Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

Wednesday, August 13th:

After spending a long and largely sunny weekend visiting folk in Éire (I did manage to get up to the top of a hill so that there might more on that later), it is time to pick up the next installment of that Hebridean trip report. The start to that Wednesday was to be just as idyllic as the weather that we have been enjoying all week. Having had a good satisfying hike the day before meant that I was far from being in "rushing-about" mode. That walk hadn’t just allowed me to enjoy wonderful countryside in good weather but it also planted in me an idea for a another walk: Àird a’ Mhulaidh to Miabhaig and Ard Aisaig (anglicised to Ardvourlie, Meavaig and Ardhasaig, respectively).

So, it was a case of embarking on another bus journey, this time taking me from Tarbert to Àird a’ Mhulaidh, and I was set to start my trek though the heart of some expansive hill country. In contrast to the clear blue skies over Tarbert, the hills near Àird a’ Mhulaidh had gone and accumulated nearly enough cloud to block out the sun for a goodly portion of the time. It is true to say that it get through at times but I had to leave the larger remnants of blue sky after me as I left Loch Shìphoirt (in English: Loch Seaforth); the sea loch in question remained well lit by the sun for as long as I had a view of it on looking behind me.

Conditions remained dry with the sun poking out to stop me in my tracks for a spot of photography and I had a good track underfoot all of the way to Bealach na hUamha. The gradient was gentle too up to the bealach but my legs were in for more testing action as I dropped down to ford Abhainn Langadail and climbed back out again, along the lower slopes of Stuabhal. After the bealach the track had by now become a path but this was largely clear apart from a boggy stretch on the western backs of Abhainn Langadail. On the descent, there were ample opportunities to peer at Loch Langabhat (there are a few of these in the Western Isles, apparently) to the north and Harris’ hilly heartlands to the south.

The sky grew steadily darker as I made my ascent to the saddle between Rapaire and Stuabhal but things did brighten up again while I took a rest on that bealach. It afforded me one last glimpse of Loch Shìphoirt in the distance, which had been growing smaller all of the way to Bealach na hUamha before I lost it on dropping into the glen for that river crossing. To the west, a myriad of rocky hills lay gleaming in bright sunshine. Stuabhal looked reachable from the saddle but I had enough on my plate and left it for another day.

After an ascent, it was time to descend again. Clouds hid the sun away while a certain dampness began pervade the air as I made my way down to Loch Chleistir. Waterproofs were needed but the rain wasn’t too unpleasant at all. It was only to be a light shower and I was to meet a few of those before I reached Miabhaig. From Loch Chleistir, I rounded Creag Chleisitir to drop into Gleann Stuladail to meet a vehicle track near Loch Bhoisimid where some folk were out fishing. A modicum of height was gained after I had past Lochan an Fheoir. The muggy atmosphere meant that my waterproofs remained off as much as possible and it was ideal for midges whose attentions meant that I kept moving as much as I could. The blunt nose of Sron Scourst loomed ahead and I was up by its flank and attendant loch soon enough.

By now, I was well along Gleann Mhiabhaig and progress was being restrained. There was good reason: the sun was out while the showers stayed away so the ever widening vistas were made to look as well as they ought to appear. There was to be one last light rain shower before I got to the B887 and none disturbed me after that. In fact, the evening was to be of the type that keeps on drawing back me to Scotland time after time.

Once on tarmac again, I took a small break before setting off for Ard Aisaig. I had it in mind to catch the last bus from there back to Tarbert but that plan got scuppered by a certain tardiness induced by my surroundings. Rushing about on an idyllic evening like what I had would have been silly anyway; it’s so much better to take your time when everything is looking its best. My walk might have been longer but I wouldn’t have wanted to be indoors when things were as good as they were.

My trek didn’t take me past the collection of houses that is Miabhaig because I would have been needing to head towards Huisinis to pass them and it was a diversion that I was not unhappy not to make, even if it might have revealed new sights to me. In any event, I wasn’t to be disappointed by the views over Loch Mhiabhaig together with those both along and across Loch a’ Siar (West Loch Tarbert to some) that I did see. They kept me entertained to the point that any displeasure from road walking was the last thing on my mind. I might have begun to tire on the final approach to Tarbert but fact that the evening wasn’t running out of steam easily kept me going until I reached where I was staying. I could have been forgiven for staying out a little longer than I did but I had my fill. Sometimes, it’s best to be grateful rather than greedy.

Over the past few weeks, I have been engaging in a spot of website tuning from time to time. There has been the occasional tweak to appearances but it’s mainly been about tweaking things behind the scenes. There is always plenty of that to be done but, sometimes, a complete redesign can be an unavoidable and, if you’re doing it yourself like I would be, time consuming operation. The last one was a few years ago and there’s plenty of life in what I have so I’ll continue to tweak and improve it as long as I can.

If you are a regular visitor, you may have noticed that the masthead image of the site has changed. Travelling on ferries like I did last month meant that a trap was set for me: ending up with photos of slivers of land dividing land from sea. Even with my alleged (D)SLR-wielding sophistication, such is the beauty of sunlit green land juxtaposed against blue sky and sea that it can happen to me too. Photos like those do have their uses though and they are perfect for creating masthead images like what you see above. A spot of cropping in Photoshop Elements followed by some tweaking of levels, curves and colours is just what’s needed to get the required results.

Speaking of processing photos, it’s probably a good time to look at my photo gallery and freshen it up with some new images and do a spot of pruning too. I am always finding things to add to the blog so it’s too easy to neglect the site’s initial raison d’être. I have some ideas in mind for bigger changes to the photo gallery but I’ll let them develop before anything happens.

Update, 2008-09-29: That evolution remains ongoing and users of Firefox, Safari and Chrome should notice that most corners are now rounded. Visitors with Internet Explorer and Opera will not see any rounding because this is an aspect of CSS3 that is only partially implemented for now. It’d be very nice if it gained more widespread implementation but graceful degradation will do for now. Any other tweaks should be seen by all.

Tuesday, August 12th:

It’s been a while since the last installation of my Hebridean trip report so it’s about time that this made its appearance. Picking which photos to include did cause some of the delay and I hope that I picked the best ones; there were many contenders of equal quality and it was hard to select one over another. The cause was that the Tuesday of the week of my visit was blessed with marvellous weather and the countryside looked well in the glorious sunshine.

Monday’s weather was something of a mixture without coming close to being a chore to bear. I did meet up with some rain but there were spells of blue skies and sunshine to be had at times too. Yes, cloud abounded but there was no misery. Tuesday was to improve on this and I arose to the sight of clear blue skies and sunshine. Not knowing whether it would last caused me to take the camera on a short sortie before breakfast. I need not have worried because a glorious day was ahead of me. It might have clouded over later on but the rain stayed away and I got in an excellent stroll.

After a good breakfast, I caught a bus to Àird a’ Mhulaidh (Ardvourlie in English) from where I was going to walk to Tarbert by way of the Harris Walkway or Frith-rathad na Hearadh. As it happened, I disembarked from the bus a bit further on than I had intended but that was fortuitous: I spotted a promising opportunity for a walk on the day after. Though I was sorely tempted by the prospect of crossing through the hills to Miabhaig (anglicised to Meavaig), a certain reality made me stick to my planned course.

That reality was the fact that I was carrying everything for week with me that day. For my other walks, I was able to lighten the load on my back but this was the one day where that wasn’t possible. The result was that I was travelling perceptibly slower than I otherwise would, something that echoes a sentiment expressed by Andy Howell after his recent trek in the Pyrenees. Maybe I need to get in some training for walking with heavy but still sensible (15-20 kg) loads…

So, adapting a pace that was more akin to a tortoise than a hare, I made my way along the shores of Loch Shìphoirt (or Seaforth). The load on my back wasn’t the only thing that was slowing me down: the day couldn’t have been better and the scenery took on a most appealing aspect. Eilean Shìphoirt (Seaforth Island) looked far more lofty than its 217 m summit would suggest. It was all in the steepness and that is very much a feature of Harris. The only fly in the ointment was I was walking on tarmac and was to continue along the A859 until I got past the bridge over Abhainn Scaladail. Thankfully, the road wasn’t that busy at all and I was well away from it by the time that the traffic from the Uig ferry started to make its way north from Tarbert.

On my OS Explorer, the track that I was to follow was merely an undistinguished dotted line, one of many depicted on Scotland’s walking maps. It gave me no hint that this was the start point for the Harris Walkway that officially opened by Cameron McNeish in 2001. Of course, signs on the ground gave the game away. The track itself cut an obvious line up the side of Caisteal Ard and Cleit Ard as it carried on my ascent from the bridge. It may have been the post road from Stornoway, was very much a green lane and was boggy over a lot of its length with a good deal of water underfoot at times. Given the summer that we got this year, that should be no surprise and surface water is a minor perturbation for a hill walker anyway.

Gaining height allowed me wider views and they continued to vary as I plied my way back to the A859 again. Sea lochs, steep-sided hills and freshwater lochans were all part of the fare on offer. Views of An Cliseam (the Clisham) abounded too as I took my time to enjoy my good fortune and took advantage of any benches that I found too. I didn’t know how long it would last but there was no sign of dramatic change as I mounted saddle between Cleit Ard and Gormul Màraig.

On returning to the A859, the skies became cloudier but the morning was good and there was sign of rain. I soon reached my final escape from the A859, until I reached Tarbert, that is. I lost height quickly on the minor road to Màraig (Maruig) and Reinigeadal (Rhenigadale). It was only in recent years that it was extended to the latter, which until then was only reachable on paths and tracks up. There is a Gatliff hostel at Reinigeadal which sounds a wonderful prospect once you strike up the trust to depend on finding a bed there without booking ahead. I suppose that’s easily achievable if you travel in the low season and it might not be too chancy in the summer either. Nevertheless, I’d rather have some sort of shelter with me just in case…

After losing all that height, I soon lost the tarmac at a switchback bend in the road to start on another off-road section of the Harris Walkway. It’s 6km could be done much faster than the time that I took over it but I had a heavy load and there was some wonderful countryside to be savoured. Even with the pervasive cloud hiding the sun on me, it still looked glorious. You couldn’t miss the cloud-free top of An Cliseam even if it was one of many of its kind, all of them equally impressive in appearance. As I made the gradual ascent of Bràigh an Ruisg, some walkers got out of a car on the road that I had left to walk the very same track. As I took a break for some food and to enjoy the views, they passed me, the only other walkers that I’d seen all day. I was happy to let them go on ahead of me; the last you want in places as nice as this is to feel as if you are some kind of line of traffic, especially when there was no need for it.

Going up and over Bràigh an Ruisg was the cause of my losing one set of views for me to get others in their place. For a short while, the sun got free from its cloudy prison and a camera was set into action before I left An Cliseam after me. One I got down from the bealach, the terrain was to be flatter as I bimbled by the lochans along the floor of Gleann Lacasdail, stopping at times to take in what was around me. Blue sky and sun still broke through but cloud was increasing all the while.

It didn’t take too long before the Tarbert-Scalpay road started to come into view and the sight of a goodly number of cars and other vehicles going along it was not what I wanted to see. Nevertheless, by the time I overcame the final spot of ascent to reach this road near Urgha, things had quietened down for a none too taxing tramp to Tarbert. Walking on a hard surface like tarmac is rarely pleasant when carrying a heavy load but having to remain alert for traffic adds to any discomfiture. I was therefore very thankful to have missed the earlier traffic.

Tarbert was reached in good time so I had the opportunity for a rest at my accommodation for the next two nights before pottering out for a restorative meal. After that, I took the chance to amble about the place where I was to spend two nights without the encumbrance of a heavy pack. That liberation from having to carry everything with me was to find use for my walk next day too. However, that’ll be something for the next post in the series.

English may pervade all of the U.K. these days but other languages live on too and the names of places and landscape features like hills betray the influence of those non-English languages and cultures during its history. Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Norse names have remained in existence, even if they have morphed over the years. That of course presents that challenge of pronouncing whatever a name might be and, even in England, that’s not always a straightforward matter. The usual rules do not always apply.

In Wales and Scotland, the linguistic rules of the likes of Scots Gaelic and Welsh might be very regular but you need to know them and it can be hard to discern and remember them all. Welsh is (in)famous its additional consonants and vowel sounds but the same comment applies very much to the Gaelic languages too. For some reason, I used to think that Irish was far more accessible to anglophones until it dawned on me what we do with vowel sounds. When you don’t know those rules, personal forenames like Aoife, Eoin, Eimear and so on become a minefield. My schooling has meant that pronouncing those names is second nature to me, so much so that I didn’t realise the traps until relatively recently.

I myself can get caught in linguistic tarpits too. The chasm that exists between Scots Gaelic and Irish is one that really comes to mind and, while visiting the Western Isles, I must admit to sticking with anglicised names like Ardvourlie and Ardhasaig in place of their Gaelic equivalents so as not to cause confusion. That isn’t to say that there aren’t similarities between the two languages; it’s just that there are enough differences to allow for woeful inaccuracy and imprecision at times from someone using his school Irish.

Take the forename Eoin, for instance. In Irish, it is pronounced like the Owen, the Welsh version apparently, while Scots pronounce it like Iain. Here’s a hill country example from Scotland: aonach. The Scots say "ann-och" while the same word in Irish is pronounced "aynock". Not only is they spoken differently but their meanings differ too with the Scottish version meaning moor and the Irish one meaning fair or market. Gleann is yet another example of different pronunciations of the same word and with the same meaning in both languages: the Irish counterpart rhymes with clown while the Scots turn it into "glen". It should be easy to see that the list of occasions where applying the rules of Irish to Gaelic would produce the wrong result could be a long one. It might be better to learn Gaelic without too much recourse to Irish so as to reduce the number of errors.

Even the English word Gaelic is uttered differently in the two countries. Scots say "gallik" after the word Gàidhlig while we in Ireland go for "gaylik" instead. Incidentally, the Irish word for the language is Gaeilge (spoken as "gyael-ge"). Both languages may have had a common ancestor but they have gone their separate ways since and I wouldn’t be surprised if Old Norse had its influence too.

Having a dictionary and following the rules that it describes would help but there’s nothing quite hearing a word spoken by a native speaker for fine tuning things. Even so, I really should get out that Gaelic dictionary that I picked up in Tyndrum. It might even keep me out of trouble.

It’s my week wandering the Western Isles that has brought all of this to mind and their official title of Na hEileanan an Iar (try "na hell-a-nan an yar" if that’s new to you) should be dropping a hint as to why. Even cursory examination of OS mapping will reveal almost exclusive use of Gaelic place names and my trip reports will adopt the convention of using Gaelic names in the main with the English versions in brackets the first time that I refer to a place that has one. I won’t be distracting from the tales of my explorations with pronunciation guidance but you should be able to find anywhere that I mention on a map. Hopefully, that will make things a little easier to follow.

You would think that a trail passing through the countryside of Harris with its wondrous hills, glens and lochs would be well publicised. However, that does not appear to be the case for the Harris Walkway and I came across it while following tracks marked on my OS map during my explorations of Harris last month. Even finding a description of it on the web is not as easy as it should be. I did manage to locate an article written by Cameron McNeish for The Sunday Herald shortly after he officially opened the trail in 2001 when he was president of the Rambler’s Association in Scotland. Here’s an excerpt that gives you a good flavour of the route followed:

Start: A859 road just E of bridge over the Scaladale River. Grid Reference: NB186096.

Finish: A859 road near Seilebost. Grid Reference: NG090971.

Route: From the cairn by the side of the road follow the green track S past Caisteal Ard and Gormul Maaruig. The track rejoins the main road for a short distance before following a minor road to the bridge over the Abhainn Maruig. From here a track runs S over the Braigh an Ruisg and down to Urgha Beag from where it’s only a short distance to Tarbert. From there a combination of roads and paths run through Cadha, Diraclett, Kendibig, Meavag and Drinishader. From the head of Loch Plocrapool another track and minor road combination runs to Grosebay from where a green road runs over the hills behind Cluer and Stockinish. Follow the line of the Sgurran Ruadha dyke N until you meet the road again on the zigzags of the Uamh Ard. Follow the road down to the junction of the Stockinish road, turn right up the sign-posted track and follow it through the bealach to the A859 near Seilebost.

All in all, it’s a good twenty mile trek so splitting it over two days sounds eminently sensible. The trouble with trying something like this in one day is that you are rushing along and that Harris deserves much better than that. Leaving some time to take it all in is very much in the spirit of the island. Not having hoards following you or ahead of you like the West Highland Way in summer makes it easy to slow down and relax a little. From my experience, I reckon that the countryside through which you’ll be passing demands nothing else.