MTB circuit of Carn nan Tri-tighearnan

Carn na Tri-tighearnan Circuit, 40 miles, 4,500 ft ascent. Ridden anticlockwise

Around a year ago I first wrote about my local hills, the high moors that rise to the southeast of Inverness. At the time I noted that a planning application had been lodged for a wind farm on the Moy Estate. This application has subsequently been approved, not by Highland Council, who ran out of time, but by Richard Dent, the Reporter appointed by the Scottish Government. His report considers the combined impact of the Moy development and the existing nearby development at Farr. It also makes note of further proposals: a practically adjacent development at Daviot (not on the current version of the annually updated SNH wind farm map) and the adjoining proposals to the south at Tom nan Clach and Glenkirk. If the developers get their way this area will soon be dominated by wind farm developments, each individually approved using language similar to that employed in Richard Dent's report, an example of which I provide below.

'.......those walking in the vicinity would experience the turbines as dominant visual features. ..... although, on the other hand, it would remain possible to experience vistas in which the wind farm would not be seen. I am therefore not persuaded that the visual impact of the wind farm in recreational terms is unacceptable.'

Unlike Richard Dent, I am persuaded that eventually the combined visual impacts of these various developments will become unacceptable, for I fear that the current applications are the thin end of an unsightly and technologically inappropriate wedge. There are sure to be applications to extend each of them in due course. Unacceptable or not, the train has well and truly left the station and the visual impact of these developments will eventually have to be accepted. Therefore I have decided to devote as much time as possible to enjoying their absence. For some time now I have been poring over my maps and making exploratory forays, keen to find a substantially off-road mountain bike route starting at my house and taking in the Streens Gorge on the River Findhorn. For aesthetic reasons I wanted the route to contain the bare minimum of road riding or pushing. All the ideas I came up with seemed overly contrived, but the penny dropped a few weeks back with the realisation that it is possible, using a combination of a few hundred metres of pushing and a track unmarked on the 1:25,000 OS map, to link the track that climbs over Beinn Bhuidhe Mor with another which leads over the Moy Estate to Ruthven.

The machinery of the wind farm constructors moves into position on the north bank of the Moy Burn near the confluence with the Allt Odhar. The peaks in the distance are those of Meall Mor

Curious feature in the bank of the Allt Odhar. The reddish line is an iron-rich layer that marks the boundary between  tills or sediments of different types. It almost encloses a rugby ball sized sandy nodule in the centre of the photo.

The feature in the image above intrigued me, for I have seen similar iron-rich layers elsewhere in the area and have thought that they might have arisen from ash deposits from a distant volcanic eruption. The example above clearly traces the boundary between two different types of gravel, making me think that the iron-rich layer may been formed by precipitation when water that has percolated through the peaty soil above meets the lower gravel layer. Does anyone know the correct explanation? The layer does not appear to be explicitly mentioned in British Geological Society Sheet Memoir 84W.

Starting the descent towards Ruthven. The warehouses of the Tomatin Distillery are evident just right of centre. 

The terrain brought to mind more exotic landscapes that I have visited abroad; the lichenous tracts of Norway's Rondane National Park and the open, rounded, ice-milled expanses of Icelandic Highlands. In the interior of Iceland low density beige tephra accumulates in the depressions of a landscape of more dense black volcanic gravel, giving the impression of vegetation where there is none. Here light patches of lichen amid the darker heather create entirely the opposite impression, that of a vegetated desert. The road across the moor is of relatively recently construction and is incongruous despite being built from local rock; no vegetation has yet gained a toe hold in its foot-high smear of crushed red rock.

The River Findhorn at Streens

This is a route best saved for dryish conditions, for the River Findhorn must be forded. I carried crocs with me to protect my feet during the crossings. I did not carry anything other than padded shorts to protect my posterior and during the ride through the gorge, which in all honesty was not much better than cycling across a field, I was worried that I may be inflicting damage on my undercarriage. A scene from Borat kept popping into my head, one where he inadvertently spends the night with a rather fruity gentleman and afterwards makes a statement to the effect that he had had a lovely evening but that his ass had been ruined in the process. Fortunately my concerns proved to be groundless, no ass ruination occurred.

View west up the Findhorn from Quilichan

There are a couple of miles of tarmac on the switchbacked climb from Drynachan after which the route cuts west across the moor, with fine views over the firth to Caithness and out west as far as Slioch, then follows the Reirach Burn to hit tarmac once more at Glengeoullie bridge. The tarmac is again shortlived, for after a couple of miles the route cuts into the Assich Forest. I rode out of the forest at Galcantray. There are a couple of routes towards Saddle Hill that would have prolonged my off-road experience but both would have involved some pushing and were not appealing at the end of what had already been a slightly longer than expected day.

So there you have it - an aesthetically pleasing 40 mile mountain bike ride through spectacular, remote and committing terrain, yet accessible from the city of Inverness. My advise is to give it a shot before the construction of the Moy windfarm completely alters the character of the area.

Some thoughts on land ownership

Recently added fence on the summit of Carn nan tri-Tighearnan, a very visible symbol of land ownership 

I can vividly remember the first time I became fully conscious of the concept of land ownership. It was 1998 and I was sitting in a cafe cum bookshop in Antigua Guatemala, relaxing with a litre bottle of Cervesa Gallo after a Spanish lesson. In my guidebook I read the following.

'The greatest challenge to a lasting peace stems from great inequalities in the basic social and economic structure of Guatemalan society. It's estimated that 70 % of the cultivable land is owned by less than 3 % of the population.'

This struck a chord with me because I grew up on the Isle of Bute, an island with a population of around 8000 which was owned by one man, Lord Bute. The comparable statistic was that 100 % of the cultivable land was owned by 0.01 % of the population! I realised that I had grown up under a feudal system and that this was a rather odd thing to have experienced in a developed countries in the last quarter of the 20th century.

View south over the River Findhorn from Carn an Uillt Bhric, a nearby trig as yet unmolested by fences 

It is a great shame that Scotland is divided up into sporting estates, vast parcels of land that are available to be bought and sold. As such the management of our wild land is subject to the whim of the landowner, land that is well managed today could easily pass into the hands of one who is motivated more by profit than by any sense of custodianship of wild land. Under this system of land ownership there is no obligation to preserve that which makes it special.

Recently I paid a visit to the summit of Carn nan tri-Tighearnan, the Hill of the Three Lairds. It is one of my local hills and takes its name because its summit marks the boundary of three estates.  The summit plateau is guarded by extensive peat hags and was previously imbued with a tremendous sense of open space.  I say previously because since I last visited a fence has been erected along the boundary line. If you start your ascent, as I did, from the River Findhorn, the fence must be surmounted in order to access the trig point. The fence is reinforced with chicken wire down to ground level. For the first time in millennia the mountain hair have been deprived of their right to traverse these high moors from the Findhorn to the Nairn. The fence now constrains them within their respective estates. When the winter snows drift against the fences will they be able, briefly, to roam at will.

It is not particularly straightforward to establish who owns estates or where their boundaries lie. The fence motivated me to find out the identity of this trio of fence-building lairds. I subscribed to the excellent whoownsscotland.co.uk and satisfied my curiosity. 

The three fence-building lairds are, clockwise from bottom left, the Moy Estate (owned by John Mackintosh of Mackintosh); Holme Rose Grouse Moor (Owned by M.M. Hasson (1/2), W.D. Armstrong (1/3) F.E. Ratky (1/6)); Cawdor Estate (owned by Cawdor Trusts, Colin RV Campbell, (7th Earl of Cawdor) & Isabella Campbell (Countess of Cawdor) and Angelika Campbell, Dowager Countess of Cawdor) 

I met a couple of elderly baggers on the summit. They were true, blinkered, list-ticking baggers in that they had climbed all the Munros before moving on to the Corbetts. Someone had then suggested that they should climb Suilven and Stac Pollaidh and that had started them ticking their way through the Grahams. They suggested that grants were probably available to the landowners subsidise the construction of fences such as the one we had recently scaled. Do any readers know if such fences are indeed subsidised from the public purse, and if so, to what extent and, most importantly, why?

A Near Miss with Take That Star Mark Owen's Wedding Cavalcade

I really should pay more attention to the Hello magazines that people leave in the coffee room at work. I came within a few feet of Take That star Mark Owen's wedding cortege this afternoon but didn't realise it until later, when I read about his wedding in a dogeared copy of the Highland News while I was waiting for the Magic Wok to whip me up a Kung Po Chicken. 

Still water in an artificial pond passed en route to Carn Maol. The pond makers had also taken the trouble to build a row of Butts in order to maximise their chances of blasting any ducks unlucky enough to stop by for a swim.

A cavalcade of six or so Range Rovers containing men in evening wear swept past me as I returned to my van after a quite family stroll on the moorland above Cawdor. There was clearly something going on when we passed through the village half an hour or so later; a herd of long lenses were corralled opposite the church; men in fluorescent jackets milled about, self-importantly directing the passing traffic. In short, all the trappings of a showbiz extravaganza were present in this usually quiet highland village. Apart, that is, from hordes of screaming teenage girls. Or indeed hordes of any description. 

View from Carn Maol over the Moray Firth. This small hill of 324 m makes a fine viewpoint. The Cairngorms are visible to the south; to the west a panorama unfolds from the Affric hills northwards to Caithness.

I don't mean to play down the occasion. Most of the parking spaces in the village were occupied. There were even three cars parked by the pig field a quarter of a mile along the road.

I have been constantly plagued by celebrity in the great outdoors this year. Perhaps I exaggerate slightly, but I did share the bar in the Tongue Hotel with Paxman back in April. At least I managed to recognise him without any assistance from a chow mein stained tabloid.

Perhaps this unusual topic will bring my blog to a new audience, I might get thousands of hits from Take That fans overnight. 

Running, Grouse, Windfarms and National Parks

Frequently updated blogs can easily become annoying, but Will Gadd's is an exception. Reading his thoughts on training made me feel slightly lazy, so I decided to convert my guilty indolence into useful action. I enlisted Tam the dog to accompany me on my favourite hill run, taking in the rounded summit of Beinn Bhuidhe Beag. It's about a 10 km circuit of landrover tracks with an invigorating 300 m of ascent. I wrote about ski-touring this route a couple of months ago.


Having such a facility on my doorstep makes me glad to live in Scotland where our tradition of free access to the hills is enshrined in law. Our access situation contrasts sharply with that elsewhere the world, notably in North America. I've been researching a trip to the National Parks of Utah next year; Zion, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Arches. Like most people nowadays I suffer from terrible carbon guilt and the reason I've been able to suppress this enough to justify a long haul flight is because of the unparalleled opportunities for outdoor recreation provided by the US National Park system.

Looking down the Allt Carn a'Ghranndaich towards a cloud shrouded Ben Wyvis

In many ways North America provides an ideal location for the establishment of national parks; large areas exist that are devoid of development, allowing the land managers to draw a boundary and impose rules to protect the land both for nature and for outdoor recreation. In our crowded island the situation is very different. Both the Cairngorms and Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Parks contained landowners, settlements and peoples' livelihoods long before they were designated as National Parks. Protecting the land from insensitive development has to be balanced with the desire to maximise the economic benefits brought to an area by national park classification.

Tam strains at the leash as we approach the summit of Beinn Bhuidhe Bheag

It is often difficult to decouple the recreational value of a piece of land from its economic value. My morning's run over the grouse moor is a case in point. If this land was in its wild state of trackless heather and peat hags it wouldn't be an attractive venue for running or for biking.

An aspect of running that I enjoy is the way it allows apparently disparate thoughts coalesce into communicable themes. Today's insight was that my continued enjoyment of this running route may be reliant on the economic benefit that grouse shooting brings to the landowner continuing to outweigh that which they could gain through alternative land uses. One such alternative use might be covering the land in windfarms. I'm not as violently opposed to these developments as some, but all the same I prefer viewing them from a distance to running in their shadows.

This unprotected, but accidentally recreationally useful, state is all too fragile. I'd like to see the National Parks Act used to protect a far greater proportion of Scotland's wild lands.

Paul Theroux in Inverness

I spent part of saturday fruitlessly wracking my brain, trying to think of a dildo-related phrase that might be wheeled out in the heat of an argument. This strange line of enquiry had been occasioned by a comment of Paul Theroux's in which he speculated, based on the content of their quarrels, that the owners of his Inverness Bed and Breakfast establishment may be users of 'what the dirty shops called 'marital aids''. Sadly Theroux, that meticulous note-taker, did not carry through to his final draft the exact words that had conveyed this  impression.

For those unfamiliar with his work, Theroux is a hugely influential travel writer, though nowadays he has been eclipsed in the mind of the British public by his documentary-making progeny, Louis and Marcel. He rose to prominence in the 1970s after writing 'The great railway bazaar', an account of a train journey from London through Asia on the Orient  and Trans-Siberian Expresses. This proved to be the first of many great voyages; a few years later he made a tour of the coast of Great Britain, in the course of which he passed through Inverness.

Finding myself without opportunity to venture any great distance from my house this weekend, I had hatched a plan. I would locate the book in which he described his coastal odyssey, 'The kingdom by the sea', find out what he had said about Inverness, then visit the described scenes to see if any of his observations still rang true.

Theroux devoted part of his short stay in the city to studying his map and debating whether or not Inverness qualified as coastal. In his mind it all hinged on whether or not the Moray Firth was part of the North Sea. I can understand his confusion. If his map lacked detail, the intersecting spits of Chanonry Point and Fort George may have appeared to be joined, making freshwater lochs of the inner Moray and Beauly firths.

He was ignored by the bickering hosts of a cold and unpleasant Bed and Breakfast.  The dampness of the bathmat and the owner's bowling trophies troubled him. The appearance of their diseased dog was so objectionable that he wanted it to be put down. After making the marital aid related observation mentioned above he took the train to Aberdeen.

I was mildly disappointed that there were no footsteps in which to follow, but pleased to find further evidence to support my long held suspicion of Bed and Breakfasts and their proprietors. There is no need for me to try to recreate Paul Theroux's time in Inverness - a quick visit to tripadvisor.com revealed that similarly dissatisfying accommodation experiences being dispensed in Inverness to this day.


Instead I spent sunday walking up a small hill at Abriachan, where I took the photo that accompanies this piece.

A local skitour for local people

The middle of August marks a turning point in the year: the days become shorter; the ending of the school holidays congests the roads; people resume their constant droning about football after the summer ceasefire. About this time my mind begins to wander towards the coming winter and the sporting opportunities it may present.

Last winter I enjoyed a truly local adventure, a circular skitour beginning and ending at my front door, taking in the great area of moorland bounded by the River Nairn to the north, the Findhorn to the south, and the A9 to the west.

In the comfort of my living room I tightened my ski boots, shouldered my pack, then cast my skis out the front door onto the garden path. The time was just before eight and the streetlights still glowed orange. My skis slid easily on the fresh snow. I crossed the main road to gain access to the expanse of fields leading down to the sheer sandstone arches of the Nairn viaduct. The orange walls stood out thanks to their steepness, shedding the snow rather than allowing it to accumulate. The river was a ribbon of black, chugging slowly beneath the snow arched branches of the alders, its edges blurred and squeezed by sponges of slush, slow to melt in the chilly water, the current close to the banks insufficiently strong to sweep them seaward.

Past Clava House I cut over a field, once again in the shadow of the great arches of the viaduct. Casting my eyes backwards I was delighted by the twin trenches snaking behind me. The low sun lent them depth, the only features in this carpet of white. I affixed my climbing skins and set off up through the larchwoods. The woods were still and calm, a great silence having descended along with the snow. Animal tracks became commonplace, birds, roe deer and hares. The fine powder had the appearance of having been dusted straight from the sky, like icing sugar onto a mince pie, but here among the tall trunks of the larch the half-coated trunks revealed the direction from which it had come. The mass of accumulated snow had caused several boughs to shear from their parent trees onto the track. I negotiated my way round them, eager to escape the confines of the forest and break out onto the wide open moorland beyond.

Pylons carried crackling power cables above my head as I struck out onto ever deepening snow. The full extent of the snow cover became apparent, in front of me stretched a panorama of white, Saddle Hill to the left, Beinn Bhuidhe Beag and the distant heights of Beinn Bhuidhe Mor in front.

Huge erratic boulders are much in evidence in the straths, but are conspicuous by their absence here on the moor. Save for the small granite crags that cap the southern flanks of Saddle Hill, these hills are primarily composed of sandy gravel, the plateau having presumably been beyond the reach of the great glaciers that flowed from the coires of the Monadhliath down the straths during the last ice age. A few wizened Scots pines grace the steep banks of the burns which radiate out like the spokes of a wheel. Recent, sympathetic, planting of young trees mean that in future a small revival of Caledonian forest will be nurtured on these slopes. Twisted remnants of bogwood hint at what may be their eventual fate. I admired the panorama that presented itself across the deep blue waters of the firth to the north: the great hulk of Ben Wyvis and the jumble of the Fannichs rising beyond the Kessock Bridge; the pointy peaks of the Strathconon Corbetts; the long, triple-summitted ridge of Beinn a' Bha'ach Ard that guards the entrance to the long lonely reaches of Strathfarrar; a glimpse of one of the Affric hills peeping above the Scandanavian forests of Abriachan.

While these distant peaks drew the eye, it was the rounded hills to the south, the ones that were actually within striking distance, that captured my imagination. The snow had been settled slightly by the wind and my skis sank less deeply into it. I eyed what I now suspected to be tremendous fields of firm packed snow extending into the wild, committing terrain to the southeast of Beinn Bhuidhe Mor, the high plateau beyond Carn Dubh Mor containing the Graham, Carn nan Tri-tighearnan. As it had taken me well over two hours to make it this far, such an itinerary would have to wait for another day, perhaps on lightweight Nordic touring kit.

The city of Inverness and the jumble of houses at Culloden Moor were still in view. In the still conditions I could hear a plane taxiing at the airport. So close to civilisation and yet, up here on the snowfields, in a different world.
I crossed the tracks of a fox, laid out in a straight line as if the animal was walking a tightrope. Periodically he had paused to excavate small holes, perhaps hunting for mice below the snow in the same way that a polar bear would for seals below the ice. Grouse appeared as black sentries silhouetted against the snow. They strutted indecisively backwards and forwards, both feet and wingtips tracing their progress on the white canvas.

A sandwich and the dregs of my flask sustained me on Beinn Bhuidhe Beag's 460 m summit as I rested my legs in preparation for the descent down its steep northern flanks. There was a boundary fence to negotiate but the snowcover was sufficiently deep that I was able to slide over the top wire without stopping. Deep powder awaited and inspired me on this delightful but all too short descent. Euphoric, I reaffixed my climbing skins in the depths of this normally boggy hollow and decided to pick my way up through the dwarf pines onto the west ridge of Saddle Hill. The sinking sun coloured the sky a deep azure as I made my way across the flat fields to home. My legs were weary after seven hours on ski but my heart was light, an ambition had been achieved. I had seized what, in the uncertain and changing climate of the future, may turn out to have been a once in a lifetime opportunity.

We live in an age of lists. Our shops are full of coffee table books of one hundred things to do before we turn thirty, or before we die. All too often these are commercially based activities in far flung countries: jet boats and bungee jumps in New Zealand; hot air balloon rides over the Serengeti at dawn; rafting the Zambesi. Our worship of these exotic dreams implicitly devalues those which are more local or commonplace. In truth the ordinary may be extraordinary, and if we search deeply enough each one of us will find our own dreams lurking. Many of them will be local, attainable, affordable and doubly satisfying because of the creative spark needed to visualise them in the first place.