Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

In order to build a picture of anywhere that I am going for the first time, I end up hitting the web as well as perusing books and maps to get a sense of the place and where to go together with what there is to be seen. Of course, any plan that results is going to be incomplete so I always feel the need for flexibility so as to explore the unexpected, the unknown unknowns if you will. Things like the stillness of the Uists and Harris’ potent mixture of stony hillsides, sandy beaches and blue seas will forever stick in my memory but it’s discoveries like the Harris Walkway that could prove invaluable on any future trip.

When I started out on my hill wandering journey, many places were new to me but there are now less locations where I haven’t been. Anywhere south of a line drawn below the Brecon Beacons fall into this category as does much of my own native Ireland and Scotland north of the Great Glen. Over time my walking trips have tend to gravitate on certain areas and it’s very easy for some places to keep you profitably occupied, so much so that there are years that I could title by the places where most of my walking took me. 2003 could be the Lake District year for instance. I remain partial to going somewhere that I haven’t visited before and that Western Isles trip falls into that bracket as do a number of trips I made in 2006 when Northumberland and Pembrokeshire saw my footfall.

Speaking of heading onto pastures new, I got the idea that my Western Isles trip needed a spot of research before I went. It could be said that the idea of heading onto offshore islands focussed the mind more than it otherwise might have done. Apart from a certain tourist overview, these were to be terra incognito to me and it might be said that I was venturing further away from the usual locations than is my wont. All of that was enough to get books lifted off shelves and mapping organised.

In fact, I didn’t even have a collection of paper OS maps for the islands even if I did possess digital mapping from the likes of Anquet and Mapyx. A lurk in the outdoors blogosphere will reveal that printing out digital maps is being done by a fair few but I retain a preference for the old style paper mapping from the likes of the OS or Harveys, if only to allow myself more options when I’m actually out there among the hills; it’s amazing what can take your fancy while you’re actually there. Having digital mapping did allow me to refine my shopping list so that I wasn’t expending any more cash than was absolutely necessary. I have to admit that I have developed a taste for OS Explorer mapping and a full collection of these for Na hEileannan an Iar would not have cheap, hence the cutting of the proverbial cloth to my measure. I might enjoy the flexibility offered by paper mapping but both the cost and the need to watch the weight that I was carrying for my week away meant that any overindulgence simply was out of the question.

While I have planned many an outdoors excursion by mere perusal of a map, books remain essential for that broader view. I am very partial to Cicerone’s guidebooks but I found that Walking in the Hebrides didn’t meet my expectations, even with the mention of "Western Isles" in its subtitle. If I had wanted to get an overview of the walking on offer across all of the islands on Scotland’s western seaboard, then it might have been fine but I was after something that was a little tighter in its focus. The fact that it did not contain route maps, even sketches, for any of the walks didn’t help either and it really needs a map open in front of you for the directions to feel that little bit more real.

More more successful in my opinion is Nick Williams’ The Islands from the Pocket Mountains stable. The scope might have been as broad as the Cicerone title but the punchy pithiness of the descriptions really did give a feel for what was there to be explored and worked far better than the often dense prose of Walking in the Hebrides. The featured walks might have scaled the heights and ventured into the wilds but a spot of map perusal picked out lower level hikes through the wonderful stuff.

Speaking of lower level walking, I spotted another even more slender title while actually on my week long outing that might have its uses yet: Luke Williams’ Walks: Western Isles from Hallewell Publications. Again, brevity might be a very prominent feature but there are a plethora of ideas here too. Speaking of mid-outing acquisitions (I can be the proverbial magpie at times, picking up things and adding extraneous weight to what I am carrying, and it’s a habit that needs careful control), I also ended up procuring Charles Tait’s The Western Isles Guide Book with its enticing photos and useful overview of things to see while on the islands.

My mid-trip book buying brings to mind a comment I overheard a few years back, in Portree’s tourist information centre if my vague recollection serves me correctly. The comment itself was the more memorable and I’ll turn it slightly on its head here: to get books devoted to a certain location, you almost need to go there. Even in these days of internet shopping, that still retains a ring of truth about it and it’s an opinion that can be taken even further. You don’t get the full feel for a place like the Western Isles simply by surfing a website extolling its virtues. It’s by going to explore that you find what else awaits discovery and that it turn provides reasons for any return; exploration and discovery begets more of the same and the role of books and maps is to get the process started.

Like many outdoorsy bloggers, I share my meagre adventures with the world. Of course, they are nothing like Irishman Pat Falvey’s recently successful Beyond Endurance expedition to the South Pole. The Antarctic attracted its fair share of Irish with names like Bransfield, Shackleton, Crean, Keohane, Forde and McCarthy gracing the history of the continent’s exploration in an era where the exploits were a world away from our interconnected present where websites can convey regular news of progress in a timely manner. In contrast to the blogs of members of Falvey’s team like Shaun Menzies and Jonathan Bradshaw, the diaries of those explorers from the past were much slower in becoming publicly available. Having read Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ Captain Scott, I detect resonances of similar hardships down through the ages even in the latest stories.

The heroics of Scott, Shackleton et al. were all the more profound given that they were venturing into the unknown; it wasn’t as if they could fly back from the South Pole after reaching it, like present day explorers can do; they not only had to reach the pole but they had to return too and that sadly was Scott’s undoing. Fiennes’ descriptions of the hardships and disasters suffered on Scott’s expeditions were so vivid that I needed some gentler reading to give me a break from the grim happenings being described. Damien Enright’s A Place Near Heaven returned my imagination to a more temperate climate with is vividly pleasant observations of the activities of nature throughout the seasons in West Cork. Bemused recollections of crows breaking open shellfish by dropping them onto boreens, and puncturing car tyres with the resultant mess, certainly provided light relief. Maybe, I am not cut out for polar exploration.

Another world far away from mine is that of high altitude mountaineering, the type of thing for which the likes of the late Sir Edmund Hilary gained their fame. Names like Alan Hinkes and Chris Bonnington also come to mind. Climbing the world’s highest mountains is another activity that more than takes the human body well outside of its zone of comfort. Reading of Irish mountaineer Gavin Bate’s pulmonary oedema on Everest in a recent of Walking World Ireland certainly made me shudder (he managed to make his way back down from the death zone and is still very much with us). Stories like that do make one wonder why some people do this and that sort of wonderment brings my thoughts to Robert MacFarlane’s Mountains of the Mind. Like Fiennes’ book, that too ends with a hero encountering his goal and never returning alive; in Mallory’s case, we may never know if he achieved his.

You might be wondering what has brought this lot on. Ironically, it isn’t necessarily my wonderment at the exploits of those venturing into extreme places, though that of course plays its part. In the main, the real triggers come from a world more like that described by Damien Enright rather than that frequented by Pat Falvey and his kind. It seems that we Irish, rather than wallowing in the habitual and banal like poet Patrick Kavanagh, would rather relate the exceptional. There is a place for that but I reckon that the world is the poorer for Irish hillwalkers not relating their more accessible adventures in the Irish countryside. I, for one, would have a strong interest in them and, if I were to encounter a good blog musing over walking in Ireland as its mainstay, I’d be more than happy to give it a mention. In the meantime, I really should try to get in a proper hillwalking day over there this year. It shouldn’t demand the heroics of Scott and others…

When passing through Leeds on my Easter Yorkshire Dales excursions, I popped into Waterstone’s and spotted that Lonely Planet has finally updated its guide to walking in Scotland; the previous edition dated from 2001 so it might have been time for an update. Being easily persuaded, I acquired a copy to see what’s in the new one. There are changes to the routes featured but I’ll hang on to my copy of the first edition as there seem to be a number of changes to the featured walking routes and I might find some use for it yet.

On the surface, not much has changed with the included walking information apart from updates to the text and changes to the presentation. These include putting the walking information chapters at the back and adding glossy sections at the front containing a good supply of colour photos. But dig deeper and the changes appear. The recently enacted Scottish access legislation must surely have had an impact as walks in the Campsie Fells and Ochill Hills are now headline inclusions. New routes such as the John Buchan Way now get a mention. Some previously featured routes now find themselves in the Other Walks sections at the end of the chapters along with new additions such as the Rob Roy Way. Another fate for previous headline routes is that they find themselves in boxes sitting outside the main text. Classic routes such as the Aonach Eagach ridge or the ascent of Ben Nevis via the Carn Mor Dearg arête find themselves in this position.

I mentioned Rucksack Readers in an earlier post but I thought that I’d say a bit more about them. They offer a range of guidebooks covering trails in Scotland, Ireland and beyond. The idea is that you carry them in your rucksack while out on the trail. Consequently, they are waterproof and lightweight. Added bonuses are the inclusion of mapping and the ability to fold the guidebooks flat. Their Irish range includes: Dingle Way, Kerry Way and Wicklow Way. Apart from maybe the Dingle Way, I had heard of these and the guides are a welcome addition to the market. But it was the Scottish range that alerted me to some trails about which I had known nothing: Cateran Trail and Kintyre Way. Otherwise, stalwarts such as the West Highland Way and Great Glen Way are covered as are the Rob Roy Way and the Speyside Way. Going further afield, treks in Europe, Asia and South America get are featured.

In a previous post, I mused over the idea of visiting the Western Isles and walking there. Leafing through my copy of this month’s TGO, I spotted a book review that caught my attention: Peter Clark’s The Outer Hebrides: The Timeless Way. The review seemed favourable so I might just pick up a copy myself. Below, you will find links to websites that tell you more; the first introduces the book itself while the second is that of the publisher, where you will find an order form (in spite of the London-sounding name, the firm is based in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis.

The Outer Hebrides: The Timeless Way

Northampton Square