Route Submitted for TGO Challenge 2019

As Mike Tyson once said - 'everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face'.  Well my plan for next year's challenge has been submitted for vetting.  Hopefully neither the Vetters nor the reality of the Challenge shall punch me too hard in the face.  This year will be my 1st challenge since 2015 and as I have been away from the hills for a couple of years I decided on a familiar start point Shiel Bridge from there the plan is:

The Saddle

Soouth Glenshiel Ridge

Fort Augustus

Corryarrack Pass

Monadh Liath

Kingussie

GlenFeshie

Mar Lodge

Braemar

Jock's Road

Glen Clova

Tarffside

Fetteresso Forest (last done in 2012 before the Wind Turbines were installed)

Stonehaven

With luck I should meet up with a few old friends along the way.

There’s Always the Hills by Cameron McNeish

 I was lucky enough to buy my copy of this book directly from Cameron after he had given a talk on his life in Banchory during the summer.  In this autobiography Cameron looks back on his childhood in Govan, his early interest in Athletics and his discovery of the Outdoors as a playground and the realisation, after a variety of ‘normal’ jobs that, with luck, hard work and perseverance a living could be made from one’s hobby.  The result has been a career now decades long, and continuing, in which Cameron has become a guru on the nature, history and culture of Scotland’s wild places.

Cameron’s early life, though marred by the early death of his father, seems to have been a happy one from his recounting of it here.  Today, as in the past, many youngsters, on leaving school or university, are pressured into deciding on a career before they even know themselves.  They can take comfort from Cameron, who would take seven years after leaving school to find a job, as the warden of Aberdeen’s SYHA Hostel, that gave him the time to plot what he actually wanted to do.  In the meantime he would marry at the age of 21 and work as a policeman, a part-time barman, selling weighing machines, selling insurance and spend a year in the financial sector. Even getting the SYHA job was not easy due to sectarian discrimination the appointments board of the 1^st hostel he applied for turned down his application n the grounds that his was a mixed marriage – his wife was Catholic.  Once the appointment at Aberdeen was made however, Cameron discovered the nearby Cairngorms and never looked back.  Soon he became the warden at Aviemore SYHA and eventually, through beginnings in writing outdoor articles for local newspapers, would become the editor of ‘The Great Outdoors Magazine’ and author of a number of books on Scotland’s Mountains.  After a stint on Saturday morning radio, a chance conversation with Richard Else who was then covering a Chris Bonington expedition to Mount Elbrus would lead to TV career that began with ‘The Edge – One Hundred Years of Scottish Mountaineering’ and would lead on to ‘Wilderness Walks’, some episodes of which can be found on You Tube and which inspired the title of this book, and the series of walks that have become essential watching each Christmas on BBC Scotland.

As age has slowed him down, Cameron continues to work in the outdoors and to carve his own path.  A health scare is overcome and the worries it brought about are recorded here with honesty but phlegmatically.  Cameron’s response to old age is to recognise that one needs to modify expectations though he still treads his own path.  Mountaineering and guiding take less prominence than pack rafting, cycling and travels in his campervan through which new adventures are still pursued (walking and back packing are still in his repertoire though less prominently than before).  McNeish is clearly his own man, obviously he has made compromises but this book is the record of a life that is continuing to be well-lived and should provide inspiration to us all that we can choose our own path provided we don’t fall into the trap of forever wanting more ‘stuff’ we simply need to recognise what is ‘enough’ and to work hard at living the life we desire not what others desire of us. 

Book Review: Crusader: By Horse to Jerusalem by Tim Severin; read 22 May 2018

Nine hundred years after the First Crusade, Time Severin and Sarah Dorman set out on horseback to follow the 2500 mile route of Duke Godfrey of Boullion and other Crusaders, from Belgium to Jerusalem travelling through the modern lands of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia (itself today consigned to history), Bulgaria, Turkey and Syria.  The horses chosen were a riding school palfrey (Mystery) and a Heavy Ardennes (Carty), the latter a descendent of the war horses of Crusader cavalry – what Severin calls ‘the Main Battle Tank’ of its day. This Journey, after many years of marine expeditions was a return to long distance land expeditioning by Severin (in 1961, whilst at university he had travelled to China on a motorcycle following Marco Polo’s route).

Track of the 1st Crusade and Severin's Journey

The book’s dust jacket claims, not unfairly, that it is a ‘dazzling synthesis of adventure, practical history, and exploration’ which is also a claim made on the jacket of the author’s next book ‘In Search of Genghis Khan’* which makes me wonder whether Crusader had sold as well as expected.  It did not matter to me as I read the book on publication in 1990 and have just revisited it.  Times have changed; when this journey was made, the Iron Curtain was still drawn across Europe; border checks remained even in Western Europe as this was prior to Schengen and the Customs Union; the Lebanon was a no-go zone for Westerners which forced Severin and Dorman to detour through Syria (and Jordan) to reach Jerusalem – today an impossibility.

The book tells the story of sourcing and training suitable horses to recreate the journey as well as of the journey through a now lost Europe - I am sure you can no longer find Bear trainers in Bulgaria - though it was done just over a quarter of a century ago. In communist Hungary they add a 2^nd palfrey (Szarcza) to the team as the huge Carty is extremely uncomfortable to ride, this emulates the Crusaders as their heavy horses would have been used as pack animals until they would be mounted battle.  After an unpleasant journey through Yugoslavia, the expedition is lauded and extremely well looked after in Bulgaria- a result of Severin’s network of friends and again in Turkey. 

Battle of Dorylaeum 1097

The story of reception of Duke Godfrey’s army, and those of the other crusaders by Alexius in Constantinople is recorded as is the decimation of the Peasant’s crusade by the Seljuk forces of Kilij Arslan at Civetot in north-western Anatolia .  The main crusader army would gain some recompense by investing Nicea though by subterfuge this city was obtained by Alexius and was not sacked despite a long, and generally incompetent siege of the crusaders.  It is just past Nicea (somewhere in the likely locale of the Battle of Dorylaeum) that the expedition is halted for the winter and the horses handed over to the safe keeping of a retired jockey for the winter, a change from the original plan decided upon by the need to rest horses and people (Severin had lost 20lbs in weight and Sarah had broken her foot in a fall the day before the stop).  The expedition had travelled at the same speed as the crusaders and it had taken just over 4 months to reach this point.

As it turns out, this is as far as Carty gets, unable to settle in the winter quarters despite the attentions of former jockey Remzi, he is retired to a horse farm in Vienna, he is replaced for the second year’s travels by the diminutive and spirited Zippy.  Sadly, Mystery, is destined not to make it to Jerusalem either as she dies, probably as the result of a blocked intestine, by a river on the approach to Syria after the winter break.  The Hungarian horse Szarcza would also fail to make it to Jerusalem, breaking own in the Syrian desert and being given over to a horse owner in Jordan just before the journey is completed.  The fact that neither of the original horses make the whole journey is perhaps a pointer to the crusaders own problems on their journey 900 years earlier as it’s likely that they too lost many horses through wear as much as war.

Duke Godfrey attacking Jerusalem

This book describes an extraordinary journey made in modern and medieval times.  It is well worth a read as both a history and a travelogue if one can still get a copy I would highly recommend.  The book is a reminder that history never stops as we see the story of the First Crusade told whilst we see for ourselves the significant geopolitical changes since Severin and Dorman made the journey just 30 years ago. 

* ‘A dazzling synthesis of exploration, living history and adventure'