Best weather ever in GB..? 18 6 11 (18) 25 1 31

Quite a record that, with my aging process well under way, and something that is unlikely to be repeated any time soon..?

Of course I am talking about my beloved Scotland which these past 5 years I have begun to visit more than once a year again with a renewed urgency since I sold our small sailing boat in 2012, and decided to make a push to complete my round of the Munro hills all 282 of the 3000 footers, or 914,4 metre peaks (Hugh Munro that is who was the first person to climb them in around 1891...) which set me the task of climbing 104 peaks still remaining. Today that figure has been reduced to 20.

My first visit to Scotland was made in 1943 not to climb hills but to visit my father J, with my elder brother J junior, and our mother, A, during WW ll when he was stationed near Oban. 9 months later we were joined by our sister M, and when in 1945 father didn’t return from the war, Scotland began to gain a special significance in one’s life. Some of my earliest memories then are from the rainy January of 1943 when with stays at two guest houses we were obliged to vacate the premises during the day times and so got to walk in the rain for much of the time. To any regular visitors to my blog these recollections will be well known.

During my mid-twenties my job in the Paper and Pulp industries took me to Scotland for the winter of 1966 for the commissioning of Scottish Pulp and Paper Mills at Corpach near Fort William, another centre renowned for its high level of rain-fall with 60 inches a statistic which may be different today, when I climbed my first and highest Munro in Britain's highest mountain of Ben Nevis, which sits over-looking the nearby of Fort William. Regrettably the Pulp and Paper Mill has ceased production: first with the closure of the Pulp Mill followed some years later by the Paper Mill.

Because of the wonderful dry and sunny weather this year’s visit will also be remembered both for the cheapest and most expensive accommodation my wife and I variously enjoyed. For one thing I got to spend 4 nights in tents under canvass, and on other occasions I got to stay 3 nights in a bothy: one of the independent estate owned bothies as opposed to those of the MBA (Mountain Bothies Association) of which I have been a subscribing member these past years, though during these visits there is no-one to exact an over-night charge for staying there. The most expensive accommodation arises because in Greed Britain some of the more ruthless providers of accommodation have increased their prices to the point they are no longer offering value for money, and where in more and more cases a two-pricing policing has been introduced with one price for the nights of Sunday through Thursday and then increased prices at weekends, simply because weekend accommodation is more sought after with weekend only visitors joining annual holiday-makers, so that the market is perceived to tolerate weekend increases. For me personally a person living on a pension these 10 years these increases are inflationary for no indexing can keep pace with their apparent unrestrained rises… which on principle rules out much of the accommodation now available.

But let it also be said that because one has been visiting on a regular basis throughout one’s life there are also providers of accommodation who over the years have reduced their prices either for friendship reasons or for other factors and so it is nice not to have to apply the term Greed Britain universally.

Another development that was pretty much inescapable was a growing xenophobia which one associates with the view of an increasing number of British people, if not so prevalent in Scotland, of people unafraid to talk of foreign workers as undesirables on the one hand, and perhaps a failure on the other to appreciate the enormous contribution such same people have contributed to the growing UK economy pre-Brexit: how for example recruitment of other EU nationals to the NHS (National Health Service) has fallen by 95% since the Referendum to leave the EU, whilst the underclass of UK nationals who have never worked nor who have ever actively sought work has perhaps remained static..?   

For the present then I shall continue to enjoy the improved vigour my improved bodily fitness has engendered when for the first time in some years I suffered no ill health during my visits. Have a good day everyone as I hope you are enjoying good weather in your neck of the woods..?