Monday 5 July
The week in Scotland is always one of the highlights of my year, and this time has been no exception. Mind you, the competition has been fairly stiff this year, what with our round the world trip in February and March. But I still rate a week in the Highlands as highly as a month anywhere else in the world.
The weather was dire, as it usually is in the west of Scotland. My friends Allan and Pat, who organise these trips, have arranged them in the last week of June for the past several years, and it invariably rains for most of the time. But now that we have all retired, we have more flexibility about dates. I think I have persuaded them to try for a month or so earlier next year. Scotland is often at its best at the end of May.
We didn't do nearly as much climbing as we hoped. We climbed one fairly substantial mountain, Beinn Resipol, but it took two attempts. We set out to climb it last Monday, but it started to rain so heavily that we gave up after an hour or so. On Tuesday it was much drier and we reached the summit. The cloud level was even high enough to give us a good view, to the Cuillins of Skye northwards and Ben Nevis to the east.
On Friday we took the ferry from Arisaig to the isle of Eigg, where there is a hill called An Sgurr. It's less than 400 metres high but looks very impressive, a vertical monolith of rock that appears to be impossible to climb without ropes. But there is a reasonably easy ascent round the far side, and we made it to the top and back in time to have a cream tea at the island's one cafe before catching the ferry back to the mainland. From the boat, we saw a pilot whale and a colony of seals.
I was really glad that Liz decided to come with me for this holiday. She didn't do much climbing. In fact, the only day that she came with the climbing party was the wet day on Beinn Resipol, which was not the best introduction to the joys of hillwalking. But she enjoyed her week in the Scottish hills, and fitted in very well with the rest of the group. For me, it was an opportunity to get to know her as an adult. Until now I have continued to think of her as my little girl, and it sometimes worries me that I tend to treat her like a teenager still. After this week of being with her, away from the rest of the family, I think I can finally relate to her as a grownup. About time too, I suppose, seeing as she is in her thirties now.
The rocky tower of An Sgurr on Eigg
Saturday 10 July
One day from the Scottish trip will stick in my memory. It didn't look as though it was going to be a good day at all. In fact, it was raining hard in the morning, and we stayed in the cottage, reading, cleaning our boots, planning future hikes and so on. Around mid-morning, the rain eased off a bit and Allan, Bob and I decided that we had to go out for a walk even if it meant getting wet. Bob noticed on the Ordnance Survey map an interesting looking footpath which led for about 5km across a little roadless peninsula to a small bay, labelled on the map as "Peanmeanach ruins". We made sandwiches for lunch, put on our rain gear and drove to the start of the path, a layby on the road from Fort William to Mallaig. There was already a car parked there, a rusty old Mercedes.
The path was narrow but well constructed, and had clearly been made for pack ponies to use in some distant time. It wound over a range of low hills, through an attractive wood of moss- and lichen-covered oaks, and down through a flat, swampy valley covered with tussocky grass to the ruins of some stone cottages facing the sea.
As we neared the ruins, we saw that one of them still had a roof and appeared to have been restored and cared for. It even had glass in the windows. As we walked past it I looked in and was surprised to see someone inside waving at us. I waved back, and a young man came to the door and greeted us. It turned out that the place was a bothy, and the young man was staying there for a long weekend. He invited us inside and offered us a mug of tea, which we were glad to accept as the rain was starting to come down again.
Note for those who don't know what a bothy is: it is a unlocked hut in (usually) a remote mountainous part of Scotland where walkers can shelter overnight. Bothies don't have any mains services or facilities, though they sometimes have supplies like tins of baked beans or candles, left by previous users and available for those who need them. Many of them, including the one at Peanmeanach, are owned by the Mountain Bothies Association. This one consisted of two rooms plus a loft space, with wooden platforms for sleeping on and another bench for cooking on.
The lad who invited us in asked us what time it was, and was surprised when we told him it was half past one in the afternoon. He had obviously not been up for long, and was frying some bacon for his breakfast on a little Primus stove. He said that he had arrived at 12.30 the previous night. To judge by his accent, which was almost unintelligible to me, he must have come from a pretty rough area of Glasgow. Presumably he had driven up from there in the rusty old Mercedes after work the previous day and walked along the path in darkness (not that it gets totally dark so far north at this time of year). He clearly loved the solitude of this place, and said that he comes there several times a year.
I asked if he knew anything about the history of Peanmeanach, how long it had been since it was inhabited. The ruined cottages, of which nothing was left except stone exterior walls up to about waist height, looked as though they had been abandoned for about two centuries, and I guessed that the village must have been uprooted at the time of the Clearances. But he said that the last inhabitants had left some time in the 1940s. It seemed incredible to me that practically all traces of habitation should have disappeared in just over 50 years, and I also found it hard to believe that people could have lived in such an isolated spot until so recently. But a Google search for Peanmeanach confirms what the lad said.
Allan asked the lad if he had trouble with mice during the night. No, he said, and he pointed to some crumbled biscuit that he had put on the floor to decoy rodents from coming up onto the sleeping platform. He seemed so at home in this remote place, it was hard to visualise him coming from a crowded city (though maybe they put biscuits on the floors of Glasgow tenements, for the same reason). We would have liked to talk with him some more, and he was clearly glad of our company. But the rain clouds were starting to gather again so we finished our sandwiches, thanked him for his hospitality and set off back along the path. I would love to come back another time and explore the rest of the Ardnish peninsula, which has several other ruined settlements according to the map.
Peanmeanach: ruined cottages and bothy.
Acknowledgement: I did not have my camera with me on that rainy day. These photos are lifted from the internet, with apologies to anyone who may own the copyright. I do however have some photos of the rest of the holiday. They are posted here.
Saturday 17 July
As a teenager in the 1950s I was shy, serious and scholarly (not much change there, then). My parents were staunch Conservatives, loyal and active members of the local Conservative Association. I had no interest in politics, but I shared my parents' pleasure when the Tories won the general elections of 1951 and 1955, and I thought of the Conservatives as being "our team". That all changed overnight in November 1956.
What happened was that the British and French governments decided to invade and occupy the Suez Canal zone. The canal, previously owned and operated by British and French companies, had been nationalised by the Egyptian President Nasser. In October 1956 the Israeli army invaded the Sinai peninsula and pushed towards the canal. A couple of days later, British and French troops moved in, allegedly to separate the Egyptian forces from the Israelis and keep the peace. But with the USSR threatening to come to the aid of Egypt, US President Eisenhower leaned on the British, French and Israeli governments and forced them to withdraw.
British public opinion on the war was split down the middle, with my parents strongly supporting the Conservative Prime Minister Anthony Eden. At school, in a current affairs class, we had a debate on the war. One boy, Geoffrey Reeves, spoke vehemently against the war, pointing out that it was a relic of colonial gunboat diplomacy without any justification in international law, and that it threatened the peace and stability of the whole region, if not the whole world.
Geoffrey Reeves was never a friend of mine, in fact I doubt whether we ever spoke to each other. But on that day in November 1956 he changed my whole political outlook. I could see that what he was saying was absolutely correct. He said it was obvious that the British, French and Israeli governments had conspired in advance to invade Egypt. All three governments had flatly and completely denied this, and it was only many years later that it was proved that this was indeed what had happened. From then on, I was a convinced liberal, and ever since then I have tended to look sceptically at anything that politicians say.
Nearly half a century later, some things have changed, other things haven't. Some time in 2002, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair decided to invade Iraq, and used distorted and false intelligence reports to persuade Congress and Parliament that there was an imminent danger from Saddam Hussein's (nonexistent) WMD. As in 1956, both governments vehemently deny any collusion. Unlike in 1956 there are no superior superpowers who could have called a halt to the escapade. On both sides of the Atlantic, various enquiries have been set up to report on aspects of the war. The latest is the Butler enquiry, which reported earlier this week that there had indeed been disastrous failures of intelligence, but that no individual was at fault. In his refined and superior style, Lord Butler concluded that information had been unreliable, bit of misinterpretation here and there, don'cha know, but it was all an unfortunate accident, nobody's to blame, old chap.
I think that history will be less forgiving. Anthony Eden is remembered these days (if at all) not as Winston Churchill's distinguished Foreign Secretary or as the winner of the 1955 general election, but as the leader of the disastrous Suez adventure. If this week's by-election results are anything to go by, millions of Britons have already come to a similar conclusion about Tony Blair.
Monday 26 July
At this time of year, online journalling has to give way to other activities. So, what have I been up to in the unusually long gap since the last entry?
Well, for one thing, I've been watching the Tour de France on TV. It seems to be covered by a different channel each year. This year, one of the digital stations, ITV2, has had a 60-minute slot devoted to the Tour each evening. Since I hardly ever watch TV, I felt justified in insisting on seeing it every day although both Mary and Liz would rather have been watching something else. For the sixth year in succession, Lance Armstrong was in a different league from all the other riders. I said in an entry two years ago that I think he is the world's greatest living athlete, and his two further Tour wins since then only confirm that opinion. In an interview after the final stage, he was asked what was the secret of his unprecedented success in winning six straight Tours. His reply: "It's easy to derive sensational answers. But the answer is hard work. What are you doing on Christmas Day, on New Year's Day? Riding your bike? Absolutely. The answer is total and complete commitment to hard work. That's our secret.''
I admire that sort of commitment. The world is a better place because some people – athletes, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs – have such a single-minded drive for achievement. But I'm equally glad that I don't feel the need for such obsessive dedication to a single activity. A more casual and laid back lifestyle suits me much better. I think most British people feel as I do. They want a relaxed and casual lifestyle for themselves. Yet all too often they expect a Lance Armstrong-style Christmas-Day-and-New-Year's-Day commitment from other people. You can be sure that there will be plenty of anguished soul-searching when Britain fails to pick up more than a handful of medals at next month's Olympic Games. But what do you expect, when we all spend Christmas Day scoffing turkey, and New Year's Day nursing a hangover? If you want to be a winner, get on your bike!
Of course, I haven't spent the whole of the past two weeks watching the Tour de France. Last week, we went to stay for a couple of days with friends in the Lake District. The hills were looking very tempting in the fine summer weather, but climbing was out of the question with Mary in the party. So we opted for culture instead, and we spent an afternoon at Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth museum. 
The museum had a fine exhibition of art inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost. There were several drawings by William Blake, including this one showing Satan, Sin and Death, based on a painting by Hogarth. Also in the exhibition was a cartoon by Gillray, based on the same picture, depicting Satan as the Prime Minister (William Pitt) and Death as his Chancellor, at each other's throats, being kept apart by the queen (not sure which queen, presumably it was Charlotte, wife of George III; and I also don't know who the Chancellor was). Someone should produce an updated version showing Tony Blair and Gordon Brown being kept apart by the Queen.
Finally, another time-consuming activity occupying my evenings is that I'm updating our family web site to make it a bit more stylish and standards-compliant. I only mention this as an excuse for what is likely to be another hiatus before my next update here.
