Neighbours (dead)

When I'm done feeling sorry about not being at Loch Loch, I start thinking about my new neighbours, the former inhabitants of the shielings at Sron nan Dias. They had such a magnificent house, with two fireplaces, shed attached, an ancient gravestone nearby, that I cannot believe this was just a temporary home. Someone has spent a lot of time up here. And this is just about the only place in the valley where a winter day is not completely dark and depressing.

Who lived here? For how long? How often did they wander out towards Straloch? What did they do in their free time? Did they have any free time? I know so little. At night I imagine their noises, as they put another log on the fire (but where did that wood come from?), as they turn around under their wet and heavy blankets, as they quietly talk to each other. As the baby starts screaming. It is all I can hear at night, apart from the wind and the occasional squeak of a grouse.

Remorse

The winter camping rhythm is rigid. Go and play outside from sunrise to sunset, which here, in the hills, means from 9 to 4 - if the weather plays along. The rest of the day: murmuring in the tent, restlessness, reading, until a battery dies, either from the lamp or from the phone or my own. At night I imagine being at Loch Loch, down around the corner. Sure, the wind would be violent, the days are shorter, but I would be at the end of the world, properly, and not just on a convenient perch with a view. More and more I learn that Loch Loch in its deep and secluded valley has the function of an end for me, a resting point, a place of destruction, clinging to existence, and then regeneration. When I re-emerge after three days, it's like starting from a blank slate. A new beginning. Being awake at night, standing on top of the ridge, seeing the dark shadow in the north, I miss Loch Loch. I am in the wrong place. So close, and still not there.

There are two ways to see Loch Loch from my new campsite, either by going around the corner, staying high, or by dropping down and taking the path. For a moment I was worried that the loch had disappeared, and all I would find is a patch of mud. But, as always, the loch is just exceptionally good at hiding. Deer and deer tracks everywhere, the old campsite in good condition, the shape of the loch unchanged.

Ben Vuirich!

I've always thought I'll climb Ben Vuirich in passing, at some point. No need to force it. Ben Vuirich is the giant lump of mud at the top of Glen Loch. If I walk in from Straloch, I have to circumnavigate the west, and then the north side of the mountain. It is a pretty big fucking mountain, and still a few metres short of being able to call itself a Munro. With my campsite being right opposite Ben Vuirich, it was pretty obvious that I had to find some time to do this, finally. I don't know why I think I have to do anything.

The northern and eastern slopes, visible from my tent, are smooth and steep, with rocks and hard snow. The easy way up is from the south. That means, I'll walk around it, again, along its east flank, then up to the southern ridge. Nobody should blame me for not being thorough with this hill. As it is custom for Corbetts, Ben Vuirich doesn't have paths or anything really. It's just thick heather, moor, swamp from bottom to top. Exhausting, cold, windy, but with a beautiful view at the end. In the video of the summit, the wind is louder than my voice. A bunch of things with antlers on the top, a dozen maybe, reluctantly making way for me.

I learned that I can climb mountains in a T-shirt, even in December, if I just try to work hard. I learned that fourhundred metres gain in altitude can indeed be very hard work. That two miles through trackless moor is brutal. Okay, I already knew that, kind of. And I learned that mountain tops are, by and large, hostile places, although they might look sunny and friendly in pictures.

Christmas at Sron nan Dias

Visit number eight. It has taken a while, but I finally have learned the lesson. The Best Campsite Of The World has a flaw, and this time I take precautions. This time I build my house next to the ruins of Sron nan Dias, just out of the wind funnel, and with spectacular views over Glen Loch and Glen Fearnach and, man, Beinn A'Ghlo. What a place. Green grass on limestone, not entirely level, but soft and dry and sheltered and fantastic. At night, when the full moon was out, you could see me wandering around the ruins, in circles, pointing at things in the sky, marvelling at the stars moving against the background of the clouds, or vice versa. A light appears on the ridge above my campsite. Anyone up there? The light stumbles to the left, then stops, then moves back. A minute later the light has moved up and is now hovering above the rocks, too high for a person. I have witnessed a starrise.

The wind funnel

It's time to abandon the Best Campsite in the World. So I said to myself on the way back to my little rescue boat in the middle of a gigantic wind maelstrom, and slapped myself immediately. Never! Never will I abandon. At least let's turn the tent around to face away from the loch. But then, I heard myself say, I don't have the view in the morning if and when it calms down a little. And it will calm down. (It didn't.) When I lie awake in the night, listening to the waves three meters in front of the tent, the streams left and right, and the howling gusts which push the tent down onto my face, it doesn't quite feel anymore like I'm on this planet.

The Best Campsite in the World has a wind problem. The glen funnels every bit of airflow from the north or south into a gigantic gale. If the wind comes from the north, it has two miles to accelerate following Bernouilli's laws, before it reaches the south shore and the little beach. If it turns just a little to the east, the winds take up speed on the plateau above before they drop down to the glen, in clumps of turbulence that shake my confidence in the tentpoles. Leave the glen though, just by a little bit, set up shop just outside the wind funnel, and you have a lovely quiet night. You sort of understand why there are fundaments of old houses just outside the glen, in both directions, but not in it. No fools, these people.

The power of place

This is the first time here with a phone that can do more than just emergency calls, and with basically unlimited power. I can report that there is very little internet beyond the last farmhouse on the Straloch side, and absolutely nothing beyond Daidhu. The undisclosed place remains undisclosed. I climb up to Sron nan Dias to see how far I have to go until my phone finds anything, and at around 600 meters it detects life. Ben Vuirich straight ahead, the ruin straight below. It is one of the more astonishing places to have at tiny shred of internet.

Here I realised for the first time how fantastic this place is for a house. Not only are you the only one with internet in the glen. You also have winter sunshine in the morning (left of Vuirich) and in the evening (right of Vuirich). When the Sun is above Vuirich, you know it's time to go and get lunch. For most of the year you have a stream running down the slope next to the house. You have a shortcut to the main valley. You are sheltered from the ferocious northern winds. And you have a view. What a stroke of genius. For comparison, here is the view out of the shadows towards Sron nan Dias, from the shielings down by the watershed. The inhabitants are raging with envy.

The north shores

I use the few hours of daylight to walk to the far end of the loch. A crude stone shelter on the south side of the peninsula, probably new, but definitely convenient on a day with north wind. The valve still holds ankle-deep water. I've never seen it much deeper in six visits since 2013. The loch is stable, until further notice. The outflow deeper than I remember it, and impossible to ford without wading over icy rocks. This is not completely unexpected, after two days of rain earlier in the week. On the other side, a herd of moving dots on the slopes, female deer, about fifty of them. They have noticed me, move a little, but are not too bothered. Let him ford the river first, they say.

I continue north, until I reach the confluence of my stream with another one, hopping down from the slopes to my right, also unpassable. Those two combined make a formidable river. They will continue north, until they hit the River Tilt, who will take them around a corner and back south on the other side of the big mountain, to the Garry, the Tummel, the Tay, and the North Sea.


For me, the natural deadend means that the decision to turn around is made by nature, how convenient. Following this second stream, I find a series of nameless waterfalls, carved deep into the rocks, and vow to return when it's swimming pool season. Exciting.