This year’s was possibly the best yet, a six-man trip to Azerbaijan to climb the county’s highest mountain, Mt Bazarduzu (4466 m).

Until recently the Caucasus were largely unknown to most British people, but they have been featured in a number of television programmes, most recently Joanna Lumley’s series about the Silk Road, and this additional exposure is likely to make them increasingly popular. My own relationship with this magical mountain region got a head start thanks to an incredibly drunk Polish man I met on a flight to Kazakhstan in 2016. He showed us photos of his holiday in Georgia and Azerbaijan, then started a fight with a Kazakh  man  in the row in front. The die was cast. We visited Georgia last year and this year it was time to visit the neighbouring country of Azerbaian.

The two countries are rather different from one another. While Georgia looks west to the EU and one can simply rock up and climb its mountains, Azerbaijan seems more content to remain among the other former Soviet republics. The state maintains an iron grip on the high mountains, making them extremely difficult to access. This is in large part due to their proximity to the notoriously lawless Russian Republic of Dagestan. Indeed, according to the Lonely Planet guide, as recently as 2015 it was all but impossible to enter the Shahdag National Park. Nowadays access can be granted, provided a maze of red tape is negotiated first.

Normally we travel completely independently, but for this trip we are grateful to the local mountaineer and mountaineering advocate Telman Hajibutayev of mountaineering.az. Telman project-managed the expedition and accompanied us to the summit. He arranged permits from the Azerbaijani military, the Ministry of Ecology, the Ministry of Emergency and the Shahdag National Park authorities. He also arranged a qualified local mountain guide, without which permission cannot be granted. We were guided by Morsal Gasimov, owner of Mountainhost.az. He chose a different route from that shown on the old Soviet maps, though we camped close to the spots indicated on it.

We started our ascent from the mountain village of Xinaliq, which at around 2200 m is the highest and most remote in Azerbaijan. The village was featured in Levison Wood’s Channel 4 series ‘From Russia to Iran: Crossing Wild Frontiers’ (towards the end of Episode 2), and already felt like a world and time apart. Horsemen and their fearsome Caucasian Sheepdogs drove great herds of sheep were across the grassy hillsides above, while in the village geese, turkeys and chicken scratched in the unpaved streets. The streets were lined with blocks of dried dung, used by the locals as winter fuel, helping them to survive -20 C winters in this treeless landscape.

From Xinaliq we took a bumpy 3 hour / 24 km ride in the back of an unsprung ex-Soviet all-terrain truck to Camp 1 at 2800 m.  The journey took us over a high pass of around 2850 m into an even higher, even more remote region, where herders spend the summer months in blue tarpaulin yurts. The only permanent settlements are a small army outpost, a weather station and a pair of large houses that the wealthier and more powerful herders have somehow managed to construct in the heart of the national park. Below the crumbling ramparts of Mt Shahdag we passed the scattered stones of a lonely Mongol graveyard dating from the 12th or 13th century. It felt serious to be travelling though a land that had proved itself harder than the Mongol Hordes.

We spent a night at  Camp 1 to aid acclimatisation to altitude, then next morning we ascended a steep-sided and serious gorge, in which careful route-finding was necessary to avoid regular rockfall, to reach Camp 2 at 3300 m. On a previous trip Telman had had a tent blown from Camp 2 into the river below, so he cautioned us to make a thorough job of pitching up. After lunch we took a short acclimatization hike to a ridge at around 3500 m, from which we could see the blue waters of the Caspian Sea, over a hundred kilometres to the east. To the west a sea of cloud obscured the low plains of eastern Azerbaijan. But mostly the view was dominated by the great scree-covered bulk of Bazarduzu.

On the descent we paused at a small, part-dried lake, a watering hole for goats and wolves, whose footprints dotted its muddy shoreline. Back at camp we ate dinner and hydrated ourselves with copious mugs of tea, ready for an early night beneath the sparkling, moonless, high altitude night sky.

We were up early and left Camp 2 at 0500 hrs to reach the summit via the south-east ridge at 0900 hrs. The weather was clear and the views superlative, to the other high peaks of Azerbaijan and out into Dagestan. Were those high villages below us warlord’s lairs? Jihadi training compounds? Anything seemed possible in the Land of Mountains. One thing was for sure, there was not a pub within eyeshot! The weather was pleasant and our Azerbaijani friends had brought a series of flags that they wanted to photograph on the summit so we lingered for a long time before reluctantly beginning our descent.

The scree on Bazarduzu was of shattered, sandy, mudstone, providing a nice surface for ascent and a joyful scree run for much of the descent. We arrived back in Camp 2 with time for a doze in the sun before the walk back to Camp 1 and the truck ride back to Xinaliq for a well-earned meal of lamb stew.

We still had a few days left in Azerbaijan, so be sure to check back for another instalment of Caucasian fun!

I have been working on an ebook based around this trip which I plan to self-publish before the end of 2018. Get in touch if you’d like to be a beta-reader!

I have however been a bit sloppy in documenting my outdoor sleeping adventures of late. Here’s a quick run through the highlights of my last eight months:

April: Loch Awe

April was a big month, leaving corporate employment after 12 years with the same company. I marked the occasion by cycling around 200 miles from Knapdale to Inverness, bagging my outdoor sleeps as I went. My favourite was camp spot was definitely Kames Bay on the shores of Loch Awe.

May: Ardverikie Family Camp

Years ago (perhaps 8 or 10?) I passed by the west end of Lochan na Hearba on a mountain bike trip with my friend Pete. We vowed to return for two reasons, to climb Ardverikie Wall, the classic Hard Severe on Binean Shaus, and to camp on the beautiful sandy beach at the head of the loch. Our kids are now capable of walking in to wild camping spots, so we returned with our tents at the start of May. We renewed our vow to climb Ardverikie wall, but the summer somehow  slipped past without this promise being fulfilled.

June: Family Beach Camp

Another one I’ve wanted to do for a while, a camp on the sands near Culbin Forest. It’s a long walk through the forest to reach the beach, so I used a bicycle luggage trailer  to transport our gear to the edge of the forest, bringing our camping spot within easy reach of tiny legs.

July: Summit camp on Ben Hope

Camping on a mountaintop in midsummer is one of the great joys of life. I headed north, planning to bag the two northerly Munros, Ben Hope and Ben Klibreck.  It was midweek and the hills were quiet, so I was surprised to meet a fellow electrochemist on the summit of Ben Klibreck. He was from the generation before me and had learned his craft from the same master as my own PhD supervisor.

Throughout the descent I kept one eye on Ben Hope, which remained swaddled in cloud. I ate a dinner of dehydrated spag bol by a small loch, thinking of how I had come down in the world from my campervan-owning days, now I’m reduced to travelling in a tiny car, taking my chances with rain and midge at mealtimes.

As I drove down the glen to Ben Hope the showers cleared, and a sunny evening developed. I left the midgey glen and climbed steadily to one of the finest summits in the country, where I was rewarded with a flat mossy pitch and a beautiful sunset.

August: Truso Valley, Georgia

The best aspect of having escaped contractual obligations is the ability to go on holiday for as long as you please. Towards the end of July we went on a family road trip, by ferry to Holland, then through Luxembourg to France, where we went as far south as the Jura before cutting west to the Massif Central, then north again, stopping in the Loire and Normandy before crossing the channel. Overall we notched up 21 nights under canvas, but the highlight came later in the month, on my mountaineering trip to Ge0rgia.

Most of the trip was spent making an attempt on a 5,000 m peak,  Mt Kazbek. Our last two days were spent exploring the lower ranges, where 3,000 – 4,000 m peaks rise from valleys at around 2000 m. The scenery is as good as Scotland, the weather and insect situation much better. The ski touring must be amazing in winter.

The Truso Valley extends west from the Georgian Military Highway, and is famous for its geothermal features, geysers, soda lakes and expanses of flowstone. The area has suffered in the conflicts between Georgia and Russia, and is mostly abandoned apart from the camps of herders and the border police, who ensure that visitors don’t get close to the border with Russian-occuppied South Ossetia.

We drove up to find an nice camping spot, had a fire and drank beers and sweet Georgian wine.

September: West Coast Multi-Family Camp

A multi-family camp at a secret west coast location. Actually it’s not secret, in fact it’s part of a campsite, but after discovering it last year it has become my favourite. If I disclose the location there’s a chance that you might be occupying it next time I want to go myself!

With six families and a child count into double figures it was a great weekend, one that justified cracking into a Scandinavian Candle that I’d been saving for a special occassion.

October: Last Minute Doss in the Local Woods

October almost slipped past without an outdoor sleep, but when my plans for a night out on the last saturday of the month fell apart, I grabbed the opportunity and enlisted my daughter for a bivvy in the local woods. It was drizzly at first, and we almost abandoned. I was glad we persisted  because the skies cleared, and after the moon set the night sky was spectacular, with several huge shooting stars. It was also very interesting to sleep out so near to my house, hearing all the night noises that are normally blocked by my roof and walls, such as circling geese, honking in the dark. I forgot to take a camera with me so there is no evidence, though I do have a witness.

November: Ruantallain Bothy, Jura

Ruantallain first came to my attention back in 2011, when I camped on the other side of Loch Tarbert at Glenbatrick. It has become my new favourite bothy. Its situation on the inaccessible west coast of Jura is impeccable, with views south to the Paps of Jura and west to Colonsay. It is surrounded by amazing scenery, with caves, arches and the vast raised beaches for which the coast is famous. There is also such a tremendous quantity of game – feisty furry seal pups, shaggy goats butting heads, and the red deer for which the island is most famous – that it was all but impossible to avoid fantasising about living off the land.

I usually operate a policy of not mentioning non-MBA bothies on the internet, lest they become inundated. However, Runatallain features in one of those despicable bothy guidebooks, so the horse has well and truly bolted in this case. With only one small room open to the public it wouldn’t take much for this gem to be over-run, but thanks to its location there is little chance of this happening in practise.

 One more thing before you go…..

If you’ve made it this far please sign up for my newsletter to make sure you never miss an update, I’ve installed a handy form below, just enter your email and away you go!

The Caucasus have rarely been more prominent in the British consciousness. Two recent TV series have featured the region, Levison Wood’s “From Russia to Iran: Crossing the Wild Frontier” and “Russia with Simon Reeve”.  I watched Levison’s first episode with delight, for I knew that by the time the second episode aired a week later I would be in the Caucasus myself.

We’d booked flights to Tbilisi in Georgia, via Amsterdam. The plan was to cross the border into Armenia and climb Mt Aragats, a 4000 m volcano (not be be confused with Turkey’s Mt Ararat, famous among nonsense pedlars as the crash site of Noah’s Ark).

Things started to go wrong right from the start. Our party of four was almost reduced to just Dan and myself. Mike slept in and missed his flight. Colin, who was meant to share a taxi to the airport with him, only made the flight by the skin of his teeth.  In addition to depriving us of his sparkling company, Mike’s absence left us without a climbing rope, and with the administrative headache of changing the car paperwork, which was all in his name.

After a jolly night of beers, kebabs and hookah pipes in Tbilisi, we spent a slightly jaded morning rectifying these difficulties, then hit the road south to the Armenian border. The drive was dusty and depressing, the roadside settlements notable only for their stalls selling laundry washing products. Even the smallest village had eight stalls trading exclusively in powder and liquid.  Perhaps detergents are extremely expensive in Armenia, making it worthwhile to cross into Georgia to stock up.

I’ve crossed land borders plenty times before, but there was something slightly foreboding about this one.  Dan and I were obliged to dismount and pass through passport control on foot, while Colin stayed with the car. We waited for an ominously long half hour, then saw him turn the car round and point it back into Georgia. There was a problem was with the paperwork, and the only way to rectify it was to return to Tbilisi.  But Dan and I were now in no man’s land, neither here nor there. We had to enter and leave Armenia before we could return to Georgia. We walked across a bridge, had our passports stamped by a surly guard, then snapped a few selfies that would have been our only souvenirs of Armenia, had another surly guard not spotted us taking them. He demanded to see my phone and made me delete them before we were allowed to leave. The whole experience made us reluctant to try the border crossing again. Even if we got the paperwork sorted, we would be re-crossing the border the day before our flights home, when any delay could be disastrous.

We retreated and took stock in a miserable, litter-strewn town, where we ate a lunch of  sausage, bread and watermelon in the shade of a partially built building. A mangy but friendly dog with sagging udders loitered beside us, hoping for scraps.  A new plan crystallised.  We would drive back to Tbilisi, but rather than stopping to fix the car paperwork, we would continue north on the Georgian Military Highway to Kazbegi, the starting point for our new objective, Mt Kazbek, a 5000 metre peak on the Russo-Georgian border.

The drive north was spectacular, but it was dark, wet and horrible when we arrived in Kazbegi. We found accommodation in the centre of the village, a cheery establishment where we were dined on the local delicacy of kachapuri, a kind of bready cheese pie, and spoke with Polish climbers who had been forced to turn back from their summit attempt by snow and high winds.

We awoke first to kachapuri induced indigestion, then to the noise of rain lashing onto the tin roof above our heads. The weather forecast wasn’t encouraging. High on the mountain, up to two feet of snow was forecast for every day that week. Winds of up to 55 kph would give a -20C windchill. We hadn’t come equipped for such conditions. We’d planned to climb a much lower peak in a desert. It would be possible to hire ice axes and crampons, but there were other deficiencies in our gear. I was the only one who had brought thermal base layers, but I was not feeling smug. Colin and  Dan had nice warm gloves, whereas my own light summer ones wouldn’t be up to the job. Failure seemed the most likely outcome. But we were there now, so we would head up, have a poke around and see where it led.

The summit cleared as we ate a traditional Georgian breakfast of an open-topped kachapuri with a runny egg on top. The mountain was plastered with snow and looked fiendish and untouchable, rising 3300 m above the town.

This is a popular area, with many trekkers going as far as the glacier or the Betlemi hut, and many inexperienced punters being guided up to the summit. We paused at a small shrine at the 2940 m Arsha pass, marvelling at the great plume of cloud stretching from the summit of Kazbek, drying our feet in the sun.

There wasn’t a big rush the next day, so I would have been happy to camp on the green grassy pitches  by the spring at 2990 m, but the others wanted to to push on to the hut, convinced that sleeping at 3600 m  would lead to significantly more acclimatisation. My view was sleeping higher might well lead to less sleep, negating any enhancement in acclimatisation.

We pressed on, cutting up the left side of the glacier to avoid crossing the river, swollen with meltwater in the afternoon sun. Just when I thought we were committed to arriving at the hut near nightfall, a perfect campsite appeared beside a small dirty stream, with flat gravel for camping and a small glacial pond in which the particulates had sedimented out of the water, allowing us to collect only slightly cloudy water.

Just as we got into our tents there was a change in the weather, thunder and distant flashes of lightning. Soon the storms were upon us and we experienced the raw fear of a mountain thunderstorm. I assume that our tent poles would act as a Faraday cage, protecting us from electrocution, but doubted the fabric would survive a direct hit. I imagined how unpleasant it would be to suddenly find myself suddenly exposed to the elements, covered in charred tent fragments and being rapidly soaked by the rain.

These fears were short-lived, soon replaced by the equally unpleasant thought that my tent would instead be shredded by hailstones, which started small and increased to the size of bonbons, but thankfully no larger. We lay separately in our one man tents, feeling small and alone in the face of the storm.

The next day was a relatively short one, up the moraines, across the glacier, up to the hut and along to our camp at the Black Cross at 3900m, where we pitched behind stone-built windbreak walls. We prospected the route which we would have to tackle in the dark next day, and were glad to have done so for it took us through complex, labyrinthine terrain on the dirty glacier, then past the Khaumra Wall, a horrendous crumbling affair that regularly rained rocks and strafed us with vast clouds of windblown gravelly dust. We identified the entry point onto the white glacier, which would involve running the crumbly gauntlet of the wall for a few hundred metres. In the morning all would hopefully be frozen securely into place. On the descent Colin found a tatty old pair of gloves and brought them back to camp for me. They fitted over the top of my thin gloves, saving me from the indignity of having to wear my spare socks on my hands.

 Dan at Camp 2, 3900 m

We retired at 2000 hrs, but I was still trying to drop off to sleep at 0100, when the torch beams of other parties started move through our camp. We rose into a beautiful, moonless morning, with clear skies and a grand view of the Milky Way.  The path through the glacier was straightforward after our reconnaissance, and we were soon gearing up on the white glacier, ready to negotiate the complex, yawning crevasses near its edge. At the gearing up point we had been enveloped in blown dust from the crumbly wall, and I looked forward to escaping the plume, which caught my torch beam, complicating navigation. But we didn’t leave the plume and after arguing about it with Colin for a bit I had to accept that it was actually cloud. The weather had turned on us, and we were now leading several parties up a glacier, in the dark, in cloud at 4300 m. It was bitterly cold and I had to wear every item of clothing, including my down jacket.

A bit of smartphone micronavigation revealed that the route was off to our left. We located it and followed this faint path of crampon tracks up the glacier into the murk. By the time we reached the col and plateau area it was clear that the weather had changed completely. There were occasional breaks to the summit, and less frequent breaks below, revealing a lower world crammed with towering cumulus clouds. The one advantage of the poor visibility was that nobody would notice that we had illegally crossed the border into Russia.

The thin air provided a regular excuse to stop to catch our breath and discuss what to do. Quite a few parties were deciding to turn back, but not all. The ground steepened and I was blown off my feet by a sudden gust. Motivation hovered around the 50 % level and we repeatedly agreed to push on for another 100 m of ascent, hoping that it would clear. The big fear was that conditions would deteriorate further, if it started snowing heavily it could obscure the path.  And conditions were bad enough as they were, it would have been a bad day for skiing at Cairngorm, never mind bumbling around in the cloud at 5000 m.

At 4770 m – a new altitude record for all but Colin, eclipsing my 4565m on Tanzania’s Mt Meru many years ago – we conferred for the last time. Colin and Dan really wanted to descend, pointing out that even if we got to the summit we wouldn’t be able to see anything. Just at that point my own motivation had risen to 51 or 52 %. With everyone feeling strong and at least one party ahead and others behind, it struck me that another 100 m of ascent wouldn’t change our situation substantially, that we could just press on a little bit further to see if it might clear. But this line of reasoning didn’t stick, and we turned back with a heavy heart, passing many other parties who would most likely also turn around.

It was only when we got back to the foot of the glacier that the full shitness of the conditions became apparent. The crumby wall was rimed, the waterfalls of the previous afternoon frozen. We had made the right call, the summit wasn’t going to clear that day.

Though I was knackered, we did still have food for another night on the hill. We could sit it out and try again the next day. When I arrived back, spent, at the Black Cross, I spoke to other campers, who informed me that snow and high winds were forecast. Now the winds had been disturbingly high already, genuinely high winds would threaten the integrity of our tents despite their stone windbreaks. After bite to eat and a couple of hours lying down we struck camp and started the long descent, past the hut, down the glacier and back through living ground, with plants and grass, over the pass and down to the church. Raindrops began to spatter the dusty path and soon we were clad in waterproofs, racing a thunderstorm back to the car.

Our attempt had ended in failure, but we had got further than I had expected when we set out. I might have taken that outcome if it had been offered on the first morning in Kazbegi, when I was listening to the rain lashing off the roof and reading that awful weather forecast.

By the time we reached the car the rain was torrential and the mountain was wracked by thunderstorms even more intense than those that had terrified us at Camp 1.  I was intensely glad not to be sitting them out in a blizzard at 3900m. Beer, kachapuri and indigestion in the village below was a far more appealing prospect.

To be continued.

“Right,” I announced, swaying slightly in the near dark as I swirled the dregs of my can. “I’m going to crack open another beer for the final push to the summit”.

My brother leant forward, bracing himself for a hearty guffaw.

“You do realise that you said exactly the same thing, standing on exactly the same spot, when you cracked open that can you’re just about to finish?”

I hadn’t realised. But now I understood why it was taking so long to reach the summit of Stob Coire Sgriodain. It was well after midnight and we were still squelching up boggy slopes, a long way short of the spot where we planned to pass the night.

Welcome to the world of the Bevvy Bivvy, a little known but highly advanced outdoor activity. It’s a bit like going to the pub, except you have to bring a carry out and climb up a mountain while drinking it.

I’d allocated five cans of lager, one miniature of Icelandic schnapps and two of malt for the ascent. Only a splash of whisky made it to the summit, but it was all that I had any appetite for at half past three in the morning.

We were able to capitalise on those hard-won miles in the morning by making an early start on the long day ahead.  At half past ten.

In this era of nannying, where some deem it irresponsible to go hillwalking without first having taken a course, asked a dozen questions on  Facebook groups and equipped oneself for the Arctic with gaiters, poles, etc, it is hard to imagine a more foolish or irresponsible combination of activities than bivvying and bevvying. Which is probably why it is so much fun.

Here’s a few pics from the round of Loch Treig that followed

Chno Dearg

Stob Coire Easain and Stob a’Choire Mheadhoin

Before I left corporate work I experienced some anxiety that after 15 years my job may have become a larger part of my identity than I had acknowledged, that I might miss some aspect of it when it was gone. Two months out these fears seem to have been unfounded. It is incredibly liberating to be outside a chain of command, no longer a subordinate, free to pursue my own interests rather than those dictated by others.

I remember reading about how forests in India regrew as if by magic from the bare earth of severely overgrazed land. The trees had been alive just under the surface all along, putting up shoots that were immediately chewed up by livestock. My brain feels similar. Rather than experiencing any yawning mental void, I can feel the green shoots of my true nature, no longer trampled under the clumsy hooves of a bovine corporate structure, growing and branching out into the light, open space above.

During this process of metamorphosis my thoughts have often turned to Peter Mattiessen’s line in ’The Snow Leopard’, in which he likens his dark mood during a period of self transformation to the irritability of a snake shedding its skin, ‘dragging about the stale shreds of a former life.’  In dark moments early on in this process I borrowed and adapted this imagery to imagine a sooty-faced post-apocalyptic version of myself, clad in the last threadbare tatters of my M&S non-iron short and slacks, a partially melted identity badge hanging around my neck on a frayed lanyard.

After two months of wriggling I have almost entirely removed those stale corporate scales, and when I look back on this period the 8th of June, the two month anniversary of my first day of freedom, will stand out as a turning point. I’d been down in Aviemore teaching a morning tai chi class at a conference.  This had required an early start, but left the rest of the day my own. There was no need to sit in an open plan office until 1700 hrs, filing emails and completing online training about how to complete online training.

On the way home decided that I would take advantage of the recent heavy rain to make a packraft descent (possibly a first?) of the River Nairn, from the A9 trunk road to the Nairn Viaduct. In its upper and lower reaches the Nairn is a domesticated river, running through fields with little more than a sliver of riverine woodland beside it. But between the A9 and Nairnside it cuts into the bedrock resulting in a deep gorge, lined with verdant early summer vegetation and rock outcrops. Its inaccessibility made it irresistible to explore. The canoe guidebook rates it as Grade 1 – 2, so I knew that there shouldn’t be any impossible sections, though it did note that there were many trees across the river. My heart quickened as I inspected it from the bridge (see video above), for the sight of the river in spate brought back memories from childhood when I would spend my time after school walking and exploring beside the burn that flowed beside my Dad’s farm. Normally I waded in its placid waters, but after heavy rain it became a terrifying brown torrent and I felt drawn to it even more,  so that I could feel the delicious fear that comes from close proximity to a force of nature powerful enough to destroy a human life in an instant. Was I really about to deliberately launch myself into such a flow in a small inflatable boat?

There is something about getting geared up for an activity that makes one step outside one’s normal self. And as I stood inflating my boat in the sunshine beside the surging floodwater, dressed in a two piece dry suit with a rubber gasket tight round my neck, neoprene socks inside trainers, a helmet to protect my head from overhanging branches or submerged rocks and a sheath knife attached to the front of my lifejacket in case I had to cut myself free from an entanglement or burst my raft if it pinned me after a capsize, I felt like my purpose was simply to run the river, to test my paddling skills on its fast, choppy water.

Right beside my intended put in point there was a stopper – a standing wave – with a huge hole behind it. I didn’t want to risk being sucked into it and capsized, so I went a little further downstream. I felt overly calm, and checked in with myself to try to make sure that this was a sensible thing to do. I could always just deflate my boat and start walking home, but I reasoned that the river was technically no harder than the short sections after the weirs on the River Ness, but rather than a few metres of excitement this continued relentlessly for miles.

When I got onto the water I found that the waves were bigger than they had looked from the bank. Within about twenty metres, as I passed under the old bridge, I took the wrong line over a stopper, my boat turned across the flow and suddenly I was swimming. Or rather being swept helplessly downstream. I kept hold of boat and paddle and attempted to kick my legs to get into the side. The longer I was in the water the greater the chance of getting snagged on a submerged log. This is why it is dangerous to attach yourself to your boat or paddle, it creates more chance of getting snagged and pulled under. I was several hundred metres downstream when I managed to get out of the flow and scramble awkwardly onto the grassy bank. I took stock of the situation. All my stuff was still with me, even my shades. I was dry and warm, and curiously unshaken. I debated whether I had just had an extremely lucky escape and should count my blessings and retreat immediately, or whether I had established that a capsize can easily be recovered and is nothing to be feared. This question hung unanswered in the air as I left my boat and prospected downstream to see if the next section would tip me out again.

As the brain regions that had been colonised by corporate habits and behaviours begin to return to normal service, old, forgotten enthusiasms have begun to blossom into my mind. Amongst these has been an urge to re-read a book that was gifted to me by a young American guy called Ben Wood who I knew when I lived briefly in Buenos Aires back in 2000 (give me a shout if you’re out there Ben!), Carlos Castaneda’s ‘Journey to Ixtlan’.  The book was adapted from Castaneda’s anthropology PhD thesis and described his apprenticeship under don Juan Matis, a Mexican shaman.

It’s worth noting that everyone apart from his publisher and the university that awarded his PhD now believe that Castaneda made the whole thing up, and that in later life he became something of a cult leader, so I am in no way endorsing him or his writings wholeheartedly. I do however have some sympathy with Bruce Chatwin’s view that the line between fiction and non-fiction is an imaginary one, invented by publishers. The world that Castaneda creates or documents in ‘Journey to Ixtlan’ is so plausible in its extreme weirdness that I feel it gives some insight into the belief systems of shamanic cultures and, by inference, to the minds of all our forebears. Castaneda’s earlier works emphasised the use of psychedelics, but by the time he got to ‘Journey to Ixtlan’ he had advanced in his training to the point that no plant sacraments were necessary. The book focusses instead on the changes that Castaneda had to make to his behaviour if he was to become ready for the next stage of his journey.

Don Juan made three stipulations. The first was that he must erase his personal history, to avoid the problem of people knowing him, taking him for granted and trapping him in “the tie of their thoughts”. The second was that he must abandon any feelings of self importance. The last and most important was to realise that his death was always present. Those who have learned the correct way of seeing can detect its presence, over to their left. Whether you are aware of it or not, one day your death will lean over and touch you, ending your time on earth.

This writing resonated with me as I stood beside my boat, with the roar of the water in my ears, deciding whether or not to step back into the fray. In a small way I had followed Don Juan’s three stipulations. I had erased a large portion of my personal history by exiting the corporate world. It was hard to muster much of a sense of self importance standing beside that raging torrent, realising how small and insignificant I was against the power of the water. And after that first swim I had become very much aware of my death.

“In a world where death is the hunter there are no big or small decisions, only decisions that we make in the face of our inevitable death.”

Don Juan lived every day as if it may contain his last battle on earth. He inhabited a world of precise acts and feelings and decisions that was infinitely superior to the blundering idiocy of Castaneda’s life. He taught that one must assume responsibility for being in this marvellous world, in this marvellous time, that one must make every act count since one is going to be here for only a short while, too short a time to witness all its marvels.

My logical mind told me that I had bitten off more than I could chew and had a narrow escape. But  rather than give into these fears I instead I developed the mindset of a warrior. I regulated my fear so it was no more than a healthy response to a genuinely dangerous situation in which every act is important, in which every battle may be one’s last on earth. Of course this is the case in every moment of every day but it is easy to ignore this reality when cocooned within the trappings of modern life.

I scrambled down the river banks to inspect a few hundred metres at a time, asking myself if I had the skills to paddle it safely. The answer to that was rarely “certainly”, more usually it was “probably” and sometimes it was only “maybe”. The warrior spirit became most apparent on sections that I couldn’t see and wanted to inspect, but the flow was too fast, sweeping me unprepared into unseen stretches. In order to proceed I had to relax, trust that I could either run it safely or rescue myself if it turned out to be beyond me.

Everything apart from boat and river fell away, the colours were so vivid, I was engrossed, the most alive I had been in what seemed like years. It was as exhilarating as an ice climb or a ski descent of a steep couloir. Two hours later when I took out at the viaduct I felt as if I had been immersed in one of don Juan’s amazing and mysterious alternative realities. Though just a few miles from the comfort and security of my home, I had been engaged in what had been without any sense of exaggeration a life or death struggle. I don’t want to give the impression that I had any expectation of death, but I was very much aware of its presence and acutely aware of the need to focus completely in order to mitigate its possibility to an acceptable level.

When it was all over I was left with an impression of having stepped through a portal to a different life, that the last of my corporate scales had been washed off in the churning chocolate floodwaters of the River Nairn.  I emerged reborn, revitalised, forever changed.

I also wrote this trip up for my new blog at WildTaiChi.co.uk.

Style Showdown: Lightweight Bikepacking vs Heavyweight Trailer

We opted to camp and carry our provisions. To carry this equipment we used two contrasting styles. Donald hauled his in a single-wheeled  Beast of  Burden trailer. This truly was a beast, with an unladen weight of 7 kg and a cavernous 100 L luggage bag. I used Alpkit bike packing gear, a bar bag and a seat post bag, and also a small day pack for the overspill. My lack of space pushed  me towards the extreme lightweight end, relying on home made dehydrated food cooked using a Bushbuddy wood stove. Donald’s huge load capacity propelled him in the opposite direction.  Read on to find out which approach prevailed….

Day 1 Glenmore Lodge to Inchory via Tomintoul, 56.4 km, 484 m

We started late, around 1400, and cycled past Ryvoan bothy into territory that was new to me, through caledonian forest remnants towards the Eag Mor Gap, then down to Glen Brown and onwards to Tomintoul. The weather deteriorated and my plans for leisurely pints were replaced with a desire for a warm cup of tea, though I did wash it down with a miniature of Norsk Aquivit. This raised my spirits for the onward cycle up Glen A’an to Inchory, which I knew from my trip up Ben A’an and Beinn a’Bhuird  last summer. There is a lot of tarmac and the cycling is good, but it was cold and I was glad to arrive at our campspot amid the nesting birds and face the challenge of cooking with twigs in the rain. Fortunately I had brought enough dry twigs from home and was able to arrange it just outside my tent in the light rain. The night cleared up and we were able to relax and enjoy a beautiful campspot.

Day 2: Inchory to Bynack Lodge via Braemar, 46.1 km, 601 m

A fine day with no hint of the previous day’s rain. I did some Chi Kung while Donald enjoyed a lie in. The oystercatchers maintained a noisy patrol until I settled into my routine, after which point they paid me no more attention that they would a reed shaken by the wind. Thus refreshed and revitalised, I sourced enough dry heather twigs under a bridge to get my coffee and hot muesli cooked up. The section to  Braemar was one that I had cycled in 2005 when we rode into Faindouran Lodge as part of training for  our first alpine climbing trip. This section has beautiful riding up past the lochs and rivers of the upper glen, then a long haul up to 720 m before an exhilarating descent to Invercauld, followed by a road section to Braemar.  We could have stayed on the other side of the river but we both fancied a bit of civilisation, with its fizzy drinks and ice creams. Donald had some shopping to do, having forgotten his mug and lost the saltire that decorated his trailer on a bumpy downhill. As it turned out no saltires were available for sale in Braemar.

As we stood in the sun outside Braemar Mountain Sports I took another step towards my new lifestyle of minimalism, sealing a deal to sell my campervan to a chap who’d looked at it earlier in the week. I then drank two celebratory beers before we set off. As we rode I talked about my mixed feelings about having passed on the vehicle but I know that now is the time to let it go, when it has 12 months MOT and the market is full of eager early summer van buyers.  Owning a van is a balancing act between joy and stress, and the balance began to tip for me last year. Now the kids can walk into wild camp spots it was getting less use than in past years, while requiring an increasing amount of maintenance to keep it in good shape.

The haul up from Linn of Dee to White Bridge was virgin territory for me and hard going at the end of a long day. I had to resort to listening to Jimbo Jaytech’s latest selection of progressive house and trance to keep me moving. On the approach to the lodge there were a couple of walkers who were progressing at a disturbingly similar pace to us, though we did eventually pull ahead. We had just pitched up when they arrived and they took a spot below the ruins of the old lodge. Two dutchmen arrived later on and pitched uncomfortably close to us. Had it not been for my earplugs I would have fallen asleep to the guttural inter-tent chatter of our friends from the low countries.

Day 3 Bynack Lodge to Loch an Duin via Blair Atholl, 60.4 km, 700 m

We were last away from camp in the morning, and chased down both the walkers and the Dutchmen on the approach to Glen Tilt. This was familiar territory, bagged during a ride with Donald a few years back from Aviemore to Blair Atholl. On that occasion we caught the train back to Aviemore, but there would be no such luxury today. Donald spotted an adder slithering off the track in front of him and we paused to inspect it as it flicked its tongue in warning form the heather. This was only the third adder sighting in my life, and the second was in almost this exact spot on that earlier ride. After that sighting I had researched what to do in the event of an adder bite. Should one stay still and attempt to limit the spread of the venom, or rush for medical attention? To what extent would one be incapacitated by it? My research was inconclusive, with first hand accounts of bites hard to come by. My impression was that if I was ever bitten I would expect a fair amount of pain and unpleasantness but that my life and mobility would likely be maintained.

There is a beautiful section of single track on a steeply sloping bank that leads down to the upper reaches of the Allt Garbh,  a section that I had found challenging on a hardtail mountain bike, but which I was able to blast most of on a full suspension unit. I was surprised by the trailer’s ability to handle it, though Donald looked slightly frazzled by the effort required to propel his appendage over the rougher sections, and I stayed on hand at a couple of the worst to lend a helping hand.

Landrover track resumed soon afterwards, and we soon left the walkers behind. There were other campers and cyclists out enjoying what is one of the most scenic glens, notable for its contribution to geology through Hutton’s interpretation of the intermingled granite and the metamorphic Moinian rocks, which showed that the rocks had once been molten, and had not sedimented during a biblical flood as advocated by the religiously inspired dogma of the time.

With a long ride ahead we blasted on to Blair Atholl, keen to combine lunch and civilisation faff into one single instalment. In the village it was too hot to sit out in the sun and we enjoyed an unexpected injection of carbs and salt from the chip shop in the shade of a tree planted to commemorate the coronation of Edward VII. I had thought that it would be nice to sink a few cold beers but wasn’t prepared to risk weakening myself any further. There was still a long way to go.

Despite its smooth tarmac the next section along the cycle path felt among the hardest of the trip, the intense heat made us seek refuge in islands of shade whenever we paused. We passed Bruar, Calvine and Dalnamein en route to Dalnacardoch Lodge, where we crossed the busy dual carriageway and climbed through the merciful shade of a conifer plantation to access the high moors leading into Sronpadraig Lodge and the Gaick pass beyond. Once we were up above the A9 corridor we both experienced a second wind, uplifted by the expansive views to Schechallion and the Glen Lyon Munros.

This was the section that I had been looking forward to most of the whole trip. Back in 2011 I had ridden this route in reverse, enjoying an overnight camp at Loch an-t Seilich with friends who had cycled in from the south, before swapping car keys and going our separate ways, reuniting in Kingussie over a pint. I can still vividly recall the vivid colours of that day, the deep blue of the string of the three lochs, the vivid greens of fresh growth and the ochres of the gravels that define this area, together with a sense that I had uncovered a secret land, a vast tract of empty country that runs parallel to but remains completely hidden from the busy A9 corridor.

Our plan was to push on past Sronpadraig Lodge as far as possible to maximise our chances of finishing at a reasonable time on Friday. We were delayed by an inspection of the creepy derelict lodge. What was formerly the bothy is now in use by the estate and is secured like Fort Knox. The large lodge lies open and though the roof is intact most of the interior is in an advanced state of deterioration, with only one decent room, a pink painted one with a fireplace and and old camp bed. In order to access this gem one has to make a committing approach along a hallway of dubious integrity.

I recalled the next section of single track as being tough to the point of being unridable in sections from my previous visit, and also that the path marked on the map took a sub optimal route involving an unnecessary double river crossing. Donald had some business to attend to so I left him to it and cycled on to prospect the route. The river has cut into what I took to be a steep moraine, and the best route involved taking a steep track up its face then traversing pathless peat hag and bog to join the main stalkers path. This was straightforward with my bike packing setup, and once I found the path I walked down to the lochside to check out camping spots, which were adequate but lumpy. I cracked into the first of my two remaining miniatures of whisky and waited in the last of the evening sun for Donald to appear.

Donald reported that negotiating the steep face of the moraine had indeed taken his close to his limit and at one point he had actually taken to conversing with his trailer, cautioning it that it would not beat him, that they would stay together until the end of the journey. He seemed invigorated by the tussle and suggested that we push on further before camping.  Taken from the south the single track alongside the loch was a real pleasure to ride, and we soon covered the 2 km to the its northern end, where we found a lumpy but beautifully situated camping spot and settled in for the night.

Day  4 Loch an Duin to Glenmore, 56.4 km, 484 m

This was my favourite camping spot, though I had to range far and wide to find enough twigs and heather stalks to fuel my wood stove. There was only negligible ascent on the route past Gaick and down Glen Tromie, making it an exhilarating blast. We took forest tracks over to Glen Feshie,  followed the river to Feshiebridge then cut through the forests to Inshriach. The dry forest smelled like Yosemite, the air thick with the scent of pine. We paused at Inshriach bothy and were surprised to find a man in residence. His name was Iain, a Londoner who described himself as semi-retired, and planned to pass a few months bothying and camping round the Cairngorms until the grouse shooting season, which would earn him enough to export his minimalist lifestyle somewhere warmer over the winter months. I have a deep admiration for people like that, but doubt that I could manage to take it to those extremes. Maybe by the time I’m Iain’s age I’ll be ready!

The pine smell intensified as we made our way past Loch an Eileen and Loch Morlich. I was in awe of Donald’s fortitude, despite all those tiring kilometres pulling his trailer he spurned the shortest route in favour of a satisfying and aesthetic tarmac free return to Glenmore,  and the restorative ice cream and chip shops of Aviemore.

Style Showdown: Conclusion

For a trip like this the lightweight bikepacking approach beats the trailer hands down. That said, I didn’t spend nearly as much time waiting for Donald to catch up as I expected. Though the trailer handled extremely rough terrain comfortably thanks to its suspension, it is more in its element where the surface is good and the hills relatively small. It would make a great choice for transporting coal and beer into a bothy.

Every working day for the last 12 years I have used my swipe card to raise the same striped barrier. No longer.  On April 7th I handed in my card, laptop and phone and left the protective umbrella of corporate work behind. Though I am excited about the future this change has inevitably left a hole in my life. My preoccupation at present is to ensure that the void is filled with positive energy, that any darkness that comes lapping onto my shores is kept at bay.

To this end I set out to cycle the 329 km from my in-law’s house near Tarbert Loch Fyne to my own home outside Inverness. The journey was an attempt to create some space between myself and my previous employment, to see how much my identity had been bound up in corporate work, and to establish how my sense of self had been diminished or augmented by the loss of that work.

During the four days of the ride I began to come to terms with my new status and began to recognise and process the anxieties that naturally arise when one leaves behind a stable life for new and unknown things. I arrived home slim, tanned and thirsty, both for a night out with former colleagues and fellow escapees and for life in general.

Trip Report

Day 1: Ardpatrick to Kames Bay, Lochawe (83 km, 1688 m ascent)

  

The starting point was dictated by my inlaws’ house, from whence I took the quiet B roads through Kilberry, enjoying the views across to Gigha, Islay and Jura, watchng the seals sunbathing on the rocks and admiring the many scarecrows that the locals put out at this time of year. There was even a Trump scarecrow. I cut off on forest tracks before I hit the busy A83 with its constant stream of bank holiday traffic, and linked to the towpath of the Crinan Canal at Ardrishaig. I experienced some twinges in my stomach as I rode and feared that an unscheduled stop might become inevitable. The path was busy with walkers and cyclists, so fortunately I was able to stem the flow until I reached the Moine Mhor, the flat plains of former sea bed that extend from Crinan to Kilmartin.  A gorse bush laden with bright yellow flowers provided some cover, behind which I squirted some extremely loose stool onto the grass. As I burned off my toilet paper I hoped that this would be an isolated incident rather than the start of an extended bout.

My next stoppage was only a few miles along the road. I leapt into some woodland, and only once I was underway did I realise that I was right beside a path. Thankfully no ramblers were subjected to the  spectacle. My output on this second bout was beyond loose, a small puddle of rusty water that soaked into the mossy ground before my eyes. This had an element of finality which cheered me – I felt empty, and rode on hoping that I was out of the metaphorical woods and would be spared a further visit to the actual woods. Unsettlingly, I had almost depleted reserves of toilet paper that I had hoped would last for four days. The thought of having to expose my delicate ring to scratchy moss or non absorbent leaves was not appealing.

Despite these upsets, this section of riding was excellent. On back roads and tracks past the many cairns, standing stones and monuments of Kilmartin to the impressive castle of Carnasserie, where the first ever book in the Gaelic language was written in the late 1500s. There followed a short section on the A83 before I tuned off on the minor road to Ford and the north side of Loch Awe. This was virgin territory to me, extremely hilly single track (as in single track road with passing places)  through forest, much of it recently felled. The sun was shining, the first signs of spring were all around, yellow primroses, budding willow and birch, the vivid green of new larch needles, and I decided to push on as long as possible.

There was one more impromptu stop, during which I discharged a small puddle of miso soup and burned off the last of my toilet roll on a tree stump. Realising that I wouldn’t make it past the loch I checked my map and decided to head into the forest just past the village of Dalavich and look for a camp spot. I pitched up in the warm evening sunshine at Kames Bay, where there was just enough flattish ground to pitch my tiny tent, drank the two beers I’d brought with me and re-hydrated my Macfie Brand spaghetti bolognaise. This was delicious, I’d say superior to the gold standard of camping food, Mountain House spag bol.

I could have had a nice campfire, but after a soaking up the last of the sun’s rays I wanted nothing more than to lie down in my tent. This was the pattern at each of my camps, falling asleep around 2000 hrs, waking around midnight to brush my teeth and arrange my bed properly, then a second stint of sleep until 0700.

Day 2: Kames Bay to Stronchreggan (107 km, 1857 m ascent)

It was a cold night, during which  started using my sleeping bag as a duvet and ended up right inside wearing my warm jacket. I awoke to a frosted tent and bike and a surprising amount of ice in my platypus. I got on the move immediately, striking camp while my Macfie Brand porridge with strawberries rehydrated. I had high hopes for this, having found the commercial preparations to be overly sweetened, but I was in for a disappointment. It was a  bit chewy and the strawberries didn’t provide as much sweetness as I had hoped. The next batch will be ground into a finer powder to aid rehydration and have some sugar or honey added.

The route taken by Route 78 completely avoids the busy A83, apart from a tiny section of 30 mph limited road through Taynuilt. What it lacks in traffic it makes up for in distance and hills, but the scenery is beautiful, with views to the Ben Cruachan and Ben Lui groups of Munros and the delightful woodland of Glen Nant.

It wasn’t until mid morning, as I rode past new lambs in Glen Lonan, that there was any noticable heat in the sun. I had my first and only unfavourable vehicle encounter on the road to the Connel bridge, with a bearded buffoon in a rented motorhome. Instead of slowing momentarily to permit me to reach a passing  place, the fud ploughed on and pushed me off the road about three metres before I reached it. I stopped to roar and gesture obscenities, but I doubt the idiot looked in his mirror to register this feedback. If I’d had a gun I would have happily shot his tyres out. And kneecapped him for good measure.

The next section of Route 78 was one that I was looking forward to, running alongside the busy A83 between the Connell Bridge and Ballachuillish. I have often envied cyclists as I have driven this road in a car loaded with moaning, carsick children. And very pleasant it was too, with great coastal views and opportunities to explore away from the road on forest sections and on the old railway track. It was wonderful to get a fresh perspective on familiar terrain, for example seeing Castle Stalker from the sea level path rather than the unpleasant windy and hilly road. I ate my lunch on the shore near the bridge over Loch Creran, glad of my thick jacket to keep out the chill.

I suffered a couple of setbacks on this section, a few spits of rain, enough to make me don waterproofs briefly, and a flattish tyre just outside Ballachuillish. I opted to pump it up rather than fix it in the rain, hoping to make it to the toilets at the Corran Ferry where I could take advantage of shelter, a sink to aid detection of the puncture, and soap and water to clean myself up afterwards. I also re-stocked my toilet paper reserves. The most trying part was reinflating my tyre with my tiny pump, but I was soon ready for the road again. I thought I had just missed the ferry, as they raised the ramp as I set off down the slipway, but the staff on the Highland Council run ferry are a friendly bunch and they lowered the ramp and let me board. Many times I have had the opposite experience on ferries run by Caledonian MacBrayne. This small act of kindness cheered me, and I decided to spend the time that I had saved by not waiting for the next ferry  in the Corran Inn having a pint and a bag of crisps before pedalling round the pleasant and very quiet road on the north side of Loch Linnhe. I wanted to be close enough to Camusnagael to ensure that I would make the first ferry at 0815, but  not so close that I was camping in a settlement. A spot near the burn before Stronchreggan fitted the bill, and  I wandered around the flat grassy site in a daze, choice paralysis preventing me from selecting a spot. For dinner I enjoyed a Macfie Brand beef and vegetable stew served with Smash mashed potatoes, a truly excellent and satisfying meal, then retired for my usual two stage sleep.

Day 3: Stronchreggan to All-Saigh Forest, Loch Ness (78 km, 1727 m ascent)

All was damp after overnight rain, and upon waking at 0600 I sprang into action, keen to get packed up before the rain started again. I had a Mountain House Oatmeal with Raspberries left over from my extravagant and decadent past as a corporate employee, and it was just as I remembered it, tasty and satisfying but overly sweet and very expensive for what it is. I arrived early at the ferry and brewed up a second coffee while I waited. Three locals were using it to get across to their jobs Fort William, and as I listened to their chat about committees and cats I realised that I was at risk of going a little strange after so much time alone, and began to experience second thoughts about the 2 weeks on the Cape Wrath trail I had planned for late May.

This route makes such a good job of bypassing civilisation that Fort William provided my first opportunity to buy objects, though it was early and only the Nevis Bakery was open. I bought a sausage roll for a second breakfast and a Chelsea bun for lunch and went on my way to the sea locks of the Caledonian Canal and the effortless towpath cycling to Gairlochy and north shore of Loch Lochy, then up the south shore of Loch Oich on the new path that follows the old railway line.

I stopped at Leitirfearn, where I had  camped on a canoe trip years ago, when the south shore was less travelled. It is now a ‘Trailblazer’ Campsite, complete with composting toilet. I was delighted to see this. I had purged my system so thoroughly on the first day that the previous day had been barren from a toilet point of view, but by now the piping had been re-stocked and pressure was building.

I always love a composter, and this one was a beauty. It had an important design improvement, a funnel at the front to divert the urine away into a soak away. This meant that the huge mound of shit, paper and sawdust was if not quite odourless, at least perfectly tolerable. The combination  of passing a solid stool into a satisfying toilet and lovely warm sunny weather raised my spirits, and suddenly I seemed so close to  home that I began to imagine actually arriving home later that day. This would be possible if one took Route 78 through Foyers and along the south side of Loch Ness, but I wanted to take the Great Glen Way. Not only that, I’d been reading about the new ‘high route’. In its original form the Great Glen Way was a tedious slog through oppressive conifer plantations. This is why I had never been tempted to walk it. But these new high section are above the tree line and offer amazing views over the loch and across the the mountains of the Monadhliath. The only issue is the vicious uphill pushing required to access them, and indeed to ride them because they have many steep ups and downs.

My dreams of making it home, or at least to Drumnadrochit, soon evaporated. After a steep descent to Invermoriston I took on a nasty push up tarmac roads to access the forest trails, and was immediately  confronted with another high vs low route decision. This high route was even higher, rising to 470 m, so I was nervous of it, but I had the time and I really didn’t want to camp low down in the forest so I pushed on in the hope of finding a decent camp spot up out of the trees.

In the end I settled for a tolerable spot by the Allt-Saigh, from where I had the option to descent to join the low route the next day. I was totally done in after pushing a laden bike up so many hills, so ate my Macfie Brand Spag Bol (if anything it tasted better than the first portion) and had a little wander up out of the forest where I found the ruins of shielings, unmarked on the 1:50k map. I then turned in for an anxious night. In my weakened state I could see only the negative in my new lifestyle.

Day 4: Allt-Saigh to Culloden Moor (61 km, 1270 m ascent)

 

In the morning I ruminated on my night of existential angst and realised that I was experiencing a misplaced regret for having walked away from a future that was not on offer, that of continuing to do stimulating work in the safety of the corporate environment.  The fact of the matter is that my position has been made redundant, that the opportunities that attracted me to my former role no longer exist.

This realisation – that the waves of anxiety that have been buffeting me stem from a false regret, a regret at having ruled myself out of an imaginary and only partially desirable future – cheered me.  I set off with the feeling that I knew my enemy and was now able to face it and deal with it. Up until this point it had been catching me unawares at unexpected moments.

I studied the map, and realised that a descent to the low route would be followed by a significant climb to the meeting of the high and low routes.  It seemed a better option to push  higher to gain the full descent, so I headed on up. At some points it was so steep that I considered ferrying bike and bags separately, but I persisted and was rewarded with amazing views and a lovely descent right out of the forest and onto the road to Drumnadrochit. I stopped in to visit Dave, a friend who  has successfully avoided the monotony of regular work for many years and has nothing but positive things to say about it.

After a short section beside the A82, during which some wind turbine sections came through, requiring the whole road and a police escort, I took on what I  hoped would be the last evil push up through the trees. On this push I met a heavy man who was plodding so slowly that I easily passed him even when struggling with my laden bike. At the viewpoint at the top I met his younger companion , waiting and enjoying the view. As we chatted I realised how littlte I had spoken to anyone while on the road, indeed how few people I had encountered.

Soon I was on familiar territory, the forest walks and mountain bike trails at Abriachan, then the long descent towards Inverness, with the water and exposed mud flats of the Beauly Firth on my left, then on trails through the northern suburbs of Inverness, towards the River Ness and its islands. I paused on the banks of the river near the town centre, while workmen strimmed ahead of me, and reflected on a great journey now at an end. Or almost at an end, I still had to pick up Route 1 through the city towards my house. With my journey close to an end I bought milk, biscuits and the pack of liquorice allsorts I needed to propel me up the  final hill from Balloch to my home in Culloden  Moor.

The house had been empty for over a week and the door snagged on a large pile of envelopes, including my P45 and final payslip. This final signal from my previous life induced some waves of fear and doubt which plagued me until after 2200, at which point, realising that only action could set me back on an even keel, I put away all my equipment, tidied the house and went for a long sleep in a comfortable bed.

I woke refreshed, shaved my beard and felt a new man. My four days in the saddle truly had been a journey of self discovery and transformation, leaving me brimming with optimism and ready to open the next chapter in my life.

Background Information

The Route

In this world of Brexit, Trump, environmental devastation and threat of nuclear war it is easy to think that global affairs are in some sort of inevitable decline, but here is a striking example of an improvement. In the 8 or so years that I have been visiting Knapdale I have often considered cycling but have aways been put off by inavoidable road cycling on busy roads, including terrifying road trains carrying huge loads of timber.

This has changed, with the development of the Caledonian Trail (National Cycle Route 78) and improvements to the cyclability of the Great Glen Way.

Equipment

My choice was between a skinny tyred road bike and a hardtail 29er mountainbike. I could perhaps have managed the cycle trails and canalside paths on the road bike. But I really wanted to ride the Great Glen Way from Fort William to Inverness, making the MTB the obvious choice. If you were to continue on Route 78 down the south side of Loch Ness instead of taking the Great Glen Way, a robust touring bike would be best. You might get even away with a road bike if you don’t mind lots of riding on unsealed paths, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Several sections of uphill pushing on the Great Glen Way make bike packing gear preferable to panniers. But in April, with sub zero temperatures and rain forecast, I wanted to carry more bulk than my bike packing kit could swallow, including a bulky and heavy synthetic insulated jacket. In the end I chose panniers, adding my bar bag to balance the bike up a bit.

I considered taking a tarp, which would have worked well, and would have given a nice dry area in which to remedy any mechanical setbacks, but I do really like having a tent to keep the wind off and keep my stuff from blowing away or being absorbed into the undergrowth.

Provisions

I’ve been preparing myself for a lifestyle of minimalism to counter the loss of financial power resulting from my exit from corporate work.  This was to the fore in my trip preparations and I dehydrated my own food,  spaghetti bologniase and beef stew, and also some experimental dried porridge with strawberry pieces. I packaged these up in recycled Mountain House foil packs. The other minimalist aspect was relying on my petrol stove rather than buying gas canisters. I devoted some time to learning its ways and can now avoid getting petrol on my fingers or soot on my pot while cooking. Total cash saved on this trip was probably about £35. Total cash spent was £10.40, £5.20 for a pint and a bag of crisps in the Corran Inn, £3.00 for a one way ticket on the Camusnagael to Fort William ferry and £2.20 for a sausage roll and a Chelsea bun from the Nevis Bakery after I disembarked.

I’m now at 25 months of sleeping outdoors at least once a month. One might imagine that it would get easier after two years, but I still experience an inbuilt resistance to leaving my warm house and comfortable bed for the dark unknown.  Even when my logical mind knows that I am bound for a pleasant camp on a dry night, my subconscious mind manufactures fear and difficulty and attempts to resist.

This effect is more pronounced than usual, for I am in the midst of a significant change in my life and work circumstances (more of that later on). I’ve been reading self help books to aid my transition. The 1950s classic ‘The Magic of Thinking Big’ warns that fear is an inevitable obstacle on the road to success, but offers the reassurance that it is  easily fought and subdued with action. In the case of a camping trip the required action is simply to assemble the necessary equipment and pack it into my bag. The act of packing initiates an unstoppable chain reaction that propels me out the door towards fresh air and adventure.

My destination was Whiteness Head, a long, narrow spit of sand and gravel that extends about northwest from the Carse of Delnies, just outside Nairn on the Moray Coast. On one side lies the open sea, on the other a deep lagoon which formed part of a platform construction yard in the early days of North Sea oil. It is earmarked for development, but for now it lies empty and abandoned, sheds, floodlights on tall posts and mounds of concrete rubble. Ever since my last trip there, during which I cycled up the spit with my daughter, I have had the idea of returning with my packraft, trading a long-ish cycle for a short paddle from the abandoned yard.

As recently as the 1880s Whiteness head was a short gravel bar, but since then it has been growing at a rate of between between 10 and 30 metres per year to reach its current length of 3.5 km. Longshore drift transports gravel from the Nairn end towards the growing tip, and it is topped in places with dunes of windblown sand. The winter storms create a steep storm beach of sea-worn stones on the seaward side. Over the longer term the transport of material from the base to the tip of the spit will eventually result in it separating from the main shoreline to form a ‘flying bar’ similar to that at Culbin to the east.

The McDermott oil platform construction yard was opened in 1973 to serve the North Sea oil industry. taking advantage of the spit to shelter the yard from the waves. The yard is an extensive flat area of reclaimed land. Dredged sand was deposited into settling ponds, raising the ground to around 4 metres above sea level.  Ongoing dredging operations to maintain the deep channel curtailed the extension of the spit until the yard closed in 2001. Since then the spit has become wild once more, the undredged channel has filled, leaving  extensive sand flats at low tide. The site will eventually be redeveloped as part of the nascent offshore wind industry. Planning permission has been granted for dredging and a reduction in the size of the spit to 2001 levels. Last year the owners went into administration and the site was sold for £5 million. The identity of the buyer is unknown. It really is a strange country when such an iconic piece of the landscape can be owned by persons unknown.

This then is perhaps a golden age for Whiteness Head, when the yard lies silent and dark, and despite its relative proximity to civilisation it is a wild place, with little light pollution save from Fortrose across the water. In a short while it could revert to an industrial landscape and be far less appealing as a camping spot. But for now, before any dredging takes place, the sands exposed at low tide are extensive, and the GPS trail of my morning wander showed that I had trodden where I had no right to be according to the map, out into the open sea.

Living on borrowed land

All that extra land created when the tide goes out made me think of how so many of us are living on land borrowed from the sea, land that would have been underwater before the present glacial period. At the last glacial maximum, some 20,000 years ago, when the ice sheets extended down to the temperate latitudes, so much water was locked up in the ice sheets that global sea levels were 125 metres lower than they are today. They have been more or less constant for the last few millennia, over which we have built our global civilisation, creating the false impression that the sea knows its place and can be relied upon to stay put.  Over the last two centuries we humans have become a geological force, burning enough buried carbon to raise CO2 levels, trapping more of the sun’s heat, raising global temperatures and accelerating the melting of our remaining ice caps and glaciers. There is almost 70 m of sea level equivalent locked up in that ice, and we have already emitted enough CO2 to raise sea levels by 25 m. The outstanding question is how quickly this will occur. The latest estimates are for up to 3 m of sea level rise by 2100. Just think about that – some readers of this post will live to see it, and their children or grandchildren will certainly see it. And that 3 m will not be the end, rather it will mark the start of some really serious sea level rise. These estimates have been creeping up since I have followed these matters, as reality and observation supplants wishful thinking and computer models, and I expect them to continue to do so.

We live our lives in an illusion of permanence, but in reality all around us is in constant flux. Just as trawler nets resurrect mammoth tusks and the artefacts of mesolithic life from the North Sea floor, revealing the past occupation of the now-submerged Doggerland that connected Britain to continental Europe, the trawlers of the future will snag their nets on the buildings, vehicles and other 21st century artefacts that will be abandoned as humanity retreats from the present coastline towards higher ground. I intend to enjoy our current coastline while it is still there – you should do the same!

Please share this post and sign up for my newsletter!

 I noted in the intro that my life circumstances are changing. After 15 years of solid corporate work I have left behind my salaryman life and am working to establish myself in self employment. My intention is to avoid the 9 to 5 for  at least a year while I build up a portfolio of income sources based on writing, teaching and science-related consulting and contracting work. This means that I will finally be able to finish the book projects that I have been working on over the last few years. Subscribe to my email list to receive updates and please share this post with your social media networks to help me build my audience.

If there is anything I can do in return to serve you, the audience, let me know through the comments or contact form.

Fear of the dark is a fundamental part of the human condition, dating back millions of years to when we were hominids on the African savannah, sleeping alongside nocturnal hunters capable of snatching us from our nest and dragging us, screaming, into the night. The nature of our fear of the dark has evolved with us. As the planet became crowded with people the risk of being eaten by a big cat or bear has receded for in most locations, only to be replaced by the fear of our fellow man.  And even when the logical mind knows that there are no wild animals or hostile humans there can still be a fear of supernatural menaces, such as ghosts or demons.  More commonly these three categories, animal, human, and spirit, merge together into a generalised fear of the dark.

I was raised several miles from the nearest street lamp in a land that had been purged of its last bear and wolf centuries before I was born. I also grew up before the invention of the head torch, when torches were long cylinders that ran on expensive batteries, so I spent a lot of time outdoors in the dark. Generally speaking I am completely relaxed when out in the wilds in the dark. There are no wild beasts capable of killing me and eating me. The chance of seeing another soul out in the dark is sufficiently low that it is reasonable to assume that there is nobody there. Even if I did bump into another person they would most likely be a fellow outdoorsman, who may well be more scared of me than I of them. Thanks to my  scientific outlook I don’t have to worry about malevolent spirits.

Normally when I sleep outdoors I am striking off into empty country, putting distance between myself and the rest of society before I lie down the ground, but this month’s outing was different.  I had identified a promising camping spot on Google Earth,  a flat bracken-covered area beside the river that was only two kilometres or so from my own house and within a few hundred metres of other houses.  It made me realise that there is a certain boldness required to sleep out in crowded conditions, that those who live in the crowded south are far braver in their micro-adventures than I.

When left my house at about 9 o’clock it felt weird to do so on foot rather than on wheels,  to be walking down a residential street carrying a rucsac that had clearly had a large sleeping mat attached to the side of it, past houses containing  people that I knew who could in principle have popped their heads out the door and asked questions like “Where are you off to?” or  “What are you up to?” forcing me to explain the strangeness of it all and have them look at me as if I was mad.

As I walked past the last of the houses I felt even more exposed. It seemed somehow important to avoid detection. As I walked in the night I thought first of how unlikely an encounter with another person would be, then that pre-programmed fear of the dark began to over-ride my logical brain. My mind wandered onto  how disturbing it would be to have an encounter with a dodgy character, and  began to serve up recollections that fuelled this anxiety.  Someone had once told me of driving on the road to Loch Ness when a  crazed girl with an axe, an escapee from an institution for the disturbed, stepped into the road in front of his car. What would I do if I met a girl with an axe?

The next thought to arrive was of a wandering eccentric on the island where I grew up. Known as The Buddha, he was the half-caste son of a local jazz singer and bore a striking resemblance to a young Colonel Gadaffi.  The Buddha roamed barefoot in the night and was rumoured to howl at the moon. They said that  he had pulled up the floorboards in the lounge of his council house and planted a tree, that he had taken too much acid on the hippy trail and fried his brain. Maybe he was enlightened, maybe he had more to teach than anyone else on that island. Come to think of it if he had  actually achieved enlightenment he would probably have been less quick to give chase to  taunting children. What would I do if I met the local equivalent of The Buddha? What if I was the local equivalent of The Buddha?

The night was light enough to see,  but not  necessarily light enough to be seen,  so when a car approached I put my torch beam on so they could see me. Soon after, just as the headlamps of another approaching car illuminated the stand of conifers to my left, I gladly cut off from the  main road and struck out across fields. This relieved any angst that had been building and I realised that I was in fact exploring my immediate environment for the first time. As a boy I knew every inch of land within a few miles of my house, yet this was the first time in  a decade of living here that I had ventured away from the road.  It felt good to be out exploring, but I still wasn’t far from people.  I kept my light off for as long as possible. When I had to put it on I tried to use the cover of the terrain to hide it from the few houses within view.  But I knew that any house would be full of people sitting watching TV. Even if they were to see a light they wouldn’t come out to investigate.

I walked through a gap in the conifers, beneath electricity pylons, skirting on animal tracks round blobs of thornbush,  then cut across another field before descending a  steep bank through birch and alder to the river. It was here that I felt that for the first time i was actually out doing something a little bit wild. To access my  proposed camping area I had to cross a burn. It proved to be quite difficult to navigate. There were fences on steep terrain either side, and many fallen trees that I had to wriggle around and slither over. Having done so I emerged from the trees into the bracken-covered clearing. It was rife with badgers, the sandy fluvial environment allowing them to dig extensive burrows. I saw their eyes highlighted slightly red in my torch beam in the distance and the flash of the their striped flanks as they scurried away. The spot was really only good for badgers.  What had looked as if it was a flat area beside a tree-lined river was in fact a steep bank,  only the lower and steeper part of which was wooded. The riverside camp spot  I had hoped for simply wasn’t there. It occurred to me that I could simply turn around,  pronounce my destination unsuitable and return home, saving my February sleep for another time.

But it would have taken me half an hour or so to get home and much less to find a flat spot and put up my tent and get into it. I ascended to the margins of a field where I used the cover of some gorse bushes to make sure that my lighting wouldn’t be visible to the nearest house, set up my tent and climbed inside. Once inside my tiny tent the beauty of being out and about was so obvious, though I was within earshot of road and railway, I was out, unconfined by walls. Pleasingly it began  to rain just as I finished pegging out my tent, and I enjoyed listening to the patter of raindrops on the canvas.

I read a few chapters of Peter Matthiessen’s ‘The Snow Leopard’ and made a few notes while enjoying a lightweight refreshment or two, then turned in.  For the first half I slept fully clothed with my summer bag over me as a duvet but when I awoke I was a little cool so I stripped down to my thermals and climbed inside my sleeping bag. Once warm I slept until 0800.

As I clambered out of my tent a flock of at least thirty pigeons took to the air on clattering wings. The sun was just below the horizon. I took my cooking gear and seat outside to prepare my breakfast, catching the sun’s first rays as my porridge bubbled. There was now something quite beautiful about this spot, something soothing in the contours of the land. The evolutionary biologist would argue that such an environment, a riverine valley with wooded patches, is fundamentally appealing to the human animal (unlike for example the unsettling interior of a deep dark forest). This is why we recreate elements of it in parks and landscaping, because it strikes some primitive chord, reminding us of the environment in which we evolved. As I sat and ate I heard a woodpecker tapping a tree and watched a pair of swans flew past, high above. Small birds chattered in the treetops. They were unidentifiable without a glass, though the call was chaffinch.

February’s outdoor sleep takes me up to 24 back to back months of sleeping outdoors once per month. A significant milestone, yet there was no euphoria whatsoever at having completed two years. The intention was always for this to be a practice, The benefit comes from the doing of it, not in having done it.