CHAPTER 28
I popped back to our chalet for my laptop, having spotted a plug socket behind our table, and in ten minutes or so I had the order of service files pulled from the forum and attached to an e-mail ready to send. I carried the laptop over to the bar so that Sue could see the files.

“I’ve had a word with the boss, Ellie, and he had another idea”

“Which is?”

“The website for this place. We’re setting up a ‘history’ one on there, with notable events and characters. The Old Fox, for example. Hamish, and Wullie, our old Ranger, who had the argument with those film boys about the mess they left, until Connery got involved. Art and Lana would fit well there; ‘this is the sort of person that you’ll meet here’. And there won’t be any Campbells, of course”

“What mess?”

“Oh, there’s a scene in that film where a castle tower gets destroyed. It was all plaster and sacking over a wood framework, of course, but the mess was just left there afterwards, up on the Study”

I smiled at her.

“I think that’s a lovely way to remember them”

“Aye. We’ll work up a little plaque for the picture, just saying the names and dates and ‘see website”

“You really know this place, Sue”

“Been here over forty years, Ellie. Left Dundee in my teens; came here, never looked back. I can’t imagine anywhere better”

She suddenly started to giggle.

“Let me put the mail address in… Right. A memory, aye? Art had come up by bike, not one of his end-to-end trips but train to Fort Bill, and then along the road to here. Day he arrives is the day before our annual football match, against the Kingshouse, down in the village. He walks in for his evening drink, so I tells him he’s down to play the next day, has he got shorts? Anyway, next day we’re all down at the field, and the posts are stripped larch trunks, but one goal had no crossbar, so one of the lads had broken up a pallet into its laths.

“He’s overlapped them to make a long enough spar, but when he puts it up it sags, so he reinforces the middle, and it ends up about six or eight laths thick. So the game starts, and it’s Art who has a shot at goal, with those huge thighs of his, and he misses, hits the post, and the whole crossbar just flies to bits with the shock, showers the goalie with wood and nails. Young Wullie had a tow rope in his car, so he stretched that across instead, but Art was so embarrassed! Aye, they’ll fit on the history page, Art and Lana. Now, where are you hoping to go while you’re here?”

“Jacky wants to do Nevis”

“Do that tomorrow. Weather’s changing in a couple of days, and it’s nasty place in the clag. Day after?”

“No idea yet. I was thinking of the Lost Valley, Hidden Valley, whatever, or the Lairig Eilde. Probably the former, just for the memories”

I looked over to that photo once again, and Sue patted my hand.

“Aye, hen. Keep the good ones, okay, and make some more”

The food was good, the ale well-kept, and the company, by the time left, loud and raucous, but all three of us were quickly realising how tired we were, as well as more than a little irritated by a few persistent offerers of drinks, but the bed was comfortable and the moon through our picture window astonishingly bright. Sleep came quickly, but so did the morning light. We were a long way north, after all.

I chivvied the other two out of bed, laying out walking kit, including trekking poles, for us all, and then led them over for a stupendous breakfast, which introduced Jacky to Lorne sausage and haggis bits for the first time. Well, it’s better than ‘poutine’, as far as I’m concerned. We filled flasks and water bottles back in the room, then Mary drove us out of the Glen, Jacky’s eyes fixed on a particular hill now coming into view.

“That’s Sgorr na Ciche, girl”

“What’s that mean?”

Mary called over her shoulder, “Peak of the Tit, Jacky. As in breast, not bird”

“You’re joking!”

“Nope. English name is Pap of Glencoe”

I let Mary do her own tour guide turn for a while, remembering so many days together in the Lakes or here, and almost feeling a newcomer to it all, for all of that had been Harry rather than Ellie. We threaded Fort William, parking in an expensive spot some way from the footbridge I remembered, as I shuddered at the number of ‘experiences’ signposted for tourists. Boots on, and a slow walk up towards the Youth Hostel and the footbridge over the river. I explained to Jacky about the marketplace seen from that film, and Mary laughed.

“We’ll be passing the castle where it all started off, and you’ll get to see how far apart the locations really are. Hollywood’s a bit unrealistic”

Understatement of the year, love.

Nevis is a grind, nothing more, with no tricky bits and only one real false summit, which comes at the halfway point. It is, however, surrounded by lethal terrain, easily strayed into if careless, or if visibility is poor. My own map is well-worn, but I also carry a card with a route description fully detailed down to distances and bearings, designed to avoid going over the North Face or down Five Finger Gully, which is a far too frequent killer.

The views are glorious down the Glen, and as we passed Lochan Meall an T-suidhe, bith girls were going well. We sat on a couple of suitable rocks for a cuppa, and to allow Jacky to snap away. I felt the years falling away as I took in the beauty of the place, and all through it my wife was beside me, smiling. She hugged me, one-armed.

“How is Ellie doing, love?”

“Ellie is wondering if life could possibly be any better”

“Jacky is going bloody well. I’ve got an idea for when we’re down, if you like. Little bit of walking, but all flat”

“Steall?”

“Steall. Get rolling again?”

That halfway point is a little cruel, because it looks as if you’re arriving at the top, but as you round a bend in the path, you see the other half of the mountain rearing up above you, grey stony ground rather than grass, and ascending after the Red Burn in a series of wide zigzags. It’s a path where your eyes tend to look about a yard in front of your feet while you pant, and then it eases, just slightly, which is where we hit the snow.

Traffic on the path was moderately heavy, so the route had been trampled flat, saving us from needing gaiters, but I could see Jacky’s surprise. A low hill, by Canadian standards, under a clear blue sky and rather warm sun, but heaped with snow.

“Not far to the summit, girls. Keep well to your right here; big, big drops, and I don’t like that bit under snow”

The summit is a reasonably large plateau, with the old weather observatory in the middle, the trig point a short distance away and much closer to the precipitous cliffs. We celebrated at the trig point, with the traditional group photo courtesy of Mr A Random Stranger, then again sitting on the old building’s broken walls.

“Box ticked then, Jacky?”

“Oh, indeedy! And I’ve got mobile signal too; mailed Jay some pics. This is lovely!”

Mary was sanguine.

“This is a miracle, Jacky. Most times I’ve been up, it’s been fog and rain. This is a miracle, but I am not complaining. Still got to walk down, though. That’s where the poles will be useful”

We stayed there for an hour, cautiously exploring the drop after a pair of climbers appeared over the edge (No. Just no), drained our tea, munched some sandwiches the hotel had put up for us, then started the grind in reverse. What a glorious day.

Once down, Mary drove us further up the glen, where we had a pose around the Polldubh falls, the surrounding crags covered with more roped lunatics, and then further on to the end of the road, below the Waterslide.

“Short walk, Jacky, but flat, and very scenic. Through a gorge with spectacular water erosion, then a waterfall. You okay for that?”

A sharp nod, and after some shots of the Waterslide and its signs warning of DEATH, we set off along the DANGER OF DEATH path to the Steall. It’s actually a pretty well-made path, not dissimilar to the one we’d walked to Easedale. There are a couple of bits where it’s cut into the side of the hill, but they’ve put a cable there to hang onto, and one of the messier bits has now been replaced with railed wooden decking, but otherwise it’s a doddle. What it does offer is views of astonishingly complex kettle erosion, where loose stones in a depression are whirl round and round by the rushing water to carve away at the solid rock to create a cauldron.

Jacky was fascinated, of course.

You emerge from the tree-shrouded gorge into a much wider upper glen, a large waterfall a short walk away, which is the Steall. As it came into view, Jacky stopped dead.

“I’ve seen that before somewhere”

Mary nodded, still in her teacher/tour guide mode.

“The film Excalibur. And just before that bridge over the little waterfall, that’s where I think they CGI’d that school”

“School?”

“Books by a bloody horrible excuse for a woman. A lot of it was filmed round here”

Speak your mind, my love, speak your mind. One more little bit of reassurance, evidence that she was mine, and I remained hers.