Wildcamping. Part Three. By the Falls

 Thursday 23rd 

sound diary: https://youtu.be/6YXrQfxqpAE

At 8am Ann brought me down coffee and a packet of biscuits. Rich tasting filter coffee in a flask. "Sorry I couldn`t rustle up a bacon sandwich".  Such kindness....  Well beforehand I`d body-washed in the river, having considered swimming, deciding not to as the Tay was still in spate after yesterday`s downpour.

Leaving the flask and cup in a plastic bag as arranged, I set off down the road, making for Pitlochry. The Tay ran alongside me, close enough that I could study its banks for signs of beaver: gnawed tree stumps, tangles of branches congested into a dam, dark paddle of a tail or shiny snout. I saw them all in my imagination, but not on the river Tay that morning.

The road climbed a hill, threading between fields and passing neat farms and quiet, well tended villages populated only, it seemed, by summer holiday kids, paddocks and horses.  Communities off the beaten track. Seldom visited back waters. Far from fast, city bound roads. Inconvenient. All the better for it. In my mind`s eye great grandfather Bob or great aunt Nettie rolled along these same tarmacadam tributaries in the 1920s and 30s. And, during those early intense days of this April and May, with no planes and very few cars moving I could`ve cycled this road and travelled backwards in time a hundred years, wading through endless waves of birdsong and humming, buzzing insects, all punctuating and giving depth to air and height to sky.

Pitlochry was mildly irritating; at odds with me. I didn`t want to check out the shops. Buy tartan tat, eat ice cream or pizza. By now a crisp raeburn apple, cheese or smoked mackerel, oatcakes and fresh water were providing the fuel I needed. And I wanted to shed lazily accumulated fat layers, become leaner again. I found the John Muir shop. As anachronistic as the Crannog Centre amongst all the busy-ness. And it was shut too. 

So, halfway has been reached and It`s becoming clear that I`m approaching my true destination. Which isn`t Inverness at all, but the Cairngorm National Park. So far much of Route 7 has been along quiet country roads, seldom on designated tracks. Increasingly I`ll be rolling along cycle lanes, but accompanied on my left by a railwayline, on my right by the A9. Always the hum and rumble of traffic. When, in a few short days I find myself in the ancient green woodlands of Glenfeshie or Rothiemurchus, I`ll curl up, a creature in a canvas den. Fall asleep while the forest alone sings. Uninterrupted by modernity.

In the meantime I search for a camping place, turning left at House of Bruar towards Tummel Bridge. I`d been told wildcampers, or more accurately dirty or clatty campers have been parking in laybys hereabouts, abandoning tents, beer cans, and lighting fires along the length of that route. I soon come across beer bottles in a hollow tree trunk, then castaside lumps of charred greenwood, cut down fresh for the burning. A circle of blackened grass. My wildcamping antennae vibrate a No; because, to wrap yourself in the soft hide and belly of a tent over night, in a lonely place, this renders you vulnerable. My pitch needed to be hidden and inaccesible to the easycamping fraternity. 

A friend online suggests returning to the House of Bruar, as behind the buildings and climbing far above are the Falls of Bruar. So I push my heavy bike up the inclining needle-carpet pathway, eyes casting left and right for likely spots. It`s getting late and so tourists and evening walkers are dwindling. I read on a sign that the forest and falls are managed by the Blair Athol Estate. I don`t want to get into a debate with a liveried ranger about what does and doesn`t constitute the right to responsible access. So I skulk like a tent pitch poacher. As the sun casts slanted pine and cloud shadows I set up camp behind a grassy heathery knoll at the foot of a spruce cluster. Then I walk up and visit the high waterfalls and decorative arched bridges and grottos. The lowering sun, skin warming. Air, pine resinous. Ears full of chanting water thunder. Up here, mature coniferous growth is flanked by acres of new plantings, as there has been disease amongst these trees in recent times. And what I find, as I sit at the top, is that I am not alone amongst all of this natural beauty. For maybe the first time, I entirely understand John Muir`s making an ecstatic religion of the natural world. 

Towards Tummel Bridge