Cameron McNeish's Blog

The End of the Less Travelled Roads

AS many of you will know by now the BBC is launching a new Scottish channel later this month and after a great deal of thought I've decided this is a good moment to 'retire' from television.I've been making television programmes, on and off, for about 25 years or so with my good friend and colleague Richard Else. We started our working relationship in 1993 when we began planning The Edge - 100 Years of Scottish Mountaineering.Two 6-part series of Wilderness Walks followed that, all on BBC2.For the past twelve years I've been associated with The Adventure Show. We began making Adventure Show specials and for the past eleven years we've produced a couple of hour-long programmes that have been broadcast during Christmas week. Latterly they were known as Roads Less Travelled and featured me doodling around Scotland in my wee red campervan.To my eternal surprise these shows have been phenomenally successful with excellent viewing figures and audience share and I believe the last programmes, Roads Less Travelled - Scotland's Atlantic Way, had the highest figures of all. So I've decided to finish on a high note rather than wait for me to become increasingly doddery with decreasing viewing figures.With the big 70 just around the corner there are loads of things I still want to do and it will be nice to have my summers to myself again. I should point out that The Adventure Show will be continuing on the new BBC Scotland channel in the capable hands of Richard and Meg Else and I wish them ongoing success with that.I now want to concentrate more on my writing, particularly as my recent autobiography, There's Always the Hills, has done so well. In addition to more books I'm still writing regularly for the Scots Magazine, The Great Outdoors, Walk Highlands and Campervan Magazine. And of course I'm still putting together Scottish Walks and Scottish Cycling so my life will be no less busy.And I desperately want more time to spend on the hills!I'm not finishing with the camera completely though. I want to build up a portfolio of my own Scottish videos that I can share on this website and Richard and I will be making a series of videos for other organisations, all outdoor related. News of the first of those soon.So for the moment I'd like to sincerely thank all of you for being so encouraging and supportive over the years. It's been a real joy working with the camera operators and everyone else involved in the television programmes. It's been great fun.And we couldn't have done it without you, the viewers. Many, many thanks.But for the moment, and for a good few more years I hope, there's always the hills...

Bidean

The peaks of Glen Coe act as a magnet for hillwalkers and a fine way to experience them is a round of Stob Coire nan Lochan, Bidean nam Bian and Stob Coire Sgreamhach. AS a youngster I remember spotting a couple of climbers arriving at the roadside in Glen Coe. They were sun-tanned and lean, both wore tartan plaid shirts and breeches and one of them had a rope draped over his shoulder. They had come down from the ‘high tops’, to my young eyes a distant and unattainable region that was suffused with magic and mystery. I remember thinking the two climbers were like Gods come down from Parnassus and as I watched them I had an overwheleming desire to be just like them.Their air of physical prowess, health and vitality was only part of the attraction. I gazed beyond them to a world that was alien to me at the time; a high place where rock and air and water dominated all else, a mysterious world of crag and corrie that formed a distant horizon beyond which lay other worlds. As I contemplated that mystery and romance I experienced the first pull of the hills, a sensation that was to grow in me as I worked my way through teenage years.When I eventually decided that hills and mountains were to be a bedrock of my life I quickly realised the two climbers weren’t gods at all, but the heaven from which they had descended most certainly was a land of magic and mystery, a land to which I returned weekend after weekend, mostly in the company of various members of the Lomond Mountaineering Club. Glen Coe became our playground.Few hillgoers would argue that Glen Coe is a special place. Glistening crags fall down from high corries on one side of the road while the notched, jagged wall of the Aonach Eagach rises sheer on the other and we explored it all. We regularly used a little stone howff, a rock shelter beneath a large overhang, and it was from there I was first introduced to rock-climbing on the easy routes of the East Face of Aonach Dubh.This great cliff had long offered long, if modest climbing routes like Long Crack, Spider and Archer Ridge. Even on bad weather days the combination of Bowstring on the Barn Wall and Quiver Rib, two straightforward routes, offered immensely fulfilling outings. I often wonder if my love of hills and mountains would have been so fulfilling had I learned to climb on an indoor climbing wall? I suspect not.Not very far away from our shelter in Coire nan Lochan lay another howff, built years ago by the lads from the Squirrels, a climbing-club from Edinburgh. A few memorial plaques are still scattered around – one reads: ‘These are my mountains, and I have come home.”How often have I climbed up into the dark recesses of Coire nan Lochan and the Coire Ghabhail? How often have I slithered down muddy paths after a great day on the crags of Aonach Dubh, or from winter routes on Argyll’s highest peak, Bidean nam Bian? And what of all those friends and climbing partners who shared these mountain days, some still here, but many gone? The nostalgia that’s produced by such wonderful memories is a sweet one and it’s warm embrace is never far away when I climb these hills of Glen Coe. And that’s partly why I have never associated this marvellous glen with it’s nickname of the Glen O’ Weeping.On the ridge to Stob Coire SgreamhachI accept that in certain weather conditions the glen can most certainly be a dark place, but I’ve realised that commercial tourism had done a disservice to Glen Coe, bestowing the fanciful title on it in memory of the 1692 massacre when Hanoverian forces murdered their MacDonald hosts. As massacres go it wasn’t the worst in Scottish history, but it was certainly bad enough. Thirty-two men, women and children died at the hands of their guests, government soldiers, who rose quietly and murdered them during the hours of darkness. This ‘murder under trust’ as it became known became indelibly etched in the pages of history as the Massacre of Glen Coe and even today, over 300-years later, there are those who want to preserve the site of the infamy as a memorial to those who perished.Life was comparatively cheap in those days and while we should never forget the ‘murder under trust’ element of that event I’ve always felt it was a little unfortunate that such a deliberately emotion-charged nickname as the Glen o’ Weeping should have been coined. It paints a grim picture of what is one of Scotland’s finest natural landscapes and as I sat close to that old Squirrels’ howff recently, with the memorials to other mountaineers around me, climbers who, like me, loved this place, I couldn’t help think of the generations who have been thrilled and inspired by the mountains of Glen Coe, those who never ever saw it as a ‘dark place’ but as a place of undiminished light.Three great craggy prows dominate the glen– Beinn Fhada, Gear Aonach and Aonach Dubh, collectively known as the Three Sisters of Glen Coe – their cliffs tumbling down into the narrow glen where the river and the road squeeze through the mountains, both heading to the glorious west. And if such a view was not enough to whet a mountain lover’s appetite beyond the Three Sisters, above archtypal mountain corries , you might just catch a tantalising view of the peaks that make up Glen Coe’s most classic round - Stob Coire nan Lochan, Bidean nam Bian and Stob Coire Sgreamhach.Bidean nam Bian, 1150m, the centrepiece of this round of Glen Coe peaks, is not only the highest mountain in the old county of Argyll but it’s the name of an entire massif, and a complex one at that with several pointed tops and deep-cut corries. There are a variety of routes to the 3773ft summit and in winter conditions most of these routes can be considerably challenging. Great rock crags – the Diamond and Church Door Buttresses add drama, and a sense of history, to the scene. The first climbs there were put up by some of the great pioneers of rock-climbing in Scotland – Norman Collie, Harold Raeburn and JH Bell at the end of the nineteenth century.Bidean, the Peak of the Mountains, couldn’t be better named for its summit is the culmination of four great ridges which give way to no less than nine separate summits and cradle three deep and distinctive corries. It even has a secondary Munro - Stob Coire Sgreamhach was promoted to Munro status in the 1997 revisions.A number of alternative routes ascend Bidean nam Bian. The linking of Stob Coire Beith offers a pretty good route from Achnambeithach at the western end of Loch Achtriochtan, and there’s a whole glorious ridge waiting your attentions to the south west, a ridge with wonderful views to the south down the length of Etive to the fabled lands of Deirdre of the Sorrows and the peaks of Cruachan, a ridge which skirts the head of the steep sided Coire Gabhail before climbing the boulders and screes of the newest Glen Coe Munro, Stob Coire Sgreamhach.This is another great spot to sit and while the time away. Gaze across at the twin ridges of the two Buachailles, or pick out the tops of the Blackmount Deer Forest, a wonderfully wild quarter with a clutch of fine Munros culminating in the square topped peak of mighty Ben Starav.From the summit cairn you can descend to the north-east, down the two mile length of Beinn Fhada, but it can be awkward and difficult, especially in snowy conditions. An escape from the Fhada ridge can be made by dropping down steep slopes into Coire Gabhail, but you have to backtrack quite a distance to avoid a deep chasm that lines the upper corrie floor. Better to return down the north west ridge of Stob Coire Sgreamhach towards Bidean and then carefully descend the loose scree filled gully in the steep headwall of Coire Gabhail, then down scree slopes to where the corrie begins to fan out. A footpath then offers easier going down the length of the corrie, over the incredibly flat pastures that may once have fed stolen cattle (an old tale suggests the MacDonalds of Glen Coe once hid cattle up here, hence the tourist nickname of The Lost Valley) and through the great jumble of boulders that fill the woodlands at its mouth. Follow the track to the right and avoid the mass of boulders, cross the stream and follow the footpath down to the footbridge over the River Coe.As you follow the well used track back up towards the roadside car park brace yourself for the sudden madness of the A82. You might hear a piper playing a lament and likely as not the car park will be filled with tour buses, its passengers photographing the peaks and crags of the Glen O’ Weeping. The smile and contentment on your face may well cause them to question that nickname too.The tops of Glen Coe with Bidean nam Bian towering above them allI usually climb Bidean via an ascent of Stob Coire nan Lochan, 1115m, a fine peak in its own right, even if it is only classified as a ‘top’ of Bidean, with a traverse of the high-level interlinking ridge that connects it to the main Bidean ridge. All going well you can then wander along the main ridge to the hill’s other Munro, Stob Coire Sgreamhach, 1072m, finishing off with a descent into the marvellously atmospheric Coire Gabhail.Some years ago I brought my son and daughter-in-law up into Coire an Lochan in what should have been an early summer/late spring day. As we reached the corrie lochans visibility was reduced to about thirty metres and we could just discern the north-east ridge of Stob Coire nan Lochan rising to our left. As we climbed higher the ridge becomes narrower and rockier and soon some mild scrambling made us use our hands as well as our feet. There was much more snow about than I had anticipated too, and since we hadn’t brought any ice axes with us I became pretty convinced the summit of Stob Coire nan Lochan would be as far as we could go.However, the ridge that connects with Bidean was clear of cloud and looked fairly clear of snow as far as we could see so we set off optimistically, enjoying the romp despite the damp conditions. There were a number of patches of wet slushy snow around but as we climbed the steep ridge onto Bidean the snow cover increased dramatically. It was decision time. The ridge was steep and narrow and a simple slip, without an ice axe to arrest the fall, would have meant a long slide into the blackness of the corrie depths where vertiginous crags lurked. The summit of Bidean nam Bian would still be there for another day, so we backtracked to Stob Coire nan Lochan and followed the hill’s north ridge round to Aonach Dubh before sliding down wet snow patches back into Coire nan Lochan.By this time we were pretty wet through but despite the dampness the drifting mists on the black crags and the raging waterfalls held our attention and made it a pleasant descent. We stopped for a final brew in the old Lomond MC howff and I suspect I bored Sarah and Gregor with my reminiscences.Even after forty-odd years the floor was still hard-packed and firm below its rock-overhang roof. Across the corrie, beyond the roar of the burn, the East Face of Aonach Dubh rears up steeply, vertically, a crag I once knew as intimately as any portion of stone in this rocky land. As ever, it felt good to be back.

HIGH ABOVE THE MOOR

The Buachaille Etive Mor from the Rannoch MoorSCOTLAND sparkled in a late winter high-pressure system. I felt as though I’d be waiting weeks for such a day on this long and drawn-out winter. The sky was cloudless when I left Newtonmore to drive west to Glen Coe but the temperature was well below zero. Everything was covered in a blanket of frozen snow and although the amount of snow on the hills was deceptive (much of it had fallen in a high winds and had been blown off) it all looked quite Alpine.There was sun a-plenty in Glen Coe, but no snow – thankfully the West had escaped the blizzards that had swept the eastern highlands earlier in the week. I’m not a great lover of snow. Ice axes and crampons and stiff boots are all necessary evils when there is snow on the hills and I much prefer to travel as light as I can.So, with the hill bare of the white stuff I left my ice-axe in the car and headed towards the steep, grassy slopes of Beinn a’ Chrulaiste, a well placed Corbett that forms the minor part of the portal to Glen Coe as you approach from the south. Its neighbour, the higher and infinitely more impressive Buachaille Etive Mor, was attracting a fair number of climbers and hill-walkers, but on this day of days I wanted to gaze towards the bigger hills, rather than gaze down from them.On the drive over to Glen Coe I had decided this wasn’t a day for big ascents, long distances or anything as mundane as peak-bagging! This was a day to dawdle on the heights, maybe to snooze in the sun, take lots of photographs and simply wonder at the majesty of it all.The Buachaille Etive Mor, or at least its Stob Dearg peak that gazes down on the A82, never fails to invoke this deep sense of wonder. It bursts through the thin skin of the earth and thrusts upwards on sheer flanks of rock for over two thousand feet, its ridges, ribs and buttresses separated by deep gullies. It rears upwards with more boldness and aggression than any of its neighbours and from the slopes of Beinn a’ Chrulaiste its near presence is almost intimidating.Beinn a’ Chulaiste is well placed for appreciating the Buachaille, but before I describe the hill it might be good to get its pronunciation sorted out. Try ‘bin a kroo-lastyer’. It means ‘rocky hill’ but it’s not nearly as rocky as it’s higher neighbour across the glen.Glen Coe hills from Beinn na ChrulaisteAfter a stiff climb up from Altnafeadh, I stopped for a while on the summit of Stob Beinn a’ Chrulaiste, settled down beside a rock, sipped coffee and just gazed across at the Buachaille’s profile. Crowberry Tower rose from the steep flanks and below it D Gully Buttress showed its face to the sun. Out of sight from here was the dark face of the Rannoch Wall but I could, if I squinted against the sun, see into the steep, deep and dark recess of Raven’s Gully. An involuntary shudder ran down my spine at the memory of it, a dank and icy place where I once severely overstretched myself…Chilled, I moved on up the tilted plateau that leads to the summit trig point of Beinn a’ Chrulaiste at 2811ft. While the close views to the Buachaille were impressive the longer distance views were no less imposing. I can’t think of a better viewpoint in the whole of the central highlands. Below me the A82 snaked its way through the narrow defile of the Pass of Glen Coe, the Three Sisters rising sheer on one side and the slopes of the Aonach Eagach on the other. West and north a long line of snow dusted peaks ranged along the horizon, the Mamores and the Grey Corries with the crouching dome of Ben Nevis looking down on all of them. The Loch Trieg hills looked whiter than the rest and beyond Ben Alder the Monadh Liath hills and the distant Cairngorms were sparkling white. Closer at hand Schiehallion rose from the flats of Rannoch like, as John Buchan famously put it, “a skerry of the sea.”At my feet the Blackwater Reservoir stretched its narrow profile deep into the heart of the Rannoch Moor and further south more lochs and lochans sparkled from this great expanse of watery wilderness. It’s been said that you could drop the entire Lake District National Park into the Rannoch Moor and still have some space around the edges. And it is the most extraordinary place, a huge region of knolls, rocks, splattered pools and blanket bog, a flat, tussocky wilderness so level that you can walk in a straight line for 10 miles between the 950 and 1000-foot contours.In shape the Rannoch Moor resembles a great inverted triangle with its points being Loch Tulla, the Kingshouse Inn and Loch Rannoch. Its northern boundary is Stob na Cruaiche and the high ground south of the Blackwater Reservoir, and to the west it’s bounded by the great wall of mountain that makes up the eastern fringe of the Blackmount Deer Forest. The south-eastern boundary is another huge escarpment, the Wall of Rannoch, which is made up of Beinn an Dothaidh, Beinn Achaladair and Beinn a’ Chreachain and the lower hills which run north-eastwards to Loch Rannoch.On the ascent of Beinn a’ Chrulaiste I had anticipated lying in the sun with my binoculars focussed on the crags, ridges and gullies of the Buachaille but instead I cooried down above the hill’s Coire Bhalach and trained my glasses on the flatness of the Moor. So often we draw on the dramatic scale of our mountains and wild areas to appreciate something of man’s insignificance, and just occasionally we can be audacious enough to believe that we can conquer it, or tame it for our advantage.One particularly ambitious project was tackled in 1763 when Ensign James Small, the government factor to the then forfeited estate of Struan Robertson, tried to drain part of the Rannoch Moor, an area recognised today as one of the wettest and soggiest places in Scotland.With the assistance of some soldier-cum-navvies, he dug a row of five trenches on a remote plot of land on the south eastern edge of the Moor , his intention being to “drain and sweeten the soil”. Not surprisingly, little came of the project. I suspect it didn’t take long for the Soldier’s Trenches, as the plot came to be known, to fill with sphagnum moss and bog-water and today all that can be seen of the project is an area of livid green corrugations, about three miles south of Rannoch Station.While we have to admire the bold ensign’s ambition, his project falls into relative insignificance when compared to the dream of building a railway across the moor. This project taxed the great engineers of the day and eventually, as a solid testament to man’s enterprise, the track was laid on a bed of floating brushwood, (a fact that probably escapes most travellers today as they wake up to a Rannoch dawn on the night sleeper from Euston) along the south-eastern margin of the moor before turning north to cross extremely boggy ground to Rannoch Station and then beyond to Corrour and Loch Treig.Despite the unqualified success of the railway the inner recesses of the moor remain inviolate. Certainly the A82 road crosses the western reaches of the Moor, but between that line and the railway is an enormous tract of land that is well worth a visit.The great void of the Rannoch MoorI’ve crossed the Moor a number of times throughout the years and I’ve always been thrilled by the solitude you can experience there. But not everyone enjoys that kind of emptiness. In 1792 the Rev John Lettice, later chaplain to the Duke of Hamilton wrote of the Moor: “An immense vacuity, with nothing in it to contemplate, unless numberless mis-shapen blocks of stone rising hideously above the surface of the earth, would be said to contradict the inanity of our prospects.” Lettice’s sentiments convey his enmity with such a landscape, but I find it immensely appealing, an empty quarter where the spirit can soar in unfettered abandon. I find it moving and I find it humbling.For a fairly substantial taster that offers a pretty full flavour of the place, try this walk. From the building site that is currently the Kingshouse Hotel on the Moor’s north west corner follow the track eastwards and north-eastwards past Black Corries Lodge. A new track has been bulldozed around the back of the Lodge. Two to three miles beyond the path fizzles out and although the OS map suggests there is a footpath I’ve never found it! Nevertheless, the going isn’t too hard and for all the Moor has a reputation for being a huge quaking bog the going is reasonably dry underfoot. Continue on a rough easterly bearing to the old ruin of Tigh na Cruaiche, high above the northern shores of Loch Laidon. From there, climb north beside the Allt Riabhach na Bioraich, steeply at first then flattening out before a final steeper slope leads to the superb viewpoint of Stob na Cruaiche.Here, high above the saucer-like Moor, you get a real sensation of being hemmed in by great mountains on three sides. Only to the east is there any sense of space, an astonishing perception when you consider you’re in the midst of 60 square miles of flatness.With the Blackmount and Etive hills beckoning, head west now along a broad and rocky ridge to Stob nan Losgann and then onto a broad and featureless subsidiary which has a track running across it. Follow the track past Lochan Meall a’ Phuill to Black Corries Lodge and your outward trail back to Kingshouse. It’s a big day of some 17 miles/28k, but it will make you a Rannoch convert. Can a moor offer the same attributes of spaciousness and isolation as our highest mountains? The Moor of Rannoch can.It was time to move. Descending the hill’s south-east ridge towards what’s left of the old Kingshouse Inn (the old building has been demolished and is being replaced by a new building, much to the dismay of traditionalsists) was like dropping down into a huge void – the openness, spaciousness and flatness of the moor, surrounded by distant walls of mountain, was simply breathtaking.If you try this route up and down Beinn a’ Chrulaiste don’t be tempted into descending directly towards the junction of the Kinghouse road with the West Highland Way. It may be the logical direction but the south slopes of Beinn a’Chrulaiste are extremely steep and more rocky than the map suggests, so make for the Allt a’Bhalaich burn, and follow it down to the road. It’s a long walk back to the starting point but you’ll be walking in the shadow of the Buachaille and by the time you reach Altnafeadh you, like me, might just be convinced that this Great Herdsman of Etive is a mountain without equal, a giant amongst Scotland’s grand hills.This feature first appeared in the Scots Magazine

A Big Thanks to friends and followers.

Rennie McOwan

RENNIE McOwan was one of the foundation blocks of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, the legislation which gave Scotland some of the finest access legislation in the world.Today's generation of hillgoers owe much to the campaigning efforts of Rennie who was advising politicians and landowners forty years ago that the traditional de facto rights we had in Scotland since time immemorial should be codified and legislated for.This didn't always sit well with the land-owning fraternity and in particular the National Trust for Scotland, but such was Rennie's kindly and gentle nature, and such was his perseverance, that eventually the Trust began to listen to him and create policies regarding their mountain owning interests that were in accord with Rennie's recommendations.One particular aspect of this advice was the recognition of the importance of the Unna Rules. Percy Unna was a benefactor who left his Glen Coe properties to the Trust on his death, provided the Trust followed a set of environmental rules.In 2003 I was delighted to hand over the reigns of the Presidency of Ramblers Scotland to Rennie so that he would be President during the year of the Scottish access legislation becoming law. This was in recognition of his huge contribution to access campaigning. In terms of campaigning for a freedom to roam and land reform Rennie McOwan was a giant.On a personal note I have always been indebted to Rennie for so willingly and generously sharing his immense knowledge of Scottish mountaineering, history, folklore and culture.He was a kind and generous man by nature and his regular encouragement and inspiration to me, from my days as a young and wet-behind-the-ears journalist, were a much valued and appreciated contribution to any success I may have enjoyed as an outdoor writer and television presenter.Rennie McOwan will be remembered as an excellent journalist, mountaineer, historian, environmental campaigner and a true son of Scotland.

Climb it again Sam

Another summit bagged (Photo: Richard Else)IT was still dark as we left the car park, head torches shining pools of light onto the frozen ground in front of us. On the previous day the hills had been raked by blizzards and we were hoping for a period of calm in the weather.My companion strode out alongside me, his 6feet 3inch stride making easy work of the snow-covered slopes. I couldn’t help speculating how at ease he was in these conditions, as though his acting alter-ego, Jamie Fraser of the award-winning series Outlander, had taken possession of him, a man completely at home in a wintry, highland setting.Sam Heughan is a hillwalker and climber, a Munro-bagging enthusiast and a proud Scot. I had been surprised some months earlier when my Twitter account told me that Sam was now following me, for the Sam Heughan I was aware of was an international television star, an award-winning actor and, according to the females in my life, one of the sexiest men in the world. Why on earth was such a celebrity following an ageing mountain bum on Twitter?All was revealed when I eventually met Sam and learned something of his hill-walking and mountaineering achievements and aspirations. Some time later he agreed to write the foreword to my autobiograpy, There’s Always the Hills, published last February. In it he suggested I might have been able to offer him some sound advice when he first discovered the hills for himself.Sam’s first Munro was Ben Lomond and although he didn’t actually make it to the summit the experience had a profound effect on him.“In reasonable hiking boots, several base layers and a technical winter jacket, I wasn't feeling cold, although my hands would turn bright red - then white - if I took them out of my gloves for too long.“The closest Munro to Glasgow, Ben Lomond, is a popular climb in summer but can be hazardous in winter. Lost somewhere on the mountain’s Ptarmigan Ridge, its lower peak, I climbed too high before losing my balance and sliding downwards for twenty to thirty metres. Digging my raw and frozen fingers into the snow to break the descent I realised that, displaced only a few metres to the right, I could easily have slipped off the mountain. I had become one of ‘those’ people: foolish, dangerous.“I learned very quickly to respect the mountains and I resolved to always be not only cautious but also prepared. Then I would enjoy their great heights all the more, and adventure even further into their lesser known world.”And so here we were, climbing into that “lesser known world” of the Monadh Liath during the dark month of December, being filmed for a television special for BBC Scotland called Take a Hike. Our plan was to wander up Glen Banchor near Newtonmore in Badenoch, follow the length of Gleann Fionndrigh into a tight cleft in the hills, then climb the north slopes of a lovely wee hill called Creag Liath.Creag Liath is neither a Munro or a Corbett but we were hoping for some good views across to the Cairngorms and west towards Laggan and Ben Nevis and we knew that we’d need to get an early start – December days are notoriously dark for successful filming, especially when days eases into night not long after 4pm.It struck me I was walking was a man with the world at his feet, with a fan base of millions and star of the internationally successful long-running television series Outlander. Why wasn’t he enjoying the winter sun in California or the sunny ski slopes of St Moritz rather than walking out here at the crack of dawn, in sub-freezing temperatures climbing a snow-covered hill?“I just love these places,” he admitted. “There’s a frigid beauty in the shape of these hills, the effect of light on the slopes, the colour and the sheer size of everything. And on hills like these you get a sense of your own insignificance in the greater scheme of things. These rocks have been here for millions of years – compare that with the mere flicker of time that we are on the planet.“And I love the history and the stories related to these wild places. Every place and hill name has it’s own story: Schiehallion - fairy hill of the Caledonians: Castail Abhail - castle of the fork: Beinn Alligin - the jewelled mountain: Càrn Mòr Dearg - the big red cairn. These were the names that conjured up the history, and mythology, that drew me first to their wild peaks, challenging me to be brave enough, daring me to uncover their secrets. Even the rivers, burns, woods, towns and meeting places have a complex history, each hidden meaning bringing new insight to the story and character of the land. The list is endless!”Sam close to the summit of Creag Liath in the Monadh LiathSam is more than familiar with this storied aspect of Scotland’s history. Born and raised in converted stables in the grounds of Castle Kenmure in Dumfries and Galloway he spent his early years enjoying a sense of freedom and exploration that is denied to many youngsters today, and from an early age he had a vivid imagination.“I had a great time, exploring and relishing the freedom of the surrounding countryside pretending I was Robert the Bruce or one of King Arthur’s knights. I just loved running around with a wooden sword imagining I was someone else.”My comment, “Just as you now do for a living?” brought a smile to his face. “I guess I’m very fortunate to live in a pretend world and get paid for it,” he admitted.Like many great achievers such good fortune can only be interlinked with hard graft. In his teenage years Sam’s family moved to Edinburgh where he attended James Gillespie’s High School for a year before moving to the Edinburgh Rudolph Steiner School. There he was introduced to the youth ranks of the Royal Lyceum Theatre where, initially, he worked backstage but it wasn’t long before his acting potential was recognised and he quickly made his mark as a budding actor. After taking some time to work and travel he studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, nowadays known rather grandly as the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.It’s temping to consider Sam as an overnight success, thanks to his role as Jamie Fraser in Sony’s phenomenally successful Outlander series, but his success followed a weighty acting apprenticeship that included roles in Doctors, Midsomer Murders and BBC Scotland’s own River City, where he played the part of Andrew Murray, not the tennis star but a Livingston FC football player. His part in David Greig's Outlying Islands in 2002 saw him nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award as most promising new performer.In 2013 Sam became the first cast member officially announced for a new television series to be produced by Sony Pictures Television. Irish model and actress Catriona Balfe became his co-star, playing Claire Randall, a second world war nurse who stepped through some mysterious standing stones to find herself in the middle of the eighteenth century in the Scottish highlands.The first series of Outlander was broadcast in the US, Canada and Australia in August 2014 and was later acquired by Amazon Prime where it premiered in March 2015. Apparently both BBC and STV were interested in broadcasting the series but an article in The Herald suggested that following a meeting hastily arranged between former PM David Cameron and Sony executives the broadcast delay in the UK may have been due to sensitivity about the September 2014 Scottish independence referendum. It seems the former prime minister feared another ‘Braveheart effect.’The television programmes are an adaptation of a successful series of books called Outlander, written by American Diana Gabaldon. It’s a curious mix of fantasy, sci-fi and Scottish history and is largely set in the period just before and after Culloden. Sam plays the part of a minor highland chief and Jacobite by the name of Jamie Fraser, who marries a woman, a kind of time traveller called Clare Randall.Yes, I know it all sounds pretty weird but it works, as the massive success of the books and the television series testify, but has it worked for Sam Heughan?“Outlander has changed my life, “Sam told me at a recent charity event where we shared a table. “It is hard to get your head around it and I'm just going with the flow. It is a terrific job and I'm very lucky.“One of the best things about it is that I’ve been able to rediscover my own country. It’s so magnificent to watch the sun come up when you’re standing on a moor with hundreds of highlanders dressed for battle. There’s definitely an interest in Scotland and what happened here. I think the rest of the world are fascinated by our history and it’s nice to be able to bring Scotland and our culture and music to the screen.” The series has brought international fame for Sam, and he recently became country-clothing manufacturer Barbour’s first Global Ambassador in a two-year deal, but does such fame and recognition have a downside when he spends time at his home in Glasgow, or when he’s on the hill?"The show has been well received but it is always odd when people recognise you in America or at airports and come up to you. It is very nice but quite strange,” he said."In Scotland we are very different, aren't we?" he says. "We do take it all with a pinch of salt. Glasgow is certainly a place where they will tell you if they don't think you are anything special. I can go to the pub or go out for a meal in Glasgow and most of the time people have no idea who I am, but I have to say so far people have been really delightful when they do recognise me."Sam’s close friend and business partner, German-born and LA-based Alex Norouzi, told me recently that Sam was one of the most down-to-earth people he had ever met. “Fame hasn’t changed him or fazed him at all,” Alex told me. “I’ve worked with all kinds of celebrities over the years but Sam is the most level headed, decent celebrity actor I’ve ever met.”Certainly, Sam appears to be using his celebrity status to good effect. In September of 2016 he took part in the Great North Run to raise funds for Bloodwise, a major blood cancer charity that he has supported since 2011. He has taken part in two marathons for charity and more recently he became president of Bloodwise Scotland. In 2015, Sam founded his own charitable foundation, run by Alex Norouzi in Los Angeles. He calls it My Peak Challenge and to date it has raised more than half a million pounds for Bloodwise and its fight against blood cancer.Adoring fans at the My Peak Challenge Gala Dinner in GlasgowLast September Sam kindly invited me to say a few words at the very first My Peak Challenge Gala Dinner, which was held in the impressive surroundings of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow. Five hundred Outlander fans, predominantly female, travelled from the US for the event to join My Peak Challenge participants, known as Peakers, from all over the UK.The event was quite surreal with all these Outlander fans telling me how wonderful Scotland was, but it was also curiously uplifting with lots of passion, enthusiasm and commitment for the MPC charity, and for Sam of course!MPC is designed to help others achieve personal health and fitness goals and Sam believes it has created a special community which has led to a real sense of camaraderie between people across the globe, supporting one another to achieve their personal goals, all while helping to raise vital funds for charity.“It’s been brilliant to see this campaign evolve and I'm thrilled by the amount of money it's raised for the charity,” he said. “MPC has attracted all kinds of people from around the world, from an Olympic athlete in Australia to recreational runners and hikers in the UK and North America and even folk who have no background at all in active sport.”MPC offers folk a fully integrated training, nutrition and support programme to help members accelerate toward their goals while overcoming any obstacles. Over the course of twelve months, MPC members develop a foundation for creating mind, body and lifestyle improvements, all while participating in a fitness program adaptable to any level of expertise (beginner, intermediate or advanced).MPC is about reaching outside of your comfort zone, finding something that you don’t think you can do, setting a challenge, preparing for it and ultimately achieving it. Sam explained: “Most people interpret that as a physical challenge — walk a 5K, train for a triathlon, go hiking, climb a mountain — but many others set creative challenges: finish writing that book, take up painting again, go vegetarian for a month or more, learn to sew or knit or sing or play a new instrument or speak a new language.”Sam in Glen Banchor near NewtonmoreNo matter what the challenge, Sam and Alex believe that empowerment is born through achieving something you never thought you could.“When you achieve something you previously thought impossible, the world opens up to you,” Sam told me. “Where you go from there is entirely up to you.”So where does Sam Heughan go from here? He’s working on a fourth series of Outlander at the moment and he's already been signed up for Series 5 and 6. That will certainly keep him busy throughout all of this year and into the next.And what’s his next mountain challenge to be? “Probably the one you take me up,” he replied with a grin. That’s a Peak Challenge I’ll happily accept.First published in the Scots Magazine where I write a monthly column, Cameron's Country.

BIDEAN

On the Bidean ridge heading towards Stob Coire SgreamhachAS a youngster I remember spotting a couple of climbers arriving at the roadside in Glen Coe. They were sun-tanned and lean, both wore tartan plaid shirts and breeches and one of them had a rope draped over his shoulder. They had come down from the ‘high tops’, to my young eyes a distant and unattainable region that was suffused with magic and mystery. I remember thinking the two climbers were like Gods come down from Parnassus and as I watched them I had an overwhelming desire to be just like them.Their air of physical prowess, health and vitality was only part of the attraction. I gazed beyond them to a world that was alien to me at the time; a high place where rock and air and water dominated all else, a mysterious world of crag and corrie that formed a distant horizon beyond which lay other worlds. As I contemplated that mystery and romance I experienced the first pull of the hills, a sensation that was to grow in me as I worked my way through teenage years.When I eventually decided that hills and mountains were to be a bedrock of my life I quickly realised the two climbers weren’t gods at all, but the heaven from which they had descended most certainly was a land of magic and mystery, a land to which I returned weekend after weekend, mostly in the company of various members of the Lomond Mountaineering Club. Glen Coe became our playground.Few hillgoers would argue that Glen Coe is a special place. Glistening crags fall down from high corries on one side of the road while the notched, jagged wall of the Aonach Eagach rises sheer on the other and we explored it all. We regularly used a little stone howff, a rock shelter beneath a large overhang, and it was from there I was first introduced to rock-climbing on the easy routes of the East Face of Aonach Dubh.This great cliff had long offered long, if modest climbing routes like Long Crack, Spider and Archer Ridge. Even on bad weather days the combination of Bowstring on the Barn Wall and Quiver Rib, two straightforward routes, offered immensely fulfilling outings. I often wonder if my love of hills and mountains would have been so fulfilling had I learned to climb on an indoor climbing wall? I suspect not.Not very far away from our shelter in Coire nan Lochan lay another howff, built years ago by the lads from the Squirrels, a climbing-club from Edinburgh. A few memorial plaques are still scattered around – one reads: ‘These are my mountains, and I have come home.”How often have I climbed up into the dark recesses of Coire nan Lochan and the Coire Ghabhail? How often have I slithered down muddy paths after a great day on the crags of Aonach Dubh, or from winter routes on Argyll’s highest peak, Bidean nam Bian? And what of all those friends and climbing partners who shared these mountain days, some still here, but many gone? The nostalgia that’s produced by such wonderful memories is a sweet one and it’s warm embrace is never far away when I climb these hills of Glen Coe. And that’s partly why I have never associated this marvellous glen with it’s nickname of the Glen O’ Weeping.I accept that in certain weather conditions the glen can most certainly be a dark place, but I’ve realised that commercial tourism had done a disservice to Glen Coe, bestowing the fanciful title on it in memory of the 1692 massacre when Hanoverian forces murdered their MacDonald hosts. As massacres go it wasn’t the worst in Scottish history, but it was certainly bad enough. Thirty-two men, women and children died at the hands of their guests, government soldiers, who rose quietly and murdered them during the hours of darkness. This ‘murder under trust’ as it became known became indelibly etched in the pages of history as the Massacre of Glen Coe and even today, over 300-years later, there are those who want to preserve the site of the infamy as a memorial to those who perished.Life was comparatively cheap in those days and while we should never forget the ‘murder under trust’ element of that event I’ve always felt it was a little unfortunate that such a deliberately emotion-charged nickname as the Glen o’ Weeping should have been coined. It paints a grim picture of what is one of Scotland’s finest natural landscapes and as I sat close to that old Squirrels’ howff recently, with the memorials to other mountaineers around me, climbers who, like me, loved this place, I couldn’t help think of the generations who have been thrilled and inspired by the mountains of Glen Coe, those who never ever saw it as a ‘dark place’ but as a place of undiminished light.Great views of the other Glen Coe tops from the Bidean ridgeThree great craggy prows dominate the glen– Beinn Fhada, Gear Aonach and Aonach Dubh, collectively known as the Three Sisters of Glen Coe – their cliffs tumbling down into the narrow glen where the river and the road squeeze through the mountains, both heading to the glorious west. And if such a view was not enough to whet a mountain lover’s appetite beyond the Three Sisters, above archtypal mountain corries , you might just catch a tantalising view of the peaks that make up Glen Coe’s most classic round - Stob Coire nan Lochan, Bidean nam Bian and Stob Coire Sgreamhach.Bidean nam Bian, 1150m, the centrepiece of this round of Glen Coe peaks, is not only the highest mountain in the old county of Argyll but it’s the name of an entire massif, and a complex one at that with several pointed tops and deep-cut corries. There are a variety of routes to the 3773ft summit and in winter conditions most of these routes can be considerably challenging. Great rock crags – the Diamond and Church Door Buttresses add drama, and a sense of history, to the scene. The first climbs there were put up by some of the great pioneers of rock-climbing in Scotland – Norman Collie, Harold Raeburn and JH Bell at the end of the nineteenth century.Bidean, the Peak of the Mountains, couldn’t be better named for its summit is the culmination of four great ridges which give way to no less than nine separate summits and cradle three deep and distinctive corries. It even has a secondary Munro - Stob Coire Sgreamhach was promoted to Munro status in the 1997 revisions.A number of alternative routes ascend Bidean nam Bian. The linking of Stob Coire Beith offers a pretty good route from Achnambeithach at the western end of Loch Achtriochtan, and there’s a whole glorious ridge waiting your attentions to the south west, a ridge with wonderful views to the south down the length of Etive to the fabled lands of Deirdre of the Sorrows and the peaks of Cruachan, a ridge which skirts the head of the steep sided Coire Gabhail before climbing the boulders and screes of the newest Glen Coe Munro, Stob Coire Sgreamhach.This is another great spot to sit and while the time away. Gaze across at the twin ridges of the two Buachailles, or pick out the tops of the Blackmount Deer Forest, a wonderfully wild quarter with a clutch of fine Munros culminating in the square topped peak of mighty Ben Starav.From the summit cairn you can descend to the north-east, down the two mile length of Beinn Fhada, but it can be awkward and difficult, especially in snowy conditions. An escape from the Fhada ridge can be made by dropping down steep slopes into Coire Gabhail, but you have to backtrack quite a distance to avoid a deep chasm that lines the upper corrie floor. Better to return down the north west ridge of Stob Coire Sgreamhach towards Bidean and then carefully descend the loose scree filled gully in the steep headwall of Coire Gabhail, then down scree slopes to where the corrie begins to fan out.A footpath then offers easier going down the length of the corrie, over the incredibly flat pastures that may once have fed stolen cattle (an old tale suggests the MacDonalds of Glen Coe once hid cattle up here, hence the tourist nickname of The Lost Valley) and through the great jumble of boulders that fill the woodlands at its mouth. Follow the track to the right and avoid the mass of boulders, cross the stream and follow the footpath down to the footbridge over the River Coe.As you follow the well used track back up towards the roadside car park brace yourself for the sudden madness of the A82. You might hear a piper playing a lament and likely as not the car park will be filled with tour buses, its passengers photographing the peaks and crags of the Glen O’ Weeping. The smile and contentment on your face may well cause them to question that nickname too.The old howff in Stob Coire nan LochanI usually climb Bidean via an ascent of Stob Coire nan Lochan, 1115m, a fine peak in its own right, even if it is only classified as a ‘top’ of Bidean, with a traverse of the high-level interlinking ridge that connects it to the main Bidean ridge. All going well you can then wander along the main ridge to the hill’s other Munro, Stob Coire Sgreamhach, 1072m, finishing off with a descent into the marvellously atmospheric Coire Gabhail.Some years ago I brought my son and daughter-in-law up into Coire an Lochan in what should have been an early summer/late spring day. As we reached the corrie lochans visibility was reduced to about thirty metres and we could just discern the north-east ridge of Stob Coire nan Lochan rising to our left. As we climbed higher the ridge becomes narrower and rockier and soon some mild scrambling made us use our hands as well as our feet. There was much more snow about than I had anticipated too, and since we hadn’t brought any ice axes with us I became pretty convinced the summit of Stob Coire nan Lochan would be as far as we could go.However, the ridge that connects with Bidean was clear of cloud and looked fairly clear of snow as far as we could see so we set off optimistically, enjoying the romp despite the damp conditions. There were a number of patches of wet slushy snow around but as we climbed the steep ridge onto Bidean the snow cover increased dramatically. It was decision time. The ridge was steep and narrow and a simple slip, without an ice axe to arrest the fall, would have meant a long slide into the blackness of the corrie depths where vertiginous crags lurked. The summit of Bidean nam Bian would still be there for another day, so we backtracked to Stob Coire nan Lochan and followed the hill’s north ridge round to Aonach Dubh before sliding down wet snow patches back into Coire nan Lochan.By this time we were pretty wet through but despite the dampness the drifting mists on the black crags and the raging waterfalls held our attention and made it a pleasant descent. We stopped for a final brew in the old Lomond MC howff and I suspect I bored Sarah and Gregor with my reminiscences.Even after forty-odd years the floor was still hard-packed and firm below its rock-overhang roof. Across the corrie, beyond the roar of the burn, the East Face of Aonach Dubh rears up steeply, vertically, a crag I once knew as intimately as any portion of stone in this rocky land. As ever, it felt good to be back.First published in the Scots Magazine where I write a monthly column called Cameron's Country

Editing TGO Magazine - in the beginning

I was the editor of The Great Outdoors Magazine, or TGO as it was known for most of my time, between 1990 and 2010.On this, the 40th birthday year of the title, I thought I'd look back at the circumstances that brought my long-running editorship into being.In this extract from my book, There's Always the Hills, my move to the TGO editor's desk came about as a result of a job swap.On one glorious autumn afternoon in 1989 I was rock-climbing with Peter Evans on the Etive Slabs, on the eastern slopes of Beinn Trilleachean above Loch Etive. When seen head-on from Ben Starav across the waters of the sea loch, these boiler-plate slabs hang from the mountain like a grey curtain, and they contain some of the most surreal rock climbs in the country. Etive slab climbing is friction climbing, tiptoeing upwards through a steep ocean of granite, relying on the sandpaper roughness of the rock. It’s not climbing for the faint-hearted.Peter and I climbed a lot together and that afternoon tackled two of the Etive Slabs classics, Hammer (HVS) and Spartan Slab (VS). The climbing was magnificent: the warm sun had dried the crag of early morning drizzle and we delighted in the rough nature of the rock, tiptoeing up ridiculously steep granite relying virtually solely on the friction of our boots. It’s fair to say that Peter was a better rock climber than I was and on that particular day he ably demonstrated his prowess. As we romped down the hill after our second ascent, which Peter had led, I congratulated him on his performance. In what was to become a somewhat prophetic utterance, he joked that perhaps he was in the wrong job. Maybe he should be editor of Climber and I should be editor of the Great Outdoors?Walking back to the car along the lochside I mulled this over. While I loved editing Climber magazine, there were several issues evolving in the climbing world at that time that I didn’t go along with, issues that made me uncomfortable. Indoor climbing was one of them. Climbing walls were being built all over the country and many climbers were treating them like gymnasia. Others had virtually given up climbing outside and, along with this explosion of climbing walls, inevitably came competition climbing. I had already attended a major competition in Leeds and it had bored me rigid. It was like watching paint dry. I knew the British Mountaineering Council was very keen to embrace this new activity and was pushing for climbing to be recognised as a future Olympic sport, which it now is, but I argued against the idea whenever I could. The only real ally I had on the Public Relations Committee of the BMC was the late Ken Wilson, the book publisher who was generally regarded as the conscience of British climbing.Ken and I fought vociferously against climbing competitions, arguing that climbing was an outdoor activity. Hearing the birds sing, dealing with the weather, feeling natural rock against your fingertips were all vital attributes of the sport. The only person you should compete against was yourself, but our arguments were to no avail. The BMC could obviously see government aid and subsidy coming their way if the Olympic Games embraced climbing.I was convinced that Olympic approval would mean professionalism and had seen what happened when track and field athletics went down that route. I certainly wasn’t keen on having to report on indoor climbing competitions in what I had always considered to be an outdoors magazine. Perhaps Peter’s throwaway comment about swapping jobs would be worth considering.As we drove south I mentioned the subject again and, while admitting he had merely been joking, Peter did say he’d have a think about it. A few days later he told me he’d be up for it. We went to see Mike Ure our publisher who gave the idea his blessing and so I became editor of the Great Outdoors. I had the most curious feeling that I had come home.Peter and I swapped jobs in 1990. The Great Outdoors magazine had been losing circulation, thanks to a glut of copycat titles that had been unashamedly published by bigger and wealthier publishers. In an attempt to stem the flow, I introduced some new writers and columnists, bringing in my old pal Chris Townsend as gear editor and another dear friend, Jim Perrin, as a regular essayist.It’s exciting to take over a new title but it also takes a little time for readers to catch on to what you are doing. Although the Great Outdoors was ostensibly a magazine that catered for walkers from Cornwall to Cape Wrath, I wanted it to be a hillwalking and backpacking title, a return to my own outdoor loves. With the exception of the Lake District and North Wales there are few mountains and hills to speak of other than in Scotland, so that’s where I wanted the emphasis of the magazine to be.Let’s face it, you couldn’t find an editor with a more Scottish name then me, the magazine was published in Scotland and Scotland was where the real hills, mountains and wild land are to be found. To emphasise my point, there were now other magazines available that would cover walks in the Cotswolds, the South Downs and other areas of the south. My editorial emphasis would be towards Scotland, the Lake District and North Wales. An extract from There's Always the Hills, published by Sandstone Press, £19.99

Accidents - an extract from There's Always the Hills

A wintry Loch Avon in the CairngormsDURING the winter of 1979/80 I was avalanched in Coire Laogh Mor in the Cairngorms. I came down several hundred feet and thought I was drowning in the snow. The impact of the avalanche was so powerful that my hat, gloves, rucksack and even my wristwatch were all ripped from me.When the snow stopped moving I was buried up to my chest but fortunately my head and arms were free. I managed to extricate myself and other than a few bruises and a badly damaged ego I was fine. However, it was a long time before I could cross a snow slope again without fear. I read everything I could about avalanches, soaked up every bit of information because I never wanted to experience such a thing again.Did I think of giving up the hills? Of course not. The incident made me want to know the hills better, to understand them better, to treat them with more informed respect, just as you would with any lover you’ve had a tiff with.The closest I’ve come to losing my life was an accident while hill-running (of all things). I’d decided to have an afternoon run to the summit of Creag Dhubh, a lovely 756m high hill that overlooks the village.As I approached the summit on a fine and clear late September afternoon I remembered that I had to collect Gregor from rugby practice at 5.30. I checked my watch and saw it was only 4.30. I had an hour to jog down the hill and drive back to the house before meeting him, but something happened and to this day I have no idea what it was.I may have tripped, I just can’t remember, but the next thing I recall is trying to climb over a wall at the foot of the hill and onto the Newtonmore to Laggan road. I tried to jog along the road thinking to myself that this run seemed a lot tougher than usual. Fortunately I was spotted.One of my elderly neighbours was in her car when she saw me limping along . She stopped but (she later told me), was reluctant to give me a lift in her brand new car because of all the blood that was dripping off me. Fortunately, another neighbour, Dave Fallows, also stopped and had no hesitation in pushing me into his car and phoning for an ambulance in what was, for the time, a new-fangled mobile phone.We got back to Cherry Glen, my house, just before the ambulance arrived and I was whipped off to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness. Gina, who had been visiting relatives in Stirling, turned onto our road as the ambulance left, complete with flashing blue light. She had no idea I was inside.Whatever happened obviously involved a long fall down steep ground. I was covered in cuts and bruises, required 40 stitches in my head, had broken my left ankle and snapped the end of the radius bone in the arm, just above my wrist. And I couldn’t recall a thing.The consultant who operated on me told me this lapse of memory wasn’t unusual, it was the mind’s way of protecting me and to this day I’m not sure what happened. I’ve gone back to the area and looked around and can only think that perhaps I slipped while crossing a stream, before sliding down a series of short crags.Dave Fallows picked me up at 7pm so I reckon I must have lain unconscious for an hour or perhaps 90 minutes before stumbling down the hillside to the road. I rather like the notion that a couple of angels picked me up, carried me down to the roadside and left me for my neighbours to find.I guess I was lucky, and my consultant told me at one point that ten years earlier he wouldn’t have had the technology to save my wrist. A decade earlier my right hand would have been amputated.Not everyone is as lucky. It’s always cruel when we hear of people dying in the mountains but while every single death is a tragedy for families and loved ones, the hysterical ranting from some sections of the media is neither helpful nor welcome.The barrage of ill-informed comment from certain journalists who know next to nothing about our love of mountains, about mountain safety or mountain rescue, has incensed outdoor folk for years.One journalist in particular made so many factual errors on a radio phone-in that the accident statistician from the Mountain Rescue Committee of Scotland phoned in to correct her. Despite that, the same journalist later went on to an evening television programme and spouted the same misinformation.An extract from There's Always the Hills, published by Sandstone Press

Learning About Risk - and how to manage it.

THE River White Cart flowed through the city from its source high in the Lanarkshire hills. By the time it reached Cardonald it was fairly mature and slow moving and absolutely ideal for rafting. My pals and I spent hours building rafts, largely inspired by two great boyhood novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. It took a lot of imagination to compare the White Cart with the great Mississippi but imagination was something we had in abundance.Those early years also developed a skill that was to hold me in good stead for the rest of my life. Risk-taking is something that many youngsters are unfamiliar with these days and that, I believe, will have serious implications in generations to come. We knew that building a raft from oil cans and planks of wood and trying to float down the River White Cart was risky but wasn’t life about adventure and fun? Wasn’t risk-taking worthwhile?Occasionally we fell in the water and got wet but we soon learned how to swim; now and then someone would fall out of a tree and hurt themselves; it wasn’t uncommon to tear our clothing because of the old nails that were still imbedded in the planks of wood, but we never looked for someone to blame. We knew accidents happened, and most of the time we expected accidents to happen. The idea was to manage the risk in such a way that the expected accident could be avoided. Frequently we would argue and fall out and it would end in fisticuffs but more often than not we were pals again next day. We all wanted to play football in the school team but rarely felt inferior because we weren’t good enough. We simply learned how to deal with failure and disappointment. We drank from streams and pools of water and public fountains, ate blackberries from the bushes, stole rhubarb and crab apples from folk’s gardens and survived. Indeed, we survived with aplomb.Our biggest fear was not being allowed out to play. This was the ultimate sanction for bad behavior. Generally speaking, during holidays and at weekends I left the house after a breakfast of tea and toast and turned up for a bite of lunch, usually a bowl of soup, before disappearing again until tea-time. During the summer months I would be outside again until bed-time. What did we do all the time? We had adventures, we explored, we spent very dirty hours playing in the old steam train engines at Corkerhill Junction and at one point built a den in one of the old passenger carriages, a den that was ours for the entire summer holidays. Part of the fun was evading the old watchman. We played in and on the river, cycling once we were old enough to get a bike (but never owned a helmet). We played football and roamed freely and, curiously enough, I only remember one incident that involved the police. I don’t recall what it was about but I do remember getting a clip round the ear from this big highland polisman. Once was enough…Young, well-groomed American men would often approach us and offer to teach us baseball. They were evangelical Mormons and, while we loved to play this curious American version of rounders, I don’t recall any of us attending any of the religious classes. We had become street-wise and I suspect that the streets of Cardonald were not a particularly fertile grooming ground for the Mormon faith.We would build carts called bogies out of scraps, and ride them down the hill only to discover that we had forgotten to fit any brakes. We soon learned how to stop without brakes. We ate all kinds of rubbish: crisps, chocolate and sticky sweeties and we drank fizzy, sugar-laden drinks like Tizer and Irn Bru and Dandelion and Burdock but we never got fat, we were always too busy running around. If I wasn’t riding around on my bike I was just running, pretending I was Roger Bannister, or Emil Zatopek, or the great Herb Elliot. We didn’t walk anywhere.THE Fifties and early Sixties were memorable years. The austerity of the immediate post-war years was over and with it came the end of rationing. The Cold War cast a long shadow over the world but, despite that, remarkable things were happening. Ed Hillary and Tensing Norgay climbed Everest, the highest mountain in the world and the following year Roger Bannister became the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. An American actress called Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco and became a Princess. The Soviet satellite Sputnik launched the Space Age and a few years later the Soviets launched the first man into space in the shape of Yuri Gagarin and of course the Beatles produced their first of many hit singles, ‘Love Me Do’ and in so doing changed the whole nature of popular music. In 1954 IBM announced the development of a model ‘electronic brain’ – it was the dawn of the computer age, and a biologist by the name of Gregory Incus led a team of scientists who invented the Pill, the symbol of the UK’s most defining decade, the Swinging Sixties.Maybe it’s not surprising that this particular generation has produced some of the finest risk-takers ever. Look at the legacy of innovation the past 50-70 years has produced. Freedom went hand in hand with occasional failure, as did success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it. Our youngsters of today are like a protected species and I often ache at the thought of their lack of freedom. I’ve no doubt it will have repercussions for society in the future.The above is an Extract from There's Always the Hills, published by Sandstone Press