November is a much maligned month, a Cinderella month relegated to the supposedly dark and miserable back-end of the year. However, once you have made allowances for the shorter days and the odd bit of wind and rain, the season reveals its own indisputable charms. In fact it is often in November that the most spectacular of the autumn colours are to be enjoyed - as though the earth were releasing a final intense breath before retreating into itself to regather its forces for the Spring. Travelling up to Scotland ahead of the family, I had arranged to meet Nigel Lyle and his wife Jane in Edinburgh. The train rattled up through Northumberland and the Borders in brilliant sunshine - was this going to be our lucky Toussaint holiday? I located the Lyles, parked illegally on the Waverly concourse in their used, well-used it must be said, camper-van. I had no foreknowledge of this tastefully decrepit vehicule, but, as yet unaware of its implications, my rucksack and I piled into the cheerful chaos which typically characterises any Lylemobile. Nigel has always eschewed the vulgar convenience of any vehicule of even remotely recent manufacture. An award-winning engineer, he has nothing but contempt for any conveyance which does not require constant string-and-chewing-gum maintenance. We nosed out of Edinburgh to the accompaniment of demonic fan-belt squeal and compensatory gunning of the engine. Lovely day, what's the forecast? Wet and windy. I don't believe you! It's all right, the Eastern Cairngorms are supposed to be OK. But I thought we were going to stay in a comfortable club hut in Roy Bridge? Don't worry, we've got the van. The van was what I was most worried about, but I put any anxieties temporarily to the back of my mind.

Resolving to make the best of the afternoon, we crossed the Forth Road Bridge, drove up past Loch Leven and turned off towards Falkland. From there we headed up to the gap between the two Lomonds, the cleavage, as it were, of the Paps of Fife. We pulled over into the car park and started to get ready for our double assault on these twin peaks. I was already dimly aware of the fact that this seemed to involve an inordinate amount of stashing and restashing of gear - without realising the full implications. Under louring skies we knocked off the two hills. I'd passed them innumerable times en route for my parents' home in Carnoustie. I'd even failed at a half-hearted attempt with my, at the time, young family, due to a combination of mutiny and nightfall. This time, however, we made it and were able to enjoying sweeping views right across the centre of Scotland. Particularly entertaining was the vista to the east, where we could read the details of the life-size coastal map from the Lothians in the south to Angus in the north. With the wind rising and darkness coming on, we quickly returned to the van and headed into the night. The van rattled and whirred its way northward, past Perth, and on to Blairgowrie, where we stopped to take on provisions. I view Tayside as my home beat and there was some talk of maybe staying at my brother's house in Kirriemuir, but we finally opted to head for Braemar and the high Cairngorms. Determined to have a pint, we pulled into the car park of the Spittal of Glenshee. One can but admire the post-modern way in which the decorators of the bar have, presumably ironically, embraced tartan kitsch! Squeezing in among numerous bus parties of O.A.P.s, we polished off our beers and continued on our way, up over the Devil's Elbow and down Glen Clunie.

On the old road, opposite Auchallater, we found somewhere to pull the van over and settle down for the night. One of the problems about owning a camping-van is that one feels inevitably constrained to make use of it. Seeing in me a kindred spirit of many years, Nigel convinced me that there could be no more enticing prospect than a night spent in a cramped and uncomfortable shambles. Where shall I sleep? On the shelf, of course! The "shelf" involved clearing all the gear out of the upper luggage niche, piling it randomly about and positioning a couple of thinly padded boards across the width of the vehicule. I was then required to haul myself up and make myself as comfortable as I could. Nigel looked on with uninhibited Schadenfreude as I found myself with my head jammed down the thin end, unable to turn round. My attempts at advanced contortionism having ended in inevitable frustration, I was forced to climb back down and try to get up again feet first. It was ungainly, undignified and uncomfortable. I was determined to make the best of it and stretched out. Lights out. After two minutes my hip was sore from my own weight forcing it down against the boards. I wriggled and adjusted. The boards creaked violently. I turned again. They creaked some more. Fearing to disturb Nigel and Jane below, I resolved to remain still by sheer willpower. I lay in a state of growing hysteria. Silently snapping, I moved. The boards groaned. By now my oesophagus was smarting from the effects of dinner. Heartburn was interfering with natural breathing. We had eaten one of Nigel's weird concoctions. A sort of rehashed rissotto in which sour apples from his own garden played a significant though non-specific role. All washed down with lashings of some Bulgarian hootch I'd picked up in Blairgowrie, a town with an international reputation for its wine connoisseurship. Suddenly I realised my feet were too hot. I knew I would surely go mad if I didn't remove my socks. At the expense of wracking cramps I got them off. My face was too close to the ceiling. There wasn't enough air! I wrestled with the vent and just about got my nose out into the open. I gulped in cool oxygen and laid back down. My feet felt cold...

And so the night passed. I must have slept fitfully because I remember dreaming of being chained up in a slave-ship. Gradually it got lighter. I poked my head out the vent. Above the dark humps of Sron Dubh and Sron nan Gabhar, the sky was streaked in bands of the intensest pink and turquoise. Could we be in for a fine day? I snoozed a bit longer. Gradually the three of us emerged from our sleeping bags. Wrestling yet again with stashes of gear, we located the galley and rustled up the traditional gourmand breakfast of eggs and bacon and the local speciality, Lorne sausage. By the time we'd got dressed and finished shifting and shunting it was 10 o'clock and the sky had clouded over. Our plan was to head up Glen Callater and across to Loch Muick. Jane kindly volunteered to drive round and pick us up at the other end. It was good to get going. We could have been anywhere in the Eastern Grampians. Seemingly endlessly, undistinguished and indistinguishable heather-clad hills succeeded one another under scudding grey clouds. The accumulated effect, while not dramatic, is soothing and harmonious. The intimate familiarity of these eastern hills is reassuring and comforting, like walking at the side of an old, loyal friend. Nigel and I laughed together. It looked like we were set for a day of pointless mountaineering - my favourite sort. But I had not reckoned on Nigel's secret vice. We had spoken of striking up from Loch Callater, contouring round the southern slopes of Cairn an t-Sagairt Mor and heading down the Allt an Dubh-Loch to admire the cliffs of the Dubh Loch itself, then on down to Loch Muick and home. After all, with the cloud right down, flogging aimlessly through the mist was a less than irresistible prospect.


Leaving the main route which continues up over Jock's Road to Glen Clova, we branched off from Loch Callater, worked our way around the base of Creag an Loch and pushed on up the slopes of Cairn an t-Sagairt Mor. "Might as well climb to the top now we're here." My feelings on the matter were insufficiently strong to warrant my contradicting Nigel's mild-mannered suggestion. Our supplementary exertions were richly rewarded. Near the top of the mountain we started huge coveys of ptarmigan. Neither of us had ever seen so many together. So perfectly camouflaged as to be indistinguishable from the surrounding rocks to within a few feet, they would suddenly lift, soaring and wheeling in perfect formation before realighting at a safe distance from our inconsiderate intrusion. At the summit we took a seat and had a first round of sandwiches. Seeking to orientate ourselves in the mist, I pulled out the map. Casually, Nigel offered his opinion: "Best to head north-east. We can follow the stream down from there." "Er, yeah, OK." Heading down the other side of the hill we came across the wreckage of a fighter aircraft. We went over and took a closer look. Neither of us was sufficiently knowledgable to identify the type. Did the pilot have time to bail out? We feared the worst. He probably hit the mountainside flying too low in claggy weather. Much like the conditions we found ourselves in now. "Now that we're here, we might as well take in Carn an t-Sagairt Beag". I supposed so. We flogged on up. "Actually, from here we can get on to the Stuic and get the view down into Coire Loch nan Eun." Hang on. That would be a part of Lochnagar proper. The terrible truth was beginning to dawn. Nigel was a crypto-Munroist. The reason we had "somehow" wandered up into the wind and the mist was to satisfy his perverse urge to tick off a few lumps that happened to be over 3000 feet above sea-level. The Ordnance Survey maps all measure height in meters, which rather subtracts from the point of the whole exercise. While I have always sought to embrace the essential pointlessness of mountaineering, this utterly contrived purpose was the very antithesis of the sort of purification of motive which I was seeking. It got worse. No sooner had we hit the path around the rim of the corrie, than we veered off it again in order to take in Carn a' Choire Bhoidheach, a scarcely discernible minor outlier. At the "summit", a slight blip in the plateau, there were two cairns a short distance apart. Nigel suffered an agony of ethical doubt deciding which was the highest and thus the authentic top. In fairness, the cairn itself would have been worth the diversion. It was an object of genuine aesthetic delight, like a Henry Moore or something from a Japanese garden. The uppermost stone was perfectly rounded and smooth, accentuating, as Nigel later put it, the gentle curvature of the mountain itself. By now we were committed to the full traverse of Lochnagar. We followed the path more steeply up to Cac Carn Mor and then on to summit tor of Cac Carn Beag, at 1155 meters, the mountain's highest top. The wind was pretty strong by now and we sheltered behind the rocks to eat the rest of our lunch. We had hoped to get the full view of the main Lochnagar crags, but sadly they remained in cloud throughout. And so we headed down. We took the beautifully constructed path down the Glas Allt, past the spectacular waterfall, through the delightful little wood by the Glas-allt Shiel at the western end of Loch Muick. As darkness fell, we followed the track along the northern shore, crossed the river where it flows out of the loch and made for Spittal of Glenmuick where we were greeted by the cheery light of the camper. It had been a good, full-blooded eight hour day out on the hill.

Jane had thoughtfully booked us in to a comfortable bunkhouse in Braemar. I revelled in the depraved decadence of a warm shower and my own little room, my own little bed and my own little bedside light. No five-star hotel could compare! At breakfast the next morning, Nigel scoured the map for a suitable objective. The big mountains to the north were off-limits. We had to be heading homewards that same evening and needed to be off the hill at a reasonable hour. Nigel came up with a subsiduary summit of Carn Cruinn, a determinedly nondescript mountain at the head of Glen Ey. I supposed it was a top he had inexplicably omitted in the course of some previous Munro-bagging outing. We set off in the van for Inverey through idyllically autumnal upper Deeside, with interspersed larch, birch and pine creating a perfect seasonal effect against the backdrop of rugged heather hills and the languid meanders of the river. We parked and set off up the true left bank of the Ey Burn. At one point the course of the stream had carved out a miniature gorge in the schistose rock, creating an almost theme-park effect. We identified a number of perfect pools for swimming. But today was the not the day for it. The wind was blowing strongly out of the south-west. As we turned off the main track and headed for the base of our mountain, we found ourselves pushing into the teeth of a gale. We consoled ourselves with the thought that we would have the wind behind us for the return journey. Arriving at the bottom of our hill, there was little scope for subtle routefinding. A brutal frontal assault was the order of the day. We just carried straight on up. It was a stiff pull at times, as we forced a passage through the traditional thigh-deep vertical heather, but by dint of unimaginative persistence we made it to the summit. At the cairn, we took what shelter we could from the wind and the scotch mist and munched on our sandwiches. It was gloriously pointless! On the way down, sudden rents in the wind-shunted cloud afforded us dramatic, Flying Dutchman views of the nearby hills and the Cairngorms proper to the north. With the wind in our sails, we surged excitedly downhill, then settled into a rhythm as we hit the main track and headed back to the van.

Nigel and I chatted about mutual friends, their successes, their problems, their tragedies even. The question of what constitutes a "successful" life is something that has always intrigued me. That it has nothing to do with wealth and fame seems a point too obvious to be laboured. Since being cynically made redundant by ICI, Nigel has seized the opportunity to make a more independent life for himself as a part-time, one-man property-developer-cum-jobbing-builder and full-time climbing bum. Since he alone can measure his achievement, he is on occasion prone to self-doubt. However, for me, he remains a living testimony to the fact that it is the inner man and not the outward show which counts. I hope in this lifetime to share many more mountain days with him - the more pointless, the better!