It’s a limbo that comes along every now and then – not 100 per cent fit, but not crocked enough to stay indoors and fester – and so I found myself on the western side of the Ben Lawers range last Saturday.
The previous weekend had seen me fall foul of this remarkably skiddy autumn on the hill, clattering down sideways while avoiding a flooded bit of track on the approach to the Auchessan Munros. Whether I’d stepped on a mossy bit, or a hidden slab, I don’t know – but it was akin to slipping on ice and I toppled sideways like a big old tree, gave out a grunt on impact and then picked myself up feeling winded and with an ache somewhere in the right side of my ribcage.
It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as first feared – the lack of any sharp pain quickly told of there being no break, and I was able to carry on and plod round the day’s intended hills, albeit unable to breathe quite as deeply as normal, and taking things cautiously on descent for fear of another slip.
Just a standard stuff-that-happens incident, really, but come the end of the week the soreness was still there, almost certainly a slightly torn muscle. So whatever I did come Saturday, the number one priority was not to fall over again and aggravate whatever it was that I’d done. (Maybe I should have forgotten any notions of a hill and gone to watch Airdrie United play Gala Fairydean, although I might then have split, never mind strained, my sides laughing.)
All of which is just a by-the-by way of explaining why various Plan A options (if you can have more than one Plan A) were ditched in favour of a routine half-day on the western Lawers hills with their well-made paths. If I fell over again here, it would be entirely my own stupid fault and nothing to do with mild weather or greasy hillsides.
Even without an injury, conditions suited basic path-ploddery – cloud was clamped down at 650 metres, but it was dry apart from a slight smirr up top and with less wind than forecast. A good day for autopilot cruising on known paths, rather than having to consult the compass and do things properly.
So not for the first time, four-and-a-half hours were spent trundling round Meall Corranaich, Beinn Ghlas and Ben Lawers, returning via one of the best bypass paths in the country. Goodness knows why the Scottish Mountaineering Club guidebook, in addressing walkers who have crossed Beinn Ghlas to reach Ben Lawers, says “The best return is probably by the same route.” The path round the north side of Beinn Ghlas is not only a quicker way back – in summer conditions, without rushing, it takes me about 20 minutes from the Lawers/Ghlas col to the Ghlas/Corranaich one – it is also very pleasant in itself.
To be honest, there was not much to write about up top. If there was any wildlife I didn’t see it, and the only point of any real note was that the summit slopes of Ben Lawers were mobbed. I met a dozen people on the final approach, and there were another 20 or so at the summit – a function of getting there at lunchtime, I guess. One of the less-heralded hillwalking skills – weaving through parked walking poles and on-a-long-leash dogs – had to be employed. If there was any point during the day’s walk when I was at genuine risk of tripping and aggravating the side-strain, it was here.
However, although the hill itself was routine, there had been interest even before the start. The plan had been to do these hills in a different order – Ghlas–Lawers–Corranaich – to maximise the good-path factor, but the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) car park was taped off and half dug-up. A sign advised walkers to park 500 metres further up the road, at the start of the normal approach to Meall nan Tarmachan, but unsurprisingly this was completely clogged by 15 or more cars. There are smaller parking spaces even further up, towards the dam, so I used one of these and did the circuit pretty much in reverse, given that walking ten minutes downhill on tarmac didn’t appeal as a way to start proceedings.
It would be gross overstatement to say there was gridlock on the Lochan na Lairige road last Saturday, but it was a bit of a mess, with cars squeezed into laybys and on verges in various places. And this on a day when conditions were iffy at best – had the sun been shining, there could well have been two or three times as many cars arriving here, and it’s far from clear where they would all have gone.
Having written last year about the bulldozing of the old visitor centre – the Starship Enterprise as it was not so fondly known in some quarters – I was pretty sure as I started up Meall Corranaich that the NTS had said the old car park would stay open until the new one was ready. And so they had: “The existing car park will remain useable and open to the public until the new one is open,” according to Helen Cole, the NTS property manager at Ben Lawers, in October 2010.
Well, a year on from that, and with work on the new car park (just a couple of hundred metres back down the road, on the other side) having started, something had evidently changed. Time to ask again.
“The main reason that we have had to close the car park before the new one is ready,” said an NTS spokesperson on Monday afternoon, “is because we are trying to reuse as many materials as possible from the original car park. It had been hoped that we would be able to have a period where both the new and old car parks were half-complete and accessible, but sadly that hasn’t been possible. The work is taking place at a time when we have our lowest visitor numbers, to try to minimise inconvenience.”
As to how long this will take, it could – given a continuation of the mild spell – be completed before the turn of the year. “While the weather remains good,” said the spokesperson, “we are making fairly quick progress and are very hopeful of concluding work before Christmas.”
Fingers crossed it does happen that quickly – but these things have a habit of taking longer than anticipated even in good conditions. And if the forecasts are to be believed, although we’re not due a reprise of last December’s severe spell, the weather is likely to return to its chillier seasonal norm fairly soon (indeed, there have been reports of snow down to about 800 metres on the western Highlands today).
The real problem might come if snow and frozen ground brings work on the new car park to a halt, while good overhead and on-hill conditions prompt a lot of people to pay the Lawers/Tarmachan range a visit during December. For once, however, the road’s reputation as perhaps the iciest through-route in the UK might work in its favour: there are often long spells during winter when it’s impossible to safely reach the NTS car park, never mind the Tarmachan track or the dam, without a 4x4 equipped with chains. Any car park, old or new, at the 430-metre contour is pretty much irrelevant during such times.
Quite what the drivers who parked in various neuks and corners last Saturday made of it, I don’t know, having not asked any of them on the hill. (I was too busy trying to avoid tripping over poles and dogs.) But I did briefly discuss it with one of several shepherds working the west side of Meall Corranaich, bringing down ewes for the tupping. He was about to knock off for the day given the lower-than-expected cloudbase – “If this comes in any more, there’s no point even trying” – but as we chatted for a couple of minutes I asked what he made of the traffic situation a couple of hundred metres below us.
“I’m not a big fan of the NTS,” he said. “They had a perfectly good car park and spent a load of money building a new one.” So that’s one view, from someone who works – rather than walks recreationally – in the area. It would be interesting to hear what others think – if you’ve been there since the parking problems started, do chip in with a comment.
On the positive side, it looks like the new facility will be a straight like-for-like replacement. “The new car park will have the same capacity as the old one,” said the NTS spokesperson, “and parking will be by donation, as previously, with donations from the machine going directly to our conservation work on the site.”
So with any luck, the interruption and general roadside clutter won’t be a feature of these popular Perthshire hills for too long – and there won’t be too many incidents of passing-place rage before it all gets sorted out. As for me, once this damn intercostal thing has been properly shaken off, I think I’ll go elsewhere for my walking this next while.
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