Scotland coast to coast Part II

Gallacher continues on his way to the west coast of Scotland, but finds, on leaving the sanctuary of Croick Church, his way barred by a large KEEP OUT sign.

Was this a punishment for my sacrilegious use of Church of Scotland property, for treading barefoot on semi-hallowed ground? The church itself, standing alone and far from any present-day village, had been constructed in the 1820s by Thomas Telford-of iron bridge building fame-as one of a series of almost identical structures erected throughout the Highlands and commissioned by the British Parliament as an expression of gratitude from the nation for the contribution of the Highlanders during the Napoleonic Wars. In those days, at the height of what came to be known as the Highland Clearances, there had been a substantial community of crofting people in this valley. As extensively documented on a display board inside Croick Church, the churchyard had been the focal point, in June of 1845, of a much-publicized eviction of tenant farmers, who, on expulsion from their lands, had gathered there for temporary sanctuary and had scratched their names and plaintive messages on the leaded window panes. (Croick Church has its own website documenting the event.)

The hell with their KEEP OUT sign, I said to myself, unlatching the gate and pushing it open. But scarcely had I taken a dozen steps forward when I wished I hadn't, for over the brow of the hill directly ahead two men appeared, brandishing walking sticks. Ghillies, perhaps? But, if they were ghillies, why should they have materialized at precisely this moment? Could they have been lying there in wait just to see whether someone would ignore the sign? It seemed hardly possible. Yet there they were, bearing down on me. I anticipated a typical Scottish greeting of the just-where-the-hell-do -you-think- you're-going variety, followed by my marching orders, or even a whack. As we closed to within earshot of each other, one of the enforcers boomed out: "You've made good progress." I took this for sarcasm and wondered what was coming next. "Passed you about five miles back, in our car," said his companion, as we drew abreast. "We just came up here for a look." His tone was almost apologetic, as if he was in doubt as to my authority. After exchanging a few awkward pleasantries, we went our separate ways, leaving the gate and the sign unmentioned.

The road was now a rough but still drivable dirt track, winding slowly higher around the eastern rim of a broad and intensely green valley, covered by as fine a turf as graces the Old Course at St. Andrews. It's kept in this fairway condition, not by lawn mowers, but by flocks of Cheviot sheep, whose forebears had been the cause of so much human depopulation (generations back, large landowners had found it more profitable to graze the hardy Cheviot than to accept the rents of tenant farmers). Here and there, on both sides of the valley, stood the stone remnants of crofts-enduring monuments to a vanished community forcibly relocated to Australia and the Americas in the 18th and 19th centuries.

During one of its infrequent appearances, the sun shone high in the sky and I guessed it was early afternoon. I didn't carry a watch, because I preferred not to know the time; I would walk until it got dark, or until I became too tired to go on.

Nor had I brought a cell phone, for having had instant recourse to outside assistance, encouragement or reassurance would have entirely changed the dynamics of the trip. As a precaution against the unthinkable, I had instructed a friend that if I did not call within four days something was definitely up, and then and only then to sound the alarm.

But such a prospect was far from my thoughts as I wound my way up Strath Cuileannach. The cooling and numbing powers of Croick Church's ice-cold flagstones had done wonders for my feet and I was walking well, making steady progress against a stiff headwind that blew unabatedly in my face.

Up ahead, I could see a plume of smoke coming from the chimney of a white cottage. The electricity lines had ended at Croick, so whoever was living in this remote place had to be improvising to some degree. Landranger 20 identified the spot as Lubachoinnich.

As I approached, a man wearing a cloth cap and dressed in a black suit came out of the cottage door and, without looking in my direction or acknowledging my presence (a gesture that had to be deliberate), walked a hundred yards or so directly away from the building. He stood there, motionless, staring at the hillside until I had passed. I shouted a greeting to him, but he did not respond. Why, I wondered? Could it have been that he had been plagued in the past by travelers like me wanting to call on his cell phone-if he had one, which I suppose, like almost everyone else in Scotland, he did. Perhaps he had come to this mournfully named place precisely to avoid people, or the bleakness of the place itself had made him unreceptive to strangers. Perhaps there was a straightforward and innocent explanation that I was too dense to figure out at the time. At any rate, I decided on the spot that it was he who had unreasonably kept the KEEP OUT sign on the gate, and I was glad that I had not given in to him.

Taking advantage of a sunny interval, I lay down in the lee of a large rock and, using my pack as a makeshift pillow, fell easily asleep. But not for long, I think, because the sun was still shining when I was jolted awake by the screech of a military jet aircraft. It had passed directly overhead, scarcely 200 yards above the ground, I fancy. I have had several similar experiences in the Scottish Highlands, at the most remote spots, and each time have been scared half out of my wits. It is an especially frightening thing to become aware of a plane hurtling noiselessly toward you and passing over before the tremendous sound of the engine catches up and blasts your eardrums.

From the progress I had made, I estimated that my "howff" would be happening in the vicinity of a place marked Duag Bridge, where, according to the map, a roofed structure was to be found. On its maps, Landranger identifies all roofed structures with little brown squares.

You have no way of telling whether one of these little brown squares represents an inhabited dwelling or a potential howff, until you arrive at the door. The little brown square at Duag Bridge was still an unknown quantity, but it certainly promised to be more than a roofless croft. If people were living in such an out-of-the-way place, I had to hope that they would be more receptive to human contact than the lugubrious laird of Lubachoinnich.

The river whose course I had been following ever since leaving Croick Church had now shrunk to a mountain stream. The path I was following had clearly at one time been used by wheeled vehicles-horse-drawn, most likely. It was still negotiable on foot, via detours around former puddles now grown to ponds. The present-day track, however, had not been driven on for many years, perhaps a century.

The sky had darkened again, but the cloud cover was high and the distant summits clear. With the help of the survey map, I had no problem orienting myself in this rather featureless region. All the same, I could see where the map might be confusing under conditions of poor visibility. Apart from its always-useful contour lines, one of the most helpful features of the Landranger map is its delineation of wooded areas in various shades of green. Sometimes these woods really do exist as indicated, but sometimes they do not-simply because maps are updated relatively infrequently, while the surface of the land changes in unforeseeable ways; a sapling plantation, for example, fails to emerge as planned, or the Forestry Commission suddenly decides to cut down some trees.

This moorland area I was now crossing was a case in point. According to the map, I was now in the middle of a wood, but there was nary a tree to be seen, just a few poor pine shoots struggling for a foothold-and failing, it seemed-in some of the most serious Scottish bog imaginable.

Since passing Lubachoinnich hours before, I had seen no trace of buildings, past or present. This land had been too harsh even for crofters centuries back. The lurid greens of the strath had long given way to the bland and mottled browns and grays of the treeless moor. Yet, despite its featurelessness, the landscape was one of magnificent desolation. Alone in this wilderness devoid of normal visual reference points, I felt time and distance take on odd, yet attractive, dimensions. The emptiness of the country was all I had hoped for, and more.

I thought about how utterly different my solitary and solipsistic walk was, compared with, say, the San Miguel de Allende pilgrimage to San Juan de los Lagos, with its dry and dusty pathways thronged with the faithful, each pilgrim on a clearly charted, goal-driven mission. Antarctica and the Congo notwithstanding, this silent, sodden, windswept Scottish moor was, in almost any sense except the geographic, about as far from Guanajuato as you could get on the planet.

Exhilarated by the desolation all around, I now wanted to see the cart track peter out into a single-file walking path or, better still, to vanish altogether. But to my disappointment, instead of disappearing, the cart track abruptly merged with a well-maintained gravel road, clearly being used by modern vehicles. The upgrading of dirt tracks to gravel roads, like the nonexistence of marked woods, is typical of the hazards that the map-navigating traveler simply has to accept.

As I turned due west into Glen Einig, a light rain began to fall, just as forecast. From high up on the glen's southern slopes, I could see along the valley all the way to Duag Bridge, and I easily spotted the roofed structure that had become my primary goal for the day. To my great consternation, a large, white vehicle was parked very near to the building. On closer inspection, I could see that it was a mini-bus-of the kind used by hospitals to transport invalids-with seating capacity for perhaps 20 people. Deserted and parked as it was in this wilderness setting, the bus looked about as incongruous as Doctor Who's telephone box in the Sahara desert, and from my point of view, about as welcome, I imagine, as a pig at a bar mitzvah.

The building beside the parked bus was a flimsy structure, consisting of little more than a few corrugated iron sheets nailed to a rickety wooden frame. But it did have a roof, window frames that had once been glassed-in and a chimney of sorts. I pushed the door and it swung open, and I was surprised and mildly encouraged to find the place empty. I don't know why I should have been so surprised, since the greater surprise would surely have been to find it home to a busload of tourists.

Why the structure had been built or when, I had no idea. The chimney was a puzzle. Did people live here at one time, and what kind of existence could they have had? The shack, and it was no more than that, was currently being used to store straw and chicken wire. Not that there was any sign of farming in the vicinity. The interior had been partitioned into two rooms, with the chimney centered over an ancient cast-iron grate set against a wooden dividing wall. One room contained the straw and the wire; the other room was completely bare, save for a pile of wood lying by the hearth.

It seemed I had stumbled upon the perfect howff. What a miraculous find! I imagined the Mountain Bothy Association had to be responsible for its maintenance, but only the small woodpile by the grate pointed in that direction. Whoever had come in by bus had presumably taken off on foot elsewhere, and for the moment, at least, I had possession of the building.

Bill Gallacher, long-time San Miguel resident, is a regular contributor of ironic works to Atención.