A dash home to get my pack and find something garish to wear and I was back on familiar ground.
I met Allan at Overtoun House for an evening wander in the Kilpatricks, a long overdue occasion. I’ve known Allan since ’72 or ’73, which is always fun in conversation, because he’s the only person I know that’s not a blood relation who remembers what I was like all through my school years, there is no hiding at all.
It was another beautiful warm night, but now with a very welcome breeze, and we took a meandering course under the crags, over land and through the trees to bring us eventually up to the trig point on Doughnot Hill. Ben Lomond was a distant flat pyramid seen through rays of soft light drifting through the thin layers of broken cloud.
The descent was through a blaze of bright green and a dozen shades or purple, the rhododendrons were bursting with life, their own and that of their buzzing visitors. I hadn’t noticed that the day before, had it sprung out overnight? Is it the different pace or different eyes from doing different things seeing it all a different way?
Whatever, it oddly felt like I hadn’t been up there for ages, it’s good to be home and nice to be showing an old friend about the place too. I hope he wiped his feet at the door.
