We are half way through our walk and well into the glaciated valleys of the West Highlands of Scotland. From our lovely B&B at Glengarry, we walked a km into Tyndrum and a shop designed to separate any tourist from his money. I needed some new shoelaces. The expired laces had carried me over the Routeburn in NZ and along several short walks around Woodend and now into the Scottish Highlands.
The first day was through a a long park up out of Millingavie on the fringes of Glasgow, pronounced Mu(l)’ngai, and over a low pass into Rob Roy country. The Whytes are a sept of the McGregors, proscribed in 1603 for being a nuisance after their lands were gifted to the Campbells – Rob the Red had a Ned Kelly folkhero status in the early 18th century, supporting the poor and blackmailing the rich. My mother’s side are Macdonalds from Mull – another part of the clan that the Crown wished to exterminate in the 1692 massacre at Glencoe. The road we walked today was the military road constructed by General Wade after 1725 to tame the wild highland tribes and the Jacobite rebellions. In the early 19th century, sheep were more effective, and thousands of highlanders came to Australia and the other colonies or joined the highland regiments. The last third of the trail from Millingavie into Drymen was along a disused railway embankment, hard under foot, but the B&B was opposite the oldest licensed pub in Scotland and was run by the retiring Chaplain to the British fleet. We had tired legs and sore feet.
The next day led up through a wind-felled forest to some conical hills, possible ancient volcanic plugs, and then down past day-trippers to the beginnings of the
Scottish theme park of Loch Lomond. Hard walking along the lake edge over the next two days brought us to the Drovers inn at Inverarnan. Loch Lomond was over-run by jet-skis and water skiers, power boats and day trippers on a glorious sunny day. Inversnaid Hotel along the way was Scottish baronial interpreted as a kitch destination for coach tours. Tartan carpet, average customer age 80+ and Polish waiters. Bizarre! The Drovers Inn was weird with the staff, local and imported, all in a mixture of off-the-shelf synthetic kilts in an ancient panelled bar lined with a job lot of stuffed animals and birds. Lots of Germans walking the trail, interspersed with an occasional American and a couple of Kiwis. Scots were using it as their backyard to train for cross-country marathons or just to enjoy walking – and they love their countryside. We were instantly identified as Kiwis or Oz by the crew of a naval helicopter that dropped in for lunch with us at the Bridge of Orchy.
By the next day, our legs and feet had developed some fitness so the walks to Tyndrum and to Inveroran were straightforward as we entered the steep glaciated glens and the inevitable bogs. The Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th & early 19th centuries was based on teaching all children to read. Many of them went on to the universities in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, St Andrews and Glasgow and thence to populate the managerial levels of the professions and the army throughout the British Empire and its colonies with diligence and canniness. Those who didn’t get the education often toiled in the shipyards of the Clyde or went into the infantry regiments that controlled the empire. With the referendum on Scottish independence looming in a fortnight, the divide between the educated and the uneducated classes, and between the highlands and the lowlands seems pretty strong. There seems to be a general disillusionment with professional politicians and a genuine concern for a fair sharing of resources with those who are badly off. But those with knowledge and access to opportunity think the whole independence idea is daft. On the other hand the highlanders, the poor and deprived seem to have such a large chip about the English that they want to fight Bannockburn all over again. Blame Mel Gibson and Braveheart!!
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