Glencoe & Loch Leven Autumn Festival Scotland 2016
Guided walks and navigation course provided by Rich Mountain Experiences for the Glencoe and Loch Leven Autumn Festival.
We provide these walks and courses throughout the year, summer and winter. We can also provide private guided days, expedition and winter skills , and other bespoke tours away from the path...Contact us for further details... richmountainexperiences.co.uk facebook.com/scottishmountainguiding
Winter Skills training on Am Bodach, Scotland April 2016
Day 2 of Winter Walking Skills based in Glencoe and the Mamores, Scotland. The weather was much kinder than the previous day, giving wall to wall sunshine rather than the previous maelstrom...
Exploring Scotland: The Highlands and Lowlands
Scotland is incredible. This video quickly races through 4 days worth of footage shot in Edinburgh, across the Scottish Lowlands and in the Scottish Highlands.
While places like Glen Coe are incredible, the more rural and less often visited parts of Scotland are equally impressive. The country is always a wealth of wonderful surprises which as you can see range from rich fresh caught seafood to the hand crafting of Harris tweed, stunning sunsets and even golden sand beaches. Make sure to see part two in this series which covers the Isles of Skye, Lewis and Harris from the same trip.
Most of the footage comes from a trip done with Wild in Scotland. I blog about the experiences on where you can also see my photos from the trip.
This video was shot on a Canon T3i/600D using a 18-135 and 55-250mm lens.
Great Motorcycling Roads #4 - The Corrieyairack Pass
The Corrieyairack Pass is an eighteenth-century military road that connects the settlements of Laggan and Fort Augustus to one another in the Scottish Highlands. Its construction in 1731 by the newly-formed British Army occurred under the charge of General George Wade, a man whose name is now inseparable from the network of Scottish roads commissioned during his tenure as 'Commander-in-Chief of North Britain'.
The Jacobite Rebellion of 1715 greatly troubled the British Government who responded to the volatile and unpredictable situation in the Highlands with a programme of garrison construction. Finding themselves outmanoeuvred by the agile Highlanders, the British Army started building roads to join the newly-built barracks and forts together as part of a concerted effort to keep the peace.
Roughly 23 kilometres of the Corrieyairack's 40 kilometre length remains an unpaved 'rough track' making the route particularly accessible to non-pedestrian users, though width restrictions at either end deny use by car or carriage. The road climbs over 700 meters to Meallan Odhar Beag, the Gallic name given to the highest point of the pass which is located at the western end of a series of sharp hairpin bends.
Many peat-blackened burns and streams cross the pass, which make for cold, wet feet if you're hiking or unfortunate enough to stall whilst crossing by motorcycle. The larger crossings were bridged by Wade and much of their original stonework can still be seen, though all have been repaired or preserved in one way or another. The sturdy, double-arched Garva Bridge spans the River Spey aside the widest ford on the pass, which also marks the point where traditional stone paving yields to its modern day aggregate form. Wade had initially named the bridge after England's patron saint, which - given the anti-English sentiment of the time - was a decision doomed to failure from the day it was made.
The wet, slippery wooden sleepers that pave these bridges constitute as much of a hazard to the traveller as the innumerable submerged, football-sized granulite boulders that have slowly worked their way down from the Spey's many sources.
The pass today can perhaps be more accurately described as an impasse, with its status as a road never formally 'vindicated' by due process. The touring motorcyclist must instead satisfy him or herself that the purpose and historical use of the pass satisfy the requirements for a road as defined in Scots law. ScotWays, the Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society inform the inquisitive motorist that there are:
'Very few rights of way for motorised vehicles in Scotland'
Whilst the Highland Council state that the pass is:
'Not maintained as a road and is not suitable for use as one'.
Although accurate, both answers are intentionally evasive and avoid explicitly stating the pass not to be a road, presumably to both deter the kind of motorist who lacks the responsibility to use the pass in an acceptable way, and to avoid the financial responsibility of maintaining such a narrow, remote hill road.
The pass and its bridges are recorded by Historic Scotland as scheduled ancient monuments, so damage - however it may occur - is likely to constitute a criminal offence. For this reason motorcyclists must retain wheel traction at all times - particularly after periods of very wet weather when wheel traction is harder to keep. The lack of any 'vindication' makes motorcycle use of this road a privilege rather than a right.
Perhaps the best summary of the Corrieyairack's majesty was made by General Wade's successor, Major William Caulfield, who is credited with writing:
Had you seen these roads before they were made.
You would lift up your hands and bless General Wade.
Bless Wade I cannot, but if he were here today it would be a pleasure to lend him my motorcycle so that he too may experience the beauty of his toil, by way of the unique test of physics that only a motorcyclist is gifted to understand.