Adrenalin-powered activities..? 19 6 14 (7) 25 2 3

In between the days spent walking either with my wife A-E or later on my own, or with my nephew-in-law, D, I would repair to one of the many “Backpackers” hotels and/or hostels to rest up, occasionally get some clothes washed, and indulge one’s self in more holiday-like pursuits, in terms of eating pre-cooked food and enjoying a relaxing beer or glass of wine or two, and in the process get to indulge another aspect of why one likes to visit the UK and Scotland which is to say socialise with its people.

The contrast with my everyday life back home in Finland, living as I do in a small town of only 8 or 9000 people couldn’t be more different in a general sense, because in the one I am known as this aging guy who has lived in the town forever, to the young people which is to say anyone less than the 31 years I have lived there, whilst in UK I am this person from abroad only a visitor though still speaking with a northern English accent, but a seasoned visitor who for example with regular visits say to Scotland going back to my childhood can claim to know the country better than a good many Scottish people…

And the driving force to do with such activities undoubtedly has much to do with adrenaline. That I came to this conclusion in a sense was inevitable. I had last year foregone the autumn visit to Scotland as during the previous 5 years, when I started taking a second vacation there in order to complete my round of the Munro hills, owing to a set-back with my health, and as a consequence was full of foreboding lest I should now find myself unable to scale its hills which had become ever-more distant from Scotland’s road network, and necessitating spending whole days engaged in walking. But fortunately I still possessed the ability to continue walking for whole days at a time, that is of uncharted territory save for the excellent descriptions provided by the Ordinance Survey maps, or at least provided when I first bought them?

So with my first outing to climb the as yet unclimbed Cairngorm Beinn Dearg, assisted by my 1984 edition of the Braemar to Blair Athol 1:50 000 map, or 1¼ inch to 1 mile, my usual scale this past 50 years or so, I began walking in mist and rain along a bridal way which continued beyond its short length according to my old map when with the aid of my GPS coordinates I discovered that I was going to miss my designated summit and so had to walk cross-country to retrieve my objective, delayed in the continuing mist and rain to gain my summit not in the expected say 3 hours but in say 4, when I decided at that point to curtail my ambitions to achieving just the sole new peak instead of continuing for more, possibly another two and involving not a total of 5 hours but possibly 12 hours, to return and spend a second night alone in my bothy to return to civilisation next day to regroup and plan my second outing. Later I had to recognize the bridal way i had been walking on that day was undoubtedly extended since my map was published in 1984!

This second outing turned out to being in still more sustained falling rain and mists, to the extent that I walked 8 hours before gaining my main summit objective in altogether more strenuous conditions than I had bargained for, but when wearing a pair of shorts under my waterproof over-trousers I continued beyond dusk to finish my walk some 13 hours after setting out, when my main sustenance was provided in the second half of the day with a giant sized bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut chocolate, after eating my Cheese Onion Tomato and Cucumber sandwich lunch, with a flask of hot tea earlier in the day. The success of this outing later impressed me with the fact that it must have been the adrenaline on top of the chocolate which kept me focussed and in such high spirits for the whole of this mammoth day’s undertaking, which to my great surprise at the time that I accomplished it undaunted, albeit very tired.

If you like this offering in the next one I shall tell you about some of the most exceptional people I came to meet on these travels? Have a good day everyone, more next time...