Are we there yet? – Allan Sim
So here I am at Ardrossan ferry terminal on a bright, dry October morning awaiting the arrival of the rest of the ‘team’. Having given up on the day job – or maybe the job had given up on me- I had been persuaded by Johnny boy to join this motley group of former teachers who walked each Wednesday. Ayrshire, Arran, the Galloway hills, in fact ‘anywhere we can get to and back in a day’ was the sphere of operations. I had done part of the Ayrshire Coastal path already with them and last week we had completed the Ness Glen walk down by Loch Doon. But this is to be more of a challenge particularly as I have no previous hillwalking experience.
Soon we were on board and enjoying the rolls and bacon from the servery.
Lesson 1: Don’t have two rolls prior to a big climb, but then nobody told me it would be a big climb.
Brodick is soon reached and I follow the guys to the bus stop, for today’s walk is to begin round the back of the island.
Lesson 2: I hadn’t reached bus pass age at this time, the rest had. It had been an age since I had been on a bus and the cost of the journey certainly wasn’t coppers and I was the only one paying!
The trip seems to take ages before Davie calls out that we are nearly at the stop at Thundergay which is to be or starting point. Davie and faithful (that’ll be right!) collie, Holly, had done this walk a few weeks previously and knows it like the back of his hand. More of this later. Up we go on a track straight from the stop, no time to loosen up or get run in, and the pace is swift, too swift for me. But I cling on and am grateful for a coffee stop at a lochan. Here’s where it begins to go wrong. A mist has descended on this part of Arran and anything above the lochan is obscured. Not for the last time do I ask, ‘Are we there yet?’ The answer is in the negative but there is just a wee climb to go.
Lesson 3: Never believe a word these guys say. No matter how many hills you do on a walk there is still one more to do and when they say ‘It’s all downhill from here’ it means it’s all downhill until the next climb.
The ‘B’ word is used at this point and is to be repeated at regular intervals during the rest of the day.
Onwards and upwards we go, knowing not where I am going because I can’t see more than a few yards in any direction and, in any case, I am concentrating on just putting one foot in front of the other. I am struggling big time by now and getting ‘advice’ aplenty from those in front. Johnny keeps me company and we start doing the climb fifty paces at a time before short stops. It has to be short stops as we can’t risk losing contact with those in front. Whoever said that the fastest man should bring up the rear?
Eventually the shout is ‘We’re here, the top of the hill’ and in the gloom we sit down for lunch. How uncomfortable can you get? Soaking from haar on the outside and from sweat on the inside. I’m so out of breath and miserable that I can’t face my pieces. Holly enjoys them.
However them that know are beginning to question whether we are here after all and after a debate between those who have GPS’s, those who have maps and him who knows the walk like the back of his hand, a decision is made that we aren’t at the top after all and that we have still some way to go yet. Wonderful! Even with all the expertise available there is a lively debate about the correct way to proceed. With thoughts of having to be rescued by helicopter, but how would it fly in this mist?, and of never seeing my family again, and beginning to panic, I help the debate along by intervening with the plea ‘Get me off this hill’. This seems to focus minds and after being promised that it is just as easy now to go on than to turn back –remember lesson 3- we follow Davie. After twenty minutes going in one direction it becomes apparent the he and the back of his hand are in fact very distant relations. So, we retrace our steps and come back to the point we had left ages ago. This time sense prevails and we follow the route dictated by the satnavs, climbing again over grass and rock until we reach the point where we will descend. What a relief! But just when I think that I can enjoy the walk down, it is announced that if we want to catch the bus at Pirnmill we have to get a move on. And so get a move on we do and make the bus by five minutes. And when we look up to the horseshoe that we had traversed, I could not have told you what we had done or in which direction we had been travelling, the mist has cleared.
‘ It’s a great walk in a good day’, I am assured. The B word in triplicate.
When I get home I am so knackered that I literally crawl upstairs and fall into a hot bath.
That’s it, never again, you can stuff your hillwalking!
The Great Outdoors. You can keep it. Well, until next week anyway.
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