Day 08 – And they’re off!!
People started moving around at about seven a.m. so I started to make a move too, whereupon Giles innocently announced “Good, we can make as much noise as we like now”.
Judith was having breakfast in the transport café and this had been my second choice, but I’d arranged an even better alternative by having breakfast with Ali and co in the house. I now see that Neil has a recumbent bicycle and I wish I’d known at the time, I’d loved to have seen it and maybe cycled over to Tromie Bridge on it…..
A leisurely breakfast whilst being waited on hand and foot by Ali didn’t seem to take any longer than the DIY breakfasts the others had in the hostel, and we all left the starting gate at the same time. The others got a good lead in the main street whilst I posted a parcel home and got some provisions in the Co-op, but there was a bit of confusion up ahead (perhaps they couldn’t resist a diversion to investigate the enigmatic Aqua Theatre) which allowed me to catch up at the first mark. Accelerating away out of the first turn onto the cycle track John Hutchinson and I put on a good lead which we held until well into Glen Feshie.
As shown on the map there’s a cycle track from Newtonmore to Kingussie (pronounced Kin......... something or other), and whilst it does run parallel to the road, the road is far enough away and is quiet enough that it’s quite pleasant when in good company. John had been the person who’d arranged the mini bus from Loch Ailort to Glenuig and Acharacle on my first Challenge, so whilst I’m grateful for the mini bus I still wince at the scepticism I was greeted with. “Are you getting off at Glenuig? You’d better be a ****** good hillwalker”. Luckily I was used to this sort of thing as part of my family is from Yorkshire, so I was able to parry with “Is this the bus for Montrose?” Obviously the wrong part of the family; it went down like a lead balloon.
At Kingussie I would have explored the cream cake shops, but John being made of sterner stuff - he’d already threatened to go across the top of the Caingorms despite the deep snow - took us hard right towards Ruthven Barracks and Tromie Bridge.
At Tromie Bridge we left the road and followed forest tracks. A group of DoE teenagers peered at us through the rain wondering at our cheerfulness, whilst we peered back wondering at their sadness - surely walking in Glen Tromie beats role play in business studies?
It was good being with someone who claimed to know the way, and we made good speed through a pine forest and then stopped for lunch beside a river near Baileguish. In the distance a rescue helicopter moved up Glen Feshie with the Cairngorms forming an austere backdrop. This was the cue for John, a former member of the mountain rescue services in The Lakes, to launch into a series of increasingly terrifying tales about how a day in the hills can all go horribly wrong, and whilst it didn’t put me off my lunch (I’d just bought fresh provisions) it did give me a great excuse for avoiding anything too exciting between Glen Feshie and the coast.
Pushing on we followed tracks through more forest and then dropped down to a bridge over the River Feshie.
Glen Feshie is the start of a natural route around the southern edge of the Cairngorms, and the bad weather was encouraging a lot of Challengers to take this route rather than go over the top. We fell in with a father and son (Edwin & Alistair Hunt?) from Cheltenham making their way up the glen.
A sort of Challenge leap frog now took place. I pulled away from the other three and then found a beach on the side of the river where I had an afternoon snack. John joined me but the other two pushed on. Then John left and three others passed me. Then a chap from York (James Butler?) arrived and I walked with him up to the bothy.
The bothy was cold and damp, and whilst it seemed reasonably big now, there were still several hours left in the day for other Challengers to turn up, and then there was the party of DoE kids making their way here; so whilst some of the other Challengers jealously staked their sleeping areas James and I pushed on up the glen. Just before the ancient Caledonian Pines stopped I turned into the trees and pitched the tent in a hollow. At this point in the glen high cliffs soared upwards on either side, the wind shooshed in the tree-tops, and the river could be heard in the distance. A woman in the bothy who’d been struggling with the Challenge had jettisoned a lot of her gear, including her tent. I could think of at least two reasons not to do that.
Dahl Makhani with boil in the bag rice from Laggan Stores for dinner. One bag of rice disappeared quickly, so I made some noodles too. Then it was custard, tea and biscuits and a book, also from Laggan stores. If the Laggan Stores rice was a great success the book certainly wasn’t. A collection of short stories by Scottish authors, it made me wonder (not without irony) why people write such rubbish, and more to the point, why people read such stuff. Having nothing else to read except my train tickets home I carried on reading.
A few days later when passing a paper recycling bin I was sorely tempted to throw it in, but a lifelong respect for books stopped me and instead I carried it all the way to Montrose where I craftily swapped it for John Buchan’s Greenmantle in the campsite reception. Imagine my despair on settling down into my ten hour train ride home to find that this famous novel was just a load of improbable jingoistic propaganda. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how good it felt to throw it in the recycling bin at home, so all was not lost.
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