Friends of the Ochils Newsletter 17: Winter 2000Bang on middayMidweek in mid-September, and I needed some fume-free air and some quietness after having had my head frazzled by the traffic-mad streets of Glasgow. So when the next morning dawned calm and clear in Stirling, all sorts of important tasks and duties were postponed and an Ochils stroll slotted in instead. In some strange parallel universe where I happened to have access to a secretary, I'd have asked her to fend off callers with: "Sorry, but Mr Hewitt has been called away to the hill this morning". I simply had to go. The bicycle took me to Alva and was stashed at Donald-the-shepherd's house near Rhodders farm. Knowing I needed to be back at the desk by early afternoon (the imaginary secretary could only hold the imaginary fort for so long), I plumped for a quick circuit of Wood Hill, Ben Cleuch and the Law, then back by the woodland track. Three hours should suffice. Ideal. The plod uphill was notable for my contriving to mislay a pair of gloves somewhere above the treeline. This, it should be said, is not the first time such a loss has occurred, and anyone who ever finds any gloves anywhere in the world should post them to me forthwith. I've lost so many (including a very nice thermal pair 20 minutes after having bought them from Rohan) that the chances of any found items belonging to me are far higher than even the most altruistic of lottery operators would tolerate. Anyway, over Wood Hill, across the little cleft that still seems strange even after a hundred or more visits, and on along the ridge. It was great to be out, away from yesterday's speed cameras and slip-roads, but the early sunlight had somehow gone wrong. Conditions were now strange and slightly menacing. Fragmentary clouds scudded in from the west, while haar-like stuff spilt over the eastern summits, looking unnervingly like the noxious fumes that boil from test tubes in mad-scientist movies. I had been on the Ochils often enough to get the hang of most weather patterns, but this was an odd one. Never mind: whatever was happening wasn't likely to kill me, and in another couple of hours I would be pedalling homewards. Enjoy the hill while it lasted. I was certainly cheered when, near Calf Craig, the binoculars showed a figure dropping westwards off the Cleuch plateau. Even from a mile away the lack of a rucksack suggested this to be Tom Bell - a Grangemouth man who has been up Ben Cleuch 1340 times armed with nothing more sophisticated than a Tesco carrier bag. (Berghaus and Lowe-Alpine have missed a trick in terms of economical rucksack design, if Tom is anything to go by.) As Tom is a morning Ochiler, and I'm usually an afternoon man, we hadn't bumped into each other for a year or more. So we stopped for a natter, during which I learned that my friend had spent his summer majoring on Ben Lomond, eager to notch up 100 ascents to accompany his 100 Aonach Eagachs and 150 Stuc a'Chroins. He's some man. As Tom headed down, I reached the top of Cleuch slightly behind the original target of 11:50ish, arriving exactly half a minute before midday. (The ex-runner's watch-watching instinct dies hard.) I tapped the trig, then shuffled round for a seat on the west side of the cairn. All very nice, and time to mellow out with a tin of mackerel and a glance at the newspaper. Except... I had been seated less than five seconds when there was the most enormous rumble from away to the south, loud enough to make me jump. My back had been turned to whatever it was - a real life case of "It's behind yooooou", I suppose - and my initial thought was thunder. Electrical storms have hung around the fear zone of my mind ever since a series of incidents a couple of summers ago - including a friend being zapped in the Torridons and my being pursued around the Ochils by a small, cartoon-style cloud that seemed to be fitted with a tracking device. Twice I outwitted it by changing course through 90 degrees, only to see it jink after me, as though in some malicious, meteorological edition of One man and his dog. |