Highland Insider

Ben Wyvis has its first snowy blanket of the year. It’s more of a delicate white throw than a twenty-five tog duvet, but it’s extremely fetching nonetheless. The hill stands out beautifully with the sun catching the snow, making it appear nearer than usual.

It’s so pretty, it almost makes me want to climb it again. Almost. It’s a straighforward mountain, with a great path and no long walk in, but of all the Munros I’ve climbed this one took the most effort – both times. It felt like there was something in the hill itself draining my energy down into it through my feet. I wouldn’t have made it to the top at all last time if Lee hadn’t bullied me on step by step.

There may be a clue in the name. There are several versions. The Gaelic name, Glas Leathad Mor means ‘big green slope’ which is fairly innocuous. The other meanings recorded are much more sinister, including Terrible Hill and Hill of Terror. Obviously the Big Green Slope version was given by someone who looked up at the hill one sunny summer’s day from a comfy picnic spot down at sea level. Whoever came up with the others had definitely been to the top.

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Image courtesy of Pam.

I’ve been vaguely aware of Knockan Crag for most of my life, having driven past it on the way to Lochinver for years. It never really grabbed my attention before, being an inconspicuous wee hill in among the eye-catching glories of the Assynt and Coigach mountains: with Suilven, Stac Pollaidh and Canisp parading their tempting summits before me, I wasn’t likely to turn round and check out Knockan Rock.

But a couple of years ago, the north-west Highlands were awarded European Geopark status – the first locality in Scotland to be recognised with the title. Suddenly I was seeing leaflets and posters about Knockan Crag and its unique position in the history of geology, and a couple of weeks ago I finally went to have a look.

I pulled up in the car park with Lee and another friend and was almost immediately accosted by a cheery gentleman in a red waterproof who offered to show us round the site. This was Donald Fisher, a local geologist who has the ability to make a wee chip in a big grey rock tell a story of epic proportions. We followed him up and round the Crag, hearing about how the structure of the hill below us had been formed in layers and how the most important discovery in geology had happened right there in the nineteenth century.

Donald had us hooked as he described how ancient rock from deep below the surface had been thrust up to slide on top of higher, younger layers, giving hard evidence to the ideas that developed into plate tectonic theory. (Donald, if you happen to read this and I’ve got the technical stuff wrong, feel free to leave a comment and put me right!)

At one point we were able to touch, with the thumb and finger of one hand, two seperate layers of rock which were formed 500 million years apart and had been pushed together over millenia before people, and probably even midgies, existed in the Highlands.

At intervals around the site are beautiful pieces of rock art, including stones carved with lines from the poetry of Norman MacCaig and a perfect globe constructed of layers of slate that fits its surroundings so well it seems to have grown there.

I didn’t expect to be entertained as well as interested at Knockan Rock, nor to be moved by poetry while hiking up the crag. The place is a gem among rocks, and Donald Fisher is a bit of a pearl himself.

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I spent Friday night at Callart View Bed & Breakfast in Glencoe village, and had possibly the most magnificent breakfast of my life. I was ready to be impressed, having already sampled the ‘Bed’ part of the deal: a comfortable warm double with a rich patchwork quilt and spare pillows laid on, in one of the three cosy rooms of this 1920s gardener’s cottage.

My breakfast table was by the window looking out onto Loch Leven with the mountains of Lochaber beyond. The food was going to have to be good to capture my attention with such a panorama in front of me. It was. I noticed none of the other guests in the dining room went for either of the porridge options, and they missed such a treat. They were all from various parts of mainland Europe, where porridge doesn’t seem to be recognised for the superfood it is; I remember a party of German walkers in a youth hostel once being horrified that we were going to eat oats. ‘It’s for horses!’ they insisted.

I chose the creamy porridge with almonds and sultanas, laced with a nip of whisky and it was comforting, invigorating and totally delicious. Lynn Allman, porridge chef and owner of Callart View with her husband Geoff, is from York, which just shows you don’t have to be Scottish to be handy with a spurtle. I feel a return trip to Glencoe won’t be long in coming.

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My walking boots are in the kitchen, hosed down and stuffed full of newspaper. Above them the old wooden pulley is festooned with hats, gloves, fleece, trousers, woolly socks, rucksack … in fact just about every item of walking gear I own, apart from my waterproof trousers which had a lovely dry weekend in the wardrobe. The rest of us spent Friday climbing Sgorr Dhonuill, by Ballachulish, with a couple of friends, Ann and Joan, who drove up from south of the border on Thursday.

We spent the entire day in thick cloud, imagining what a fantastic route this must be if only we could see it. It starts in a Forestry Commission carpark in Glen Achulais and winds along great paths up through the conifer plantations and out onto open hillside, following and crossing a steep burn which was spectacularly in spate. Then it’s back into woodland, with a narrow track up through native broadleafs as well as pines this time, with lush bracken, ferns and foxgloves to wade through. With the fine spray from the waterfalls mingling with the misty cloud, there was an almost tropical, rainforest atmosphere. We took a couple of wrong turns when we mistook the track for another burn and went looking for something that didn’t have water gushing down it. On the return leg we’d got wise to that and just splashed our way straight back down, stopping to wring out our socks back at the forestry track.

In between was a boggy ascent to the bealach between Sgorr Dhonuill and Sgorr Dhearg. We had intended to pop up to both peaks that make up Beinn a’ Bheithir but the conditions were so poor we chose one, nipped up to its rocky summit and got back down as fast as we could. Apart from a bashful young roe deer on the edge of the woods, we only met one other soul on the hill all day, a friendly Irish chap who was walking at about twice the speed we were and managed to do both summits in less time than we took to do one.

So, I’ve been to the top of Donald’s Rocky Peak, but, as always when the cloud is down, I don’t feel I’ve really got to know the hill. Bad weather forces an intimate knowledge of the ground under your boots, and, as a by-product, a better knowledge of you own resources, physical, mental and spiritual; but without the view of and from the mountain, you lose the perspective of the height and scale of the mass you’re climbing. That’s why I’ll be back to Glen Achulais some time, on a dry clear day, to get to know the horseshoe ridge of Beinn a’ Bheithir a bit better. Mind you, as the name translates as ‘Hill of the Thunderbolt’, I might have to wait a while.

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