Creag Dhubh is the first hill Scottish writer Nan Shepherd climbed on her journey into the Cairngorms, described in her book The Living Mountain. It means ‘black crag’, but on the day we walk, its slopes are lost in white cloud. Captivated by these ‘forbidden’ mountains from childhood, she made this approach as a young woman, alone and excited by her own daring. It was ‘blue cold and brilliant after heavy snow’. For us, there is also cold and snow, but the earth is sodden and the skies heavy.
Nevertheless, it is exciting. I have been up the Cairngorms often, but this is my first time following Shepherd on this route via Creag Fhiaclach, one of the last remaining stands of montane scrub in this fragment of ancient Caledonian forest. We take what she calls the ‘unpath’, across humpy, heathery ground. Here are spiky, fragrant junipers, Scots pines with red bark and needles of unfailing green, and birch, their lichened trunks rising through a haze of purple branches, beaded with water droplets.
Like Shepherd, we ‘toil’ up the slope, slower with each snow-sinking step. But unlike her, we do not reach the breath-catching view of Glen Einich down the other side. Instead, we walk deeper and deeper into mist. By the time we reach the scrub, the dwarf trees appear like the ghosts of departed bonsai. We hear red grouse gurgling, but see only their prints and two drifting feathers.
Checking map, compass and aspect of slope, we climb higher, till even the rocks disappear and there is nothing but white. No seam now between sky and snow, up or down, here or there. Tiny brown tendrils flicker across my vision and disappear like smoke. I am dizzy. For a moment we believe the cloud might dissolve to a singing blue sky, but a hard stare renders only blankness.
When Shepherd gained the top, she ‘jumped up and down… laughed and shouted.’ We save that for another day. It has taken too long to get this far already and we must turn home before the short day turns dark. As we plough slowly back, knee deep and led by the voice of a buried stream, the lightest motes of snow begin to fall.
This article first appeared in The Guardian Country Diary.
On this night, eight years ago, I started writing my novel, Of Stone and Sky. It was the summer solstice here in the Highlands of Scotland and I was woken at 3am by the light and an idea that kept tugging on me. Finally, I got up, went down to the kitchen table and started writing on a blank sheet of paper. The first words were, “A story. A land. A people. This place of beauty and history, of loss and hope. A shepherd.” Top right of the page it says, “4am, 22 June 13 – The shortest night”.
For a long time, The Shortest Night was the working title of the book, initially because that’s when I started it, but also, as the story emerged, because the summer solstice became the point of emotional climax for one of the central characters. That event happens right at the end of the book at the summit of Angel’s Peak, a mountain in the Cairngorms whose Gaelic name is Sgòr an Lochain Uaine – the Peak of the Small Green Loch.
It’s a tough walk to get there and I’d never been, writing the chapter based on walk reports and photos. But in eary July 2019, feeling overwhelmed by life and in need of a mountain, I went up with my husband, Alistair, and our golden retriever, Sileas, (Gaelic for Julia.) By then, the novel-in-progress was on its third title – Colvin’s Walk – but on a much higher rejection count, which was a significant source of my stress. The account of that trip and how it changed me, can be read here. On that occasion, because of the dog and our uncertainty about the route, we didn’t take the steep scramble up the north ridge of Angel’s Peak that my character Sorley takes in the novel, opting for a safer traverse.
Now, two years later, Of Stone and Sky has found the right title and the right publisher in the wonderful team at Birlinn/Polygon Books and is rapidly finding happy readers. Which is the whole point. This past weekend, in order to celebrate, to give thanks, and to walk the path of Sorley as he searches for his brother Colvin on midsummer’s night, we went back up to Angel’s Peak. This time, we swapped the dog for our professional Mountain Guide friend, John Lyall, who led us up the ridge.
And before I went, I registered Of Stone and Sky on BookCrossing.com. Bookcrossing is a way of releasing books into the wild for others to find, read and pass on. I did the same thing with my first novel, A House Called Askival, planting a copy on the top of Askival, the highest mountain on the island of Rum, for which the house in a hill station in north India is named.
Wonderfully, it was found a few days later by a delighted book-lover who shared the news and later released it at the Ryvoan Bothy in the Cairngorms (little knowing it is my stomping ground). I’ve never heard about its journey from there, but perhaps it was fed into the fire on a particularly cold night… Or perhaps, hopefully, it fell into the hands of another book-lover and is still travelling.
And so, like offering the ‘angel’s share’ of a barrel of whisky, I left a copy of Of Stone and Sky at the top of Angel’s Peak. In order to fend off the notorious Cairngorms weather, I double bagged it, put it in a tin, double bagged it again and taped it up like a parcel bound for the moon. The best container I had for the job was a shortbread tin and it seemed a perfect choice for historical fiction set in the Highlands, with its tartan, glass of whisky and Dean’s Shortbread strapline, ‘History in the baking’. But there’s a wry irony too. While Of Stone and Sky certainly does serve up a hundred years or so of Highland history, it’s not melt-in-the-mouth. In fact, more than one reader has commented how the book is NOT the shortbread-tin version of Scotland. I do hope, therefore, that the finder of the tin – and, indeed, my readers – will not be disappointed.
As well as the book in a deceptive tin, we took a very special shepherd’s crook into the Cairngorms. The full story of our walk – and the crook – will be in an upcoming post. For now, I leave you with an extract from that chapter in the novel where Sorley makes the trip.
“Three years after my brother disappears, I make my slow way up the walk they took when I was just a light in my mother’s eye, up through the pass of the Lairig Ghru in the Cairngorm mountains and into the Garbh Choire. It is midsummer’s day and the smells of moss and peat rise around me in the warm air, cotton clouds drifting in the high blue. Stones shift under my feet and hands as I pick a route up the rocky slope to the Lochan Uaine and the waterfall where the MacPhersons’ key was found. Hip throbbing, sweating, I pull off my pack and ease down onto a rock, enjoying the cool air on my damp back and hair. Above me rise the twin summits of Cairn Toul and Angel’s Peak, together forming a curving wall of steep cliff and scree slope that shelters me from the full force of the wind. Stretched out between me and the foot of the cliffs, the lochan is a vivid blue-green, deeper than the sky. Its surface is lightly brushed with ripples, edges lapping on pebbles that all look grey at first, but gradually reveal their colours, from pearly white to peach and pink, mottled mauve and black.
…
I lie that night on a mossy ledge beside the lochan, the hood of my bivvy bag unzipped so I can stare at the sky. It never quite gets dark but glows a deeper, lovelier green by the minute, drawing me into drifts of light sleep and welcoming me back as I wake to the sound of a bird or a voice in my dream. Each time, I find the moon has travelled, a silver canoe rowing the deep. In the very early hours, with the sky softening to pink, I see a deer a few feet away. She is young and delicate, one hoof lifted, her eyes fixed on me. We watch each other, barely breathing. Then her ear twitches and she shoots away, so swift and quiet it seems she is spun from light.
It’s 3 a.m., but I get up, drink from the cold lochan and climb the curving north ridge beside it to the summit of Angel’s Peak. It is slow and painful, and I am light-headed from hunger and lack of sleep. By the time I get to the top, the sun has risen and washed the whole of the Cairngorms in gold.”
As well as a free one on top of Angel’s Peak, copies of Of Stone and Sky can be found here.
Living by the Spey, most of my walks into the Cairngorms are from the north-western side, such as the one to Angel’s Peak last year. I’ve always wanted to venture in from the Deeside on the south-east, walking up to Loch Etchachan and Ben MacDuie, so on a recent weekend we drove round the top of the mountains to begin a three-day camping trek from the Linn of Dee near Bramar. We were blessed with endless sunshine, but the unusually still air meant we were also cursed by Scotland’s smallest and most infuriating fiends: the midges! Apart from their invasions morning and evening, it was a trip of radiant light and colour, of long days and far views, of rushing water, birdsong and quiet. I’ll let the photos tell the story.
We got to Braemar by 5.30 that evening, extremely thankful for hot showers, a pub meal and a huge soft bed. But even more thankful for three days walking, swimming, sleeping, looking and listening in the Cairngorms.
“However much I walk on them, these hills hold astonishment for me.”
Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain
Do you love maps? I find them fascinating, so when I was invited by Walk Highlands to write an article about what to do when we can’t walk very far, Map Gazing immediately sprung to mind. It’s what I did for a long time before making my pilgrimage to Angel’s Peak and what I did for a long time afterwards, to savour the journey. A map, I’ve discovered, is not just an image of the land, it is a story about it.
Read the Map Gazing article (with fantastic photos from the Walk Highlands editors) here:
From the comfort of my sofa in a warm living room, I have just booked myself onto my first ever mountain winter skills course. It is the middle of January in Scotland and having just returned from several weeks of the Australian summer, I feel plunged into darkness. Jet lag casts me onto the endless shores of the night where I lie tired but sleepless, listening to the silence that looms strange and total around the house. My parents’ old weatherboard house in Melbourne is a being of breath and bones, sighing with the see-sawing temperatures, bumping with the passage of creatures inside and out, caressed by trees. The Australian birds are raucous and the road busy.
Here in our village in the Highlands in mid-winter, even morning arrives without sound or light. I keep checking the clock to tell whether it is still some ungodly hour or time for breakfast. By day, rain washes across the landscape, clouds mass and shift with the wind and this morning we woke to a fall of wet snow that by afternoon had dribbled into the mud. None of this inspires me to go mountaineering. Nor does the whole-body misery of bubbling cold, sinusitis and jet lag.
But I want to write a book about the Cairngorms in all their moods, so I need to get up there and broaden my experience. Although I’ve walked in snowy hills many times, it’s always been with more experienced walkers and not long treks or demanding conditions. Late last year, therefore, I became a member of Mountaineering Scotland and this year I need to go on one of their highly recommended Winter Skills courses. The problem is they’re all booked up.
Until a few days ago when an email arrived offering a space on a one-day course this Wednesday – three days’ time. My heart sinks. I should be excited by the opportunity, but I’m feeling rotten and the last thing I want to do is spend nine hours in freezing conditions throwing myself down snow slopes for ice axe practice. Besides, the combination of the festive season, heat in Australia and this virus means I’m not exactly at peak fitness. But I know this might be my last chance this winter, so I gird my loins and book, noting that – at this late stage – no refund will be possible on cancellation.
Reading the kit list, I then note I will need to make a trip into town the following day for proper winter boots, crampons, ice axe and seriously waterproof trousers. (My current ones are budget brand, have lost their seam tapes and are about as effective as a pair of plastic bags.) But ouch. The cost of all that gear may wipe out any author earnings for the book. Wondering how many warm layers to wear, I check the Scottish mountain weather forecast for the day of the course. Here are extracted highlights:
HOW WINDY?
Southwesterly 60-80mph; risk gusts towards 100mph on high tops.
EFFECT OF WIND ON YOU?
Atrocious conditions across the hills with any mobility tortuous; severe wind chill.
That sentence goes through me like a 100mph gust of freezing wind. No, no, no. This is not me. I’m a happy-go-lucky hillwalker, not a polar explorer pitting myself against the elements and prepared to get frostbite, hypothermia and snot crystals hanging from my nose. And it’s not that sort of book I’m writing, anyway: the adventure epic of agony and conquest, the heroic survival memoir pushing the limits of bravery and belief. Who needs a mountaineering disaster? I’m touching the void of my existential crisis right here on the couch.
I go to bed feeling not just unwell, but frankly terrified. Little wonder I barely sleep.
The following afternoon, we head into Aviemore. If there’s one thing this town excels at, it’s outdoor shops, and we do the rounds. My husband Alistair is an experienced hill-walker in all weathers and advises me on winter walking boots, the pros and cons of stiffer soles or a more flexible fit, the lacing techniques. I’m struggling to get my head past the price tag. And that weather forecast. It’s only 2 o’clock in the afternoon, but already the darkness is gathering in the wind-blown skirts of rain. A friend who works in one of the shop learns I’m doing the course this Wednesday and winces. My stomach twists.
The news calls it Storm Brendan. It’s always bad news when the weather has a name.
I’m shown a series of ice axes and Alistair and the staff cheerfully demonstrate the necessary grip to arrest your fall and discuss the pros and cons of leashes. Pro: you don’t lose it. Con: if you fall without getting a grip, the thing is bouncing around and can hit you in the head. The good news is that Mountaineering Scotland will issue us with helmets. The bad news is that my head is already throbbing.
I haul waterproof trousers over my jeans and hubby points out best features for keeping rain, snow and wind out. I silently note that, even in the sale, these are more expensive than any dress I’ve ever bought. We end up in Tiso’s where I plea for time out in the cafe. With tears dripping into my hot chocolate I confess my anxieties. “Do I need to do this? Do I need to buy all this stuff?” It all just seems so scary and expensive.
Alistair is gentle. “No, you don’t have to do the Winter Skills course on Wednesday.” I almost howl with relief. “But yes, if you want to explore the Scottish hills in winter, you need to be safe. For that, you need proper equipment and better skills. You do need this stuff and it will last for years. And there are other opportunities to get the training, so don’t worry.”
Come Wednesday morning I can’t resist another sneaky peak at the mountain weather forecast. It still has those devastating predictions of 100mph gusts and ‘atrocious conditions’ but now includes these lovely lines:
HEADLINE FOR CAIRNGORMS NP AND MONADHLIATH
Stormy winds. Snow & whiteout, focused W Cairngorms NP
HOW COLD? (AT 900M)
-2 or -3C. Wind chill on higher terrain close to -20C.
So I’m sitting snugly – and smugly – at my kitchen table watching the garden trees whipping about and contemplating nothing more adventurous than a dog walk. But I am wearing-in a pair of spanking new leather winter boots that are warm and strong and quietly reassuring me that together, we’re going to move mountains.
Sileas, our Golden, yearning to get me out there
From the comfort of my sofa in a warm living room, I have just booked myself onto my first ever mountain winter skills course. It is the middle of January in Scotland and having just returned from several weeks of the Australian summer, I feel plunged into darkness. Jet lag casts me onto the endless shores of the night where I lie tired but sleepless, listening to the silence that looms strange and total around the house. My parents’ old weatherboard house in Melbourne is a being of breath and bones, sighing with the see-sawing temperatures, bumping with the passage of creatures inside and out, caressed by trees. The Australian birds are raucous and the road busy.
Here in our village in the Highlands in mid-winter, even morning arrives without sound or light. I keep checking the clock to tell whether it is still some ungodly hour or time for breakfast. By day, rain washes across the landscape, clouds mass and shift with the wind and this morning we woke to a fall of wet snow that by afternoon had dribbled into the mud. None of this inspires me to go mountaineering. Nor does the whole-body misery of bubbling cold, sinusitis and jet lag.
But I want to write a book about the Cairngorms in all their moods, so I need to get up there and broaden my experience. Although I’ve walked in snowy hills many times, it’s always been with more experienced walkers and not long treks or demanding conditions. Late last year, therefore, I became a member of Mountaineering Scotland and this year I need to go on one of their highly recommended Winter Skills courses. The problem is they’re all booked up.
Until a few days ago when an email arrived offering a space on a one-day course this Wednesday – three days’ time. My heart sinks. I should be excited by the opportunity, but I’m feeling rotten and the last thing I want to do is spend nine hours in freezing conditions throwing myself down snow slopes for ice axe practice. Besides, the combination of the festive season, heat in Australia and this virus means I’m not exactly at peak fitness. But I know this might be my last chance this winter, so I gird my loins and book, noting that – at this late stage – no refund will be possible on cancellation.
Reading the kit list, I then note I will need to make a trip into town the following day for proper winter boots, crampons, ice axe and seriously waterproof trousers. (My current ones are budget brand, have lost their seam tapes and are about as effective as a pair of plastic bags.) But ouch. The cost of all that gear may wipe out any author earnings for the book. Wondering how many warm layers to wear, I check the Scottish mountain weather forecast for the day of the course. Here are extracted highlights:
HOW WINDY?
Southwesterly 60-80mph; risk gusts towards 100mph on high tops.
EFFECT OF WIND ON YOU?
Atrocious conditions across the hills with any mobility tortuous; severe wind chill.
That sentence goes through me like a 100mph gust of freezing wind. No, no, no. This is not me. I’m a happy-go-lucky hillwalker, not a polar explorer pitting myself against the elements and prepared to get frostbite, hypothermia and snot crystals hanging from my nose. And it’s not that sort of book I’m writing, anyway: the adventure epic of agony and conquest, the heroic survival memoir pushing the limits of bravery and belief. Who needs a mountaineering disaster? I’m touching the void of my existential crisis right here on the couch.
I go to bed feeling not just unwell, but frankly terrified. Little wonder I barely sleep.
The following afternoon, we head into Aviemore. If there’s one thing this town excels at, it’s outdoor shops, and we do the rounds. My husband Alistair is an experienced hill-walker in all weathers and advises me on winter walking boots, the pros and cons of stiffer soles or a more flexible fit, the lacing techniques. I’m struggling to get my head past the price tag. And that weather forecast. It’s only 2 o’clock in the afternoon, but already the darkness is gathering in the wind-blown skirts of rain. A friend who works in one of the shop learns I’m doing the course this Wednesday and winces. My stomach twists.
The news calls it Storm Brendan. It’s always bad news when the weather has a name.
I’m shown a series of ice axes and Alistair and the staff cheerfully demonstrate the necessary grip to arrest your fall and discuss the pros and cons of leashes. Pro: you don’t lose it. Con: if you fall without getting a grip, the thing is bouncing around and can hit you in the head. The good news is that Mountaineering Scotland will issue us with helmets. The bad news is that my head is already throbbing.
I haul waterproof trousers over my jeans and hubby points out best features for keeping rain, snow and wind out. I silently note that, even in the sale, these are more expensive than any dress I’ve ever bought. We end up in Tiso’s where I plea for time out in the cafe. With tears dripping into my hot chocolate I confess my anxieties. “Do I need to do this? Do I need to buy all this stuff?” It all just seems so scary and expensive.
Alistair is gentle. “No, you don’t have to do the Winter Skills course on Wednesday.” I almost howl with relief. “But yes, if you want to explore the Scottish hills in winter, you need to be safe. For that, you need proper equipment and better skills. You do need this stuff and it will last for years. And there are other opportunities to get the training, so don’t worry.”
Come Wednesday morning I can’t resist another sneaky peak at the mountain weather forecast. It still has those devastating predictions of 100mph gusts and ‘atrocious conditions’ but now includes these lovely lines:
HEADLINE FOR CAIRNGORMS NP AND MONADHLIATH
Stormy winds. Snow & whiteout, focused W Cairngorms NP
HOW COLD? (AT 900M)
-2 or -3C. Wind chill on higher terrain close to -20C.
So I’m sitting snugly – and smugly – at my kitchen table watching the garden trees whipping about and contemplating nothing more adventurous than a dog walk. But I am wearing-in a pair of spanking new leather winter boots that are warm and strong and quietly reassuring me that together, we’re going to move mountains.
Sileas, our Golden, yearning to get me out there
Though the Glen Tanar Health Walk group love where they walk and were very happy to have me join them, it was made clear that they did not want to do any writing.
I said, ok, I could certainly work on that understanding. In fact, most of my engagement with the Health Walk groups for the Shared Stories project has not involved a ‘writing workshop’ as such. Each group is different and rather than impose an unwelcome activity, I’ve tried to come alongside them and enrich their weekly outing in ways that respond to their interests. My times with the Grantown, Aviemore and Kingussie groups are described here.
My first visit to Glen Tanar was a typically cold, grey and drizzly November day. It’s nearly two hours’ drive for me and burrowing through thick cloud on the rollercoaster Snow Roads, I did wonder if it was worth the time and effort just to trudge along with a group who maybe didn’t really want me there. In the car park of the Glen Tanar Charitable Trust, I watched them emerge from their vehicles adjusting their plumage of waterproof jackets, trousers, gaiters, boots, hats, scarves, gloves and sticks. No outing in the Cairngorms is just ‘a walk in the park’!
Glen Tanar Health Walk Group
But they were brimming with smiles and laughter and greeted me warmly, Glynis offering me chocolates from the bag she passes round every week. I thanked them for including me and assured them there were no writing activities and the last thing I wanted to do was to spoil their walk. More smiles and laughter, maybe even a little relief.
Glen Tanar is on the eastern side of the Cairngorm mountains where the Tanar Water flows into the River Dee. Once the lands of the Marquis of Huntly, the estate was bought in 1865 by Manchester banker and MP, William Cunliffe Brooks. Since 1905, it has been owned by four generations of the Coats family, who now run it as a diverse Highland estate for field sports, holiday accommodation and weddings.
Because of Scotland’s access laws, anyone is free to roam on private land (respecting certain restrictions) and the Charitable Trust actively encourages people to explore and enjoy Glen Tanar, in particular its National Nature Reserve. The Health Walk here has been doing exactly that every Friday, come rain, hail or shine, for many years, usually in the company of a Trust ranger. And it’s easy to see why.
The landscaped gardens were designed for Sir Cunliffe Brooks at the end of the 19th century and include a series of connected ponds and 200 different tree species. Now somewhat overgrown, a creeping wildness is overtaking the Victorian fancy, original paths and flowerbeds lost under the competing tangle of native and introduced plants. On that misty, late Autumn day, the place was breathing its stories, pungent with the cycles of growth and decay.
One lady showed me a giant stump from which 15 new saplings had sprouted, mostly different kinds of tree. We stopped to look at an abandoned summer house, its wood quietly rotting as a fairy-tale stone well stood sentinel nearby. The group pointed out the tendrils of leaves from the very rare twinflower, and at a lochan fringed with reeds, we watched a heron in its perfect stillness.
“Don’t step on the frog!” someone said.
“It’s a toad, it’s a toad!” Ranger Mike was rolling his eyes. The group laughed. Apparently this happens regularly.
“When I was wee,” a senior lady murmured to me, “we just called it a puddock.”
Afterwards we retired to the warmth of The Boat Inn, where the coffee was fragrant and the scones served up like a Bake Off Showstopper. Every Health Walk ends with this gathering for beverages and a blether, and the two halves of the expedition are equally enjoyed. The Glen Tanar group sat around one large table and I asked if they’d like to play Talk in the Park. It’s a simple activity where each person in turn chooses a card, reads out the conversation prompt on it and then shares with the group. Not everyone has to take a card, of course, but as soon as someone starts, most folk want a go and, inevitably, everyone is involved in listening and pitching into the conversation.
One of the cards read: Talk about a person who is a frequent companion in your nature experiences. Aileen’s face creased into smiles, her eyes shining, as she talked about the wonderful person who had gone with her on nearly every outdoor adventure for countless years. “And that’s him, there!” She grinned, pointing across the table at her husband. “Oh that’s a relief,” he said, cheekily. “Was wondering who she was talking about.”
When I gave out a sheet of Scots words for nature, former school teacher Mary launched into a spontaneous and splendid recitation of the fabulous poem The Puddock by John M Caie. Cheers and applause all round and no arguments about whether it was a frog or a toad.
“Now,” I said at the end, passing round the Cairngorms Lyric handout, “I know you folks aren’t interested in the writing, but this is just to show you some of the things that have been happening across the Park. Just for your interest, you know. Just… well, just in case…”
And, as they say in all the best internet click bait, you’ll never believe what happened next.
(But you will have to wait till next week to find out…)
Though the Glen Tanar Health Walk group love where they walk and were very happy to have me join them, it was made clear that they did not want to do any writing.
I said, ok, I could certainly work on that understanding. In fact, most of my engagement with the Health Walk groups for the Shared Stories project has not involved a ‘writing workshop’ as such. Each group is different and rather than impose an unwelcome activity, I’ve tried to come alongside them and enrich their weekly outing in ways that respond to their interests. My times with the Grantown, Aviemore and Kingussie groups are described here.
My first visit to Glen Tanar was a typically cold, grey and drizzly November day. It’s nearly two hours’ drive for me and burrowing through thick cloud on the rollercoaster Snow Roads, I did wonder if it was worth the time and effort just to trudge along with a group who maybe didn’t really want me there. In the car park of the Glen Tanar Charitable Trust, I watched them emerge from their vehicles adjusting their plumage of waterproof jackets, trousers, gaiters, boots, hats, scarves, gloves and sticks. No outing in the Cairngorms is just ‘a walk in the park’!
Glen Tanar Health Walk Group
But they were brimming with smiles and laughter and greeted me warmly, Glynis offering me chocolates from the bag she passes round every week. I thanked them for including me and assured them there were no writing activities and the last thing I wanted to do was to spoil their walk. More smiles and laughter, maybe even a little relief.
Glen Tanar is on the eastern side of the Cairngorm mountains where the Tanar Water flows into the River Dee. Once the lands of the Marquis of Huntly, the estate was bought in 1865 by Manchester banker and MP, William Cunliffe Brooks. Since 1905, it has been owned by four generations of the Coats family, who now run it as a diverse Highland estate for field sports, holiday accommodation and weddings.
Because of Scotland’s access laws, anyone is free to roam on private land (respecting certain restrictions) and the Charitable Trust actively encourages people to explore and enjoy Glen Tanar, in particular its National Nature Reserve. The Health Walk here has been doing exactly that every Friday, come rain, hail or shine, for many years, usually in the company of a Trust ranger. And it’s easy to see why.
The landscaped gardens were designed for Sir Cunliffe Brooks at the end of the 19th century and include a series of connected ponds and 200 different tree species. Now somewhat overgrown, a creeping wildness is overtaking the Victorian fancy, original paths and flowerbeds lost under the competing tangle of native and introduced plants. On that misty, late Autumn day, the place was breathing its stories, pungent with the cycles of growth and decay.
One lady showed me a giant stump from which 15 new saplings had sprouted, mostly different kinds of tree. We stopped to look at an abandoned summer house, its wood quietly rotting as a fairy-tale stone well stood sentinel nearby. The group pointed out the tendrils of leaves from the very rare twinflower, and at a lochan fringed with reeds, we watched a heron in its perfect stillness.
“Don’t step on the frog!” someone said.
“It’s a toad, it’s a toad!” Ranger Mike was rolling his eyes. The group laughed. Apparently this happens regularly.
“When I was wee,” a senior lady murmured to me, “we just called it a puddock.”
Afterwards we retired to the warmth of The Boat Inn, where the coffee was fragrant and the scones served up like a Bake Off Showstopper. Every Health Walk ends with this gathering for beverages and a blether, and the two halves of the expedition are equally enjoyed. The Glen Tanar group sat around one large table and I asked if they’d like to play Talk in the Park. It’s a simple activity where each person in turn chooses a card, reads out the conversation prompt on it and then shares with the group. Not everyone has to take a card, of course, but as soon as someone starts, most folk want a go and, inevitably, everyone is involved in listening and pitching into the conversation.
One of the cards read: Talk about a person who is a frequent companion in your nature experiences. Aileen’s face creased into smiles, her eyes shining, as she talked about the wonderful person who had gone with her on nearly every outdoor adventure for countless years. “And that’s him, there!” She grinned, pointing across the table at her husband. “Oh that’s a relief,” he said, cheekily. “Was wondering who she was talking about.”
When I gave out a sheet of Scots words for nature, former school teacher Mary launched into a spontaneous and splendid recitation of the fabulous poem The Puddock by John M Caie. Cheers and applause all round and no arguments about whether it was a frog or a toad.
“Now,” I said at the end, passing round the Cairngorms Lyric handout, “I know you folks aren’t interested in the writing, but this is just to show you some of the things that have been happening across the Park. Just for your interest, you know. Just… well, just in case…”
And, as they say in all the best internet click bait, you’ll never believe what happened next.
(But you will have to wait till next week to find out…)
It was quiet when I arrived at the edge of Anagach woods, sunlight filtering down through giant trees, a soft breeze shifting the leaves. Gradually, people began to appear, some striding purposefully down the track, others making their way slowly with two sticks. Most were retirement age, all were local folk who gather every week for the Grantown Health Walk, one of about 15 that take place in locations across the Cairngorms National Park.
Health Walks are short, safe, social, local, low level and guided by a trained leader, all intended to help people be more active and connected, to one-another as well as nature. I was there to bring another dimension to their outing through the Shared Stories project by inviting creative responses to the natural world.
The Grantown group is large and splits into two strands, determined by pace. The first week I went with the slow walk, who were happy to stop every now and then to focus on a sense, breathing in the woodsy smells or inspecting the patterns of bark. These women wait for one another and share time with a wide embrace.
The second week I joined what walk leader, David, calls ‘The GGrantown SAS’. In keeping with his military background, he sets a brisk pace and the dozen or more walkers revel in the energy and the many routes he has found. I didn’t ask them to stop and meditate on the aromas, but took the opportunity – while puffing alongside – to hear their experiences of the outdoors. Most of them spoke of childhoods unfettered by adult supervision with whole days spent roaming, scrambling, fishing and foraging.
Back in the Royal Legion where they always finish with coffee and biscuits, I introduced the Cairngorms Lyric and offered conversation starter cards: “Where in the Park do you feel most at one with nature?” “What is your favourite wildlife of the Park?”
At that last one, David and his wife looked at each other. “I was afraid of heights,” Beata said, “and couldn’t go up a hill. He gradually got me there.” It started with small slopes and she always had to go down backwards, unable to face the view down, but finally, on the third attempt, she made it to the top of Meall a Bhuachaille and hasn’t looked back.
“Now don’t write too many good things about the Park,” one man warned. “We’ve got enough tourists as it is!” The conversation traversed the familiar contested territory of what the Park is for. I suggested expressing their views in poetry. Smiles and raised eyebrows, but on my second week at Grantown, a woman shyly gave me a Cairngorms Lyric and another emailed me several, set into her photos of the Health Walks.
With the Aviemore group, we explored the low slopes beyond Badaguish where the broome was massed with gold and Scots pine regenerating. They showed me the remains of the old crofting township of Beglan, now just overgrown stones in broken rectangles. Some in that group have walked all the Cairngorms and remember ski-ing in the early days. One gentleman persuaded me to get down cheek to cheek with a tiny burn to video its splash and song.
The following week we walked in the cool damp of Glenmore forest, where we talked about overcoming the fear of swimming. One woman was recovering from a hip operation and another was 93 and deaf. It rained, but she kept smiling.
In Kingussie, the group is more mixed. The retirees are joined by folk from Caberfeidh Horizons, a social enterprise for adults with a learning disability, mental health issues, addiction problems or long term unemployed. On my first day with them, we walked up the river Gynack, following its route through stone pools and gorges, pausing on a bridge to listen to its many notes. Resting under trees, we identified birdsong and all the colours of green.
The next week took us past the community allotments, across fields strewn with wildflowers and under giant beeches. In the café afterwards, we used the conversation cards and heard stories of getting lost in the mountains and finding friendship with a horse. I shared my poems built from the words they had come up with the week before, and one of the walkers gave me his own Cairngorms Lyric. The feeling amongst these folk was gentle and supportive, a place of acceptance and quiet joy together, both in the beautiful outdoors and the welcome of a café.
In November I will be joining another Health Walk Group in the Park and in September will be sharing at a training day for the Health Walk leaders, all volunteers who give generously of their time and care to make these walks possible. It has been a gift for me to come alongside these groups and to witness how good it is when nature, walking and a therapeutic community come together.
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” John Muir
At the start of this year, I decided to embrace my term as Writer in Residence for the Cairngorms National Park as a kind of pilgrimage. Certainly, I would be covering a lot of ground delivering the project, and that has proved true, and fascinating. More significantly, I knew I would be on a personal journey, discovering new thinking about this distinctive landscape and its people, new territory as a writer, and new learning – I hoped – about myself.
Feeling, by mid-year, a bit lost and run down, I realised it was time to undertake a physical pilgrimage. Sometimes it is only through moving the body that we shift the spirit. In my last post I wrote about my place of inner and outer chaos and needing – quite literally – to walk away; about the dream to climb Angel’s Peak in the Cairngorms and about why that mountain, of all mountains, was important.
Here is the story.
We leave the car near the ruins and rambling crofts of Tullochgrue above Aviemore, rope up Sileas, the golden retriever, and shoulder our packs. I haven’t done a camping trek in two years and it feels heavy. The afternoon sky is patchy sun and cloud as the trail takes us through the Caledonian forest of Rothiemurchus; it is deep with Scots pine and mixed with the many greens of silver birch, aspen, and rowan. Blaeberry and heather carpet the woodland floor and the Allt Dhruidh burn chortles swift and shallow through the dappled light. I could lie down here and know peace.
As the trees thin and the path rises, we emerge onto rocky moor with the dark chasm of the Lairig Ghru up ahead, cloud massing on its tops. ‘Lairig’ is Gaelic for pass, but the origins of ‘Ghru’ are debated. Formed some 400 million years ago, this triangular cleft through the middle of the highest Cairngorms was once a route for cattle drovers and smugglers. Today we meet only walkers coming the opposite direction from Deeside and a mountain biker bombing down the track. With his long red hair and beard streaming from under his helmet he looks like an indomitable Gaul. I feel anything but, my heavy pack and boots making my gait clumsy and causing a sharp twang in the hip. Growing up in the Himalayas, I used to be a mountain goat; can I regain my hill feet as well as my head?
The rocky trail is lined with grasses, mosses, bog cotton and wildflowers, from buttercup yellow to the zingy purples of heather and vetch. Meadow pipits rise from the banks with their swift wing beat and bouncy flight, cheeping urgently and we keep Sileas on her lead. Gradually, the path reveals the red shades of the Cairngorm granite: dusky roses, peaches and wines. Though the rock turns grey with exposure, any fresh cut reveals its blood and it’s no wonder the Gaelic name for this range is Am Monadh Ruadh, the russet-coloured hills. The water spilling down from the mountain is so clear it makes the stream bed shine like polished copper, though higher up, it disappears and reappears among the rocks. Further in, the Lairig Ghru dims with mist, the steep scree giving way to the jagged cliffs of Lurcher’s Crag.
It’s nearly 7 when we arrive at the high point of the pass where the Pools of Dee are ice cold and give no sign of their waters flowing in or out. The bank of stones above the second pool and the swirling cloud give a sense of the world vanishing beyond. We pitch camp and cook in a blowing smirr, crawling early into our thermals and down bags. Unfamiliarity has made Sileas hyper-vigilant and she lies out for hours in the rain, staring around, until Alistair eventually tugs her under the bell. All night my sleep is routed by the scant darkness, the tent rattling, and the aching of my hips on the hard ground. I breathe wet dog and socks.
We wait out the rain and it is mid-morning when we pick our way down the boulder fall, the valley unfurling below in the gathering sunshine. The view stretches beyond the buttress of Devil’s Point to the smoky hills south of the Dee. To the west, the twin summits of Cairn Toul and Angel’s Peak are still wreathed in cloud, challenging me to reach them.
As the Garbh Choire opens to our right, we ford the burn that becomes the Dee and strike out across the bog. Small green frogs leap in front of us and the way is dotted with flowers, delicate and exquisite in this wind-battered place. The peaks gradually clear and we can see the rim of the high bowl between them that holds An Lochain Uaine – the green pool – and the waterfall that threads down from it, over dark rock. But we can see no path, for there is none.
We ford Allt a’ Garbh-Choire and push up the slope, finding a way among the stones, sometimes needing hands. Despite that, it’s easier going than yesterday as I don’t have a pack and my body is slowly remembering the footholds of youth. Cresting the rim I go even faster, almost running now across the boulder field until I see the lochan.
Yes. It’s here. It’s real.
My novel and my characters are imagined, but something about being in the actual place that is pivotal for them makes them seem real, too, as if they are not just in my mind, but alive and present. It’s almost as though I might meet them here and I feel like crying. I also feel silly. And elated. The pool keeps changing colour with the clouds, one moment blue, another gun metal grey, rarely, the green for which it is named. In my book, Sorley swims, and though I love outdoor swimming and harboured a fantasy of taking a dip, the cold wind and my cowardice soon snuff that notion.
Over our lunch of oatcakes and soup, we scan the north ridge of Angel’s Peak through binoculars. It was our planned route – because Sorley takes it – but we decide the steep scramble is unsafe for the dog and start up Cairn Toul instead, traversing above the lochan to an easier route. From there it’s still a hard, slow slog and my body’s memory of youth fades. I hear a text ping. Wouldn’t it be amazing if, arriving at the geographic and emotional climax of my novel, I get the news of a publisher? I laugh even before I check. I know it won’t be, and it isn’t.
And, right now, that’s okay. By the time we get to the top of Angel’s Peak, the sun has conquered the sky and the world is falling away below us. Though the wind almost throws me off my feet, I am overjoyed because I am here. Stretching in every direction, the Cairngorms are billowing round tents of stone, rising in waves and walls of granite, falling in cliffs and corries, bathing in light. Snow clings in deep crevices; burns are seams of silver in the grey and green; cloud shadows glide like sea galleons and mythical beasts across the slopes. Right below us, An Lochan Uaine lies dark and fathomless.
I don’t know if I will return to swim there just as I don’t know what will happen with the book, but I do know I am changed. In these mountains I have been washed by rain, shot through with light, blown to bits by wind and hung out to dry. The mountain has shaken me hard enough to make my bones rattle and my head break its locks; it has beaten me like a rug and cast the devils to the dust; it has seared its image on the wall of my mind.
But like Jacob wrestling with the Angel and wounded at the hip, I demand my blessing. As I walk the many hours home, I am remade. The mountain returns the pieces of me one by one in the ptarmigan’s croak and the taste of a clear burn; it restores me in the petals of a wild orchid and the gaze of deer; it reveals my lost path in ancient rock and lights my way in sun.
It restores my soul.
