliers.
North-eastern England as similar to north-eastern Scotland - now there's a topic to return to in due course. I'll also need to write more about the habit of journeybreaking - of stopping off on a long haul not for a pint and a pie but for a stretch of the legs on some easily-accessible hill that one wouldnt otherwise climb and which wouldn't merit a long journey in itself. I'll have done this more than most, due in part to both my parents and Tessa's living in northern England, but also because being tall enough to qualify as a medical giant means I've never relished being crammed into a car for more than two hours at a stretch (or, rather, the lack of a stretch).
Journeybreaking should be encouraged more widely. It's good small-scale proof of the old adage about getting out and seeing the world. If pursued over the course of years, even decades, a huge number of offbeat ascents are stacked up, and gaps are steadily filled in landscape knowledge. If nothing else, it serves to undermine any pretence that the only hills in Scotland, say, are Munros and Corbetts, or that England only has its 2,000-footers. Pretty much everywhere you go there are worthwhile bumps of one kind or another - and even in the flat-horizon areas there are trig points to visit...
Being away "down south" for the weekend (although when you cross the border at Coldstream you're level with Kilmarnock) meant having to decline invitations to a couple of on-hill events - but both deserve mention by way of congratulation. Congratulation and coincidence, in fact, as it was neat that Sunday 1 September saw the completion of both a tenth round of Munros and an eighth round.
The tenth finish (a decabag?) came from the extraordinary Steve Fallon, who has racked up a round each year since first finishing in 1992. On this occasion the chosen summit was the Loch Earn Ben Vorlich, and Fallon now ranks alongside Stewart Logan (tenth completion on Schiehallion, 1 January 2000) as the only known tenfold Munroist.
No one appears to be on "just" nine rounds but Robin Howie has now crept past the bold Hamish Brown, who hasn't added to his then-record seven since his finish on Beinn Teallach in January 1985. (The celebrated Fifer assures me he's gradually closing in on an eighth, and on a second round of Corbetts, and on a round of Grahams, but it's slow work. The man has too many other interests.)
Robin Howie's octo-finish came on Meall a'Chrasgaidh in the Fannaichs, a far less familiar hill than that chosen by Fallon but a good one all the same. Meall a'Chrasgaidh has a history as a completion hill, as it was here, on 15 April 1938, that James Gall Inglis became the sixth known Munroist and one of the oldest ever, being aged 72 or 73 at the time (he was to die just under a year later). At that stage the only other Munros to have hosted completions were Meall Dearg (above the Coe crags), Beinn a'Chroin, Ben Hope, the Buachaille and Beinn na Lap.
I was disappointed to miss both the Fallon and Howie dos, especially the northern version as I'd been present at Howie Mk7 on Meall a'Bhuiridh on 24 July 1999 and afterwards in the Kingshouse - a very pleasant occasion, iffy weather notwithstanding. Howie is fond of hosting a meal after the dram-sharing up top, and this time it was in the Inchbae Lodge Hotel at Garve.
It was again a good event, he reports, although again the weather wasn't great, "Very, very windy, touching gale force at times and with a few heavy showers. The next target is to complete all the hills on my artificial hip, covering the eighth round and with now only 38 to go into the ninth round. So perhaps a hip hip hooray party early next year. All the hills covered solo could be done next year too - only four to go - but I am in no rush!"
And finally, as the man on the TV says, there's just enough space for yet another report from the Cairn Gorm funicular, where things seem to be getting more strange by the day as the company ties itself in ever tighter bureaucratic knots.
Last Saturday, after a day spent indoors at Glenmore Lodge, a couple of people set off for Fiacaill a'Choire Chais at about 5pm. After reaching the top of Cairn Gorm in good time, they headed for the funicular top station only to be met with the standard "Sorry, can't come in" line. Nothing new there.
But the attendant, no doubt aware of recent concerns about injured/unhappy walkers and bad publicity, added "It would be different if you'd hurt yourself...you've not twisted your ankle or anything, have you...?" At which, one of the walkers (described by my informant as "enormous, healthy") replied that yes, his ankle did hurt a touch. No problem, sir. The pair were ushered on to the train and reached the Lodge in time for dinner at 7.30pm.
Footballers feigning injury to get what they want is one thing but hillwalkers...
Dave Hewitt
5/9/2002
Dave can be contacted on Dave.Hewitt@dial.pipex.com
