Book Review: Annandale Way by Roger Turnbull and Jacquetta Megarry

The Annandale Way is a lovely long-distance walk in Southern Scotland that runs down the valley of the River Arran from its source in the hills to the sea. Depending on which option you take in the middle section it's either 85 or 90 kilometres long. Six years ago I walked this path on behalf of Walk Highlands (you can read my description here). Back then there was no guidebook and the route wasn't marked on maps. Few people had heard of it - including myself. I really enjoyed the walk, especially the quiet setting and the abundant wildlife.

Now there's an excellent guidebook, published just this year. It contains detailed 1:44,000 maps and an easy-to-follow route description. There's masses of background information too, including details of facilities, history, and natural history plus excellent photographs by Lynne Kirton.

Joe Graham's Monument on Almagill Hill

The book is printed on waterproof paper in a ring-binder format so it can easily be folded flat at the appropriate page. It weighs 198 grams (I don't usually weigh books but as this one is designed to be carried I did) and is published by Rucksack Readers. Hopefully it will attract more walkers to this little-known but attractive area.

Forest camp on the Annandale Way

Whilst there's plenty of accommodation along the route it's not evenly spaced and places may be booked up. Much better to do as I did and take a tent. There are a few farm and village campsites and plenty of opportunities for wild camping.

Out There - The Pictures 2: Traversing Corsica on the GR20

View across the Ladroncellu valley from the Bocca Piccaia

This is the second in an occasional series of photos illustrating stories in my book Out There, which has no illustrations. The first covered Trekking to Makalu Base Camp. This one covers the GR20 in Corsica, a challenging rocky route that I walked with Cameron McNeish - so he appears in many of the pictures!

Traversing below Capu Ghiovu

 

 

 

Camping below the Refuge diu Piobbu

Climbing to the Col de Pedru

Descent into the Cirque de Solitude

In the Golo valley

Lac de Capitellu, Lac de Melu & Monte Rotondo

 

Descending the Manganella valley

Traversing below the Punta della Cappella on a misty windy day

Monte Alcudina

En route to Monte Alcudina

The Aiguilles de Bavella

Punta di Ferriate

All the photos were taken on a 6 megapixel Canon EOS 300D DSLR with a Canon EF-S 18-55mm lens.

The Pleasures of Long Distance Trails

Another piece from several years ago, edited slightly. This first appeared in TGO in 2010.

With the summer backpacking season about to begin I have been musing on long distance paths and the attraction they have for many walkers. What is it about these narrow strips of dirt that seems so magical? Just the names alone can call out and conjure up images of wild landscapes, spectacular camps, red sunsets, cool dawns and the joy in the simple act of walking all day every day. The Pennine Way, West Highland Way, Kungsleden, Tour of  Mont Blanc, Pyrenean Haute Route, John Muir Trail, Everest Base Camp Trek, Annapurna Circuit and many more – all with their own special qualities, attractions and difficulties, all enough of a challenge that completing them is an achievement but never so arduous or dangerous that the pain and fear outweighs the pleasure (though those who’ve tramped the peat bogs of the Pennine Way in constant rain or gazed down the chains leading down cliffs into the Cirque de Solitude on the GR10 in Corsica may disagree).

On the GR20 in Corsica. Note waymarks!

Long distance paths are a product of the boom in leisure time and the rise of outdoor pursuits in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The first named recreational path was the Long Trail, which runs for 273 miles along the Green Mountains in the state of Vermont and was built between 1910 and 1930. Of course such long distance paths are in no way essential for long distance walking. Before they existed there were long distance walkers – those, that is, who hiked for pleasure rather than from necessity. John Muir himself, for whom one of the most beautiful and spectacular trails is named, hiked 1000 miles from Indiana to Florida in 1867 - choosing the “wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find” – and undertook many long walks in his beloved Sierra Nevada in California, where his eponymous trail now runs. Creating your own path like this is very satisfying – many of my long distance walks are my own personal routes, with no guidebooks or waymarks. But there is a particular delight in following a long distance path, especially if the route has been well-designed. In many areas hiking would be difficult, dangerous or even impossible without long distance paths. Forest routes like the Long Trail would be desperate bushwhacks through dense vegetation if there was no trail while high mountain routes like the dramatic and exposed GR20 in Corsica would be mountaineering routes requiring technical expertise and equipment. A simple narrow path can open up an amazing wilderness world. Britain’s first long distance path, the Pennine Way, was conceived at a time when the Pennine grouse moors were banned to walkers. Writer and walker Tom Stephenson’s vision of a trail from Derbyshire to Scotland along the Pennine hills was one of freedom and access at a time when attempting such a walk would have meant trespassing, dodging gamekeepers and risking arrest.

Most long distance paths are a few hundred miles in length and can be walked in a few weeks.  Some, however, are ultra long distance and take many months to complete, stretching for thousands rather than hundreds of miles. The first of these was the Appalachian Trail running for 2178 miles along the mostly wooded Appalachian Mountains from Maine to Georgia, which was built between 1923 and 1938.  In Europe there are long distance paths known as E routes, made by connecting shorter trails, such as the 4960 kilometre E1 from Sweden to Italy and the 10,000+ kilometre E4 from Spain to Greece. The routes sound interesting. The names are not. There is no magic in them. More attractive and romantic names would make these routes far more appealing. Britain has no waymarked or official ultra long distance paths but Land’s End to John O’Groats can be seen in the same light, especially now there are guidebooks to suggested routes and it’s possible to link shorter long distance paths almost the whole way.

The most ambitious long distance path of all is the International Appalachian Trail, which is intended to run through all the landscapes on both sides of the Atlantic that were once part of the ancient Caledonian Mountain range that split apart as the Atlantic formed. This means a trail running from the south-east USA through Canada, Greenland, Norway and the Scottish Highlands to finish in Spain. As an international endeavour the IAT cuts across governments and nation states and speaks to the shared values of all walkers. I hope it prospers.

 

In my view the main aim of long distance paths is to open up nature and wild places so people can enjoy them. For many the human side of long distance paths is as or even more important though – the meetings along the way, the sharing of experiences, the new friendships, the reunions. On popular paths walkers meet regularly in towns and at camp sites along the way. Current description of walks along the 2,600 mile Pacific Crest Trail (arguably the finest of all the ultra long distance paths) often sound like a party on the move. (When I hiked the PCT in 1982 it was much less popular – there were only a few parties and not many people at them!) And away from the trail long distance paths can act as a short-hand amongst walkers. Establish you have both hiked the same long distance paths and new acquaintances suddenly have much in common to discuss and experiences and places to compare.

For walkers long distance paths are a wonderful resource, for dreaming and planning and poring over maps as well as for actual walking. I think they also have a greater value and significance that reaches far beyond those who walk them. By revealing the beauty and glory of the natural world and the wild land they run through long distance paths create a body of people to defend and protect that land. Having a named path can give an identity and meaning to a landscape that makes it easier to argue against despoliation and for preservation and restoration. People who love a long distance path are in an ideal position to fight for its continued existence, which means protecting the landscape through which it passes. And the length of a long distance path is a boon here as it means protecting or creating a continuous corridor over a great distance, rather than just an isolated spot. Official government involvement can mean something other than signposts too. Officially designated long distance paths are not necessarily superior in any way to unofficial ones – in fact they may involve compromises that reduce the potential of the route. Because of landowners objections the Pennine Way follows the South Tyne Valley rather than the northernmost summits of the Pennines. In Scotland the finest long distance path is undoubtedly the unofficial Cape Wrath Trail. But once government has made a path official it’s agencies are then meant to conserve and promote it – agencies to which pressure can be applied if they neglect this, a lever that can be used to defend long distance paths. And that is to the benefit of us all.

Hard Lessons & Inspiration: Learning Backpacking

Camping in the High Sierra on the Pacific Crest Trail

Writing my Pacific Crest Trail book has led me to think about the early days of my backpacking life so I've pulled another piece out of my archives that might be of interest:

Thinking back to some of the mistakes I made as a novice backpacker makes me shudder. Did I really suffer that much? Yes I did! With no instruction or mentors I learnt initially by trial and error, mostly the latter. Sleeping out in the rain in a feather and down sleeping bag in a plastic survival bag and discovering the joys of condensation and a wet bag; trying to sleep on frozen ground with no insulating mat and discovering why these pieces of expensive foam were needed; buying a piece of open cell foam from a market because it was cheaper than a real camping mat and finding out just how much water it absorbed when sleeping in a single-skin tent with no vents in the rain – result: a sodden sleeping bag again. Then there was humping an external frame pack round the English Lake District with no hipbelt (these were “optional extras” in Britain in the early 1970s). A shocked American hiker had me try on his pack with hipbelt – I’ve been in loved with hipbelts ever since! I also had the experience of realising that one of those compass things might be a good idea after getting lost on the featureless moorland of Kinder Scout in a November storm and descending in the dark, cold and wet. I also realised a torch would be a good idea as I stumbled into bogs and fell over rocks. Then, just a week later, I realised that spare batteries were a good idea as my new torch failed as it had accidentally switched on in the pack and I was again slipping and sliding down in the darkness. I was cold and wet too as my cheap thin nylon cagoule leaked through the seams. I solved the last by going to the other extreme with a bulky, heavy 8oz neoprene coated cagoule with taped seams. The condensation was horrendous (this was long before Gore-Tex) but it never let in a drop of rain.

Those episodes and more taught me a great deal, as they would anyone who survived them. I don’t recommend following my example though. Far better to learn from those with more experience, whether in the wilds or from books, blogs and articles. Back in my early days the Internet didn’t exist so I couldn’t just pull up advice and gear reviews in an instant. Instead, when I realised that I would like to be safer and more comfortable, I read backpacking manuals and joined The Backpackers Club, a new organisation in Britain at the time. Those books – Peter Lumley’s Teach Yourself Backpacking and Derrick Booth’s The Backpacker’s Handbook (whose title I pinched for my own how-to book a few decades later) – were invaluable. I still have them and when I glance through them now, although the gear seems old-fashioned the advice is sound. I also went on Backpacker’s Club meets and learnt much by talking to experienced backpackers as well as hiking with them and observing the techniques they used.

As well as instructional books I read books about long-distance hikes and soon aspired to undertake similar walks. My first really long walk was inspired by John Hillaby’s Journey Through Britain, the story of a backpacking trip from the farthest apart points on the British mainland, Land’s End and John O’Groats. Hiking 1250 miles that spring long ago was a revelation. Two weeks and 270 miles was my previous longest walk. This one was long enough to become what I did, my way of life for the 3 months it took. This, I realised, was really living, this was what I wanted to do. Also on that walk I discovered my love for real wildness as I crossed the Scottish Highlands and revelled in the remoteness and vastness compared with the English countryside. I still didn’t know what real wilderness was though. And I didn’t know I didn’t know either.

After Hillaby came Hamish Brown and his wonderful Hamish’s Mountain Walk, the story of the first ever walk over all the Munros in Scotland and still one of the best long distance hiking books I’ve ever read. Inspired by Hamish and my walk through the Highlands on the Land’s End to John O’Groats trip I set out to climb all the Munros on backpacking trips. It took me 4 years, during which I undertook two 500 mile hikes and several shorter ones (including the first TGO Challenge), and I learnt much in the stormy Highlands where camps are often exposed and subject to high winds and heavy rain. I think that if you learn backpacking skills there you can easily adapt them to anywhere else. (Many years later I spent 41/2 months on a continuous walk over all the Munros plus the subsidiary Tops during a wet summer that really tested my skills and my perseverance).

Whilst bagging the Munros I was lent a book an acquaintance had picked up in the USA, a book that would

change my life even more than Hillaby’s and Brown’s had done. It was The Thousand-Mile Summer by Colin Fletcher. Reading Fletcher’s wonderful prose about backpacking in big wilderness in California inspired me to think about hiking overseas. A little research (again, without the Internet – I can’t imagine now how I did it!) turned up the Pacific Crest Trail. I knew the moment I read about it that I wanted to hike it. The year after completing the Munros I took my first very nervous steps north from the Mexican border. Although early April it was hot and the desert landscape was completely alien to me. I had much to learn again. My first lesson was that a half litre water bottle is nowhere near adequate in dry places. In Scotland I barely ever carried any water – there were always plenty of streams and pools. The idea of no water for tens of miles was inconceivable (again, the information now available on the PCT wasn’t around back then). Once I’d added some soda bottles to my load so I could carry enough water all was well though and I began to enjoy and appreciate the strange landscape.

The next challenge came as I approached the High Sierra. Late snow meant it was completely snowbound. I bought some snowshoes and crampons and teamed up with three other hikers. Together we made it through the snow, taking three weeks on the longest section. My pack was so heavy at the start that I couldn’t actually lift it. I had to sit down, put it on then gingerly stand up. Every hour or so I had to rest as my shoulders and hips were going numb. However I can’t now remember the weight or the pain it engendered but I can remember the joy of spending so many days without leaving the wilderness. The weight was ridiculous and I’ve never carried such a stupid load since but the rewards made the effort worthwhile.

For much of the PCT the beauty and wildness of the landscape had me floating along on a high. I was astounded and overjoyed to discover such wilderness. The whole trail was an inspiration. It remains the one walk that stands out in my memory; the one where I discovered real wilderness and the great pleasure of hiking and living in it. Since the PCT I’ve done many other long walks, most recently the Pacific Northwest Trail and the Scottish Watershed, and all have been great experiences. None has quite the magic or power of the PCT though. That was my first wilderness walk and as such remains special.

Walks Around Britain Podcast Interview & Buxton Adventure Fesitval

On the Arizona Trail

Many months ago I recorded an interview about my long distance walks with Andrew White for his Walks Around Britain Podcasts. This has just appeared in the latest podcast which also features Kate Ashbrook of the Ramblers on their latest campaign and Dave Mycroft and Gareth Jones talking about walks in the Peak District. You can here the podcast on Audioboo.

Buxton Awash

I've also just been talking about long distance walking in a very wet and windy Buxton at the Buxton Adventure Festival where I was interviewed by the BMC's Carey Davies. Given that I usually stand up when giving talks I must say it was nice to sit in a comfy armchair for the interview! Anyone who's interested but who missed the talk will find a flavour of it on the Walks Around Britain Podcast.

After my interview I joined the audience to watch a gripping film - Crossing the Ice - about an unsupported trek to the South Pole and back I was impressed with the fortitide and determination of the explorers but there looked to be too much suffering involved for my tastes. Great film though.

The Festival was also a good place to chat to old friends and new, something I'll be doing again the week after next at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival.

Storytelling along the Southern Upland Way

One of the pleasures of leading a group is meeting interesting people and I was delighted and surprised when I discovered that Daniel Allison, one of the people who came up Sgor Gaoith with me at the start of the month, was a storyteller and musician. I was also very interested when he told me that later in the month he was walking the Southern Upland Way and telling stories in communities along the way, a fascinating idea. Daniel has now started his walk, which can be followed on Facebook - Among the Wild Deer - and on Twitter @amongthewild. The Southern Upland Way, which I've hiked twice (see here for a brief account of my 2010 walk), is long and quite tough in places. Stopping off to tell stories along the way would require even more energy and determination. Most evenings on my walks I was happy just to lie back in the tent with a hot drink and a book.

Daniel also has an interesting website, again entitled Among the Wild Deer, which gives information on his storytelling, workshops and more.

 

Thoughts On Long Distance Backpacking

I'm thinking about long distance backpacking even more than usual at present as I'm deeply involved in planning for my forthcoming Scottish Watershed walk and have the book on my Pacific Crest Trail walk that I'll be writing next autumn in the back of my mind. A few years ago, reflecting on a recent TGO Challenge crossing, I wrote a piece for The Great Outdoors about the reasons why long distance backpacking is so satisfying. Here it is again:

 

What is it about walking for day after day carrying all you need on your back that is so fulfilling? Day walking is easier, staying in roofed accommodation is more comfortable. But neither has the same intensity or produces the same feeling of contentment as long distance walking and camping. The reasons, I think, are complex and many. They are to do with the nature of journeys, the significance of self-sufficiency and the importance of closeness to nature.

Backpacking is about travelling, about moving on from place to place, with the only limitation being how far you can walk each day. This can be done as a random venture, setting out each day with no destination in mind, just following the whims of the hour, and with no overall aim for the walk. Such relaxed unpressured backpacking sounds appealing but in reality I’ve found it strangely unsatisfying on the couple of occasions I’ve tried this approach. Whether on an overnight or a multi-month hike I like an ultimate point to aim for via a series of intermediate destinations even though I know that what is most important is what happens between those points not in reaching them. Having an objective gives a purpose to a walk, a structure around which to plan and an incentive to keep moving. A walk like this becomes a journey, an odyssey, an exploration. The goal gives the walk shape and meaning. It becomes a challenge too, something that requires physical and mental effort. And on long walks I find that the two go together and that increased physical fitness and increased mental sharpness add to my appreciation of and involvement with nature and the landscape.

A backpacking journey is a progression, a slow accumulation of distance, a gradual movement towards the final destination and away from the beginning. Every journey grows, matures and then declines. At the start there is anticipation, excitement, even trepidation as I look ahead to the adventure to come and wonder what it will bring in the way of joy and difficulty. Once the journey is well underway and the little niggles of the first days, the concerns over equipment, camp sites, water sources and route finding, have faded away its nature changes. The experience becomes deeper and more intense and I can concentrate on the land and the walking and camping. On multi-week hikes it becomes my way of life. This is what I do, this is what I am. Then as the end approaches the journey starts to wind down and the mind leaps beyond the world of the walk to the one outside that I am about to rejoin. Life after the walk suddenly emerges and becomes a reality whilst the walk itself starts to fade as I complete the last miles. 

A journey on foot is the best and arguably only way to journey through a landscape and really see it, really take in the details, the subtle changes, the way the land works. Walking speed is just right for this. The faster the travel the less the engagement with the land, culminating in the supersonic speed of jet aircraft, which is fine for whisking you from continent to continent but useless for experiencing anything at all about those continents. Mechanized transport is about getting to places as fast as possible not about the journey itself. Backpacking, slow and inefficient at getting anywhere, is about the process not the product, about enjoying nature and land, about relishing the physical effort of walking and the skills of navigation, camping and coping with the terrain and the weather. The backpacker has freedom and depends on skills and knowledge, the mechanized traveller is bound by timetables and dependent on the abilities and competence of others. There is no sense of personal involvement or adventure let alone any connection with nature. Even when the landscape can be viewed, from a train or car window say, it’s no more than a scenic backdrop rushing past, pretty perhaps but no more than that. You can’t touch it, smell it, feel it change under your feet, experience the wetness of the rivers, the roughness of the rocks, the warmth of the sun, the rush of the wind down the glen or hear the wild sounds of nature – a stag’s bellow, a diver’s weird shriek, a barn owl’s chilling scream, the softer tunes of song birds. A landscape is far more than a picture but to realise this you have to become part of it, slowly, and on foot.

Backpacking is the finest way to lose yourself in a landscape. By spending days or weeks moving through the land and sleeping there at night you become attuned to its characteristics (that soft down slope wind that arises after dusk, the bright green attractive looking ground that signifies a deep bog), its smells, its plants, its wildlife, its feel. And as you move through the landscape you can watch it change, watch mountains and rivers grow and diminish, watch forests deepen in the valleys and thin and dwindle as you climb, watch the shape of the land gently alter as rocky peaks give way to rounded hills and the latter in turn to low moorland or forest. A picture can be built up of the way the land is formed and how it changes. TGO Challengers know this, beginning on the wild, indented western coastline where rocky pointed mountains rise steeply from the sea with narrow glens and fast short rivers winding through them, then walking out of this tightly packed landscape into a more expansive one of massive, steep-sided, flat-topped hills, broader, gentler glens and bigger, longer rivers. Finally this central and eastern Highland landscape is left for a slow descent from the last low moorland hills into flat forests and farmland and the towns and cities of the east coast. The various landscapes merge and intertwine with each other, details fading in and out from one to the other. There are no straight lines delineating the end of one landscape and the start of the next. The wild is not neat and tidy. Yet at the same time there is a clear progression from the wild west to the tamed east.

In my opinion the best backpacking routes are natural ones that fit in with these changes in the landscape. By this I mean ones whose start and finish points are determined by nature not by humanity. The TGO Challenge is a good example. Coast to coast is a natural route to take, with clear, indeed absolute, end points. Walking the length of a mountain range, as I did in the Canadian Rockies, is satisfying in the same way. I finished that walk looking down on rolling hills as the big mountains I’d been following for 1600 miles faded away.  Ending the walk at the end of the mountains felt appropriate, a suitable way of completing a long journey. That’s how a backpacking journey should end, with a satisfying sense of completion.

Scotland End-to-End ... Something Else To Watch Out For....

The Spey Dam loch

Films seem to be in my life at present. After posting a hint about a proposed film on the Cairngorms in winter with Terrybnd (see last post) I spent yesterday with Triple Echo Productions and Cameron McNeish filming for a BBC programme on Scotland End to End. Together with producer Margaret Wicks and cameraman Dominic Scott, Cameron I went up to the Spey Dam loch and Garva Bridge and then walked most of the way up to the top of the Corrieyairick Pass (I reckon Cameron and I covered three times the distance as we repeated sections two or three times for different camera angles). The weather was reasonably kind with a fine dappled sky early on and then touches of sunshine and a slow build-up of cloud with the first rain drops falling just as we finished filming. Stags were roaring in the corries, the hillsides were golden brown and wreaths of mist curled across the slopes, making it a real autumn day.

Filming beside the Spey Dam loch

In between the walking Cameron chatted with me about long distance hiking, trails, Scotland, wild land and more. I set up a brief camp near Garva Bridge, finding it hard to concentrate being filmed pitching my shelter. How much of this will appear in the programme is another matter of course.

The End to End route, which runs from Kirk Yetholm to Cape Wrath, looks a good one, passing, as it does, through some of Scotland's finest and, so far, still unspoilt landscapes. The book of the walk, by Cameron McNeish and Richard Else, Scotland End to End, is already out. Rather than a simple guide book it's full of anecdotes and stories with just short route descriptions. There's plenty of colour photographs to inspire you too.

By Garva Bridge

The film will be shown in two hour long episodes over the Xmas and New Year period. Mine will only be a small part of course. The whole route is 470 miles long. The Kingussie to Fort Augustus section, of which this filming was a part, is only 32 miles of that. Cameron has many other guests on the programme, one of them being photographer Colin Prior, who was filmed on An Teallach. You can read about that on the Mountain Media blog here. I must admit being envious of Colin, An Teallach being somewhat more attractive than the Corrieyairick Pass! Especially as the latter, already spoilt by a line of pylons, is being further disfigured by the construction of much bigger pylons. None of these are actually in place yet but the ugly wide bulldozed roads needed for the construction vehicles are already there.

Reviews: Grizzly Bears and Razor Clams

The first reviews of my new book have appeared and I'm delighted to say they are very positive. I am honoured that the founder of the trail, Ron Strickland, likes my book, which he has reviewed on his blog. As soon as I had copies I sent one to Ron, then waited for his verdict. It's Ron's trail and his approval of my book means a great deal. That he finds my writing "magical" and my pictures "a pure delight" is really thrilling.

I was also very pleased at the first review by a purchaser of the book - Robin of Blogpackinglight. As well as the content Robin praises the format (thanks publishers!) and says he'd like to see Crossing Arizona and Walking the Yukon in the same format. So would I! If Grizzly Bears is successful enough maybe it will be possible.

Update July 8

There are also two five star reviews on Amazon,  one from Tony Hobbs (thanks Tony!) and one from "Deep Reader". Tony says he would give it six stars if he could!

Update July 9

Andy Howell has published a very nice review on his website.  Two particular lines in the review really please me as they cover aspects of the writing that I worked hard to achieve:

"Chris captures beautifully the relationship that a walker develops with the land that he or she is hiking through."

"Chris’ insights into the plight of the natural environment can be quite profound but never are they preaching."