XPost: soc.culture.welsh, soc.culture.cornish, soc.culture.irish
XPost: soc.culture.scottish
From: innes8@verizon.net
"Robert Peffers." wrote in message
news:oKednZi1Krgy7FrbnZ2dnUVZ8vWdnZ2d@bt.com...
>>
> Oh! Come now! Are you suggesting the English, for example, don't climb
> Scottish Monroes?
I was not aware that I was suggesting that. I am qualifiying the visitor
from the normal inhabitant, in much the same way as differentiating the
serious alpine climber from the often dangerous enthusiast.
> Just this week they published the statistics on falling off, or getting
> lost upon, mountains of the Scottish variety.
> Seems that more English persons than any other nation fall off, or get
> lost upon, Scottish Mountains.
That's true, specially in the Gorms.
The last time I was up a hill in there in midwinter on maybe 25 feet of ice
the only other idiots I met were the SAS. We stared at each other a bit, but
nothing was said other than a nod, then parted, like tiny ants climbing
around this vast white landscape overlooked from 4,000 feet up in the air.
Everybody wanted to get down and out before the sun rolled round the horizon
and dropped off at about 3 in the afternoon, at 3:30 you can see the stars,
and the sky directly overhead is purple with light, there is so little
pollution, some stellar objects cast shadows - Venus for sure, but also Mlky
Way.
You have to be pretty daft to do that, or young. When I had kids I stopped,
especially after reading an old climber saying, 'there are no old climbers'.
> You can believe it or not but many Scots have never been in a glen further
> north than Dunfermline Glen and the highest hill, and deepest loch, they
> ever saw were those of Townhill and Townhill Loch.
Té!
I don't need to believe anything much. Both my children were born in the
highlands - and unless some radical change has come about I do not quite
recognise the rather singular vision of it some here who visit, from either
England or the lowlands, seem to propose on its state or its culture. I
lived up there a long time, and in terms of English speaking, there was not
the slightest difficulty, and the locals only seemed to have trouble with
metro-lowland accents like Glaswegian.
> Believe it or not but a month or so ago I drove a friend, who has lived
> all his life in Fife, to the car park below the Falkland Hill, (East
> Lomond Hill), ad we climbed the short path to the top of the peak. He was
> amazed at the view that lies North to the mountains beyond the Firth of
> Tay and South over the Firth of Forth to the Pentlands. In nearly 70 years
> he had never climbed those hills.
> --
On the northeast coast you can look up to the top of the mainland landmass
far across the bay, and see the tops which are perhaps 50 miles away, capped
with snow. In the winter when there practically no tourists to view them,
the northern lights excite the night with the wildest shows I've ever seen.
I live in North America now and people ask if it wasn't too cold to live up
there? [Here in Vermont winter temps can be -25F]
And they seem amazed that temperatures are 50 degrees F /warmer/ than here,
at a lattitude about level with Oslo.
This has a certain effect on American trees and shrubs - for example,
Rhododenrons are mostly bushy shrubs here in the north-east, whereas in both
Cornwall and the far upper western highlands they are girt-great trees. The
biggest I can find in this town were planted by Kipling himself when he
built a house here, and they are perhaps 20 feet tall after 120 years of
establishment.
Phil Innes
> Robert Peffers,
> Kelty,
> Fife,
> Scotland, (UK).
>
>
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