Feature
25yrs Coast to Coast
Hamish Brown reminisces about the TGO Challenge.
As a teenager my parents were apt to give me a fiver at the start of holidays and tell me to get lost and off I would go by "bike and hike" exploring Scotland - and enjoying something of the atmosphere so evocatively described by Alistair Borthwick in his book Always a Little Further. Without a tent it was a matter of hostelling and howffíng: sleeping in caves, below bridges and in haystacks. How else could one go from Bridge of Orchy to Dalwhinnie or Loch Duich to Sandwood Bay? Multi-day exploring was the cream of the experience.
As it would be when, as the first outdoor appointment in a state school, I spent a dozen years taking Fife kids into the wilds. When they did a historical study based on the 'Road to the Isles' song we followed this up by tracing drovers’ routes afoot from Killin to Skye. With no school bus originally we would be dumped, say, in Glen Clova and picked up a week later in Granton. Backpacking was as natural as midges.
But it was in the Atlas Mountains I discovered trekking supreme and I still spend several months a year doing just that. Plenty time to think too and I often wondering how to push the idea of good trekking at home. What about some ‘even’ with a catching name like the Karrimor? Ideas bubbled away. Then came the day when we were pinned in the hostel at Asni while a dust storm raged outside. I passed the gloomy hours writing down my evolved ideas for walking the challenging Coast to Coast across the Highlands. That was in the spring of I979. In late autumn I visited an outdoor trade fair - not normally my scene – with unexpected results.
My notes hadn't been typed up and the idea was very much on a back burner; but at the table were the boss of Ultimate Equipment and the editor of The Great Outdoors (TGO). The former slipped out how nice it would be to sponsor some event. Choking, then grinning, I said I’d got just such an idea – and proceeded not only with the idea but all the practicalities, which had been thought through in the Atlas. There was a delightful astonishment. The Challenge was born there and then and the first event was hastily organised for the following May rather than wait another year. Sixty set off. Ever since then the number has been c.250 (I00 newcomers, I00 old hands and the rest at organisers' discretion).
May mattered. One of my main desires was to put something back more directly into the Highland economy. Too much is done by filling car boot with food and tank with petrol and briefly raiding north for hill doings. Pubs might gain but where do their profits go? With up to two weeks afoot everyone would have to spend locally. (Not that pubs are ignored. Participants have been known to drink the Fife Arms dry.) Bed and breakfasts would welcome customers at that season and - most important - the midge impis would still only be getting their war paint on.
May however, quite unintentionally, meant students and school pupils and their mentors were left out. With hindsight this was no bad thing; they could have swamped the event with their numbers and the atmosphere would have been subtly different. Instead the cross section of ages and professions has been remarkable - regularly from I8 into the 80s, even one nonagenarian. Looking at an assembly of finishers dining in celebration at the Park Hotel in Montrose it would be impossible to recognise the common link among them. (Insanity perhaps?!)
Crossing Scotland is just the distance to get into fifth gear and then it’s over. One group, dealt with the deflation by turning about and heading back to the west coast; another fitted the Challenge into a Lands End - John o' Groats walk; one couple, who first met doing the event, paused half way the next time, to get married.
There are few "rules": it has to be walked, every inch, but in whatever style desired, from a B&B every day (not easy to arrange) to camping on a Munro every night. Being the lambing season, dogs are banned. Participants choose their own route in groups numbering from one to four maximum. And there are bounds to keep the event in the widest part of the Highlands. So the start is a dozen spots (mostly hotels - again giving something) from Torridon to Oban - via Strathcarron, Plockton, Dornie, Shiel Bridge, Glenelg, Mallaig, Arisaig, Lochailort and Acharacle - and you should hear some of the pronunciations of Acharacle. The start is spread over a Friday to Monday to avoid any possible congestion or pressure on the wilds and it is quite possible to go several days without meeting a fellow sufferer.
This is normally at one of the unavoidable geographical bottlenecks such as Fort Augustus or Braemar where lochs or ranges force a convergence. Makes for good pub nights and shared B&Bs - locals have taken to the event like ducks to stuffing. Lochs may be crossed and, after signing in at the start (a safety check) a boat/canoe/ferry could be used to access a desired spot - into Knoydart the most obvious. Trekkers also phone in to Montrose control several times, another safety check, especially for those going solo.
Personal accounts of the event appear in the October TGO describing that year's crossings (2003 was perhaps the wettest ever!) and that issue has the application form for the next year. Originally the event was sponsored by U ultimate and TGO but when Ultimate disappeared TGO became sole sponsor, the main costs being administrative and Finish Control at Montrose. Participants (not competitors) apply and, accepted (often by ballot), submit a route which is then vetted by a team of experts who can, for example, explain that the name on the map where Josef Blockzi plans to shop is just a ruin, or the bridge over the Allt Whatsit was washed away recently. I once suggested to someone that a first day doing the Cluanie Ridge, then Beinn Loinne and Meall Dubh to end in the Great Glen was a bit ambitious only for the sod to do just that.
Most are happy to take weekend to weekend to weekend, most rolling in from Wednesday to Friday. The finish is anywhere between Arbroath and Fraserburgh, from which the oddity of wheeled traffic can be used down to Montrose for checking out - a strange mix of euphoria and flatness. However fit, however tackled, coast-to-coast across Scotland is a real challenge. You wear your badge with pride and certificates tend to be framed and hung on the wall at home.
The only thing I didn't foresee or plan was just what great fun it all would be, how there would be reunions and even a club for the addicted. (One Perth lad has made a crossing every year!) And, squaring the circle, about fifty challengers have joined me in trekking in the Atlas, another comparable addiction but with more sun and fewer blisters!
Sadly, with a quarter of a century gone, some of the great characters of the event are popping off but the event rolls on with a life of its own. Geordie Oswald, one time keeper on Ben Alder, once told me "Aye, I ken they're comin’. First it’s the cuckoos, an then the hikers".
PRACTICAL
By one of those wheels within wheels, Roger Smith, once editor of the magazine, is now COC Co-ordinator, responsible for organising all the paper work, vetting routes, staffing control at the finish, and running the Website where the curious can read further:
http://www.tgochallenge.co.uk/ or query info@tgochallenge.co.uk or fax 01355-233394.
The 25th Event is set for May 2004