I had the notion one sunny morning to
oblige a reader and go seeking a stone called Clach nam Breatann in
Glen Falloch. I had visited it once before, a long time ago, and I
remembered it was hard to find for it is not on the map. Clach
nam Breatann is Gaelic for “Stone of the Britons”, and it is of
significance because it marked the northern boundary of Strathclyde,
beyond which was Pictland.
Perched on its slippery top and looking down on
the steep-sided glen, I thought of the Romans whose Empire stretched
from the Black Sea to its north-westerly limit at Old Kilpatrick.
They couldn’t use Glen Falloch to penetrate the north because of
the Picts waging guerrilla war from these slopes. And even in the
expansionist times when the Romans left and the power of Strathclyde
grew, they could not contain the native Picts and the Scots from
Antrim who combined in 843 to form Alban under Kenneth McAlpin.
Clach nam Breatann leaps into history when Robert
the Bruce, in 1306, after his defeat by the English at Methven,
headed west and was unlucky enough to fall in with the McDougalls
below Ben Lui in Strath Fillan. Bruce was routed in that battle and
forced to turn south. In Glen Falloch he paused with his 500 men at
Clach nam Breatann before pushing down the eastern side of Loch
Lomond to Inversnaid. The stirring events that broke English
domination of Scotland were yet to come.
From the Stone you can drop to the railway in a
north-easterly direction and find, in less than a mile, a path which
takes a short-cut to Crianlarich. It is the soggy remains of General
Caulfield’s military road, and it speaks of other conquests, the
pacification of the Highland clans, the introduction of sheep and the
exploitation of the Caledonian Forest. I walked along the path whose
northern signpost was the snowy top of Ben More against which remnant
Scots pines of the most southerly fragment of ancient woodland stood
bravely.
During the summer I had followed Caulfield’s
road right across Strathfillan and over Rannoch Moor, then across the
Devil’s Staircase to Kinlochleven. This was for a new series of my
television programme, Weir’s Way, and some of that journey
made in a heatwave, with hordes of clegs and midges, had been
memorable enough.
STV crew filming 'Weir's Way' in the early 1970's
What surprised the camera team was to find that we
had the route to ourselves. We met no walkers except in the Glen
Nevis gorge, yet the roads were humming with traffic. One of the
things I find interesting, working with different production teams,
is how they grow to like the hills. Indeed, cameraman Harry Bridges
has become a Munro-bagger on his own account and now claims a score
of 20.
Perhaps some of this was due to a programme I did
with Hamish Brown in the Arrochar hills with Hamish recounting his
great trip across the Munros in a single walk of 1640 miles in 112
days and 450,000 feet of climbing. I was impressed at the lightness
of his rucksack containing nylon tent, sleeping bag, stove, pots
and food. I could lift it easily with one hand and reckon it was
hardly more than 20lb.
Hamish grudges time spent in motor cars, and
believes that to get the best out of the hills you should expedition
across them, using bothies, or camping, carrying your own food and
bivvy material. He can afford to look for novelty, since he has now
done all the Munros five times. A few days before I wrote this he
knocked on my door at 9am to talk about the sharp peaks of the
Garhwal Himalaya where he plans to go next year as a member of a
lightweight expedition to bag Himalayan Munros of around 20,000
feet.
Despite wintry weather, he was just back from a
high camping trip in the Braemar copies of the Cairngorms, and
as we talked he told me something of his background which was new to
me. Born in Colombo in 1934, one of his earliest memories is of his
parents going off to climb Fujiyama, leaving him disconsolate. But
they did take him to the Valley of a Thousand Hills in Natal. A
banker in Japan, Hamish’s father had to make an exciting escape
from Singapore to reunite with the family in South Africa before
coming back to Scotland. With such outdoor-loving parents, Hamish
began on the right footing, though it was in the Ochils while at
Dollar Academy that he learnt his stuff.
He grinned when I asked him what he had done in
the way of work since his R.A.F. days as a National Serviceman. “Lots
of things. I’m a ‘stickit’ minister – I was for two
years an assistant in a Paisley parish. I gave it up to teach English
at Braehead, Buckhaven, then went on to outdoor activities. I was
there for twelve years, and readers of The Scots Magazine
will probably remember some of the articles I wrote of our
doings.
“Now I’m a freelance mountaineer/instructor,
writer and lecturer. I do mountain guiding by arrangement. I
organise regular holiday courses in winter and summer. I just like
being amongst the hills, and I have probably an unrivalled knowledge
of the Highlands and Islands off the beaten track. I have almost
finished a book on the long walk across the Munros. I’ve written
fiction stories for magazines, and a guidebook to the Isle of
Rum. I’m very happy – and very poor.”
But rich in experience through his travels in
Ethiopia, Cyprus, Morocco, the Andes, Pyrenees, Corsica, Poland and
most alpine regions of Europe. From among a lot of adventurous men I
know, I cannot think of another who has crammed so much into a mere
43 years. The basic thing is, of course, that he is prepared to
barter security for mountains, and has the capacity to enjoy a
full life NOW, rather than playing safe and laying up treasures for
his old age. Being a bachelor helps, of course!
Tom Weir. 1975: first published in the Scots Magazine
