The same ppl later on..? 16 10 4 (9) 25 1 23

The difference between the two breakfast dining tables of my first blog on this subject I guess has much to do with the purpose for visiting these two very different places: the first the stepping off and alighting stop for visitors from abroad visiting the capital of the country with its variety of entertainment and places of interest to visit on the one hand and the second a place where people concentrated on outdoor pursuits like long distance and hill walking. The first example coloured also by the fact that it was a party of three young women with who knows their young male partners whilst in the second example for the most part a collection of people travelling alone or accompanied not by members of the opposite sex but by family either sisters or daughters of mothers. Whatever the event the former something of a turn off at the start of a holiday whilst the second a definite turn on.

On the second morning of my stay then I rose at 06 10 when I got to meet my French lady fellow dormitory companion with whom I perhaps foolishly asked what she did when not long distance walking, which precipitated my telling her of my own cardiac arrest, bypass surgery etc. etc. etc. from 12 years ago, not the kind of first thing in the morning breakfast table talk for someone escaping hospital life for a holiday walking the Scottish countryside...hahaha. Then I met the guy who had just one Munro hill still to climb out of the total of 282, a hill I had already climbed, which he was saving until the end of the year whilst meanwhile he was taking part in a Mountain Leader's course being held locally, a more regular kind of conversation for these parts…

And so I left for my hill at 8 10 a hill I had attempted to climb on two earlier occasions first with my wife her younger brother and his wife an undertaking far too ambitious for the party as a whole some 9 y earlier and the second perhaps 4 years ago with my brother J when mist and driving rain determined we should abandon the attempt in favour of better conditions at a later date. Well this was to be the day in question as I ascended and descended in the 10 h beginning 09 52, when I parked my hire car at its base, a total distance of 13 miles around 20 km walked.

So I returned to my bunkhouse after making a brief stop to buy food: Bangers and Mash and red wine for unlike the evening before this was to be an evening of celebration. Enquiring of the Mountain Leader guy about the showers he volunteered that there were two Russian ladies therein occupied thereby determining I shouldn’t venture forth too scantily dressed. But to my surprise and delight these were the same two “German” ladies from the evening before each with a towel wrapped round their heads as they were almost ready to vacate the mixed bathing facilities…

Thereafter I was to meet Paddy an Irishman from the coast of Donegal a middle-aged man who volunteered much information about himself: how he had just sold his grocery store there after 20 years to start a new business cultivating snails for the French restaurant market, his customers shedding tears of sadness at his departure; how he had four daughters almost fully grown up, a Grand piano but no car, and how each of his daughters was an accomplished pianist who he also liked to indulge with Alpine Skiing holidays. Here I was on safe ground because my two grandsons also play grand pianos at their music college, and when he offered that he also liked to sail I was able to counter that I had sold my yacht of 19 y just 4 years ago whereby I was now having something of a push to complete my round of the Munro hills. He too was a mountaineer giving further common ground…When he offered me a wee dram of the whiskey he was drinking however I politely declined in favour of the red wine I had promised myself, a Burgundy I had been looking forward...

When we two, and sometimes three with the Mountain Leader guy, were joined by Violetta and her mother Lyudmila, their moving to Germany from Kazakhstan when Violetta was 6 to be with her German father, neither of them natives of Kazakhstan we learned, we heard about their climb up the Pap of Glencoe, everyone enjoying fine autumn dry weather on this day. We also learned that Violetta was a Mining Engineer and when I noted that Finland has extensive Copper Mines in the east of the country she added that she was thinking of completing her Master’s degree at a Finnish University and agreed that if she did she would perhaps come to visit us in our holiday resort of a town for which my wife is a registered guide. Have a good day everyone… 

  

Pics from Beinn Sgulaird (hill of the hat)16 9 20