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On Friday night I headed up to Glencoe on the bus to meet up with Alan (mountainstar) and Carol (the outlaw previously known as mountain coward). I booked in to the Youth Hostel then we set off to the Clachaig for a few pints of ‘Sheep Sh*gger’ and the likes. In true Clachaig fashion, one man and his guitar was playing everything from ‘Sex on Fire’ to ‘Postman Pat’.
‘Oh that might be my workmate’s mate,’ I remarked. ‘I was talking to him the other day, and he said he’s got a mate who wanted him to join him in Glencoe for a weekend, because he was playing in the Clachaig one night...Workmate says he had to feign a very unpleasant illness to get out of it, because the guy’s a complete nutter
and would start a fight in an empty room
.’
‘Well, we’ll soon see if it is him or not’ Alan said, ‘if anyone looks at him the wrong way.’
Two guys in the corner were having a bit of a hard time subduing their very drunk mate
. He must be one of those blokes who is a great pal and walking/climbing buddy by day
but a bit of a bad lad when drunk by night
. He was pointing and jabbing his finger at his two pals, ranting and raving, but you could tell they were used to it, as they were trying uncomfortably to ignore him. One of the poor guys had long hair and a beard, and another one, the very drunk one, had about twenty years worth of dreadlocks all the way down his back.
‘Oh you missed all of the action,’ Alan said to me, on my way back from the toilet.
‘Yes’ Carol continued, ‘The very drunk guy lunged at his mate with the beard and got hold of his hair. In retaliation, his mate with the beard grabbed a handful of dreadlocks, and there they were, grid-locked, pulling each other’s hair until one of the bar staff separated them
.’
‘What about the singer?’ I asked
.
‘Oh he just carried on singing.’
‘He can’t be my workmate’s mate then.’
It was my round and last orders, so I trotted off to the bar. ‘I’ll just have a half pint,’ Alan shouted after me. ‘What’s this?’ he asked as I put the pint of ‘Howler’ down in front of him.
‘It’s a Glaswegian half pint
.’
Tee-total Carol drove Alan's car back to the Youth Hostel...she almost reversed into someone else's car within thirty seconds of being behind the wheel
, and back at the Hostel it took Alan some time and physical effort to realise that he couldn't open the door on his passenger side
, because she had parked it beside a very heavy flower pot
.
- Carol's car parking skills
Back at the Hostel the radiators were turned off and I was brrrrr
. I ended up sleeping in my woolly jumper with two duvets on top of me. The radiators were on a timer, so by the time they came back on in the early hours of the morning, I must have been so snug in my cocoon that it sent me into a coma. Carol and I over-slept and woke up at 9.30am. Alan would have given us a rude awakening
much, much, much earlier with one of his famous alarm calls
, if he had known which dorm we were sleeping in.
I hadn’t been out and about for a few months, so Carol and Alan assured me I’d be having a gentle re-introduction to hill walking on Mam na Guilainn via Beinn A’Chailleach
. It certainly felt like it too at first, as I skipped along (or at least I tried to, in my heavy winter boots) the West Highland Way path at Kinlochleven with them to the start of the walk
. Not long after we had reached the snow line we decided it was time to don the crampons. ‘Where’s your other crampon, [Calamity] Janet?’ Carol and Alan asked me, as I searched and searched inside my rucksack.
‘Um, well, it seems my other crampon is still in a box on top of my wardrobe in my spare room. Oops
.’
Thankfully Carol was also carrying her microspikes, so I was able to wear them.
- Walk Aboot's Micro Spiked Feet
The walk was hard, hard, hard, trudging about in the snow in whiteout conditions. I found it a wee bit hairy scary and a big bit exhausting.’
‘How far is it now until we get to the top of this bit, Alan?’ I’d say again.
‘Ten minutes
.’
It never was ten minutes
, more like thirty or forty, but it did help to keep me moving...five steps, stop, four steps, stop, ten steps, stop, stop.
‘You’re doing fine, Janet’ they both chimed.
‘Oh yeah? Well, see once we finish this ‘gentle’ walk, I’m going to kill both of you with my ice axe
...I’m going to f**£!! B**!!**
...ice axe arrest, more like a cardiac arrest
...I’m going to let you get me safely off this hill first, of course, goes without saying, and then I’m going to kill you both
...and I’m not even a violent person, usually
...And...and...and I’m going to ‘unfriend’ you on Facebook
.’
‘I’m not on Facebook’ Carol laughed.
‘Well, I’m going to ‘unfriend’ you anyway....f%£&**!!’
.
As I said, we were walking in a whiteout, so when we started to feel a downward motion in our snow steps, Carol stood for a minute, completely baffled and obviously disappointed. ‘I don’t know how’ she said, ‘but I think we’ve completely missed the summit.’
‘TERRIFIC!!!’ I whooped, punching the air with glee
.
I have walked with Carol a few times before, so I knew full well that walking for her is all about reaching the summit. Thinking on my feet
(I knew she’d make us walk back to it otherwise), it took me three seconds to decide that I had two options
; physically restrain her with the strap from my lonesome single crampon and frog-march her off the hill, or build myself an igloo and let the other two collect me on the way back again. Just then, as I was about to hatch either one of my perfectly reasonable contingency plans, the clouds lifted momentarily, and there, immediately before us, was the hard, hard, hard slog upwards-looking shape of the summit
.
My...heart...sank...beyond...words...
At the summit (there was no way round it, believe me, I checked), we sat down for a celebratory piece of cake each.
‘Do you want a piece of lemon cake or carrot cake, Alan?’ I asked.
‘...Or toffee cake?’ Carol piped in with her piece-offering.
‘Um, haven’t you got any orange cake?
’
‘There’s no such thing as orange cake!’ Carol scoffed.
A heated discussion about orange cake followed, but thankfully things didn’t get ugly...there were no ice axes or hair-pulling manoeuvres
involved.
- Snow and Stuff
- Alan on the walk downwards
There were two routes off the hill but we decided the one which led us to the main road by the loch was the sensible one, to be off the hill before it got dark. Carol was convinced we would have to walk the whole seven miles back to her car
, but I just knew that wouldn’t be happening...I was still armed with my balaclava
(unfortunately you’ll see plenty of footage of me wearing it, once Alan posts his video from the walk on You Tube
), and well-prepared to either hide in bushes with one of the other two while the third hitched a lift, or become a boat stealing bandit. I’m not telling you how we managed to get back to Carol’s car twenty minutes later, but I can tell you it had something to do with Alan’s phone and internet access to the Yellow Pages
.
The taxi driver (aw naw, shot myself in the foot already...blabbed
) was a woman. ‘I was just telling my friends that I was going to kiss you as soon as you arrived,’ I said to her, ‘but you’re a...well, I can still kiss you if you want?’
‘No thanks, dear’ she declined politely.
The taxi driver who doesn’t kiss
but does tell
told us a very interesting tale about a BAREFOOT
man who has been living in a tent in the hills for the past year. He has a very posh accent apparently, won’t tell anyone his name, and he visits the community centre every morning to have a shower. He is barefoot in all weather, and refuses all offers of old shoes and boots to wear from the fretting locals.
Have anyone of you heard about him, or seen him?
Anyway, all in all it was a hairy scary but good walk, and we were back in plenty of time for a meal in the Clachaig in the evening. Once again, in true Clachaig fashion, the Saturday night band were playing bluegrass gospel songs all night to the bulging crowd of hardy, hairy hill walkers and climbers, and Jesus-loving [not] vagabonds
.
Next morning, Carol dropped me off at a cafe in Glencoe village to wait for my bus...in Alan's car (see photo, just kidding,
).
- Outside the cafe, Carol must have parked here
'Looks a bit clearer today, we didn't get much of a view yesterday' she said to me, out of the car window.
'Oh yes we did' I beamed
...
Big thanks to the guy in the group of fancy dress birthday party goers in the Clachaig last night, for wearing a pair of women's leopard-print knickers and flashing them!!!