I’ve had a lot of luck chasing blue sky over the years, to the point where getting stuck in pishy wet rainy days at the bottom of a slope looking up without any drive to carry on can feel like a personal attack. But it’s never dented my optimism, a look out of the window in the morning still has me changing plans and hitting the road.
The road is often the problem though, especially on short winter days. A couple of weeks back it was perfect, blue above and white underneath and my first thought was Ben Lomond as I hadn’t been up this winter yet.
All the way to Drymen was at 25mph behind a cavalcade of stoopids as the sun seemed to be setting faster than usual and when I misread the first signs by the road as I was finally moving faster I had no idea until I got there that the road was completely shut at Balmaha. My bubble was burst, I could climb Conic Hill, I could maybe make the Luss Hills, but my heart wasn’t in it. Home, tea and biscuits.
I did get to Ben Lomond in the end, last Friday, but that was another unusual day which I’ll come back to.
A couple of days later it was blue skies again, it looked clear up the loch and although time was getting on I wasn’t wasting it again. The road was fine, the Greggs latte only spilled a wee bit on the centre console as we drove and I was in the hills fast. The wispy clouds looked nice, the blue sky sucked me out of my seat, into my boots and I was off.
It was hard going as it was steep from the roadside, damn that heavy milky coffee (a convenient scapegoat). The weather also hadn’t seen that lassie with the dark hair and glasses on the Reporting Scotland forecast who’d said it would be clear until late on when a front would slowly move in. Maybe this was the prefront, the forefront? Whatever, it was misting up. And snowing, now it was snowing. I climbed on but now the wind was coating me on one side with crust of white so I stopped to pull on my shell.
It was lovely though. The cloud was just prowling the tops and rolling through the glens and I know that it was clear above. I was just not high enough here to see it.
It was dark at the top, cold and windy too. I was surrounded by indistinct shapes, above, below and to every side. I didn’t feel overly welcomed. something I’m not used to, I like to dig in, get the stove on and take in the atmosphere but for now I was just thinking about descent. Nothing fancy either, a straight line out of the cloud and back to the motor.
I made an arse of that of course and in the pitch black I found the road a good k and a half from where I’d planned to. I finally got the stove on in the layby and it was okay even if there were no stars above, I still had the gurgle and slapping of the loch next to me.
I had a camera full of photies too, and now that I see them, I should remember the less than perfect days.
