Braemar

Last weekend I took a trip wit three Spanish friends to Braemar, in the highlands, about two hours from St Andrews by car. To be a tad more specific, Braemar is in the Cairngorms. The idea of taking a walking trip this weekend had first been proposed a couple of weeks ago, and I had at first had my doubts about going. The original idea had been to visit Ben Nevis, but the idea had been to go for an entire weekend and leave Friday afternoon, but I didn't feel I could afford to take what would be two and a half days away from writing my thesis. Ben Nevis incidentally, was the only mountain I could think of when asked by a Kallawaya friend, who was at that moment conducting a spiritual healing ritual for me, for the names of sacred mountains where I am from (because offerings were about to be made to the local mountain deities, and in addition one offering would be made to my own sacred mountain). Obviously, then, as my sacred mountain I ought to visit it when less weighed down by the cares of my thesis, and able to pay it due reverence and attention. This trip was only a little over a day, and I thought it a realistic amount of time to take away from the PhD to recharge the batteries and whatnot.

The trip started uneventfully. As is customary in these circumstances, I left the house in a hurry, about 5 minutes after I was supposed to meet my friends outside TESCO, and jogged quite a bit of what is usually a 20 minute walk. My friend Josep (I may or may not have changed his name) and I met inside said supermarket. He was paying for his goods as I entered. After he showed me what he had bought, and indicated to me that these were to share, I then proceeded to duplicate most of his own items. Thus I met Josep outside and we compared the week's worth of food we had bought between us for our day trip. As we stood where the Romanian Big Issue lady usually sits, and who I usually pretend not to notice, but who when I do buy a copy of her magazine suddenly attempting to talk to like a long-long friend, the TESCO lorry pulled up with supplies for the store. As we continued to wait, and made sure to get out the way, whilst trollies of toilet paper passed us, we amused ourselves by identifying places on the British food map on the side of the lorry. Cornwall was a cornish pasty, this made sense. Ireland was an Ireland represented by a lot of meat, but no fish (the only fish was in the highlands of Scotland, presumably a Salmon), we thought this odd. "Where are you from?" Josep asked me. "I'm from... onion". "Is Essex famous for onions?" Josep asked me. I racked my brains. Essex was (in)famous for many things, but to the best of my knowledge, onions wasn't one of them. St Andrews, in case you were wondering, or rather, the East Coast of Scotland roughly equating Fife, was represented by biscuits. After we had examined much of the British Isles in this way, Butterfly and Obama (I may or may not have changed their names) arrived to meet us, and we were on our way, on our way to salmon!

Despite my three fellow adventurers being native Spanish speakers and myself being fluent in the language, they proceeded to speak in English both to me and between themselves. I wondered how long this would last if I didn't say anything. I didn't say anything, and it last the whole car journey. Even after I spoke to them in Spanish once we had arrived they continued almost entirely to speak to one another in English, so I concluded they just enjoyed speaking English. At one point during the journey, Obama, who was driving, asked me were I was from. "Onions" I replied, and Josep and I laughed.

When in the hostel, we had a light supper of bread, ham, cheese, liver, and various biscuits, after which Josep, Obama and I felt the need for a short walk. We wandered around what seemed to be a Swiss ghost town. Not a car passed us. Many of said ghosts were probably haunting the shop entirely selling things made from deer antlers. Whilst Josep and Obama went on to discover the delights of a local tavern, I made my way back to the hostel, to read and doodle in the half-light, and then attempt (for an annoyingly fruitless length of time) to sleep. The lack of fruit was not a facto in my sleep, however, but rather the conversation between one snorer and another across the room between around 12am and 1.30am. The conversation may well have continued after that, but eventually I managed to count enough sheep not to notice.

In the morning, after showering, I met my friends downstairs, and we embarked on our morning feast. Butterfly asked me in Spanish how I slept, to which I told her in Spanish that I didn't sleep very well because of all of the people yawning. I think you want to say "snoring" instead of "yawning", she told me in Spanish. I was nonchalant enough in response, I think, to show that I didn't care about making the odd mistake, that yawning and snowing are basically the same anyway, and so on and so forth, whilst inwardly cursing myself for making myself look like someone who couldn't tell the difference between yawning and snoring. Obama (who I had met for the first time) asked me in Spanish how much I could understand. "Just, so-so?" he ventured himself. Inwardly outraged, I replied, "No! Ninety to ninety-five per cent" This was truthful but now unconvincing.

After breakfast we made our way outside, and to our disappointment, but not a bit of shock (we been forewarned by the weather forecast the day a few days previously), found the air was wet and falling. It was only spitting, but this set the tone for the day. We drove out in Obama's car, out of town and down a country road past some deer whose adornments would no doubt eventually find their way to the shop in town, until we arrived at a car park from which we aimed to begin our journey up Ben Mcdhui, at whose summit we rather ambitiously hoped to see "The Big Grey Man" (http://www.biggreyman.co.uk/legend.html).

The walk started out well enough, and although it was windy and spitting intermittently for the first couple of hours this was nothing more than we had expected from a walk in the highlands. Once we had started walking our names became Frodo, Sam, and those other two that nobody remembers - we settled on Bilbo as a third, even though he doesn't travel them on their adventure. We walked for several hours in a valley, with mountains either side of us looking for the path on our set of directions up the mountain, and avoiding the puddles as best as we could. After five hours of walking we were drenched and had still not found the path. We realised that we had gone too far. By now, however, we were so wet we just wanted to return, and so gave up the possibility of seeing the Big Grey Man, and had to return without the ring. It was a long walk back with wet feet, longer than we had remembered walking on our way there. Every bridge we came to seemed to be the last one, only for us to pass it and come to another last bridge. By the time we got back to the car we were exhausted. I was yawning all  back to the land of biscuits.