Cold, Lone and Still

1: A Test of Compatibility

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Looking back, I think the preparations and the anticipation were by far the best part of the holiday. It was fun to assemble and check the gear, receive confirmation of the bookings and read and re-read the maps and brochures. The shopping was fun, too. We bought nailed boots, new anoraks and sweaters, ash-plants, a compass, electric torches, whistles in case we needed rescuing, a first-aid kit, and the latest make in rucksacks, framed to give the maximum comfort on the march. I mentioned emergency rations, but Hera said that we could stock up nearer the start of the walk.

According to the brochure, the trail could be walked in a week, but we decided upon a fortnight to allow for detours to any places of interest and also to give us time for stop-overs if the weather turned very wet, for even in June it was not to be trusted where we were going.

The walking tour was Hera’s idea, not mine. We had talked over the possibility of living together before we were married, so that we could test our compatibility and all that sort of thing, but she said that it would be ‘a something and a nothing, Comrie. We would know that it was only an experiment and not meant to last long, and we should be on our best behaviour all the time and that wouldn’t be any test at all.’ She went on to point out that a walking tour in hilly and often lonely country, with mishaps occurring daily, weary legs, blistered feet, rain, wind, mist and losing our way, would be the best means of discovering whether a partnership for life would be a viable proposition. ‘If we can get through a fortnight like that without disaster, we can get through the next forty years,’ she said.

‘But supposing the weather stays fine, our boots fit, the scenery is as superb as the brochure promises, the hotels and youth hostels are first-rate and we don’t meet with any mishaps at all?’ I said. She laughed.

‘If heaven smiled to that extent,’ she retorted, ‘I would ditch our engagement and hand you back the ring as soon as the journey ended.’

‘But why?’

‘Call it superstition or anything else you please, but that would be my reaction. Luck of that magnitude comes only from the Devil.’

I need not have worried. We were in for trouble all right, although not of any kind which I could ever have expected or foreseen.

Only over one thing did I get my way at the beginning of the trip. I was determined that it should kick off in comfort, so I had booked us in for the first night at the airport hotel near Glasgow. We did not get to it by air, of course, but I guessed that, however luxurious the place turned out to be, travellers would not be expected to dress for dinner. Indoor shoes, however, we did carry with us, nailed boots being regarded askance when worn on the polished or carpeted floors of the youth hostels and hotels in which we were to spend our nights.

I had booked separate rooms under our separate names at the airport hotel, and we met in the bar for cocktails at a quarter to seven. The train journey from London had been a long one and it was good to find that every bedroom had its bathroom and that the hot water was unlimited.

‘I’m not sure this makes the most sensible start for the kind of holiday we’ve planned, but I must say it’s very pleasant,’ said Hera. She had changed her trousers and sweater for a rather slinky little frock and (not for the first time) I regretted the single rooms and a bed to which I knew I should not be admitted.

In the bar we made brief and inauspicious acquaintance with a man of whom we were to see more later. He stumbled as he passed us on his way from the bar to a small table and spilt some of his drink, for it was a glass of sherry and, as is the idiotic habit of bartenders, whether men or maids, it was full to the very brim, instead, after measurement, of being tipped into a larger glass, as I always request. Luckily, only the merest drop fell on to Hera’s arm and that was bare, so no harm was done and my handkerchief soon did its job of mopping up. The fellow, a tall, rather good-looking chap, apologised and wanted to buy our drinks for us, but when I had refused this offer, Hera added, looking sweetly at him, ‘Please don’t bother. Some people can’t help having two left feet.’

‘I say, that was a bit strong, wasn’t it?’ I asked, when we reached our own little table.

‘What was?’

‘That crack of yours about two left feet. He apologised, and he didn’t trip up on purpose.’

‘That’s where the two left feet came in. Don’t be silly, Comrie. He was determined to speak to me.’

‘But why? It wasn’t as though you were here on your own.’

‘I don’t know why. He was on the train, you know.’

‘Well, so were lots of other people.’

‘He tried to get into conversation with me in the corridor. Oh, never mind him. Finish your drink. I’m starving.’

The dinner was a good one and I wished I had booked the hotel for at least one more night, but we were due to spend the next night at the youth hostel in the centre of the city. However, we had breakfast and lunch at the hotel and then took a bus. We had not enough luggage to warrant a taxi.

The youth hostel came under the Grade 1 category. It was open all the year round, had one hundred and twenty beds, was on the telephone and had a members’ kitchen where hostellers could cook their own food. It also provided food for those who did not want to do their own cooking. It comprised two very large three-storey houses with a flight of steps up to the front door and was in a quiet street only a few minutes’ walk from the bus stop.

Although we had been told that the peak months at the hostel were July and August, even in early June the place was pretty full. We had not been in the common-room half an hour when we were faced with the prospect of being urged to join the largest party present. A fellow of about my own age approached us and asked whether we were going along The Way.

‘I’m afraid we haven’t any religious convictions,’ I said.

He laughed in the hearty, unconvincing way these muscling-in types affect and said, ‘Nothing like that, old boy, old boy! I meant, are you doing the footslog to Fort William — the West Highland Way, you know?’

‘Heavens, no! ’ said Hera, before I could answer. ‘We are merely butterflying hither and yon.’

‘Oh, what a pity! I’m trying to rope everybody in who is doing The Way. Much jollier in a big party and we can all get together in the evenings and make whoopee, what!’

He seemed to have begun as he meant to go on, for, when we came in, he had been chaffing other hostellers (among whom I recognised our acquaintance of the cocktail bar) and shouting with mirth at his own witticisms. A fellow to be avoided at all costs, I thought.

‘Sorry. We are only doing bits of this and that. We are not seasoned walkers,’ I said, ‘and we have to respect our limitations.’

‘Oh, well, anyway, come and meet the gang. There are eleven of us, all told. Not bad, eh, considering I set out on my tod? But I always reckon to pick up a mate or two at the hostels who will be going my way. After all, it’s a case of fellow-travellers, isn’t it? And I don’t mean the nasty political kind. No, no. The more the merrier, that’s what I always say.’

‘Eleven of you?’ said Hera. ‘A good thing we can’t join you, then, isn’t it?’

‘How come, fair one?’

‘Because it would make the number up to thirteen and you wouldn’t want that, I’m sure.’

‘Oh, I don’t go for that sort of bunk. Come and get matey, do.’

We could not get out of it without being boorish, although a certain restlessness in the atmosphere indicated that some of the company were not too happy, any more than we were, at being roped in by this hot-gospeller of togetherness. He introduced himself as Neville Carbridge, but invited us to call him Nel. ‘Only one “1”, of course, old boy, old boy!’ The only lone wolf was the fellow who had approached Hera on the train and then slopped drink on her at the airport hotel. I could see that Hera was not overjoyed at meeting him again. He was introduced to us as Barney Todd.

‘Not Sweeney?’ asked Hera, with the innocence she always displays when she looses off a barbed shaft.

‘Now, now, fair one! ’ shouted the idiotic Carbridge. ‘I thought of it first! You’re not the only joker in the pack. Besides, I doubled up. I said, “Sweeney” and then I said, “I’m on my tod, too, so why don’t we mingle, eh, old boy, old boy?” And now he’s going to be the life and soul of the party, just like hot toddy! I say, I say! That’s a good one, boys and girls! That’s a jolly good one. See? Todd, toddy. Damme, I go from strength to strength, dashed if I don’t. There’s no holding me when I’m in the mood. Mind you, Todd is one of his aliases. He’s got hot Spanish blood in his veins.’

One or two of the girls giggled, but I noticed that Todd himself was not amused. Personally I wondered whether I could restrain myself from assaulting Carbridge if he called Hera ‘fair one’ just once more. There was no stopping him on the subject of Todd, however. He put his hands to his forehead in the shape of horns and curvetted about, shouting, ‘My name is Toro! Bring on the matadors! Toro! Toro! Bring on the toddy, for the toro, el toro grande! Ole! Ole!’

Todd took it calmly, but I don’t think he liked being the butt of Carbridge’s joking, or listening to the giggles of the girls. Apart from Carbridge and Todd, there were four other men. One, called James Minch, was accompanied by his sister Jane. Another rather cluttered-up chap seemed to be acting as bearleader to four students, two men called Lucius Trickett and Freddie Brown, and two girls. Their leader’s name was Andrew Perth, and it seemed to me that already he had the harassed look of a schoolmaster in charge of a pack of unruly children on a school outing.

It turned out that the students were from a London polytechnic and were ‘doing’ The Way as part of a course in geology. Perth had been hired by the college as an experienced guide who had a detailed knowledge of the countryside through which the walk would take his party, so that accounted for his being with the four youngsters and looking somewhat disconsolate.

The girls were called Coral Platt and Patsy Carlow. There were two other women, but these had come on their own and got themselves collected by Carbridge. I put them down as office girls, possibly minor civil servants. They turned out to be clerks in two different insurance firms. They had been friends from schooldays and always managed to fix their holidays for the same three weeks of the year. I spotted them eyeing the men in the party, particularly Todd, James Minch and myself.

James Minch was a straw-haired lad in, I guessed, his early twenties. It transpired that he had been president of his students’ union and I could well envisage him in the part, for he turned out to have the gift of oratory to an extent which almost reduced the exuberant Carbridge to silence, and during the course of the evening he gave us not only what I thought was a highly coloured and would-be humorous account of his college career, but also a description of his journey that day with his sister from their home town to the youth hostel in which, the prisoners of Carbridge, we were now stuck until the morning.

Jane Minch, the sister, was a redhead and her otherwise unremarkable but pleasant young countenance was completely smothered in freckles. The office girls, Rhoda and Tansy (I did not get their surnames at the time), were a good deal older than any of the other women except Hera. They must have been going on for thirty. They were homely-looking girls, quite unexciting, but probably kind-hearted. I thought that the men would write them off.

‘I hope they have that much going for them, anyway. I mean, kind hearts,’ I said to Hera next morning. ‘They don’t seem to have much else to recommend them.’

‘They’re all right,’ said Hera, who was not always a defender of her sex. ‘Isn’t it about time we set out?’

I had delayed our departure deliberately in order to give the others a good long start. There had been some debate among them about whether to take the public transport to get to Milngavie, where The Way kicked off, or whether to footslog it, but this meant pavement-bashing and also it would add another seven miles or so to the long walk to Fort William. In the end it was decided, for the sake of the girls, that the public transport was to be favoured and, as we were going to use it too, although for a longer distance than theirs, I decided to let them get away first. I hoped we should never see them again. It was no part of our experiment to travel in convoy, even if we had liked the gang. The essence of our arrangement was that Hera and I should be on our own for a fortnight except for contact with hotel staff, hostel wardens and the cottagers who were to lodge us for an occasional night.

Hera had demurred when I insisted upon delaying our start, but I held on firmly and said, ‘We’ve got to let that lot get clear away. Besides, I’d like to see as much as I can of the city before we leave. We’ll have lunch somewhere and get on our way this afternoon. We’re in no hurry. Don’t you want to see the sights while we’re here? We can still clock into the hotel at Drymen in plenty of time for a bath and dinner. How I hope we’ve seen the last of that laughing jackass and his party! My bet is that most of them will jettison him the first chance they get. Tomorrow morning we’ll begin our tramping. We can start out directly after breakfast and take it easy to Balmaha. They will be a long way behind us by then, because we’re getting transport to Drymen and they’re walking all the way from Milngavie.’

There was plenty to see and do in Glasgow and, although we by no means covered everything, we did look around the twelfth-century cathedral, the museums, the art gallery, the shops in Sauchiehall Street, and we had lunch at one of the hotels. Hera was still slightly peevish and said that she could see no reason for my having delayed our start, but added that she had enjoyed her lunch. By mid-afternoon I felt we had had enough of sight-seeing and I could see that Hera was almost exhausted, so I suggested a slight change of plan.

‘We’re staying here for the night,’ I said. ‘We’ll have some tea and then I’ll book us in at the hotel where we had lunch.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Hera. ‘We’re booked in at Drymen and that’s where we’re going to spend the night.’

We had had a toss-up about the late start, so I did not argue. We went to Drymen, just as we had arranged to do, and turned in early. On the following morning we took a look around the little place before going on to Balmaha, where we had booked accommodation in a cottage.

Drymen is built around what, in England, would be called the village green. The hotel was excellent, the welcome cordial and the food good. We had been told that the shops were the best we should find for the next sixty miles, so we took the opportunity next morning to stock up on our rations and buy a couple more batteries for the torches. I also went to the bank, having previously arranged for this. I never like being short of ready cash, particularly on holiday when one never knows what unexpected calls may be made upon one’s pocket.

‘I wish we hadn’t missed the earlier part of The Way,’ said Hera. This, I thought, was rather unreasonable of her. We had agreed from the beginning to set out on our walk from Drymen. I began to wonder whether our relationship was going to stand the strain of a fortnight of pointless argument.

‘If we had set out from Milngavie, we should have had the pleasure of Carbridge’s company,’ I pointed out. ‘Be thankful we made the plans we did.’

‘It’s easy walking from Carbeth. I wasn’t thinking of starting from Milngavie. From Carbeth, The Way goes through farmland and I don’t suppose we shall see much of that further along the route, shall we?’ she said.

I answered impatiently, ‘Well, there is some between here and Balmaha.’

‘We could have followed the old railway track,’ she said. ‘That would have been rather fun. Still, as you say, it’s too late to think about that now, or the woods and the hills and the little river and the plank bridge and all the rest that’s in the brochure.’

‘You’ll have all you want of hills and woods later on,’ I told her.

To reach Balmaha we needed to cover only six and a half miles, so we lunched as early as we could at the hotel in Drymen and then made it an afternoon stroll. We identified Conic Hill and had to use a bit of the main road, but even then the journey was far from dull and we soon struck the countryside again as we turned past a farm. After that it was all farmland and forest and then on to grassland which merged into moorland. Hera was satisfied and there were no more complaints.

Some of The Way was rough, but the Garadhban Forest was worth any amount of rough walking. We climbed through sparse plantations of conifers and, looking back, we saw a great hill appearing over the top of the moorland ridge. We were sheltered to some extent in the forest itself, but when we came out to the moors again the air was fresh and the wind quite keen.

One of the strange things about hills and mountains is that they seem always to be shifting about as one travels. We had already seen Conic Hill when it appeared to be slightly behind us, but now we met it. As the day was fine, we could have taken the easier lower path, but Hera was determined to climb the hill for the sake of the view from the top, so she had her way without any dissent from me. I wanted no more arguments.

The bracken, as we climbed, was already high, but we managed to find the markers which charted The Way and, in any case, I had a map. The views from the top were magnificent, not the least being a panorama of Loch Lomond and its mountains.

Balmaha proved to be a tiny place. It had a shop where food could be bought, but already we had stocked up all we wanted to carry, so we found our cottage and introduced ourselves to our hostess. She had taken it for granted that we were married for I had booked for the two of us only in my own name, but Hera soon straightened matters out and I was despatched to a neighbour’s cottage for the night and saw no more of my strong-minded fiancée until breakfast-time.