The immortal Spey

Not sure what to do when I left Lesley and Luke - I had no other mission. So I needed to go to a campsite and look at maps and have a bit of a think, and went about half an hour down the road to Aberlour. To a Camping and Caravan Club (this is not my lot, this is the Other Lot) site with a VERY LOUD WARDEN. I'd booked on the phone, and he'd said, WORRAM SAYIN IS, IT'S THAT WET, WE'LL AVE TO PUT YOU ONT ROAD. I wasn't sure what to make of this (imagining being parked on the A82, with log lorries whistling by) but he meant on the road in the campsite, because below where I was parked it was too wet to put vans on the grass - you'd never get them out again. So I parked ONT ROAD, and spent a pleasant two days doing walks from the site. He did come over for another conversation - they'd had a van like mine. WHAT YOU AVE TO WATCH IS, THERE'S AN EARTH WIRE INT ENGINE THAT YOU AVE TO KEEP CLEAN, OTHERWISE, COME ONE MORNIN, YOU'LL THINK YER BATTERY'S FLAT, WHEN IT INT. He was proud of his own van for which he'd paid more than mine (pause for a bit of smugness) but pronounced mine A GOOD LITTLE BUS. Although YOU AVE TO KEEP YER REVS DOWN, AN IT AINT NO GOOD IN FIFTH, BUT IT DOES ALRIGHT IN THIRD AND FOURTH. AND YEV NO NEED TO GOO CHASIN ABAHT, AVE YER?

Absolutely not. I have no desire to go CHASIN ABAHT, and I was very nicely snuggled among the distilleries - Macallan, Glenlivet, and all the big famous names are along there (well, all the Speyside famous names, as well as a mysterious Diageo 'Dark grains' plant). I didn't do a distillery tour because I used to live right next to a Perthshire distillery, and I've been to Islay often enough, so I get the idea already). Speyside is a place I've never been before, but I was surprised by its beauty. The Spey itself is broad, and shallow, rippling over rocks, with trees bowing down to it either side, and every so often an angler standing in the water (trout, and salmon in season). The distilleries are all old buildings, many with distinctive ornate square towers on the top, and all of them with a plume of steam escaping out among the glens. The scenery is steeply sloping, lots of woods, but the hills are purple with heather. And every time you go round a corner there's a new vista. The morning I left I went ten minutes up the road to Archiestown, and wandered about there - it was looking very pretty, and seemed to be holding its breath, it was so hushed. I then discovered that it was the morning of the judging of the Best Kept Village competition, and wherever you looked there were people unobtrusively doing last minute snipping and tidying.



I went into a junk shop that unaccountably did cups of coffee and had a million books for sale, and browsed for ages - came out with quite a pile, and had a long conversation with the owners, who were trying to sell up. Huge house, shop, and workshop, in a very pretty village, and no buyers. They seemed quite cheerful, and the woman confided in me that they were Jehovah's Witnesses, and they didn't think the Creator would let this mess go on for much longer, what with governments and everything, before He intervened. So that's alright then. As I left with my rapidly-cooling cup of coffee, she tucked a magazine into my bag of books that would explain everything.

I did ponder for a while what He might look like, and what He's planning to do. I suppose he would be a cross between Nelson Mandela, President Kennedy and Martin Luther King. I am not sure what He would have on the side of His armoured car, as nothing He is called is as snappy as 'UN' and might present design difficulties. JEHOVAH? YAHWEH? THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE? I have just looked Him up on the web - fortunately, He has a website, www.god.com - but it is uninformative on this point. And also rather badly put together, so it appears that He does not employ web designers.

And then where would He start? Darfur? Afghanistan? Chad? Zimbabwe? Iraq? Georgia? The Olympics? (Might as well take advantage of the TV coverage, and appear in the middle of the stadium - two thirds of the world's population are apparently watching already). I even read the magazine for clues. They are powerful in their summary of what's wrong with the world, but vague about what people should do in response, apart from Prepare, which involves mainly reading the bible and Believing. I feel it's possibly more useful to try to do something about the governments and the mess, but perhaps that's just me.


Anyway, these musings took me on a nice walk - I actually walked about 6 miles, and ran some of it, because it seemed to be taking ages, and I needed to find somewhere to camp for the evening. But the drive on from Archiestown was one of the nicest I've done. I went to a place that had a herb nursery in a lovely valley - the photo is taken from inside their greenhouse. Unfortunately the caff was closed (if you wanted herbs, you could put money in a box), but a very nice woman who I met there pointed me down towards Loch Ness and a place called Dores, where there's a pub serving meals (I'd had nothing to eat by this point, not even breakfast, and the walk had been a long one).

Found Dores, where there's a carpark next to the Loch. I spoke to the man who gave up everything to live in a caravan by the Loch and look for the monster. He spends his time sitting on the porch making miniature Nessies out of modelling clay to sell to the tourists. I asked him what he thought Nessie was. 'There's more than one of them', he said. 'And they could be catfish.' This seemed an unsatisfactory conclusion to devote one's life to, but on the other hand he's got a very nice billet, with one of the best views in the world. His taciturnity might be due to constantly being asked the same questions by tourists. Perhaps it's nicer in winter, when all he's got is the Loch and the mist and a few fishermen, and Radio 4 for company.

Anyway, the Dores Inn needs to hire some staff. When I asked is there such a thing as a vegetarian breakfast, the guy there said he didn't think so, but he could ask. He came back saying no. So I said I'd have the ordinary breakfast but without the meat. He said he could ask. He came back saying it will be a while because it's all got to be cooked in a pan. I am left wondering what the alternative was (and I think we should be told, anyway, what food might be when it isn't 'pan-fried'). He charged me full price for it, plus for coffee, even though tea was meant to be included. The place seemed to be full of people waiting for food. Luckily I had the Press and Journal with me to read, but I was really listening to the Germans who were planning their route and complaining about the food, and the French girls who were complaining about the wasps. They said 'Putain' a lot.

I did meet a woman who sounded like she was from the south who was tutting and sighing at the counter, and from her gestures and eyebrows she wanted to include me in it. Can I just ask you one thing, she said to the guy, is there a shopping centre round here? I expected him to say he could ask, but he said no, just Inverness (which is true: you don't come to Speyside to find a shopping centre). She looked heavenwards and said to me that she'd come to Scotland under duress and wasn't an experience she wanted to repeat. I made sympathetic noises and said she could go home and put her feet up in the garden and forget all about it - she'd told me she had more time off work when she got back - but I did privately wonder why someone with intricate grooming and high heels would come to the Highlands. Perhaps they were looking for Bluewater and took a wrong turn.


The rest of the time I enjoyed driving about - stopped at Foyers, which has a famous waterfall that apparently had the Romantic poets all excited. It used to be more dramatic than it is now, because some of the pressure is siphoned off somewhere by the Hydro board for electricity, but it's quite pretty even so. All the way down are parts of a poem - perhaps by Burns, I'm not sure - carved into pieces of slate. The poem was apparently pencilled on the spot, the poet had been so impressed. I'm including a bit of it, but I'm afraid I don't think it's very good.

And to cut a long story short, I drove around looking for somewhere to camp for too long that day, and got tired and grumpy. Now I'm back on the tourist trail - or at least intersecting it briefly - I thought the campsites I saw at Grantown on Spey and around were intolerable: packed vans full of people watching television, or wandering about looking for something to do. So after exploring many side-tracks I found a track on some estate land which led into the woods. It took a bit of off-roading in the van to get up the track, but I felt hidden enough to sleep there. Although slightly worried about gamekeepers: this was August 11th, and the grouse season started on the 12th. I woke to bright sunlight with no sign of anyone pointing a gun at me, and was pleased that YHWH (see, I found Him an abbreviation) had spared me for another day.