Wild Land News no 67, Autumn 2006

On Diurnal Variations in the Remoteness and Tranquillity of the Highlands Article

David Jarman

A' Chràlaig is not at all remote - a cup of the Cluanie Inn's coffee-tasting coffee, and you can be on top in a couple of hours (less if you're our mad hillrunner, or have a second cup). Still, 1120 metres up is a grand place to be, especially when you manage to get there just before the first big shower on one of those days of cold blustery northwesters that kept May lively this year. Wanting to daunder the summit ridge, to appreciate rather than assault it, I retreat to the lee side. So why do we say 'the cloud blotted out the view' when it is whitening and purifying it, not ink-spattering it? It's from Icelandic blettr - a stain, apparently, in yet another curious inversion of meaning. Such are the random musings of a half-hour on a tramped-snow stance, as each hint-of-sun optimistic return to the cairn is repulsed.

The stance is well-chosen, completely out of the wind. As the passage of time slows, the sounds of the mountains reassert their immemoriality. Near on the left are the urgent tumblings of the burns in the vast corrie. Close overhead is the spasmodic spatter of hail and sleet on my sunhat (well it is May). And from away on my right, over the bare south shoulder, comes a constant noising that once tuned into magnifies into a distant roar. It must be the river far down in An Caorann Mor; or no, it must be the traffic on the A87; but surely that can't be so continual, this is not bank-holiday on Ben Lomond, although in a fleeting clearance the road is visible and the sound intensifies; but the air direction is wrong for that, and there are no motorbike bursts. On stepping out briefly, the roaring simply seems to be an overlay of wind on water.

These are the sounds of remoteness. We don't come to the wilds for literal peace and quiet, although when utter silence does descend, once or twice in a lifetime, it is deafening. We come for natural noise, the ambient sound of tranquillity, incidented today by the reverse-thrust of a raven's wings as it crosses the ridge to find itself too close above me, and by the unearthly yelp of a deer calf down below demanding its mother (thanks to Keith Miller for telling me what that was last year).

As these sounds impinge and fall into place, something is missing. It's not the boys in light blue, who are giving us a day off even though it's midweek; although a pair of ptarmigan do a damn-good impersonation, blasting low across the shoulder from behind me and down into Coire na Cràlaig, rendering my stance acutely vertiginous. And since it is now afternoon, the three couples doing the ridge today have had their lunches by the cairn and moved on.

Missing the flights

Now, the recommended direct route up A' Chràlaig from Cluanie is straight up the SW flank, a monstrous 600m of dull toil which has long deterred me from a proper visit (having taken the Munro in on a circuit from Affric years ago). But a bit of reluctant map-sleuthing reveals an infinitely better line, almost as direct, worth your SWLG annual sub alone: it's just round on the west up a side stream and then by a curious grassy rake onto the shoulder behind the 800m promontory. And it gets you away from the intrusion of the A87 almost immediately, aided by the cascading waters. Except that today, we are directly under the flight path of the transatlantic jets, and every few minutes another jumbo with its vital cargo bound for Orlando or Las Vegas sears across the firmament, its noise overpowering that of the burn, and persisting for minutes almost till the next follows in its groove.

So this is what is missing during the prolonged shower - there is a diurnal variation in the long-haul airline schedules, and they are giving me respite and tranquillity up here on A' Chràlaig.

Two years ago (in an anonymous Comment) I sounded off about non-natural noise intruding ever more into the wilds. The sources railed against then were road traffic, especially howling motorbikes, and light aircraft, which mercifully are still uncommon away from the Central Belt fringes. Transatlantic jets rated only a sentence, as an upcoming issue, and prompted by many days up in the Arrochars and Cowal, which I suspected were particularly in the line of fire of air traffic routed over beacons at Glasgow/Prestwick. Now they have become even more inescapable than the low-flying RAF, who at least only inflict themselves two or three times on a bad day.

Earlier in May, before all the endless unsettled spells, www.mwis.org.uk alerts me to an impending fine spell, and logistics actually allow me to get over to Dornie and bike up Glen Elchaig as the Highlands turn African. Hours of factor 30 skies expose the traces paralleling out towards Greenland (do they ever come back? - inbound trails are so rare they must be like ships of old clockwising the ocean currents); as the gales subside, their sound intrudes ever longer.

Beating the rushes

Your scribe is one of the great festerers, and the effort of will to rise well before the sun on the third day may have disturbed the tranquillity of the Killilan hand-reared stag populace. This is the day astonishingly foretold by mwis when the haze would clear, making the long push out to An Riabhachan ideal for viewing the ancient landscapes of the mysterious Monar basin. The early start would also get the initial ascent done before the sith-trolls had got their furnaces stoked in the corries. And, I realise up on the fat landslip-wrinkled snout of An Socach, it has won me a couple of hours of aeronautical peace before the first departures from the continental hubs were larger-than-life silver symbols scything the cerulean 30,000 feet above [I'm just paying out the rope - Ed.].

A Guardian travel feature tells us that a thousand flights a day now leave Europe for North America, with two main pulses early morning and afternoon. I have done it once, on a perfect day, seeing everything from Ben Rinnes to Cape Wrath, including right down the Great Glen, with Sula Sgeir as an incredible coda. Assuming our collective addiction to lines of white will never be assuaged, and that neither fuel prices nor government action on global warning are likely to reverse the trend, then apart from praying for really quiet engines, the only way for us wild land lovers, our offspring, and our foreign visitors to experience the fabled tranquillity of the Highlands is to track those diurnal variations. How reassuring that human behaviour peaks as predictably as the rush-hour, from the B&B-to-evening meal span of tourism to low-flying sortie schedules to hillgoers lunching on top. Maybe mwis could include transatlantic flight path predictions, as they shift to optimise weather patterns?

It is late on in the afternoon when the roof-ridge of An Riabhachan affords a mile of high living, out and back, unencumbered by poles, pack or outer layers, in light airs, with sunny breaks still, and in silence apart from distant waters and the occasional faithful ptarmigan. One helicopter has gone its business through to the west and back, but now there are no mechanical distractions from gazing to Kintail and Torridon and Wyvis, or from delighting in tennis-court webs of dense gossamer revealed as the snowbeds have shrunk back - whatever can overwinter up there in such quantity to spin them, and to feed the spinners?

Monar remote and tamed, wild and tranquil by turns

In four days, I meet just one other gangrel, off-track. He is bound for An Cruachan, a rounded hump out in the midst of Monar, not even a Corbett. There must be some reason - and it is: this is supposed to be the most remote hill in Scotland. I wish him well, forbearing to mention the Bendronaig stalkers path 2 km opposite, long upgraded to an ATV track, or the boats up to Pait Lodge 5 km away at its foot. Let alone the public transport procession 3 km above.

Back out in civilisation, just in tourist-time for supper at Lochcarron Inn, the clan is gathering for the annual trans-Scotland hike. The weather has broken comprehensively, and they will be too wind-and-wet battered to hear or care about any unnatural disturbances to their remoteness crossing Monar.