Day
19

INCHREE

TO

GLEN NEVIS

It only rains twice in Fort William – October to May, and June to September.

What comes after two straight days of rain in Fort William? Monday morning.

What do you call two weeks of rain in Fort William? An Indian summer.

How do the locals predict the weather in Fort William? If you can see Ben Nevis, it’s going to rain. If you can’t see Ben Nevis, it’s raining.

We had expected a cooked breakfast at Inchree, but it turned out to be continental. We had been so excited about booking a room we had not thought to enquire. Nevertheless, there was plenty of it – Mick ate two bowls of cereal, six rounds of toast and stuffed his pockets with cereal bars. He would have eaten the peanut butter had I not stopped him. He’s allergic to peanuts but was prepared to risk anaphylactic shock if it meant getting his money’s worth.

We had intended this to be a rest day, but having caved in early the previous day after breakfast we retrieved our things from the drying room and set off on the final 12-mile ride into Fort William. Need I bother say it was still raining? It may well be true, as the Scottish Tourist Board claims, that it doesn’t always rain in Scotland, and that many places in Scotland are drier than England, but they are all on the east coast. The west coast of Scotland, for all its gorgeous beauty, is undeniably wet. It’s the mountains that do it – when the warm air of the Gulf Stream meets the top of them, the air condenses and down comes the wet stuff. And Fort William is the wettest place on the west coast, in an area with some pretty strong competition, because it is right under a large mountain. Well, large by British standards anyway. All of Britain’s mountains are pretty tiny in comparison to the world’s great mountain ranges. The summit of Everest sits at more than 29,000 feet. Ben Nevis, at 4,408 feet, wouldn’t even reach up to Mount Everest’s knees and would be barely past its ankles. Even the Lesser Himalayas are higher than the dear old Ben. Alan Dawson observed in The Relative Hills of Britain that: ‘Many other countries not only have higher mountains, they also have roads, railways, hotels, restaurants, towns and even capital cities that are far higher than any mountain in Britain.’

Ben Nevis still looked pretty big to me, though, and cold – even in May there was snow on the summit, which often stays there all year round. However, despite being the highest mountain in the British Isles, it is nowhere near the most challenging to climb. That accolade would probably go to Sgurr Dearg in the Black Cuillin range, in Skye, which is topped by the Inaccessible Pinnacle or ‘In Pin’. It more or less does what it says on the tin, although, like Everest, it gets less inaccessible with every passing year. Everest is so busy these days that there is often a queue to get to the summit.

‘After you.’

‘No, no, after you.’

Someone at the back yells: ‘Keep moving you lot!’

I hear there are plans for a little cafe up there, and possibly a vernacular railway for people who can’t be bothered to go the effort of climbing it.

Ben Nevis has a well-laid footpath, which makes the mountain both easy and popular to climb. When we had headed to Scotland the previous summer, our friend Frank (he who kindly drove us to the start of this torturous ride) and who is a keen hillwalker, scoffed at the tourist path and suggested an alternative route which seemed to involve some precipitous climbs and scrambles up Ben’s north face. I wasn’t keen. It is a fact that, in the northern hemisphere, the north face is always the hardest route. North face of Everest, north face of the Eiger; it’s always the worst, the coldest, harshest side of the mountain. The trouble is that what Frank considers an easy climb has Mick and I quaking in our boots. The hills of Scotland are filled with places to which we have given our own epithets: cry-baby-bend, scaredy-cat-ridge, chicken-out-corner, brown-pants-summit (that was a particularly bad day).

So, when we climbed Ben Nevis a couple of years previously, we had stuck to the main route. Despite the numbers of people on the path, we had thoroughly enjoyed our mountain ascent. It still felt pretty special at the top, knowing we were the highest people in the British Isles, if only for a few moments. It was chuffing cold up there, though, and we were very glad of the celebratory nips of whisky we had brought with us to toast our achievement. It took us all day to complete the ascent and descent, and we thought we had done pretty well. Until we heard about Clement Wragge.

Clement Wragge was something of an eccentric. He was born in 1852 and initially studied law at Lincoln’s Inn. When he was twenty-two he sailed to Sydney on a windjammer, after which he worked his way across to San Francisco and Salt Lake City where he became rather keen on Mormonism – apparently the polygamy bit appealed to him. He headed back to England in 1878, where he lived until 1883, when, after inheriting a considerable amount of money, he returned to Australia. Down Under he established two observatories, founded the Royal Meteorological Society of Australia, set up a network of weather stations and invented the convention of naming cyclones – giving them the names of unpopular politicians. He could then amuse himself by announcing that so-and-so was currently wandering around aimlessly around the Pacific or so-and-so was once again causing distress. Later, when he retired, he moved to New Zealand, wrote a report on caterpillars and wasps for the government in Rarotonga, and toured extensively through India. When he died at the age of seventy he was working on a publication on the petroglyphs of Easter Island on which, of course, he was an expert.

He is relevant here because, while living in England, he offered his services to the Scottish Meteorological Society, which was drawing up plans to site a mountain observatory on the summit of Ben Nevis. From June until the middle of October 1881, Clement Wragge climbed the mountain every single day. He would set off at 4.30 a.m., take readings on the way up, stay on the summit for two hours before descending again, reaching sea level at 3.30 p.m. Meanwhile, Mrs Wragge was at the bottom making simultaneous observations, from five o’clock in the morning until six o’clock at night. In the summer of 1882 he was at it again, thankfully his wife, who was now heavily pregnant, was not required, as he used two assistants instead. Although he received a medal from the Scottish Meteorological Society for his efforts, when he applied for the post of superintendant of the observatory when it opened in 1883 he did not get it, despite being the obvious choice. He does not appear to have been the easiest chap to get along with, so perhaps that was the reason.

The observatory was used for twenty years before it closed in 1904. The ruins are still there at the summit, and on top of the tower of the observatory is a shelter for people caught out in inclement weather. A few years ago a group of volunteers were clearing stones and generally having a bit of a tidy-up at the summit when they discovered under a pile of stones – a piano. Honest, no kidding. One of the volunteers was reported as saying: ‘We have a constant battle against litter being left on Britain’s highest mountain – but this elevates being a litter lout sky high into a completely different category.’

Later, a 64-year-old former Highland Games athlete confessed he had carried the instrument up to the top of Ben Nevis in 1971 where he had played ‘Scotland the Brave’, much to the enjoyment of some Norwegian tourists who had started dancing. Sounds like everyone had a jolly good time. Apparently he had intended to bring it down from the mountain at a later date but had been unable to find it, although how you lose a 226-lb instrument on the top of a mountain beats me.

We cycled along the road that skirts the bottom of Ben Nevis. There was no prospect of us camping today; we definitely required another drying room. So we passed by the Glen Nevis campsite and made for the youth hostel further up the glen, and right opposite the River Nevis and the foot of the mountain. We did not see many tourists heading up the footpath today. As we stood waiting to book in, a group of half a dozen young walkers staggered into reception – and I thought we were wet. They were walking the West Highland Way and had just completed the 16-mile section from Kinlochleven. Foolhardy youths that they were, they had not dressed suitably for Fort William weather and were soaked to the skin and shivering, one or two of them looking like they were verging on hypothermic. The warden, obviously used to this type of thing, fetched some blankets for them to wrap themselves up in. I only just managed to resist the urge to say to them in a mumsy way: ‘For goodness sake! You can see it’s raining. Why on earth didn’t you wear a coat?’

There were quite a few other cyclists in the hostel. One chap was cycling the four corners of Britain: the Lizard, Land’s End, John o’Groats and Cape Wrath. I thought it would be interesting to chat and compare notes. Too late, I realised my mistake. He was disdainful of our amateurish and meandering cycling style.

‘Day nineteen?’ he said incredulously. ‘You should be on your way back by now. I’m on day ten.’

Yeah, yeah, bully for you. Then it was the bikes.

‘What are you riding?’ he asked.

‘Well duh! A bicycle, stupid!’ I bit my tongue and said, ‘A Dawes.’

‘Uh huh, OK, what, a Dawes Galaxy?’

‘No, don’t think so; not sure what it is, I’ve had it for years,’ I muttered, looking around frantically to see why Mick hadn’t rescued me. He was sat at the other end of the room with his head carefully buried behind a newspaper. Traitor.

‘Oh really,’ he drawled. ‘I’m riding a Cannondale Tesoro with Rohloff shifters and derailleur and Schwalbe tyres. It comes with a Knob chainring; I had Dickhead spokes fitted specially, and the saddle is a limited edition from Prickland.’

Or something like that, I had stopped listening properly. He rambled on for a bit and then looked at me. I realised he was expecting me to make a response.

‘Sorry, er… didn’t quite catch that.’

‘I said, what GPS are you using? I’ve got the latest model, its got Cod enabling connectivity and Triple Three Way P.U.S. technology. It measures altitude, longitude, attitude and fortitude… ’

‘We don’t have a GPS, it’s not necessary. I have torn some pages out of an atlas and marked the route with a highlighter pen,’ I said, haughtily. ‘And so far it has worked perfectly well, we have not got lost at all.’

Mick at this point couldn’t help himself and burst out laughing. I glared at him.

We had a mission to complete so we left Cycling Bore caressing his GPS and set off in the rain to trek the 3 miles into Fort William. On the way into town we passed a huge erratic boulder, Samuel’s Stone or the Wishing Stone. There are many stories and legends attached to this stone, one of which is that it was placed there to commemorate a victory by a local chieftain. I thought it more likely to have been dropped by a bloody great glacier myself.

We were heading into Fort William in search of pies. Not just any old pies, mind you, these were haggis pies from the multi-prizewinning Nevis ‘Say Aye Tae a Pie’ Bakery. These pies were worth travelling for. The staff in the pie shop didn’t seem to mind us standing in there dripping on the floor while we munched on them.

‘It’s wet today,’ I said conversationally.

‘Aye,’ said the woman behind the counter.

She didn’t elaborate, and it then occurred to me that saying, ‘it’s wet today’ in Fort William was like saying ‘it’s sunny today’ while standing in the middle of the Sahara Desert. A passing camel herder isn’t going to look up at the burning sky and reply,

‘Well yes it is rather warm, but I’ve checked the weather forecast and tomorrow looks like it will be cloudy, with maybe a touch of frost in the morning and possibly a shower or two on higher ground.’ No, he will look thoroughly unsurprised and say ‘aye’ in Arabic. The woman in the bakery was right, there was nothing more to be said.

Being English I was used to talking about the weather. As everybody knows, we talk about it an awful lot. When we see a neighbour in the street we wave and say:

‘Morning! Lovely day today!’ or ‘I don’t believe it’s as cold as it was yesterday!’

In shops, on the bus, when we are stood around the coffee machine at work, in fact, whenever we are required to make small talk, the weather is the subject of choice. We avidly watch the forecasts then complain because they are wrong, we even listen to the shipping forecast for pleasure. English language courses have whole sections devoted to talking about the weather, complete with weather vocabulary lists, and rightly so. It is pretty hard to get along in England unless you can talk about the weather ad infinitum. As Dr Johnson observed: ‘When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.’ The reason, of course, is that it is always doing something unexpected, or something new. The weather changes not even by the day, but by the hour. One minute it’s sunny, the next it’s hailstones. Blizzards, floods, heatwaves – anything can happen – and that’s just in July. When we do get a really extreme weather event (extreme for England anyway), perhaps a dusting of snow or a night when the temperature drops below zero, we get all excited, stock up on bags of sugar and packets of candles, and start talking about the Blitz spirit. Oh yes, we English do like our weather.

When we had feasted on as many haggis pies as we could force down, we waddled across the road to the Grog & Gruel, Fort William’s real ale pub. Mick tried the Williams Gold and I tried the Red from the same brewery, based in Alloa. Mick enjoyed his, a golden citrusy beer and I very much liked the Red, a dark, ruby beer with a nutty flavour. We were still freezing cold and wet, though. A couple of chaps sitting near the radiator could see we were in trouble and kindly gave up their seats. We clung to the pipes for a while before heading out into the rain to catch the bus back to the hostel.

Later that evening I was curled up in an armchair in the sitting room when Mick came in. I could tell by his face that something was wrong.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘It’s my feet,’ he said mournfully. ‘I think I have trenchfoot. Two of my toenails have fallen off.’

 

 

Stats
Miles: 12
Total miles: 866
Pints of beer (each): 4
Soakings: A billion
Toenails lost: 2 (both Mick’s)