Plans Afoot - Rock Climbs, Lighthouses & Islands
/All of a sudden it is Autumn! The evenings are noticeably drawing in, there is chill to them too and I noticed this morning in Aros Park how the trees are changing colour. Many people tell me they love this season best of all but for me, it feels like a sad one. The long, warm summer days have come to an end and the prospect of a long dark winter ahead never fills me with eager anticipation. I have lived for well over half my life in the northern hemisphere but originating from the African tropics as I do, my blood runs thin and I am not a winter person. I love the warmth and of course the sunshine too.
This sense of sadness is heightened with an awareness I’ve missed most of the summer because of a long and lingering dose of severe depression. For two months I was laid low because of my recurring illness, incapacitated by severe low mood, dark thoughts of suicide and a general debilitating energy sapping malaise. Thankfully I seem to be on my way towards wellness again, though I have to say it seems like an achingly slow road. Despite my continuing lethargy and sometimes crippling anxiety, I’m once more looking ahead, rather than negatively inwardly.
A week ago I turned 58 and this gave me cause to consider what I wanted from my year ahead. I want to be well, that goes without saying. I want to enjoy adventures and I want to strengthen my connection to the natural world I inhabit. I have a desire too to reconnect with old friends and to meet new ones too. For too long, probably the last ten years, I’ve lived a solitude existence, far away from core friendships which are so important to me. On the other hand I have forged many genuine friendships through my social media presence, many of who I have yet to meet in person. It is my hope, I will realise many of these friendships in the months and year to come.
My Quiet Place in My Shed With My Three Books of Inspiration, A Climbing Harness & My Treasured Map Of West Coast Scotland.
Here is my plan to make these aspirations happen. I treated myself to a book I used to love trawling through when I worked as an instructor with Outward Bound. It was a staple of all the Outward Bound staff rooms I had the pleasure of enjoying through the years. ‘Classic Rock’, a coffee table book, is a wonderful compilation of the finest easy-(ish) rock climbs in the British Isles. It’s a book from the late 1970s when rock climbing was beginning to become a popular and an easily accessible activity. I was introduced to traditional multi-pitch climbing in the Moelwyns in North Wales in 1984. From that first route, ‘Slick’, a wonderful 80 metre rambling route graded Very Difficult (VDiff), I became an avid climber. I was never accomplished, in that I climbed the harder grades but I did enjoy the long ‘big boot’ routes (as I termed them) found on the innumerable crags and mountains of Wales, the Lake District and Scotland. These are the routes which feature in the book I recently bought. None of these routes is harder than Very Severe (VS), most being graded VDiff. The grade Very Difficult is really a misnomer. It describes a route which is easy to follow, enjoys positive hand holds and foot holds, and generally provides an enjoyable stress free ascent of the mountain crag. There will be some moments when the pulse may run somewhat faster, but this will probably be because of a sense of exposure rather than any actual difficulty.
It is usual in traditional multi-pitch rock climbing to climb in pairs, with a good friend, where one person takes the lead and the other becomes the second. I won’t go into the ins and outs of the traditional multi-pitch rock climbing process suffice to say, if the route is rewardingly challenging, then the pair will leave the crag with a sense of accomplishment and a wonderful shared memory to return to.
Anyway, my plan is to climb as many of the Scottish routes described in ‘Classic Rock’ in the year to come (such as Cioch Direct on the Isle of Skye featured in the adjacent slide show, climbed with Mrs LifeAfloat). I might venture south to the Lake District to complete a few there, but the reality will be I’ll struggle to climb even half the twenty six featured Scottish routes which are widely spread around the Highlands and Islands. My intention is to use the excuse of pairing up for a rock route as a means of reconnecting with old friends and maybe meeting new ones too. I remember with fondness many of the fine shared moments in the mountains and on exposed circuitous routes with Outward Bound friends in my distant past.
When we moved onto our yacht in 2012, I gave away all my rock climbing gear which is something I hugely regret. This means I have to build my kit up from scratch which is no mean feat given the expense of rock climbing gear now. My jaw drops when I look at the prices of essential items! However, it does mean I will have brand new kit and not be using my previously questionable out of date gear, much of which I had owned since the mid-80s. I’m certainly going to have to up my game with my creativity and sell a lot of jewellery and art to afford kitting myself out again.
Karen recently bought me a wonderful book written by Donald S Murray about Scotland’s Lighthouses. I have often thought it would be a lovely project to visit as many of these structures in my sea kayak. I will have paddled past a large number of them in 2015 when I circumnavigated Scotland and the Islands. However, there are many I have yet to see and there are those I have seen but would like to visit ashore. I think it’s because of my ease with solitude and wildness which makes the thought of being a light house keeper a romantically appealing one for me. I love the thought of living a simple but structured existence somewhere on the remote and wild Scottish coastline, or island or indeed, a rocky skerry. It is the lighthouses constructed on the latter which prove the most challenging for me to reach and land on, such as Skerryvore Lighthouse perched on a jagged rocky reef, washed by heavy Atlantic swells, sixteen kilometres south west of the Isle of Tiree.
Corsewall Point Lighthouse, Galloway
Again it would be lovely to share these kayaking lighthouse visitations with friends, sharing delight in exploring the intricacies of the Scottish coastline and camping overnight in remote and hard to reach wild locations.
This is certainly not a project I would hope to complete in my 58th year. It’s very much a long term one and probably will not be fully realised before I’m to old to paddle safely far offshore. Another long term project is visiting as many of the 900+ Scottish the islands before it’s time to hang up my kayaking paddles for good. Many of these islands are eloquently described in Haswell-Smith’s beautifully illustrated, hugely informative and well researched coffee table book, ‘The Scottish Islands’. As it is for for many mountaineers and walkers, ticking off the list of Munros, the 282 mountain peaks above 914 metres in height in Scotland, there is a compelling desire within me to visit as many of the Scottish islands as possible by kayak. If I trawled through my memories, I’m certain I’ll create a pretty long retroactive list of islands I have already landed on. I intend too, to resurrect my idea of sleeping on a different island off the Isle of Mull every month in my bivvy bag (under the stars) and this is certainly a project which will keep me entertained for the next twelve months. In resurrecting this plan, I’ll make more of an effort to raise the profile of Odyssey, the cancer charity I’m very proud to be an ambassador for.
What I have outlined above may seem overly ambitious, especially for a increasingly overweight man no longer enjoying the nimble fitness of his youth. Indeed, I am mindful of being cautious and not setting myself aspirations which will be too challenging to attain. There is the danger too of shooting out of the trap like a greyhound after a hare and ending up brought up short and winded, because I’m simply too eager to be well again. This is a familiar experience for me and the consequences for not managing this carefully can be dangerous because I might find myself tumbling backwards into another deep depression, experiencing a sense of failure and inadequacy. There is a fine line between being ambitious and over ambitious. I think I have tended to relate to the latter and generally I have got away with my chutzpah. I think for me, what I enjoy most in planning these adventures is the creation of them in my mind and wondering about their possibility and potential. I often say to folks that the advent of Google Earth has been a dangerous tool for me - it’s all to easy for me to draw a line from one place to another and say to myself, I can kayak that. I simply love reading maps, noticing intriguing spots in the landscape, checking these out on Google Earth, and then dreaming of visiting them. There is sometimes a sense of rising panic within me when I realise I probably do not have enough lifetime left to visit all the places I want to in Scotland!
I need these adventurous aspirations to work towards for the motivation they provide. It’s not enough to tell myself I will simply get out into the wilds whenever I feel like it, because now I’m living comfortably ashore again, I’ve somewhat lost the incentive to get outdoors because I feel separated from the natural realm. Now I have a warm and cosy shed to work in, it’s all too easy for me to hunker down in there day after day, losing sight of my adventurous roots and the earthy anti-depressant qualities of Nature.
It’s all too easy for me to be tough on myself with high expectations and a strong drive to achieve. However, by setting out these aspirations for my 58th year, I’m hopeful I’ll inspire myself to become active again and to make a meaningful connection to the world I live in.
My story continues.