Eric the Mole 4

1 Eric The Mole 4 Welcome to So Eric is here as well! Eric The Mole last appeared quite recently – recently for a Eric The Mole 4 Ron Gemmell fanzine that is – back in the Summer of 2005 for Interaction. Contents This is a special ‘There And Back Again’ issue, with reflections on the changes in Seemed Like A Good Idea 3 my lifestyle interests over the intervening years, and what’s possibly coming next! Travelling Time 6 There is a piece on backpacking, looking back on a major walk in Scotland that I did a few years ago, something I don’t First Aid Course Anyone? 7 feel I’ll do again – or at least not as often. I’m also inspired to add a couple of I Could have been a ‘fillers’; one about changing holidays, the Contender 8 other my return to Fandom. There will be a piece on how First Aid training seems to have taken over my life and another on Bike Rides, The Next Big how cycling might well be ‘The Next Big Thing? 9 Thing’. Eric has generally been a ‘small blue thing’ There and Back Again 10 of a zine (apologies to Suzanne Vega), normally only an eight pages or so. It Artwork would appear that this time he’s likely to have put on a bit of weight – which is ironic as his creator has lost quite a bit Many thanks to Brad Foster for recently (two and a half stone over the the brilliant front cover! last fifteen months, the last time I was this size ABBA had a number 1 UK hit with Waterloo..), looks like a least ten pages or Eric The Mole 4 comes to you more – with luck you should find at least from Ron Gemmell and is some of it interesting! available for the ‘usual’, at [email protected] Well here goes, try and stay with it. or: 8 Kinsale Drive Locking Stumps Warrington Cheshire WA3 6LX, UK It’s been a long time coming 2 Eric The Mole 4 travel as light as possible, food and clothing for two days walking plus shared Seemed like a stoves and tents. We would send up to Corrour a change of clothes and toiletries for our return on the Monday (by rail, Good Idea there’s no public road to the B & B), after two nights out on the trail we would no doubt be in need of a decent shower and good bed! One boring afternoon in the office back in There were three of us on this trip. Laura November 2008, I found myself drawn (as Limer (whose husband, Adam, had sorted I often am) to the UK Ordnance Survey the rail tickets, only just to find that his website looking at interesting walks across employers had other plans for his long mountains. Big walks, short walks, half a weekend), Pat Moran and myself. Of the day, half a week – doesn’t really matter. three of us, Pat was the eldest (sixty four) That day was a big walk day, and actually and maybe the fittest, Laura being in her more like half a week! early thirties, probably just behind Pat fitness-wise, and me – early fifties, I was developing a ‘cunning plan’. Whilst overweight, not so fit, dodgy knees and looking at the map of the Central full of a cold. Part of me really wasn’t Highlands I had noticed that at one point looking forward to the trip. on the map the railway going to Inverness on the east and the one going to Fort We arrived on a grey late afternoon at William on the west came pretty close. In Dalwhinnie station, Culra bothy sixteen fact the distance from Dalwhinnie to kilometres to our west with just three Corrour was probably ‘only’ about fifty hours of daylight left. The track ahead kilometres with ‘only’ Ben Alder in the way was good going (a black top track for the (a mere eleven hundred and forty eight first ten kilometres), but it was still a push metres of mountain with long approaches to cover the distance in such a short time. from either side). Corrour Station comes A fast walking speed with a daysac is complete with a bed and breakfast hotel. about five kilometres per hour, to cover The plan looked definitely ‘do-able’. the same with a three-day expedition sac Initially I was thinking of trying this trip as straight from a 6 hour train journey was a a winter walk over a two or three days, bit of an ask for this middle-aged bloke! however the more I discussed it with friends the more it looked like autumn Ben Alder itself wasn’t even visible for the would be better; the plan was shelved first two hours, and when it was, its bulk until September the following year. dwarfed everything. Another thirty minutes on and the evening light shining I enjoy planning trips as much as actually on the galvanised roof of Culra Bothy was going on them (sometimes that’s the best a welcome sight, but still a bit too far part!) and this one was an epic. The idea away for these tired legs. We arrived just was to travel to Dalwhinne on the Friday as dusk was falling. and walk into the Culra Lodge bothy, ideally before nightfall. We were to carry Bothies are strange places, the Mountain on west over Ben Alder towards Corrour Bothies Association manage over a Station on the Saturday (wild camping on hundred of these unlocked, remote simple the other side of the mountain) and finally buildings (mainly in Scotland) scattered return to civilisation on the Sunday at the across the country in places where a dry Corrour B & B with a rail journey back roof and maybe even a fire is a welcomed south on the Monday. The plan was to sight. There’s no piped water, no 3 Eric The Mole 4 electricity, no lighting, probably no The morning was actually greyer than the firewood and definitely no beds (though evening before. There were a number of there’s usually a few wooden sleeping plus’s though, 1) it wasn’t raining (yet), 2) platforms). Very rarely there is a toilet, my right leg hadn’t seized (yet) and 3) the though it’s more likely that you’ll find a rucsacs were marginally lighter (breakfast spade. Bothies are life savers, and have and evening meal duly eaten). On the served the walking community in Britain negative side my cold hadn’t improved for decades. and we couldn’t see the summit – rain would no doubt follow… Culra is one of the larger bothies, with a couple of rooms and a good-sized Off we went. fireplace and plenty of handy sleeping platforms. There’s a decent water supply You really don’t want to know me when I flowing fifty metres due south of the door have a cold. I moan, I whimper, I’ve even and good size ‘toilet area’ fifty metres been known to be a bit self-pitying… I north, well away from the water source. would not have been a good walking Culra’s facilities comes complete with a companion on even a fine day by a serious cutting ‘spade’ welded to a long glistening lake. It certainly wouldn’t have piece of scaffolding pole – definitely not been much fun for my companions as we the sort of trowel that you could consider slogged up through heather, peat and wet lightweight and therefore certainly in no rocky outcrops to the top of Ben Alder. danger of being ‘borrowed’ for long! The The mountain was in cloud with a strong bothy itself is still five kilometres from the westerly wind along with plenty of foot of Ben Alder, which portrays itself as unwelcome driving rain, visibility was less a five kilometre long mass of rock and than ten metres for most of the climb and heather eight hundred metres above the top always seemed to be ‘just over the bothy. Big and grey and still in the next rise’, not a good day on the hill. clouds, I wasn’t really looking forward to slogging up the side of it. And then it cleared… There were only another couple of people And the clouds went, and the sun shone at Culra, and by the assortment of and the wind dropped and the visibility candles, wine bottles and the likes that changed from tens of metres to tens of they had with them, they were making the kilometres. A typical Scottish mountain bothy their basecamp for a few days. day, at least three seasons in three hours! Turns out that they were lecturers at The view was amazing; we were standing Edinburgh up for a weekend’s cycling and near the summit not far from the eastern walking (Culra being the definite end of face that plummeted down to the valley the track), and it turned out that we below. Cameras left their pouches and would meet them again a couple of times images duly saved for a time when our on the hill. The evening entertainment memories would fade. After a brief included malt whisky and bothy ghost bearing check we headed towards the stories, Pat lifting the spirits of us by western spur (avoiding the crags to the recounting the ghost story relating to Ben south) which was to be our route off the Alder Cottage (the next bothy along, mountain, to join with the river Uisage twenty kilometres away) and another Labhair (which translates into the Noisy about a night his friend had spent in the Water) flowing south east into Loch Dulyn bothy in North Wales, I slept Ossian.

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