Duinish Mean Time – edited 20 Jan 2016.
The weather was fine and spirits high as we drove towards Dalwhinnie. I was heading for a weekend hillwalking and wild camping with Morag and I expected to bag a couple of my remaining Corbetts. I did not expect a broken tooth.
We parked at Dalnaspidal Lodge and walked south towards Loch Garry, crossing the unbridged Perth to Inverness railway line by the Lodge’s private crossing. The curvature of the track made the viewing distance uncomfortably short; my ears provided reassurance that no train was coming. I walked across with eyes glued to the ground to avoid the gaps by the rails; I didn’t want a stuck foot.
As the loch came into view, the wide rocky shoreline contrasted starkly with the green hillside. The loch was almost empty and at the valve tower, about half way along, the water was low enough to see the ‘plughole’, the entrance to the five-mile tunnel to Loch Ericht. The
1930s tunnelling project, part of the Tummel Valley hydroelectric scheme, is commemorated by an inscription on the adjacent valve house.
We discussed our plans as the south end of the loch approached. Morag had told me there was an estate bothy, but we intended to camp, She had identified a grassy lochside meadow on a previous trip, but this had been stranded far from water. We looked for another pitch as we walked, but nothing flat, rock free and dry presented itself. The track rounded a hillock and a ruined gable end came into view. ‘Is that the bothy?’ I asked.
‘It can’t be,’ said Morag. A few steps further on a slate roofed cottage appeared, complete with “reeking lum”.
‘That’s the bothy then,’ I said. ‘It looks like we have company.’ Approaching the unlatched front door, I was interested, but apprehensive, as to what we might find.
Once inside I approached the inner door, passing a mountain bike in the entry passage.
‘Hello,’ I called. No answer. Slightly unnerved I called again, louder; still no answer. I opened the door to see, in front of the fire, the back of a man about my own age, who gave a start and turned. ‘Hi, nice fire you have there,’ I said. ‘I’m John.’
‘And I’m Alec,’ he said as we shook hands. Morag joined us and soon we had exchanged potted life histories. ‘I cycled in down Loch Garry. I’ve got two replacement knees and my walking’s not what it was,’ he explained. Alec was ex Special Forces, a climber and a skier. I have heard tall stories in bothies in the past, but concluded Alec rang true. He was leaving shortly so, to my regret, would not be joining us for a convivial evening in front of the fire.
Alec had chopped a pile of wood with the long handled bothy axe and heaped the results by the hearth. He had used roof timbers from the ruined part of the long building of which the bothy was part. More timbers were stacked inside the ruin; the slates were stacked neatly in front of the bothy. An entry in the bothy book, dated October 2013, described how
Craiganour estate and Kinloch Rannoch builders had dismantled the dilapidated roof and repaired the gable end supporting the bothy. “Help yourself to the wood!” it concluded.
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It was nice chatting to Alan, but Morag and I had a mission before dark, which was to bag the
Graham Creag a’ Mhadaidh. We needed to pitch our tents first. The flat, close-cropped, grass at the front of the bothy was tempting but, having in mind the dubious toilet habits of some users, we chose a grassy mound of glacial moraine further away. We said goodbye to Alec, and set off.
Our tents in front of Duinish bothy, with Beinn Mholach in the distance.
Creag a’ Mhadaidh is a short excursion from the bothy and, as Duinish sits at an elevation of
430 m, there is only 150 m of ascent, albeit across rough, trackless hillside. The summit gave us a good view of tomorrow’s first objective, Beinn Mholach, bathed in a reddish hue as the sun set.
We returned to the bothy and rejuvenated the fire. It was late and unlikely anyone would join us. Water was a priority and I set off with our bottles. Close by is a tiny burn, flowing under a bridge on the path to the hill track. It was impossible to fill the bottles without including bits of vegetation and I held my bottle up to the fading light as these settled. None was wriggling, and I was going to boil the water anyway.
The bothy qualifies as five stars by virtue of two brown armchairs, and we settled down for a drink before dinner. The ‘Duinish Meantime’ speaking clock adorns the grimy, graffiti covered wall above the mantelpiece. Its face, inscribed in pencil and stuck at ten to eight, is a paper plate with a tea strainer and spoon for hands. A blue tube connects to the mouthpiece,
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which is mounted on a candlestick on the mantelpiece.
The ‘Duinish Meantime’ speaking clock.
Dinner over, it was time for bed and we left the embers of the fire with reluctance. Stags were roaring in the distance as I settled down in my tent, which in cold weather is warmer overnight than a bothy.
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Next morning the whirring and clucking of grouse woke me, followed by a cacophony of cackling. Peering through the tent flap, I saw two males squaring up to each other. Why? The mating season was long gone, perhaps a row about territory? I dressed as my stove boiled and heaved myself out of the tent with Morag’s hot water. ‘Good morning Morag. Are you ready for your water?’
‘Good morning John,’ was followed by a hand appearing from beneath the flysheet. A cup of coffee is essential to get Morag going in the morning.
We set off early for a big day climbing two Corbetts, normally, and more sensibly, done as separate outings. The weather was perfect: cool, dry and calm, with high cloud. As we climbed Beinn Mholach, my first objective, grouse burst from the heather, calling in alarm.
We saw white tipped wooden posts marking hand sized piles of grouse grit , placed by the estate on divots of upturned turf. This grit is fine quartz gravel, sometimes medicated to kill internal parasites, which the birds eat to aid digestion of heather shoots.
It was the deer-stalking season so I had checked the “Heading for the Scottish Hills” website, hoping to find information on when and where stalking would be taking place so that we
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could avoid it. There was little information for the hills we planned to climb. It was a
Saturday, so hopefully stalking parties were less likely than on a weekday. I was wrong, as became evident on leaving the summit of Beinn Mholach. A six wheeled off road buggy sat on the hill, with a figure not far away. I approached apprehensively and was relieved to receive an amicable greeting. I showed the ghillie my map. ‘We’re heading for Stob an
Aonaich Mhoir,’ I explained, and traced our route with my finger. ‘Is that an issue?’
‘It would help if you could keep off Glas Mheall Mor; we’re stalking on the northern slopes.’
‘No problems,’ I said, ‘The last thing we want to do is interfere with your day.’ The hill had been on our route and was a Corbett Top, desirable but not essential. ‘How about when we return?’
‘If you keep close to this burn it won’t be a problem,’ he said, pointing to the Allt
Feith Gharuiareagan north of Glas Mheall Mor.
‘OK, we won’t be there until late afternoon anyway.’ I said. The ghillie called his fellow estate workers on a walkie-talkie and reported on our plans.
‘By the way, we’ve seen a lot of grouse.’ I said. birds.’
‘Have you really? The estate cancelled the shooting earlier in the year for lack of
I was relieved at the outcome of this encounter and we set off westwards towards the metalled estate road running north in the direction of the Corbett Stob an Aonaich Mhoir. To my dismay, another party of four, evidently on a different estate, appeared in the distance.
We stopped and waited, but they did not move, or appear to have noticed us. After a few minutes, we decided to approach them. Tweed clad for the hill, they were accompanied by a black labrador; one man had a rifle in a canvas case. Estate workers, not clients, I hoped.
‘Are you lost?’ the man with the gun asked. This was understandable as we were on a pathless hillside, nowhere near normal hill walker’s routes.
‘No. I thought it was a good idea to ask our best route from here to keep out of your way.’ We looked at my map and I explained our intentions.
‘Please keep to the North West from here and it won’t bother us.’
‘Fine, we’ll do that. Is there any stalking on Stob an Aonaich Mhoir?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know what he has planned,’ the ghillie said, ‘but the hill’s climbed a lot, so it’s unlikely to be a problem. By the way, where have you come from?’
‘We’re staying at Duinish bothy.’
‘That’s a long walk.’
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‘We’re big walkers.’ I said.
The road was hard under our boots after the forgiving hillside. On the way north a buggy with the black labrador perched on the back chugged past, driven by the man with the rifle; he gave us a wave. Three quarters of an hour saw us at the base of Stob an Aonaich Mhoir and another half hour on the summit, where steep cliffs dropped away to the west. The view was stupendous, along the deep glacial trough containing Loch Ericht. We sat by the cairn for a drink prior to the ten pathless kilometres back to the bothy.
The glen of the Allt Feith Gharuiareagan offered no easy options, even alongside the burn where the ground is often better. The hillside was a mixture of grassy tussocks, puddles, bare peat, heather and boggy sphagnum moss. Mercifully, there were no peat hags. In places we could walk on the gravel shore of the burn, but at every bend these gravels moved to the opposite side, giving us the choice of crossing the burn to the inside of the bend or walking on the steep, crumbly, rugged outside bank. We followed the burn, taking it in turns to lead the way and thus relieve the other of the mental strain of selecting the least bad route. I had had enough when we finally reached the bothy at about 6.30 pm, after a ten-hour hill day.
However, both Corbett ‘ticks’ had been achieved.
It’s a pity our friend Alan couldn’t make this trip, I thought, as he would have tidied up the bothy, pottered around, chopped wood, lit the fire ready for our return and had cans of gin and tonic chilling in the burn. However, a bothy evening after a long hill day is always enjoyable and I had my fellow adventurer Morag for company. Before relaxing, I prepared my tent for the night, sorting out kit to stay in my rucksack, go in the tent, or go to the bothy.
I put my rucksack in a black bin liner with a drawstring top, ready to spend the night outside: a tent space saving trick I learnt on a course at Glenmore Lodge.
Tent readied, I lit the bothy fire and poured my first dram, always the best of the day. Bell’s was my choice; I reserve single malts for bothy birthdays and similar celebrations. My dinner was freeze-dried chilli con carne, cheese, oatcakes and chocolate, after which I relaxed with another dram in front of the fire; Morag sipped a carton of rose wine. We celebrated the day’s achievements, reminisced about past adventures and discussed those to come. By 9 o’clock, we were ready for bed and retired to the tents, again to the accompaniment of stags roaring in the distance.
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The grouse woke me in morning. There was no rush and I relaxed inside the tent with a mug of tea, cosy in my down bag. Once refreshed, I got up, passed Morag her water and then went into the bothy. The permanent inhabitants had left droppings, like black rice grains, around an empty crisp packet on the table. Our food bags, suspended from the ceiling overnight, were untouched. I recalled past encounters. In Allt Scheicheachan, a Cairngorm bothy, a mouse gnawed through my sister Anne’s thick canvas rucksack to reach a KitKat. At A Chuil in
Glen Dessary, pitter-pattering in the middle of the night led us to jump out of our warm bags and embark on a fruitless hunt. Jim found the mouse the next morning, inside his bag of food.
An apple was the only casualty and we let the culprit off unscathed.
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We had burnt nearly all the chopped wood and needed to leave some for the next visitors. I contemplated the large axe and what could go wrong; it was essential to avoid injury as I had a wilderness canoe trip in Minnesota coming up. However, the lure of having fun with the axe was strong and I set about the roof timbers, chopping a pile of wood before breakfast. I escaped unscathed.
Morag by the pile of wood I chopped
After breakfast, we tidied up and swept the floor, leaving it as clean as when we arrived. We were grateful to the Estate for providing an open bothy in such good condition.
I reflected on another great bothy weekend as we walked back to the car along Loch Garry,
Corbett and Graham objectives achieved. There were small stands of native trees at intervals, mostly pine, rowan and birch. I was depressed to see disease in the young Scots pines, with needles at the tips of the branches brown and lifeless.
We had lunch at the House of Bruar just down the A9; the crowd was a shock after the solitude and quiet of the hills. The fruit stall outside the restaurant had fresh damsons and I decided to phone my wife Patricia. ‘Do you fancy some damsons? Its not often you see them for sale.’
‘Not really. What will we do with them?’
‘I don’t know, but there must be damson recipes. Crumble anyway, if nothing else.’
‘It’s up to you, as long as you deal with them.’
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Back at home, I consulted Google and decided to make a fruit cobbler, a type of pie with a sponge crust. Damsons are mostly stone I discovered, as I removed these from the stewed fruit. The one I missed broke a wisdom tooth as I ate my pudding later that evening.
(2479 words)
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