Another Writer Joins the Site - Meet John Hesp, my Clever Walking Brother
John taking a break in the Scottish mountains
In these weird times a great many people are feeling just a little isolated or cut-off, so it’s fantastic to be running a modest but I hope user-friendly, non-commercial, website where people can write about the stuff they have a passionate for and generally share their thoughts. So welcome to my brother John, who is a great walker and a fantastic writer.
Over the next week or two we’ll be putting up his account of walking from one side of Scotland to the other on something called the TGO Challenge.
As John writes… “The TGO Challenge is a loosely organised event held every year in May. Following their own routes, participants set off from one of twelve start points on the west coast of Scotland and hopefully finish on the east coast. It's not a race, the goal is to reach the other side and have fun.”
A Walk from Glenuig to Montrose
Day 0
“Roger, thanks for your email explaining that there’ll be no Challenge register at The Glenuig Hotel start point. It turns out there’ll be no hotel either.”
Roger Smith, the TGO Challenge organiser, had sent an email a few days before the start of the TGO Challenge 2009 to tell me that because only three of us were starting at Glenuig he wouldn't send a signing-on register, we were just to phone him when we started walking. Meanwhile I’d emailed The Glenuig Hotel looking for indoors accommodation to avoid the appalling weather Scotland was getting, only to be told that the hotel was closed for refurbishment. Things were getting interesting already, and I hadn’t even started walking.
It took a couple of days to travel by train from Somerset to Loch Ailort, and then a few more miles by mini bus to Glenuig, a journey from warm sunshine to cold rain. Even at Glasgow the weather was reasonably bright, but on the long pull up to Crianlarich and Rannoch Moor the weather became darker and wetter.
After a pause at Fort William the train sets off in the reverse direction towards Mallaig. Those of us who had been travelling backwards now having a forward view of even lower clouds and even heavier rain, and as the train slowly travelled west the cloud got lower and the rain got heavier.
It was with a bit of a sinking feeling that I left the comfort of the train at Lochailort and with a few others made my way to the station exit where twelve of us boarded the mini bus heading south. When the driver called out “Who’s for Glenuig?” and the only answer was a lonesome “Me”, eleven heads turned and stared pityingly – or so it seemed. A very fit and experienced looking Challenger sitting across the aisle from me asked “I take it you’re a very experienced hillwalker then?”. I mumbled a non-committal answer and felt anything but.
If I’d felt uncomfortable getting off the train at Lochailort I had a hollow, empty feeling getting off the mini-bus at Glenuig, and as I walked away from the bus in the wind and rain I could feel eleven faces staring at me from the steamed up mini-bus windows. But just as I was about to burst into tears a figure popped up from a rough bit of ground between the lane and the sea and beckoned to me in a friendly sort of way. Fellow Challenger Ian Cotterill welcomed me as though the proprietor of a five star hotel, and brushing away some sheep muck, indicated a good place to pitch my tent between the rocks. Ian kept up a flow of conversation as I pulled my tent out of the rucksack and pitched it, and by the time it was up I was starting to feel quite good about being on the west coast.
Then comes that magical moment of shoving the rucksack into the tent and getting in yourself. In an instant one finds that the unfortunate spot one had had to pitch the tent in isn’t such a bad place after all, and the worse the weather is the cosier the tent seems. Outside again Ian and I stood chatting in the half gale sipping tea, and I knew everything was going to be alright.
