A late October holiday in the West of Scotland is always a risky business. Travelling in hope of a riot of autumn colours, one all too often ends up suffering a cold and miserable drenching. Setting off, the forecast was for wind and rain, and waking up in my sleeper compartment, I looked out the window as the train crawled up a "dreich" Glen Falloch, rain slanting remorselessly down and the drenched, grey hillsides hosing water into the valley. However, morale boosted by a cup of tea brought by the attendant, I reflected on Billy Connolly's defence of the Scottish weather: "There's no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes!" and stepped confidently off the train at Bridge of Orchy. Nigel was there to meet me and pleasure at seeing him somehow converted the atrocious conditions into an infinitely amusing joke. We drove off to Kinlochleven (via Fort William to pick up my phone which I'd inevitably left on the train) where he and his wife Jane were staying with friends in the well-appointed cottage of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club. Absolved from any immediate need to rush off up hill and crag, I took my time settling in, chatting with Nigel and Jane, their friend Josie Smith and her daughter Claire. After a leisurely lunch, we were tempted by a slight interlude in the weather to brave the elements and "go for a walk".
Kinlochleven is a slightly out-of-the-way sort of place, north of Glencoe, beneath the Marmore hills. It's original raison d'être was an aluminium smelt, but it's continued existence is now much more dependent upon tourism, not least the fact that it has become a favourite stopover on the now famous West Highland Way. We wandered through the village and up through the woods to admire the Grey Mare falls. Framed in autumnal perfection, they presented an absurdly ideal picture, like a Victorian print, with a great surge of white water gushing through a chute of vast rocks. Continuing on up, we emerged onto the open hillside, heading for Loch Eilde Mor, our chosen destination. To our left were the Marmores - great lumps of mist-shrouded Scottish hill. We identified Am Bodach and Na Gruagaichean. Years ago, it must have been 1983, I'd been up there with Nigel. They'd been snow on the ridges and we'd been beaten back from a full traverse by ferocious winds. Meanwhile we were being propelled uphill by only slightly less violent gusts from the south-west, while being discomfited by intermittent rain-showers. As I plodded on up, I gradually became aware of the ringing of my mobile phone. I hadn't imagined there would be a signal. With lunatic incongruousness it was the office asking me if I was able to go on mission to Turkey! Claiming other engagements, I politely declined. My companions accused me of setting the whole thing up for the purposes of swank. Nothing I said could persuade them otherwise!
We reached a broader land-rover track with easy going down to the loch. It was one of those wild, lonely places which, for me at least, make for a perfect camp-site. What could be more romantic than the orange-yellow splash of my old Vango Force Ten pitched at the loch-side, punctuating the dark green-brown of the heather and the steel-grey waters disappearing into the horizon at a point between two hills? But perhaps not today. Turning away from the loch, we headed into the teeth of the wind as we contoured around the base of Meall na Duibhe and out onto the the shoulder of the hill known as Leitir Bo Fionn. By now we were taking bursts of rain full in the face, as my gortex jacket once again failed to live up to the manufacturer's rash claims. I hurried on down the path as it cut back towards the confluence of the Allt na h'Eilde and the River Leven and the shelter of the scrubby woods. Settling down behind a stone dyke to wait for the others to catch up, I drank in the gold and brown of bracken and birch, of oak and ash and rowan - not seeking to commit the beauty of the scene to some autobiographical memory-bank, but to be open to it in the moment itself, in order to become, as it were, one with it.
The others joined me and we continued on past the wildly rushing waters of the Leven in spate and made our way back through the village to the cottage, stopping off at the off-licence to pick up a "carry-out" to fuel the evening's home entertainments.
Nigel and Jane rustled up a curry, as I cracked open the drink. With a fire burning merrily in the grate, we ate, talked, joked, reminisced, intoxicated as much by the company as by the wine. I gave a rendition of "The Seven Drunken Nights" on the harmonica and Josie sang some traditional ballads in her astonishing folk-singing voice - an amazing talent. Turning in, we made no plans for the morning, deciding to wait upon what the weather might bring.


Next day we awoke to the steady and unrelenting down-beat of West Highland rain. That decided us. Nigel and Jane would abandon what was in effect the last day of their holidays and head south, aiming to stop off in the Lake District on the way. I, meanwhile, contacted my old university climbing companion,"Chas" Chaplin, and arranged for him to drive up from Surrey and meet us at the "Three Shires" in Little Langdale that same evening. To his credit, Chas barely hesitated, seeking only confirmation from "Rain Man", his nickname for me, that we had guaranteed foul weather. Once I had assured him that the mother of low pressure areas was hovering over the north-west of England, he set off through appalling conditions and nightmare traffic with careless insousiance. He made it just before closing time. A quick welcoming pint later, we all drove the five minutes to the Lancashire Mountaineering Club hut - a "converted" barn at Blea Tarn on the road over to Great Langdale. The years fell away. An old hay loft with a long alpine style bunk on one side, a do-it-yourself kitchen range on the other and a slippery wooden stairway down through pelting rain to the outside toilet was the sort of unbridled luxury we dreamed of in our student days! Nigel and Chas had not met since my wedding. I'd known Nigel from school, Chas from university and their paths had had no particular reason to cross. Both engineers, they quickly identified shared experience and mutual friends. It would have been nice if all three of us could have gone climbing together, but Nigel absolutely had to be back in Northwich the following afternoon.
The next morning the rain was still lashing down. I was reminded of my first ever Newcastle University Mountaineering Club meet in Langdale in October 1970. The club had opted to camp, and we freshers were accomodated in a sort of mini-marquee which had been specially hired for the occasion. Predictably it deluged. On the Saturday I remember persuading some reluctant new members to take a look at Bowfell Buttress, supposedly a climb for all weathers. We waded up the Band through the mist and rain, found what I thought must be the start, only to discover that my companions had taken cold (and doubtless wet) feet. Secretly or not-so-secretly relieved, we returned to the campsite to discover that the marquee was semi-collapsed in a foot of water. We gathered up our sodden kit, dumped it in the hired van and headed for the bar of the Old Dungeon Ghyll to get as drunk as our grants would allow. On closing time there was nothing else for it but to sleep in the van, although there was very little actual sleep involved in sitting bolt upright on hard Ford Transit benches surrounded by a chaos of rucksacks and ropes. Ah, those were the days!
Chas and I bade Nigel and Jane farewell and headed over to Langdale. Along the valley bottom the road was significantly flooded. We quickly devised a plan of action commensurate with the conditions and drove off to Ambleside for a cup of coffee. A wet Saturday festering in Ambleside must come close to a climber's vision of hell, but there was worse to come. I discovered to my horror that Chas had succumbed to MCS -Modern Consumer Syndrome, and was quite happy to drag me round the boutiques telling me which brands of anorak were cool and which irretrievably naff. I do worry about him sometimes. On a previous outing I heard him most definitely refer to his jumper as "a trendy fleece" - the mother of oxymorons to my way of thinking! However, we did manage to do some sensible shopping for climbing ropes and with the weather seeming to ease a little, we returned to Langdale, parked by the New Dungeon Ghyll, and set off for a no more than slightly wet walk up to Pavey Ark. We pushed up past the spectacular Dungeon Ghyll Force, skirted around the shores of Stickle Tarn, with the cliffs of Pavey Ark looming impressively through the mist, then headed east over and through a series of ill-defined bumps - Blea Rigg, Castle How, Raw Pike. This part of the Lakes is so criss-crossed with paths, marked and unmarked on the map, that it can get confusing and, although never entirely lost, we were anxious to find the best way down into the Langdale valley, avoiding the cliffs of Whitegill crag. As a young man I had learned much of my climbing on Whitegill and had no desire to come a cropper on it 35 years later in a bitter twist of fate! However, taking our bearings by Easedale Tarn and Grasmere to the north and east, we eventually found the path down, which was just as well as without it we might never have scaled the vast cyclopean walls which seperate the grazing areas from the bracken-covered upper slopes!

Given the busy autumn week-end, the only room we could get was in the slightly pricey Old Dungeon Ghyll, but it was definitely a worthwhile experience. Steeped in climbing tradition and oozing quaint English charm, it had a drying room, an excellent little residents' bar with a good selection of beers where we had an excellent meal, a cosy, comfortable bedroom and, to top it all, a Polish receptionist of breathtaking loveliness! We stammered our way through the settling of the bill like a couple of 16 year olds, while back in the safety of our room we shared laddish jokes about the advantages enjoyed by the experienced man etc. etc. Female beauty of that calibre is an extraordinary thing. It's not just a question of sex-appeal, although it obviously is that too. It's almost as though some, in herself, perfectly ordinary girl has unwittingly become the vehicle of a Platonic "idea" of beauty embodying a truth, a truth which calls to something equivalent, something higher in the male admirer. This must surely be connected in some way with the traditional notion of the women's "civilizing" influence on men or the Goethean concept of "das Ewig-Weibliche". It is probably the inspiration behind the medieval romances and the writings of the troubadors. Next to my bed is a picture of Carol as she was when we first met, which, I realise now, serves above all as a reminder of the better person she awakened in me. Another research project for my retirement!

The next morning there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We packed up quickly and, skipping breakfast, drove over the Kirkstone pass to Ullswater. Our objective was St. Sunday Crag where Chas had identified a three-star scramble. Not getting enough practice to have confidence in our climbing abilities, scrambling offers us the frisson of exploring rock architecture without any real prospect of being able to fall off anything! With the colours of the season revealed at their spectacular best after the rain, The Lake District showed itself off in all its dinky perfection. Having just come down from Scotland, I was lured into an exercise of comparison. And although I love both, there is no denying the differences. Where the Scottish hills are vast, endless, wild and untamed, a random litter left by the uncaring powers of the ice age, the Lakeland fells are neat, circumscribed and contained as though every stone, every tree, every hillside had been carefully, lovingly put into position by some water-colour deity. The Scottish landscape seems somehow pregnant with a deep unfulfilled longing, an unspoken melancholy, the immanence of an unrealised transcendence, inducing a state of awe, a sense of humility, whereas the Lake District is English, solid, practical, confident, reassuring, cheerful, affectionate, utterly charming, but not beyond our ordinary ken. Are these just so many pathetic fallacies or am I, through the medium of landscape, stumbling over the differences between the English and the Scottish psyche? What are the differences? I shall hazard a nutshell view: where the Englishman is "bien dans sa peau", the Scotsman is not at all and each has the merits and failings of their respective states. Where the Englishman is stolid, the Scotsman is neurotic. The Englishman is at ease in his notion of the world - pragmatic, self-assured, tolerant, of an optimistic disposition, unimaginative, dependable, an honest dullard, slow to anger, but a stubborn enemy, a man content with the certainties bequeathed unto him. The Scotsman, however, is not at home within himself, nor really in this world. This renders him susceptible to impossibly utopian projects like Presbyterianism - (another) plan to permit God's rule on earth. Not confident of himself, the Scotsman must continually overcompensate through the medium of caustic wit, which is honed to a fine edge through constant practice. Not enjoying the Englishman's existential certainties, the Scotsman is intellectually curious and genuinely interested in the things of the mind. The English have intellectuals too, but abstract thought enjoys little status in a context where all that really needs to be known is already known. Being half Saxon, half Celt, the Scotsman is divided against himself; he simultaneously seeks to emulate and despise his English neighbour. He is dourly practical and wildly exalted, ruthless and sentimental, overconfident and prone to self-doubt. Where the Englishman is the finished product, the Scotsman is work in progress. But a work in progress is by definition more open-ended. Anyway, just a thought-experiment...

We walked up Grisedale, then cut off up the fellside to the start of the scramble which we found after a bit of faffing around. The route itself was a bit contrived as the trickiest bits could largely be avoided. At one point Chas insisted on the use of the rope, but more to inaugurate our new purchase than for any real consideration of security. We took a couple of pictures, posing over precipices seen only through the camera lens. Then it was over as quickly as it had started. We plodded up to the top of the hill and lounged in the sunshine, taking in Helvellyn to the west and High Street to the east. We sauntered lazily down the hill, dragging out our remaining time together, enjoying spoof-picturesque views across Ullswater. Then on down to the car, pack up and drive to Oxenholme station for me to catch the train back up to Scotland. We parted company in the secret knowledge that, so long as we are able to bash up a hill together, we can never grow old.