Feature

Dramatis Personae

Article & Photos by Sinclair Steven

Peter Willimott: reprobate and former Chairman of Kirkintilloch Mountaineering Club, recently co-opted member of MC of S executive. Given his name to a category of hills, the Willimotts viz. any hill, of any height, in or furth of Scotland, climbed under the impression it was another hill entirely. Once described himself after a trip to Morocco as a 'tanned goddess'. An Englishman...from Norfolk.

Heather Willimott: long-suffering wife of the above. The epithet ‘long suffering’ is invariably part of Heather’s title; ‘long-suffered’ is Peter’s normal epithet.

Jack Duncan: hill-walker and cyclist from the pre-Cambrian era. Rumoured to have witnessed, not only the explosion of Krakatoa, but also the last convulsions of the Campsie hill volcanoes, “I knew Dumgoyne when it was the same height as Everest”. Inveterate pipe-smoker in memory of his volcanic experiences.

George Wood: present Chairman of KMC and retired senior police officer. Given their pension scheme he must have retired before many of the present readers were born.

Helen Wood and Liz McFarlane: ladies of a certain age and the acceptable face of the KMC.

Ross Burnside: son of founder member of the club, testing the temperature of his father’s old stamping ground, found the pace too glacial.

Author: humble hill-plodder with the burning ambition to climb every Munro involving not one iota of exposure and certainly never more than one each outing. Fighting a losing crusade, given the aging profile of the club, against the tendency, at the end of the day, to opt for tea and scones rather than beer.

Gaffertapemobile: Willimott’s Rover Montego, sponsored by Ducktape.

Euphony. Isn’t it marvelous? You all know Beinn Euphony I am sure: one of the smaller Corbetts that just has to be ticked. Euphony......Jura.......endure.....endurance......per ardua ad Jura. Jura was hard. Made harder by Pilot of the Year Willimott, who not only buggered up the travelling arrangements, maintaining the palatial emptiness of the Gaffertapemobile while reducing my Cordoba to the next best thing to a sardine can (smoked sardines, as one of the crammed-in fish was Jack), but also missed the turn off for the ferry and the turn off for the route up the hill. Again and again it was the patient care of Bloodhound Woody that brought us back to the path of righteousness.

09.30 and on a beautiful morning we trundled into Inveraray and Club Twee sought sustaining coffee/tea and scones. Except for Jack, who drifted off to remonstrate with a Stagecoach driver about his company’s failure to publish, disseminate or stick to a timetable. The somewhat brassy belle of the coffee shop wasn’t however into tweetery and duly produced a large plateful of roll and tattie scones, a culinary delight I am in no immediate hurry to revisit. Perhaps the offer of brown sauce, rather than clotted cream, should have forewarned us. However, in the absence of Jack, no one was into remonstrance mode and we chewed our way manfully through the rather arid combination of the leavened and the unleavened. 10.15 and we strolled (heavily) back to the cars to meet Jack, a piece of bus exhaust rammed firmly up his arse. Perhaps remonstrating wasn’t really on that day.

And so to the ferry to Feolin where Liz dutifully paid her fare, Jack, naturally, negotiated a pensioner’s discount and Peter reluctantly turned down the ferryman’s offer of a Saga-man’s discount for himself. Ah, the tanned Goddess’ gilt is beginning to wear thin, unlike the Goddess himself.

The weather continued to improve and was matched in quality by the B&B’s accommodation. Breakfast was a plate of plenty (excluding only tattie scones) and the rich birdlife of the garden provided most of the entertainment. I myself however missed the twinkling buttocks of the bare-arsed waiter service. A pair of plastic breasts can be stimulating, given certain circumstances and enough drink, but plastic buttocks?...at breakfast? There are times when the weakening prostate of middle-age is a blessing in disguise. Nevertheless those who witnessed the mid-morning rise of the two moons seemed excited enough.

Onwards to the Paps themselves. Not overly high, but certainly overly steep with treacherous scree underfoot and at times, painfully, under bum. On Beinn Shiantaidh Peter seemed generously to give Ross Burnside 400’ of a start to encourage the lad along. By Beinn an Oir the ‘start’ had extended to about 800’ (Peter was held back from mounting a convincing challenge by the doddering company in front, viz. us). On reaching the beallach between an Oir and Beinn a‘ Chaolais, Ross was so far ahead that, when he rejoined us, we assumed he was on his descent. However, a true gentleman, he had merely indulged in a lengthy nap while waiting for the navigational expertise of Peter to catch up. The panoramas from the tops, despite a haze, were stunning.

At this point the party, already bereft of Jack, split again, the majority to continue on to a’ Chaolais (Ross, I strongly suspect, for the second time… the lad was warmed up by now) while Peter and I retreated. Peter justified this with the reflection that the unclimbed hill was a motive for returning to Jura. I, as you will all recognise, needed no such justification; I was knackered. The walk out was a Willimott triumph. Spurning the path we walked in by, we cut across country contouring round a steepish hillside (how I just love contouring), descended into and climbed out of a number of steep gullies, gained another three or four hundred feet, to finally glimpse the distant coast. An interminable descent to the road brought the recognition we had saved about a half kilometre of level road walking. First stop in Craighouse... the pub... where we found Jack, pipe in mouth, in ‘Old Man of the Hills’ mode having conned a young couple out of a drink with his ‘I climbed with Mallory...’ line. Seeing Peter’s wallet ease out of his pocket, he swiftly abandoned them and joined us.

Food in the bar was first class and very reasonable, but it was a tired band that wound their way back to the digs to snore soundly through The Forsyte Saga. Never let anyone say the KMC aren’t cultured; more appreciative snores I have rarely heard. We apparently missed a late musical evening in the pub, although Jack claimed he was wakened by it. However as the pub was about two hundred yards off and Jack had slept soundly through George and myself going to bed in the same room, I would put this in the Mallory category of memories.

Monday morning Jack and Peter set off on the early morning bus for their three-day wilderness experience. Jack lasted two hundred yards and returned by Land-Rover. As we sailed away from Jura it was with quiet, but deep, satisfaction that most of us (Heather excepted I am sure) thought of Peter wandering off solitary and heavily laden into a rapidly deteriorating weather forecast.

First published in the Kirkintilloch Mountaineering Club Newsletter and reproduced here with kind permission of the KMC.