In early May, when the flower is still on the broom and the gorse puts forth its own shameless display, Scotland is alive with pullulating yellow. From Stirling, past Perth, up over the Drumochter pass to Dalwhinnie and on to Loch Laggan, teeming roadside blossom cheered us on our way. Our spirits buoyed up by this uninhibited welcome, we pulled into the car park at Aberarder on the north shore of the loch and got ready to climb. Nigel and Jane had set out from Cheshire that same morning in their latest vehicular acquisition, a Citroën Xantia. Xantia - a name to conjur with, evoking as it does images of Narnia, Xanadu and the Age of Conan! Certainly, by Lyle standards, it was one swanky motor! In tasteful Essex white, it sported a residual boy-race spoiler and go-faster rust-flecked welding - an exorbitantly cool image from which the conspicuous absence of hub-caps could scarcely subtract. Nigel had thoughtfully customised it with a fan-belt squeal simulator, which was a reassuring auditory accompaniment throughout our peregrinations.

We set off a little before midday, late enough, but not bad considering the distances covered to get there. As it turned out, it was the earliest start we managed over our entire extended weekend! While Jane opted for an easier stroll up to Corrie Ardair, Nigel and I, with an eye to our reputations as mountaineers, embarked on the complete round of Creag Meagaidh. Starting off up the luxuriously appointed main path, we soon veered off northwards onto more traditional boggy tracks as we aimed for Carn Liath, 1006m, our first top of the day. The sky was overcast, but the cloud cover remained high with the occasional hint of pale sun. We followed a literally primrose path up through the gradually self-reconstituting natural woodland of the nature reserve. Ben, Nigel's irrepressible black labrador, bounded along beside us. It was one of those days when climbing becomes somehow effortless. Seemingly without particular exertion we passed over Na Cnapanan and soon found ourselves on the upper slopes of our hill, wandering across the final easy screes to shelter at the cairn. We munched and chatted and took pictures of ourselves and then drifted on westwards along the tops: Meall an t-Snaim, Sron Coire a' Chriochairean. We trended down on the southerly side of the ridge in order to view the tremendous cliffs of Coire Ardair. They had taken on mythical proportions ever since Nigel and I had attended a school lecture given by the celebrated mountain photographer, John Cleare (it must have been 68/69!). He gave a riveting slide-show account of Tom Patey's Creag Meagaidh Crab-Crawl. The spectacular drama of the winter climbing, the swashbuckling fearlessness of the mountaineers, the unmistakable whiff of anti-authoritarianism, all made a deep impression on our adolescent minds. And here we were, some forty years later, still irretrievably adolescent at heart!

Ageing adolescents on Creag Meagaidh

Nigel pointed out Staghorn Gully to me. A few years previously he had had to retreat from it in poor conditions. I was suitably impressed. We earmarked it for a future escapade or life and continued on our way up and over Stob Poite Coire Ardair and down towards the "window" where the track comes up from the corrie. Looking across to lonely Lochan Uaine and the wild hills beyond, I was struck by the almost abstract beauty of the rhythmic drapes and loops formed by the half-melted snow-fields: like a picture of clouds by the Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler.

Painting of a Mountain by Hodler

The next section involved a steepish climb up onto the Creag Meagaidh plateau proper. What might have been a bit of a slog was rendered mildly entertaining by the exquisite bathos of Nigel's taking a mobile call from his daughter's bank manager in Cornwall! Moving up past the blue-gaping remains of the winter cornices, we emerged onto the upper snow fields and levitated on towards the summit. Near the top we came across a pointy-beaked wader-type bird. It strutted ostentatiously about, seeking to draw Ben away from its otherwise invisible nest. Clearly not a ptarmigan. A curlew? Too small. A snipe? Too big. Both impossible anyway at such an altitude. Only later did we realise that it must have been a dottrel - the pride of the Creag Meagaidh nature reserve.

Dottrel

At the summit we sat down by the cairn. The cloud cover was thickening. Wishing to put an aesthetic gloss on this discouraging prospect, I commented on the infinite variety of shades of grey in this natural grisaille. Nigel scoffed at my contrived literary fancy. Rain threatened. We pulled on our anoraks. We were joined by a group of seven or eight who had come up from the corrie. Old pals on an annual beano, they were a friendly lot and we engaged in an exchange of pleasantries before continuing on our way. We went directly east towards Puist Coire Ardair across terrain that appeared so scrupulously landscaped, so carefully manicured, it might have been a high-level golf course! It finally started to rain. We performed the traditional ritual of supplication to the local deity and wrestled into our overtrousers. This small sacrifice of personal convenience had the desired effect and the rain eased. We had glimpses down into the desolate Lochan Coire Choille-rais, its surface littered with pack-ice débris. Following along the ridge from the Puist, we enjoyed sensational plunging views down to the Lochan a' Choire and across to the cliffs of Coire Ardair, then, turning to the south, we headed down Creag Mhor and the Allt Coire Choille-rais. Only now, eight hours out, wading through interminable heather, impatient to reach the road, did we finally start to feel tired. Jane met us near Moy lodge and drove us to Roy Bridge, our base for the next few days.

The cliffs of Coire Ardair from the south

As a member of the Climbers' Club, Nigel had access to their hut, well, bungalow really, in the village. It was happily undersubscribed and I had a whole room to myself where I slept the sleep of the just. Nigel, with kind attention worthy of a Nepali guide, woke me gently the next morning with a cup of tea. I took this as a hint that we should be getting on and out. All too soon, however, we found ourselves severely bogged down among the peat hags of breakfast. Breakfast with the Lyles is rather like tea with a maiden aunt, where refusing the umpteenth slab of fruit-cake is not only an affront, but incontravertible evidence of an unmanly lack of appetite. Two, or better still, three Weetabix are followed by a gargantuan fry-up of bacon, eggs, sausage, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans etc., all accompanied throughout by lashings of tea, toast and marmelade. By the time we had ingested this copious and cholesterol-friendly repast, done the dishes, gone shopping, packed up and havered about where we were going, it was after 11 o'clock before we got away.

I had persuaded Nigel that we should explore the head of Loch Arkaig. It was a place I had always wanted to visit ever since my juvenile imagination had been stirred by a photograph in an old S.M.C. (Scottish Mountaineering Club) guidebook encaptioned "Strathan and the Streaps". It somehow captured for me the essence of romantic wanderings among wild hills. Nor can it be denied that the names, the rhythmic repetition of the the str sound (imagine a properly rolled Scots r), the abrupt, rugged eaps termination, must have worked their own incantatory magic.

Crossing the Caledonian canal at Gairlochy, we drove north up the western shore of Loch Lochy through a sylvan idyll to Clunes, then west to Loch Arkaig, following the narrow road by the lochside all the way to Murlaggan. Beyond Murlaggan the road ends. This was the jumping-off point for a number of cross-country routes. Parked vehicules littered the roadside. Nigel has performed feats of incredible mountaineering endurance in all the world's major ranges, but never will you get him to walk anywhere where he can drive! It is a point of honour with him to leave the car as close to the final barrier as possible. Unbowed, egged on even, by a stream of reasonable protest from Jane, with just a few millimeters tolerance, he shoe-horned the Xantia into an impossibly small and uneven space. But the point was made!

We walked down the track to Strathan - with particularly gratifying views across to the Streaps - then turned north up the path to Glen Kingie and Loch Quoich. Our plan was to knock off Sgurr Mhurlagain and Fraoch Bheinn, two distinctive Corbetts with the prospect of magnificent views. Jane, preferring a more leisurely pace, decided for the second of the two only. Not that we were going to break any records. It was an in-between sort of a day - not properly cloudy, not really sunny, slightly close. The long heave up the shoulder of Sgurr Mhurlagain was also an in-between experience. Was it tiresome because it was tiring? More probably the reverse. We chatted to distract our minds from the unimaginative trudge. Our conversation ranged widely over myriad topics. Idiotic school reminiscences, "where are they now?" inquiries about mutual friends and acquaintances, people we knew who had died, getting older, the passing of time, the meaning of life, the pat formulae served up by religion in general, the preferability of a live question to a dead answer, how to keep a question alive, mysteries which can only be expressed mathematically, the implications of arithmetical conundra, what is the present?, what it might mean to live in the present, the pitfalls of nostalgia...I spoke of how sad it was that, for so many of our circle, university days had been the high-spot of their lives from which began a slow and irresistible descent into hopelesness and mediocrity. It's all right for you, Nigel answered, in your work you're fortunate enough to be surrounded by like-minded people. It's only when I graduated as an engineer and started work, that I realised how lively and stimulating, but above all varied, the crowd I knew at Cambridge actually was. Yes, but is it university that's stimulating or just being young? How can you stay inwardly young?

On Sgurr Mhurlagain

With these burning questions happily unanswered, but our vision of life somehow enlarged by the spirit of inquiry they represented, we found ourselves at the top of our hill. The magnificent vista dispelled any final vestige of small-mindedness. To the south and east the vast and wondrous extent of Loch Arkaig lay stretched out at our feet, with the hulking mass of Gulvain rising from the opposite shore of the loch. To the south-west our familiars, Streap and Streap Comhlaidh. To the west our next hill, Fraoch Bheinn. We trundled back down to the flattish, boggy section between the two mountains, then moved on up to get to grips with its east ridge. After the drudgery of our last climb, we weren't really looking forward to it. However, without ever getting remotely technical, certainly nothing Ben couldn't cope with easily, it presented enough small route-finding challenges and little bits of scrambling to divert us from the secret self-pity which is the inevitable concomitant of the mindless plod. When we reached the top it was late afternoon. Luxuriating in the decadent pleasure of tired relaxation, we beheld a miraculous vision to the west. All was still, but below us, low-level cloud, moved on secret currents of air, caressed the hills, probing, exploring, gently embracing every dip, every knoll, every hummock. In the direction of Loch Morar, the whole valley was filled with mist as with a benign glacier, spilling up and over the gaps between the hills and tumbling in gossamer strands down the other side. The peaks of the Rough Bounds of Knoydart, thrusting up through haloes of cloud, had taken on an other-worldly aspect, like some Tolkien-inspired faery-land, but somehow more mysterious, because real.

Ben and the Rough Bounds of Knoydart

After a full nine hours on the hill, we arrived back at the car, jemmied it out of its space and set off back to Roy Bridge. We turned in that night fully intending to set sail the next morning on the first tide, but when the time came, we once again found ourselves becalmed in the breakfast doldrums. Jane, who had to get back for work, had very kindly arranged a lift back to Cheshire so that we could keep the car. Leaving her for a last walk by Ben Nevis, we pressed on to the Corran ferry and Garbh Bheinn of Ardgour. Our intention was to climb the Great Ridge, some 1000 feet of severe climbing, on a vast, remote and relatively unfrequented crag. Pinnacle Ridge, a highly recommended moderate scramble, might have been the better option, but Nigel had done it before and relished the greater challenge.

By the time we set off up Coire nan Iubhair, it was already hopelessly late. Nor was our timetable improved by my having to rush back to fetch the map we'd blitheringly left behind. After an hour or so of walking up alongside the Abhainn Coire an Iubhair, we crossed the river and headed up the steep corrie beneath the intimidating bulk of the crags of Garbh Bheinn. They were enormous in a rather blunt and unsubtle way. It was heavy going with all the climbing gear. Near a subterranean dribble of water we stopped for a late lunch before turning our attention to the climb. We'd left the guide-book behind to save weight on the rash assumption that the start of the definitive ridge climb on the mountain would be self-evident. Far from it. We spent an age trying to match our memory of the description to the typography of the rock in front of us. Nigel finally identified what he thought "had to be" the line, roped up and tentatively set off. In his (our) youth, Nigel was one of the boldest and most confident leaders I had ever come across. Fortunately perhaps, he has grown a lot more circumspect with the years. Now he seemed to take an eternity to place his protection, before easing up a couple of feet, still unsure of the route, worried about the dampness of the vegetated crack, concerned at the absence of any trace of a previous passage. More nervous placement of nuts, more unconvinced peerings upwards, a couple of moves, possibly, maybe, but... This was taking far too long. It was already past four in the afternoon and we hadn't even managed the first pitch. If we continued at this pace, despite the long days of May, we would be finishing in the dark. That decided it. Nigel climbed back down. We packed up the gear and flogged up the rest of the Garbh Choire Mor and on to the top of Garbh Bheinn at 885 meters.

View over Loch Linnhe from Garbh Bheinn

We loitered on and around the summit, watching as the play of the clouds and the late afternoon light somehow caused the whole landscape to radiate with an inner glow. Something in us warmed in instinctive sympathy, a state of psychic relaxation beyond mere physical tiredness permitted the beginnings of a new opening. The mountains and lochs of the West of Scotland seemed to extend for ever and ever: the vast sweep of Loch Linnhe to the east, the perfect cone of Sgurr Dhomhnuill to the north. To the west, the distinctive profiles of the isles of Rhum and Eigg shone purple and red, while the long tongue of Loch Sunart filled with liquid gold. Drinking in these impressions of beauty beyond words, an inward innocence was nourished, despite ourselves.

What is the purpose of human life? To "collect" experience like bubble-gum cards? Rather, it seems that our task is to consciously reconcile the two dimensions of time in which we live, move and have our being - ordinary passing time and the eternal present. Sometimes mountains can reveal to the heart what the mind cannot comprehend.