Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

Maybe I should note down what I have captured in photos but there are occasions when I go looking at one and it takes some time to fathom what I have gone and captured on film or memory card. It doesn’t follow always that I resolve a query to my satisfaction while seated in the comfort of my own home so my mind ends turning to the possibility of a return to an area. such is the case with the section of the West Highland Way between Glen Coe and Kinlochleven but there is another idea for the same area afoot too.

Perusal of the SMC’s The Corbetts & Other Scottish Hills has planted in my head the scheme of walking up Glas Bheinn. Given the name is the Gaelic for grey hill, it’s probably sensible to assume there are a few of these about so I suspect that a few words on its location wouldn’t go astray. The one that I have in my sights lies between Loch Eilde Mor and Blackwater Reservoir, in countryside that is rarely frequented if my walks along the former can be any guide. Assuming cooperation from the weather, that almost guarantees generous panoramas of the surrounding hill country with the rocky Mamores forming part of the fare. The gradients look none too frightening on a map so it might even be my type of hill and, if it puts paid to any questions as what is captured in my photos, then that makes it even better. I may not have a Scottish excursion in mind right now but it never hurts to have something on the ideas shelf for ready deployment in the event of an opportunity surprising you like Scotland has done on me on many an occasion.

Since Sunday, there have been a raft of announcements and happenstances that make it look as someone somewhere has held them over until the arrival of BST. First, there’s spell of dry weather. The sun might be in short supply but I’m far from complaining as I have turned to the bike for the daily commute. I also have every plan not to have a computing failure stop me from embarking on an outdoors escapade like last weekend. While on the subject of weather, we have had the Met Office adding more detail to their mountain weather information and the Peak District has been added as a new area too, not at all inappropriate given the number of visitors that it receives.

The mention of a National Park brings to mind the announcement of one for the South Downs. Hopefully, the rancour that has accompanied the New Forest one can be avoided but I am reminded of something else: the fact that the southern English countryside is no lure for me. That is never to say that we should value everything in our custodianship so that we can hand it on to future generations in as good a condition as we can. I am sure that these places are an invaluable escape for those living near them but I may have been so spoilt by experiences in open hill country that it is difficult for me muster the wherewithal to visit them. Speaking of being spoilt, living in Cheshire does mean that I am within reach of an embarrassment of riches and the list would become long very quickly. It’s the sort of thing that makes me reluctant to move south from here, particularly when I get to realising how little of I have actually savoured.

The mention of Cheshire reminds me of the local authority reorganisation that has happened. Hopefully, the new Cheshire East and Cheshire West & Chester unitary authorities will continue the good work that has been done with regard to public rights of way and not allow serious degradation in public transport provision either. Northumberland is getting a new county council so the same aspirations apply there.

Along with the release of the new Quo by Mapyx, this has been a busy week and that’s even without looking in on the events in London but I won’t comment on them here. It would be nice to cap it all with an outing. There are no definite plans yet but I am not going to rip up a computer over the weekend if it can be avoided. To get into the great outdoors needs some space and time to be set aside, for planning as much as execution; working through the variety of destinations that creep into my thinking so as to pick one can eat time like it’s going out of fashion. An outdoors excursion can clear the head but I have found that other clutter might need clearing first or you’ll never even get out the door. That has happened me rather too often…