The Cairngorms II 

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I like this photograph so much that I'm using it as my desktop wallpaper.

You were wondering perhaps how a 2-wheel drive vehicle with wide wheels, ordinary tyres and no chains climbs a snowy 20%, (1:5), gradient?

Looking south towards Carn Gorm. Bloody bleak or what?

Tomintoul is a place I'll remember. It's neat and Glenlivet whisky is made there. At 1,160ft the village is the highest in the Scottish Highlands, (the highest in the whole of Scotland being Wanlockhead at 1531ft). In Tomintoul we saw the only other t25 VW camper of our whole trip. It was parked outside a B & B! The village sits on a plateau pretty well in the eye of the wind and its low-built red-brown stone houses give the impression that they could tough it out forever. 

For several seconds Jo and I thought about moving to Tomintoul, but decided that at such an altitude and so far north we probably wouldn't be able to grow good vegetables.

Keeping less than half an eye on the greying weather we continued north and west down towards Grantown on Spey. On Radio 2 Wrigh'y had been saying, "There's seven inches of snow in Inverness", (about 25 miles away). Seemed like complete nonsense to me, but after our  wheel-spinning up to The Lecht, I couldn't persuade Jo that we should take a back road shortcut across to Nethy Bridge.

Grantown is elegant, spacious, purposeful and planned. We drove along to the old Spey bridge for a photograph, (couldn't find one), then mainly by B roads to Carrbridge and the Landmark Visitor Centre, where it started to snow.

We should go back there at some stage. The place was almost empty and we didn't really do it justice - we'd gone there mainly to eat. The grub was excellent and plenty of it. As she served it the waitress said that this snowfall was the start of the big one, (which by then the forecasters were saying had been delayed by 24hrs).

In the restaurant was a display of fabulous Victorian sepia prints of a tour of the Highlands. In 1986 the scrapbook from which they came was found in a secondhand bookshop in Stockport. Many of the Highlanders in the photographs were barefoot and I noticed how useful their feet looked compared with shoed feet. The toes were spread out to grip and the big toes looked almost separate, (and overdeveloped by our standards, almost like thumbs).

The snow was getting thicker.

Considerably thicker.

I began to wonder whether or not my considering was a little too late.

We almost shot into Aviemore. We're stopping nowhere but the garage, says I. Bloody Esso too! As we drove out we passed too late a non-Esso garage.

At home I'd topped up the screenwash bottle with water, then with something better, but it was still too dilute and we soon had "lace curtains" all around the van.

I was by then becoming fairly preoccupied by the fact that I'd misjudged my Scottish distances. (Well, they are bigger than English or Welsh ones, aren't they. Aren't they?).

It was dusk when we arrived in Pitlochry. Passing only a Land Rover which was going in the opposite direction, we stormed up the road which leads across to Glen Shee.

Then on the A93 up the valley we were very much held up by one of those powerful 4wd Chrysler Jeeps. It was going so slowly!  I'm afraid I felt quite justified in harassing its driver until he pulled into a layby to let us pass.

It was no longer dusk. 

It was definitely night time. 

The snow was getting thicker and the wind was most certainly getting up. It really did seem to me that every minute might count.

On the last long straight pull up to the top there was a 20% sign. I was in 3rd, (it wouldn't have taken a higher one,) and I did my best to get a run at the slope.

Powdery snow was blowing like buggery across the road, (as if it could, but you know what I mean), and I really was enormously pleased to be able to make out those high posts marking the edge of the road, white to the right, red to the left, white to the right, white to the right, watch the right 'cause that's where the drop is.......... Can't see the fricking' road. At all!

A bit of a slip at the back, then another, then a wag, (like steering a boat which wants to turn on the top of every wave), the engine revs rising out of proportion to the road speed, power off a bit, power on, bite, spin, bite, spin, slew, weave.....,

Phew! 

In about twice as long as it took to read that paragraph, we were out of it, (possibly in more than one sense?). At some stage Jo had shouted, (Or was it a squeak? No, it was certainly loud), "Stop!", (etc!).

That, of course, was not on my agenda, though had it been, I certainly could have very easily. Then we'd have certainly had to reverse a long way down and out of that wind-blasted stretch, tie lengths of my 30yr old climbing rope around the rear wheels and start all over again.

As we breasted the top the whiteout came back, (and with it more calls to stop). Grunting reassurances, (I hope), we pressed on north following a white van cautiously down Glen Clunie and stopping only for a large herd of red deer to cross the road in the light of our headlamps.

A mile or so from the campsite we were waved down by a cop heading up the valley in a Land Rover. "When you get to the bottom the snowgates'll be closed", he said cheerfully.

In fact they weren't. It appeared that he'd "deputised" a local chap to park up with his headlights blazing against any traffic approaching from the north, (not that there'd have been much). The only vehicle we saw go through the gates that night was the Whale Blazer.

On the side of the lorry it read, "WHALE BLAZER".

Not the sort of garment you'd expect a whale to wear, but when it's cold..........?

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