writing | Sore Head
A throwback to a trip up to Scotland after Covid in 2020, we cleansed our souls in a cold Scottish river after a nice walk in the Arrochar alps around Crianlarich.
I’d woken up like a bear with a sore head. We’d spent a night in the van at a spot near Dumbarton Castle, overlooking the river Clyde.
It was early October and, arriving at dusk the previous evening, the twinkling of lights from homes across the river had seemed warm and inviting against the cold crisp air. You could hear the slow rumble of a passing freight train off in the distance, and the hum of a giant transporter ship cutting through the inky black of the wide river. its huge mass a black silhouette.
The long drive up from Bristol into Scotland had taken its toll. Tired and stiff, I’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed and was being grumpy with Sally. We made a pot of tea and poured out some muesli. Munching away, I gave my head a shake to try and clear this shitty mood. It had been a while since I’d spent a night in the van so that, with the long drive, had resulted in this short fuse.
Apologising to Sally and offering to hug it out, I got a smile and tried to make further amends by cleaning up the breakfast dishes and offering coffee. After packing away we drove off in search of a cafe, and our road trip set back on course.
Arriving in Arrochar, we pulled up and got out. We were last here in February, the last stop on a previous road trip, to make a winter ascent of Ben Arthur. Not much had changed since that day, but the posters on the information board about social distancing and notices stuck to the toilet walls reminding you how to clean your hands, showed that a lot had changed.
Putting our boots on, we chatted about how it was strange to think back to that time earlier in the year when the Covid pandemic was yet to have an impact on the Western world. Slow to take the threat seriously, the UK had struggled since it took hold.
We wanted to escape much of what was going on in the world for a short while, and this trip was us making a bid for freedom. Slinging on our rucksacks, we set off up the trailhead.
We’d decided to follow a stream up a glen around the back of Ben Arthur, aiming for the saddle between Arthur, Beinn Narnain and Beinn Ime. With the lack of real mountain days in the last 6 months due to lockdown, and living in a city, it was probably wise to ease ourselves back into things.
The going was waterlogged from the start, with recent rain soaking into the mountain and holding it like a sponge. With each breath in and out I could feel the cogs and whirs starting in my body, parts of the machine that hadn’t been used properly for months were coming back to life.
My movement was slow but steady as I picked my way over rocks and through streams, the carefully placed footwork-like dance steps coming back to me.
As we moved up the glen and into the corrie, the ground got firmer and my legs moved a little quicker. I wasn’t pushing myself but my head was in a better space than it had been for some time.
I started to get lost in the moment. The gentle trickle of the stream, the smell of wet earth, the warm sun on my back. I could make out a black shape flying over the corrie we were heading into, maybe a buzzard or crow, too far to be sure. Harvester spiders scurried around the rocks as I passed over them. The dash of something furry in the corner of my eye ahead.
My senses were starting to tune to my surroundings.
As we got near the saddle, the sound of loud voices jarred and soon we could see the crowds marching up and down the summits like worker ants.
We sat and watched the whisper of clouds floating over the tops of the mountains, their shadows lingering on slopes.
The rocks stuck to the sides of the mountains looked like jagged scars under the grass and heather growing over them. Grey and unforgiving, the hard metamorphic rock that was hundreds of millions of years old, showed the real mountain underneath.
Escaping the crowds we descended back down the glen and stopped to bathe in a pool. The water was cold as the sun came out to warm us. It felt like we had been cleansing our souls for the last 6 months. Baptised in the mountain streams.
We hadn’t battled for any summits but it wasn’t about that today. It was about visiting an old friend and finding our mountain legs after a long absence.