A Walk on Kerrera

Just a five minute ferry ride across from near Oban is the island of Kerrera. Delightful coast and moorland walking, fantastic views across to the Argyll mainland and out towards several Hebridean islands. Our walk took place on one of the hottest days I have ever known in Scotland. A perfect day for a walk.

We chose to do the southern circuit of the island, from the ferry landing, so that we might see Gylen Castle and the views towards Jura. The walk around the island is on a good track, with reasonable gradients. There are many reminders that Kerrera was once part of the kingdom of Norway. It is not difficult to imagine Viking longships slipping into the quiet coves of this island.

One of the first places you come to, walking southwards, is Horseshoe Bay, where in 1249 Alexander II of Scotland began his campaign to reclaim the Hebrides from Norwegian control. His campaign never got off the ground. He was taken ill and died in a field nearby; called Dail Righ, the king’s field to this day. In 1263, a fleet of one hundred and twenty longships, under the command of Norway’s King Haakon I, moored here on the way to defeat at the Battle of Largs.  Kerrera is so unspoiled it feels like it all happened yesterday.

At the next inlet, Little Horseshoe Bay is a row of
delightful cottages, once the homes of quarry workers, before becoming the centre of the local lobster industry.

A mile further on is Gylen Castle, standing gaunt and mysterious on its clifftop above the swirling waters of the Atlantic. Okay – I admit they weren’t swirling when we got there. In fact the Atlantic was still and blue. But the atmosphere of this old ruin sinks into your imagination. Gylen Castle is a place haunted by bloody deeds. It could have come straight out of a story by Scott, or Neil Munro, or John Buchan. It cries out to be in a novel. In 1647, it was besieged by Leslie’s covenanters, who forced the garrison of clan MacDougall to surrender, slaughtering all the defenders, except one youth, as they came out. The castle was put to the torch, and has been abandoned ever since. We sat for a while on the stony beach nearby. All was perfect peace. It felt like the edge of the world. Souls can grow calm in places like that.

Nearby we found refreshment at a tea garden before continuing our journey. They have a bunkhouse as well, if you are tempted to spend some time on this jewel in the Firth Of Lorne.

The western side of the island became wilder as we made our way northwards, the track narrower, but with superb views towards Mull and Morvern. At Bar-nam-Boc-Bay are the remains of what was once a port, a crossing point to Mull, a place where thousands of cattle a year were brought from the islands by drovers. You can almost hear the cry of the men and the lowing of the cattle amidst its ruins.

Here we began to cross the island, back to the ferry, taking in the highest grounds of the walk. This high stretch is called Am Maolan – the Wild Place – and wild it is, seeming far higher and more remote than its contours would suggest. A long descent brought us back to Kerrera’s Victorian schoolhouse, and to the four o’clock ferry, which we caught with just half a minute to spare. If you haven’t been to Kerrera, then I can recommend it. The memories are priceless. A day out of the madness that we call modern life.

Text and pictures (c) John Bainbridge 2019

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A Stroll near Oban

There’s a popular belief that you have to walk miles and go into the wild blue yonder to find interesting places. It’s not true of course. A short stroll can give you lots of history and some grand scenery as well.

Dunollie Castle (c) John Bainbridge 2019

Nor do you always need a footpath or bridleway. For this stroll we mostly used the road, a relatively quiet road too, for it comes to a dead end – though there are footpath continuations.

A week ago, we were in Oban in Scotland, a place very familiar to us. But we decided to walk along to Ganavan Bay, somewhere we hadn’t been for a few years. Now this is just the sort of stroll a tourist might do. But it’s interesting, for this couple of miles embraces hundreds of thousands of years of history, legend, folklore and wartime exploits.

The Dog Stone (c) John Bainbridge 2019

This walk below Dunollie Castle even has the blessing of Sir Walter Scott, who admired the scenery hereabouts “Nothing can be more wildly beautiful than the situation of Dunollie.”

He was right. So many times, returning on the ferry from Mull, I’ve admired Dunollie’s Tower as the ship comes into Oban harbour. Once it was green with ivy, though restoration has swept much of this away. There used to be a free path to the tower from the road, but this has now been closed – access is now from the more recent mansion of the Chief of the Clan MacDougall.  The original castle dates to at least 685 AD, though what you can see is probably mostly 14th century.

The Carriage Drive (c) John Bainbridge 2019

This house itself is now open to the public, housing a little museum regarding the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. When we went last week, it was also hosting an interesting display about Scottish Tinkers – more of which in another blog,

Dunollie House (c) John Bainbridge 2019

We approached the castle by way of its original carriage drive, now a pleasant green track which passes the great stone of clacha’ choin, or the Dog Stone, where legend has it that the giant Fingal used to chain up his equally huge hound Bran.

Oban Harbour (c) John Bainbridge 2019

From the castle we headed back along the road, admiring the views across to Kerrera, Morven and Mull. On the other side of the road are great rocky cliffs covered in trees. Search among them and you may discover the caves used by dwellers in the Stone Age, who lived by hunting in these woods and moors or scavenging on the beach. Many more caves were destroyed when the Victorians expanded the town of Oban. But the views across the seascape would have been as familiar to Stone Age men and women as they are to us.

(c) John Bainbridge 2019

And like us they would have seen deer as they walked along the edge of the sea.

The road winds round to Ganavan Bay, sadly partially disfigured by the kind of ghastly modern architecture that should never have got planning permission. But our thoughts were on the past. During World War Two, Ganavan was used as a base for the seaplanes that went far out into the Atlantic to guard shipping convoys and destroy enemy U-Boats. Only a simple signboard relates this history, though there is more information in the Oban Military Museum.

Dunollie Tower (c) John Bainbridge 2019

What a pity that Ganavan Bay couldn’t have been left in a state that might have been recognised by those wartime aviators. These luxury homes are just a massive intrusion and a disfigurement of a fine coastline.

Years ago we followed the coast from here for several miles on an extremely wet day. But this time we returned to Oban, via a cup of tea stop at Dunollie. Reflecting on so much Scottish history.

 

 

 

George Borrow’s Scottish Tour

George Borrow, the Victorian writer and traveller, had links with Scotland long before he undertook his great tour of the country in 1858. As a boy he had studied at the High School in Edinburgh during the winter months of 1813-14, arriving in the city with his father’s regiment, the West Norfolk Militia, garrisoning the Castle towards the close of the Napoleonic Wars.

Oban Harbour (c) John Bainbridge 2018

These were wild times for the young Borrow. When not at school he was caught up in boyish battles between the Old and New Towns. He made the acquaintance of the militia’s drummer boy, David Haggart, who deserted soon afterwards to become a notorious burglar and footpad, hanged in 1821 for killing his gaoler at Dumfries. Borrow spent much of his youth on the march with the regiment, giving him a taste for a life of vagabondage.

Despite an adventurous adulthood, spent living with Gypsies in England and touring Spain as a missionary – expeditions that inspired his books Lavengro and The Bible in Spain – he never forgot this youthful time in Scotland. In Lavengro he was to recall the excitement of crossing the Tweed into the northern kingdom and gaining a first view of the Highlands.

George Borrow visited Scotland in 1858, mourning the recent death of his beloved mother. He had found the grief difficult to cope with and his wife suggested a palliative walking tour ‘to recruit his health and spirit’. Even in middle age Borrow was an indefatigable tramper. In younger days he had walked the 112 miles from London to Norwich in a single day. In 1854 he had undertook a vast pedestrian exploration of Wales in search of that land’s ancient literature, immortalised in his classic book Wild Wales. This inveterate walker would often remark to his long-suffering wife ‘I’m just going for a walk’ and then disappear for weeks at a time.

Writing to a friend he was to recall that ‘in the latter part of the year ’58, I visited the Highlands and walked several hundred miles amongst them’. Borrow’s notebooks and letters suggest that he had thoughts of turning his experiences into a book, a companion to Wild Wales, but depression and the ill-fortune of a writing life meant the project was abandoned. It is, however, possible, using the notes he made, to recreate the route Borrow took during this extensive Scottish tour.

Borrow started out from his old stamping ground of Edinburgh, after coming much of the way by ship from Yarmouth. He was not particularly impressed. He wrote to his wife that the city was ‘wonderfully altered since I was here, and I don’t think for the better’. A winding route took him through Glasgow and on to Inverness.

These early days were not happy, for Borrow, argumentative at the best of times, had fallen foul of a ferryman whilst crossing the Firth. ‘The other day,’ he complained to his wife, ‘I was swindled out of a shilling by a villain to whom I had given it for change.’ Borrow had wanted to recourse to law but, he reported, the ferryman ‘had a clan about him…and I should have been outsworn’.

Once on the move, Borrow was much happier. He took a steamer from Inverness to Fort Augustus, amidst what he describes in his notebook as ‘a dreadful hurricane of wind and rain’. Despite the weather he was more in his element, meeting a woman from Dornoch who, though having no Gaelic herself, showed him a Gaelic book of spiritual songs by ‘one Robertson’ and talked to him about Alexander Cumming, ‘a fat blacksmith and great singer of Gaelic songs’. Borrow was a polyglot who could speak over twenty languages and had more than a nodding acquaintance with the Gaelic.

Melrose Abbey (c) John Bainbridge 2018

He spent four days in Fort Augustus, exploring the locality. He records that ‘the first day I passed over the Corryarrick…nearly up to my middle in snow. As soon as I had passed it I was in Badenoch. The road on the farther side was horrible, and I was obliged to wade several rivulets, one of which was very boisterous and nearly threw me down’.

On October 22nd Borrow left Oban for Mull which in his own words he ‘traversed in every direction’, commenting that the scenery was ‘very wild country, perhaps the wildest in Europe’. From his notes and letters it is clear that he climbed Ben More, where he gathered some moss for his step-daughter Henrietta, and visited Salen, Iona and Tobermory, whilst staying with Ann Petrie at the Mull Hotel for a shilling a night. On the conclusion to this visit, Borrow noted that ‘the best Scottish Gaelic is said to be spoken in the Isle of Mull, which, however, is very thinly inhabited’.

According to his notes, Borrow left Oban for Greenock via the ‘Mull of Cantire’ (Kintyre) finally arriving in Glasgow, the whole journey accomplished in one day on November 3rd, though by what means of transportation is unclear. From Glasgow he returned to Inverness by train.

This journey was the occasion of another Borrovian argument. Stretching his legs during a ten minute break in the journey at Huntly, the train went without him. ‘Purposely,’ he complained to his wife, almost as though the locomotive had a life of its own.

He telegraphed ahead to Keith so that his luggage might be rescued. A reply came that it could not be found. ‘I instantly said that I would bring an action against the company, and walked off to the town, where I stated the facts to a magistrate. He advised me to bring my action. I went back and found the people frightened. They telegraphed again – and the reply came back that the things were safe’. Borrow in full ire could be a threatening prospect, over six feet tall and trained in the art of boxing.

By 21st November Borrow was in Thurso, writing to his wife that since his last letter to her he had walked 160 miles. ‘I have been to Johnny Groat’s (sic). I had tolerably fine weather all the way, but within two or three miles of that place a terrible storm arose; the next day the country was covered with ice and snow. There is at present a kind of Greenland winter, colder almost than I ever knew the winter in Russia’.

After having to wait impatiently for a steamer, Borrow crossed over to Orkney where he visited the cathedral in Kirkwall and Hoy. Here he had a chance to revel in his status as a famous author. ‘I have been treated here with every kindness and civility. As soon as the people knew who I was they could scarcely make enough of me’. On the 28th November he crossed to Shetland, buying ‘shawls, veils and hosiery’ in a shop in Lerwick, before returning by boat to Aberdeen, then back to Inverness.

Sending on his possessions, Borrow undertook one last magnificent tramp through the Highlands, from Inverness to Dunkeld and then to Stirling. ‘I never enjoyed a walk more – the weather was tolerably fine, and I was amidst some of the finest scenery in the world’. From Stirling he took the fashionable walking tour into the Trossachs to see Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond ‘thirty-eight miles over horrible roads’. He had read about the area in the novels of Walter Scott, whose books he admired even though Borrow couldn’t ever stomach the promotion of what he called ‘Charlie-over-the-waterism’, being a confirmed anti-Jacobite.

At the end of his long journey, Borrow wrote to his wife ‘I have now seen the whole of Scotland that is worth seeing, and walked 600 miles; a person here must depend entirely upon himself and his own legs’.

He died at Oulton in Suffolk in 1881, mostly forgotten and with his books out of favour. Only with the renewed interest in country walking at the turn of the 20th century did George Borrow become popular again. It is one of the tragedies of walking literature that Borrow did not write a book on Scotland to match Wild Wales. His interest in the Scottish people and the Gaelic language might have provided a classic of Scottish travel.

I’ve written a short eBook about my interest in George Borrow (out now for just 99 pence/cents.) Here’s a link if you want to have a look.

 

And do visit the website of the George Borrow Society for lots more about this fascinating author at http://georgeborrow.org/home.html

The Battle of Glen Tilt

I’ve written before about the Scottish land access battles which eventually led – in 2003 – to their splendid Land Reform legislation, which allows responsible access to almost all Scottish land and waters. When I walk there I feel envious. We English, though we value the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (CRoW), very much recognise we are just – as usual – getting the crumbs from the table.

The Scottish land access was hard won over centuries.

I often think of it as we wander up Glen Tilt, one of our favourite Scottish glens. We were there the other day, a lovely fresh one for walking, passing the scene of the fight for Glen Tilt. Here are some extracts from the account in my book The Compleat Trespasser, which gives a history of the access battles on both sides of the border:

It was in Glen Tilt, a particularly scenic part of the Duke’s 200,000 acres, that one of the most memorable of Victorian access battles took place. The track through Glen Tilt, the only direct route from Blair to Braemar and Deeside, had been a drovers’ route for centuries and was much used by the growing number of recreational walkers, until the sixth duke began to forbid public access.

The first recorded conflict was in 1847 between the Duke and Professor Bayley Balfour and a party of botanical students from Edinburgh University, who were forced off the ancient track.

The professor and his students had set out from Braemar, observing the flora of the glen for some nine miles before they were challenged by a shooting party led by a Captain Oswald, a Captain Drummond and several ghillies and servants. The botanists were ordered to turn back to Braemar. They refused to do so and pointed out that the track was a public road. The walkers continued on their way until they encountered a locked gate at Tibby’s Lodge, where a ghillie evidently summoned up the Duke, who seems to have gone into a rage at their presence:

The Duke then said, “Well you must return; you don’t move an inch further, unless you break open the gate, which you may do, and take the consequences. Don’t spoil my walks with stamping. Come off that walk every one of you. Every step you take is a trespass – a new trespass. I shall not count it an additional trespass if you return on the main Walk.” Professor Bayley Balfour – “Oh, it’s a trespass then on the side walk, but not on the main walk.” The Duke – “I shall not waste any more words with you; you must return.”

Given that the passage through Glen Tilt is a considerable walking challenge, the trespassers refused to retreat back to Braemar, though they were forced off the track, as the press reported, and ‘in their desperation, they made their escape over a wall, hotly pursued by the Duke’s familiars.’

Unfortunately for Atholl, the case for access was taken up by the newly-created Edinburgh Society for the Preservation of Rights of Way, formed ‘for protecting the public against being robbed of its walks by private cunning and perseverance’. Three of its members, Alex Torrie, an advocate, Robert Cox, a Writer to the Signet, and Charles Law, a merchant, brought an action against the Duke in the Edinburgh Court of Session.

They argued that the road had been metalled a hundred years before and was kept in repair by statute labour. When the decision went against the duke, he appealed to the House of Lords, where he lost once again. While the case creaked through the Victorian legal system – mostly on Atholl’s argument that its pursuers had no right to bring the action – the Duke made headlines once more over a conflict with two Cambridge University students, who found themselves accosted by him and his retainers as they attempted to use the old drove road on a summer’s day in 1850. As one of the undergraduates told The Times:

On Friday, August 30^th, we shouldered our knapsacks and left Castletown of Braemar with the intention of walking to Blair Atholl through Glen Tilt, a distance of thirty miles. We might have gone by another road through Blairgowrie and Dunkeld, but as this road was upwards of sixty miles in length, and we were informed by all persons of whom we inquired at Braemar that though the Duke of Atholl, in spite of the decision of the Court of Session, was still endeavouring to stop all who made use of the bridle-road or footpath through Glen Tilt, yet he would not dare use violence if one insisted on a right of passage, we determined to take the shorter road.

It was a decision that was to bring them into conflict with the Duke himself, as one of the undergraduates recorded in his letter to The Times:

“You must go back! Why didn’t you stop sir?” (The Duke yelled). I again took out my pocket book, and preparing to write, said “What is your name?” “I am the Duke of Atholl” he replied, upon which we immediately tendered him our card (which he read and pocketed) and stated that we wished to proceed to Blair Atholl.  However he insisted that we must “go back” to which we urged that the Court of Session had decided that there was a right of way through Glen Tilt, and, therefore we could not be stopped. He replied angrily “It is not a public way, it is my private drive! You shan’t come down; the deer are coming, the deer are coming!” upon which we expressed our willingness to retire behind the lodge till his sport was ended, but he said we had been impertinent, we claimed it as a right, and we should not go down an inch.

Hereupon I said that in that case I certainly would go down, and if he stopped me it would be at his peril, upon which he became impatient, seized my companion by the collar of his coat, and attempted to force him back, refusing to listen to anything we had to say. This unseemly scene took place before the Duchess and another lady, for whose presence he had so little regard as to use oaths and other violence such as you would scarcely expect to hear from the lips of a gentleman. Finding his strength was of little avail, he shouted for help to his unwilling grooms, who were evidently enjoying the scene from a distance, and my companion, seeing opposition was useless against four men, allowed ourselves to be led away by a servant.

The students remained behind the lodge, being advised by a sympathetic highlander to wait around until dark and then sneak down to Blair Atholl. An attempt to escape up the brae was met by pursuit by two ghillies who at first threatened to take the students up as poachers, and then ordered them back to Braemar:

They told us that we would be closely watched, and if we stirred from the path we would be prosecuted for trespassing. On parting, they took care to tell us that it was not their fault; and I will do them justice to say that they did their work very reluctantly. Well now, there was nothing to do but to take the old ghillies advice, and wait till dark. The hills on each side were very steep, so that, besides the danger of being taken up for trespass, it would have been no easy matter to find our way to a village distant 10 miles. For four long hours, then, we were forced to walk up and down this bleak vale in order to ward off the chill autumn evening. When it became dark we proceeded on our way, which gave us no little trouble and uncertainty, as the darkness of the night was increased by the black shade of the pine forests. However, by midnight we reached the hotel, and soon recovered from the fatigue of a day, which, after all, gave us a good deal of amusement.

But this was not the end of the matter. Two days later The Times published a leader about the event. The editorial voice thundered:

The public have as perfect a right of “way” through the Vale of Glen Tilt as the Duke of Atholl has to the possession of any acre of the property which constitutes his estate. The right in the one case, as the title in the other, is the mere creature of law.

In point of fact there was not, at that time, a ruling on the right of way itself, only on the right of the Edinburgh Society to bring the matter to law. However, the Duke appeared to lose interest in the quarrel, perhaps not least because his actions led to him being lampooned in the magazine Punch and criticised in the correspondence columns of The Times.

Now, you can walk where you like in Glen Tilt.

My book The Compleat Trespasser is out now in paperback and as a Kindle Ebook. Just click on the link for more details and sales offers:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Compleat-Trespasser-Journeys-Forbidden-Britain-ebook/dp/B00CCQYAMO/ref=sr_1_11?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1535275804&sr=1-11&keywords=john+bainbridge

 

Text and pictures (c) John Bainbridge 2018

 

Walking and Robert Louis Stevenson

I’ve been thinking a lot about Robert Louis Stevenson lately, not least because I’ve been re-reading Kidnapped, that great novel of the Scottish landscape. Stevenson’s essay on walking is one of the most inspiring ever written – do see it out, it’s online. Although Stevenson spent his final years in Samoa, Scotland was never away from his thoughts. It was the major subject for much of his writing. Even Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, though nominally set in London, gets its root inspiration from the streets, wynds and closes of Edinburgh.

Even after a hard day’s tramping, when we’re in Pitlochry, we usually walk up through the fields towards Moulin, taking the path past the Caisteal Dubh, the Black Castle, with such fine views up towards Ben Vrackie.

This time we extended the little ramble to Edradour (site of the smallest whisky distillery in Scotland – a bit lost on me as I only drink shandy!), so that we could follow the lane around to Kinnaird, where Stevenson lived for a while in the summer of 1881.

Stevenson’s Home at Kinnaird (c) John Bainbridge 2018

He enjoyed his time in Kinnaird. He wrote in a letter to Sidney Colvin:

We have a lovely spot here: a little glen with a burn, a wonderful burn, gold and green and snow-white, singing loud and low in different steps of its career, now pouring over miniature crags, now fretting itself to death in a maze of rocky stairs and pots; never was so sweet a little river. Behind, great purple moorlands reaching to Ben Vrackie. Hunger lives here, alone with larks and sheep. Sweet spot, sweet spot.

While staying at his cottage, Stevenson wrote two terrific short stories, Thrawn Janet and  The Merry Men. He also thought out aspects of a novel which, in time, became The Master of Ballantrae. In his essay Beggars, Stevenson tells us how he encountered a tinker down by the Kinnaird Burn. He wrote:

You should have heard him speak of what he loved; of the tent pitched beside the talking water; of the stars overhead at night; of the blest return of morning, the peep of day over the moors, the awaking birds among the birches; how he abhorred the long winter shut in cities; and with what delight, at the return of the spring, he once more pitched his camp in the living out-of-doors…

Rosebay Willowherb by a path Stevenson would have known.

It was delightful walking these paths he would have known so well, seeing scenes that are now so familiar to me. We walked down a path, through the gloaming, along a hedge filled with Rosebay Willowherb, looking at the broad view over that grand landscape.

Old Woodland at Rannoch

It’s interesting seeking out bits of Scotland’s Old Caledonian Forest. Not that there’s a lot left, but what there is is worth seeing. Much has vanished entirely, more has been well-hidden by the conifers of the Forestry Commission and independent foresters.

Woods near Carie (c) John Bainbridge 2018

But still interesting to find those traces…

After our walk from Kinlochleven up to Craig Varr (see last blog), we drove round the south side of Loch Rannoch to the Forestry Commission’s car park at Carie. A good and pretty start to forest walks, with a rather splendid campsite.

A magnificent wooden footbridge led to a walk up through the wood. Certainly some older hardwood trees at the start, but as you get higher you find yourself amid the same old conifers – though relieved by lovely views up towards Schiehallion.

We were amused by the “grave” of the unknown forester – glad to see the guys have a sense of humour!

Much of the original Caledonian Forest around here was sacrificed after the Battle of Culloden in 1746, under the powers of the Forfeited Estates Commission, who built a sawmill here to take down the trees.

There are some very lovely trees left, descendants of the originals, but you have to seek them out.

It was hereabout that fugitive Jacobites hid after Culloden – and wild country it must have been. Reputedly, the last Scottish wolf perished hereabouts too. There are capercaillie, deer and red squirrels resident, though we didn’t see any, but then it was the middle of the day.

“Grave” of the Unknown Forester (c) John Bainbridge 2018

We drove down to Aberfeldy afterward, passing through the little settlement of Dull (twinned with Boring, Oregon) as we went.

This brief stroll inspired a lot of thoughts about Forestry along the way.

But I’ll save those for the next blog.