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Wild Land News no 62, Winter 2004/2005

How wild is Creag Meagaidh?

Article

We were on our way to a club meet at Roy Bridge, one late winter evening. I pulled over near Aberarder and insisted we got out, even those dozing in the back seat. Clear black above, a slice of moon invoking faint icy-white mountain shapes, stars as our headlamped eyes let them come out; far enough from the sodium pall over Glasgow, Inverness, even Aviemore for the night sky to be timeless and unsullied. Completely still, deep freeze, streams gelified; no other cars on the A86, so completely silent. Half a minute was enough, back in for last orders at the Roy Bar. This could have been arctic Sweden, or Alaska. Wild, at the road side.

Those icy-white mountain shapes of the Creag Meagaidh range are frequented by climbers lured up Coire Ardair, and in summer by those on the prescribed circuit round three Munros, but its 15 sprawling km are less renowned than classic ridges such as the Mamores or Cluanie, perhaps because the crest is rounded. It is slightly beyond day's range from the central belt, and there are more seductive goals further on for a weekend.

So it was that Meagaidh had escaped my attentions for 30 years, apart from a sweep of the Tops along the fore-walk around Moy Corrie. I nursed a notion that the way to do it would be end-to-end, requiring feats of transport organisation sufficient to keep it on indefinite hold. Then on a weekday this Midsummer I found myself emerging from that handy B&B opposite the Roy Bar under blue skies with fair forecast and a bike on the roof actually in working order. Some unaccustomed pedalling saw me from Moy over into the upper Spey wondering where best to get up onto the hill. At least there is no blanket wall of forestry to corral access onto Meagaidh, unlike its unfortunate neighbours on the west.

I chose the wrong one of the three toes of the range to ascend (boundary of three maps problem), not least because it had been muir-burned to a crisp. The right one had a quadbike track to follow, as I found at the 767m trig point. Sadly this persists for 4 km on up the crest almost to the first Munro, denying the simple pleasure of making your own way along an open ridge - either you go along with it mindlessly, or you are consciously striving not to. And of course at the Munro (Carn Liath) you join the circuit from Aberarder, and a nascent walkers' path.

Also at the trig point I met the only fence of the range, mercifully a low one which soon contours off. The posts of an earlier fence adorn the march boundary all the way to The Window, passing over two Munros. SNH own the south side, and are opposed to fences on hills, so why don't they organise removal of these unsightly remains? From The Window up over the magnificent Cairngorm-like summit there is no fence, no path, no trammelling of any kind save an extraordinary cairn platform on the brink of Braeroy. And then the fenceline resumes, a surreal acute angle of wooden posts coming up the main watershed and turning down the immensely powerful shoulder of Creag na Cailliche, my route down to Moy. I pulled a score of loose stobs out of their sockets and laid them neatly to rot, a task for some team to complete. The fence becomes a monumental drystane dyke, its near-intactness over the rocksteps and nicks testifying to old skills deployed in hostile places. In its lee (for the evening has turned chilly) stands the lone sheep of the day. I happen to pass at some distance, but it does no more than swivel its head. I realise it is a ram.

Over the last kilometre down to Moy, you become aware of the fruits of the SNH purchase of this side of Creag Meagaidh since they cleared the hill of sheep (so it was a love-and-affection-starved ram). The gorge of the Moy Burn is much leafier than on my last visit. The heather is leggy, and countless rowans are shooting above it, most getting nipped by the deer that without any upper fence (there is a roadside one) will always come in however hard culled on the SNH land. A narrow trod follows the gorge, but the last bit across to the gate is getting jungly. In some or many years time, natural-looking woodland will clothe the lower slopes of Meagaidh, and as in Norway, access will become naturally corralled to one or two well-walked lines.

Wildness, not remoteness

Up on the Munros, you are in the midst of the Highlands, surrounded by mountain ranges. There is a long jaggy skyline to the west of the Great Glen, running north to Affric, Strathfarrar, and even Wyvis; the burly massing of the Nevis range; the superb north wall of the Alder massif; the distant Cairngorm upswelling; and the unfathomable Monadhliath. The most visible intrusions into this protean mountainscape, from some outer viewpoints if not from the core of the Meagaidh group around the Window, are the Laggan and Spey forests; but they are at low level and do not detract unduly from up here. Then there is the pylon line coming over Corrieyairack. Today I had to strain to see it in flat light. Just once a shaft of sun later on caught the sole wind generator on the Monadhliath, at Dunmaglass over 30 km away. This could look very different soon, if big wind farms spring up any nearer than that recently approved at Farr, and if a 400kv transmission line replaces the present modest affair over Corrieyairack (the controversial Beauly-Denny proposal comes this way). Distance from a road will become immaterial in defining 'wildness' if such developments become visible from the summits of our great hill ranges.

On this day of settled weather, Meagaidh does not feel threateningly wild - nowhere would, but the way was long and isolated and exposed to any sudden deterioration. Today the wildness is simply an ambience. The greatest intrusion, inevitably on a weekday, comes from morning, afternoon, and (just to rub it in) early evening sorties by military jets round their Ness-Spean-Spey circuit, breaking off for a few games of tig on the way. Even though the sound may only be present for a few minutes, it echoes on in the mind, and the anticipating lasts even longer.

At less than 5 km from the A86, there is no traffic noise audible. And despite such easy proximity, there is only one other person on the hill all this fine day.

Creag Meagaidh is incontrovertibly wild. The wildness may be benign midsummer, deep-freeze midwinter, or howling wet gale at any season. No measure of distance can define where it begins. As the native woodland re-establishes, it is beginning to feel wilder soon after you leave the road. Up on the ridge, old fence-lines are minor irritations to some and will fade away, the wall is an archaeological treasure, the new quad-track a sign of mechanised activity that should be discouraged in all such places. The wildness of Meagaidh is end-to-end and Spean-to-Spey, and no line can be drawn through its wholeness outside which developments will magically not compromise it. And in any case, the greatest threats to experiencing its wildness come not from proximity to roads and ease of access, but from visible and audible intrusions in the middle and further distance.

We need to give SNH the confidence to say that wild land is not the same as remote land.

David Jarman

• SNH : Wildness in Scotland's Countryside - a policy statement. undated, but issued 2002. Map 3 'search areas for wild land' has a blob embracing the Monadhliath and Creag Meagaidh - but not its southern slopes. It refers for its definition to Para 13 of Annex 1, which ends at Para 12.

  Simon Brooks of SNH comments: "The search areas in the SNH policy statement weren't based solely on distance from roads - which can be seen if the search area map is compared with the remoteness maps on the centre pages. The search areas were intended to be a starting point for identification of wild land, and aim to include all the larger areas within which it might be found. The annex to the statement suggests criteria which might be used to do this, and these areas were therefore drawn with an eye on all of these factors (including remoteness). Incidentally, the explanation of the purpose and scope of the search area map is in para. 12 of the annex rather than the non-existent para. 13 - a typo well spotted in your footnote.

  Having said all of this, wildness can of course be found much more widely, sometimes closer to larger settlements and particularly in traditional Scottish weather, in winter conditions or at night. The policy statement recognises this, but generally focuses on 'core' wild land to reflect the scope of NPPG 14 - the pretext on which it is based. We need to raise awareness of the value of prime wild land areas, but it's also very important to recognise the existence of more accessible wild places or experiences - which are enjoyed by many, not just the fitter hillwalker."