A single crow fretted in a cage surrounded by the new families of sheep. Its function was to lure other birds down to join it by entering through the one-way opening whereupon it would become trapped, squashed against its potential mate before being removed, its neck snapped then tossed aside. The cycle would then be repeated; attractive bird in cage flirts with stranger who is then executed. Blinded by love they fail to see the growing black heap of corpses.
Johnson enjoyed his first day on horseback, ‘Most of this day’s journey was very pleasant. The day, though bright, was not hot; and the appearance of the country, if I had not seen the peak, would have been wholly new.’ Up to his old tricks again, having compared Edinburgh with Birmingham he now pretends that the sight of a poxy hillock in Derbyshire had prepared him for the grandeur of the Highlands.
The remaining ten miles on the tarmacadammed A82 was for the main, more attritional than rewarding. Having grown used to scenery changing by the moment from the window of a bus this stuff stubbornly refused to alter. Same old, same old. I was acutely aware of the wind playing on a continuous loop in my ears and the increasingly painful meditation of boot on road. The fault must be mine – I should be enjoying all this. The road kill yielded one distorted hedgehog, a stiff frog with its legs in the air, presumably it died of boredom rather than a brush with an intermittent 4x4, and a bird’s skeleton toothpicked clean.
Roy claimed to have spotted a dead sheep in a field, a supposition based more on the fact that the animal refused to respond to his line of gratuitous sheep abuse than much else.
The haul of hubcaps in the vicinity of cattle grids suggested a different type of road kill. If anyone was sad enough to collect hub caps as a hobby this was the place to look. Every make was there, tens of them lying in hedgerows, and lining the ditches. Under cover of darkness the hubgoblins would pile them onto carts and trundle them away.
At Invefarigaig we climbed down onto one of the few remaining Wade bridges. Totally unmarked it seemed to be incrementally lurching to its inevitable collapse under the new road. Shedding stones from the parapet it impressed because of its smallness. Miniature masons, dwarf engineers and knee-high conscripts swarmed over a road network that would ultimately subdue and subjugate their equally tiny enemies.
The long gradual descent into Fort Augustus proved as hard as going uphill. As the town emerged from the twilight we speculated as to the precise nature of the pleasure that lay in store. We settled for a pub and a B & B.
Johnson and Boswell spent the night in the Fort as guests of the deputy governor, ‘It was comfortable to find ourselves in a well-built little square, a neat well-furnished house with prints, etc, a good meal (fricassee of moor-fowl etc); in short, with all the conveniences of civilized life in the midst of rude mountains.’ The fricassee of moorfoul was consumed a few hours after their road side snack of mutton-chops, a broiled chicken, and bacon and eggs, and a bottle of Malaga. Johnson’s long suffering horse must have been about to give up its horsely ghost.
Instead of being well-furnished with prints our B & B gave pride of place in the centre of the dining table to an intimidating hybrid monster constructed entirely from the recycled components of a large motor bike.
The remains of the original fort, torched for fun by the Jacobites, were incorporated into the foundations of the abbey that replaced it. At the time of trespassing it too was being transformed into bijou apartments. As we wandered round the croquet lawn wondering who in these straitened times could afford to live there, we met a middle aged couple leaving with suitcases. The interrogator pounced. Soon he extracted details of both the dimensions and price of the room they had just left and much more besides. They were both from London allegedly revisiting their roots. Mercifully the one big question was left unasked. Had Roy persevered they would have confessed to their weekend of adultery and peppered their explanation with our-spouses-don’t-understand, no-harm-has-been-done, we-are-soul mates, we-can’t-leave-our-respective children. Roy would have nodded gravely, exhorted them not to sin again, given them absolution with a truncated blessing before lying his old bones down on an empty plot in the adjacent monks’ graveyard.
The Curios and Collectables displayed in the window of the closed local shop consisted of several trays of model Loch Ness monsters made from curls of green ceramic poo.
As we checked on the bus timetable an elderly man came up to explain the purpose of his journey. His wife had died a fortnight previously. The information was delivered in a matter of fact way masking profound shock and denial. He was going to Brighton. Would he look for her among the beach huts? Would he talk to her reproachfully in the same teashop where they courted fifty years previously? ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going away, I have been so worried.’
Fort Augustus – Glenelg
To pick up the trail from Fort Augustus to Glenelg we doubled back to Inverness to catch the 917 which would drop us off at Shiel Bridge. The bus route is only an approximation to the original journey as much of the original road lies drowned beneath reservoirs.
At the bus station I checked with the hugely tall man in a crisp white shirt that we were in the right queue. ‘I hope so,’ he said, ‘I’m the driver.’ He explained how his vehicle was in the garage to ‘drop its toilet.’ This mystifying phrase brought several unwanted scatological images to mind. Evidently it also needed more blue additive in its fuel tank. This was a legal requirement to deter cowboy drivers from siphoning off the fuel in a lay-by and selling Molotov cocktails of cheap diesel to impoverished motorists, potential arsonists and deviant sniffers who had grown out of lighter fuel.
Two Japanese youths entertained the queue by staging an impromptu sumo wrestling match with their rucksacks hidden under cagoules, a new event in the Pauper Olympics. Roy drew my attention to a young woman picking stones from her crocs. At least I hope that’s what he said. Either way I chose not to look in case I had misheard.
When the bus arrived a woman in her 70s fought her way to the front of the queue, clicked her arms into a position that suggested she had been paralysed when cuddling a wheelie bin, and maneuvered herself into the front seat.
The journey itself was dull as most of the passengers slept, mouths open and rag doll heads lolling. A young woman jolted awake disconnecting her earphones and leaving the lyrics ‘map of the world, map of the world’ bouncing round the aisle. At a command from the driver all passengers would be required to swap one on their ear pieces with their neighbour who would in turn pass theirs to someone in the seat behind. Soon a complex lattice work of thin white wires would strangle everyone on the bus, a fatal cat’s cradle, a Babel grid of crossed wires as Mahler meets grunge and hip hop enlivens the Dow Jones Index. There would be several fatalities as pacemakers realigned themselves to a thumping bass.
A full bottle of water fell from the luggage rack and landed hard in Roy’s groin. He shouted and then admitted it was his own bottle. Attention seeking.
He spoke for a while about his part-time work with a crisis helpline. He described how the individual voices with their unique stories gradually coalesced into a sense of mass helplessness, ebbing and flowing down the phone line into the night. There was no helpline for Boswell or Johnson when their hearts choked with melancholia. No help but prayer or confiding in the journal, occasional purgation, a restorative bloodletting. Perhaps scourging in Johnson’s case, and sex or drink in Boswell’s. When all else failed, go on a journey.
At some point not far from where the current road passes through Glenmoriston Boswell and Johnson encountered a party of soldiers. Johnson fearful lest they drank his blood to slake their obvious thirst gave them two shillings to spend in the nearest off licence. As the inn where our travellers were to spend the night was the only purveyor of strong liquor in the vicinity they all arrived together, whereupon the soldiers retired to the barn to drink themselves into a quarrelsome state.
Eager for further entertainment Boswell and Johnson popped out to the barn and gave
the soldiers even more money. The plan worked as effortlessly as putting coins into a juke box. The record arm dropped the disc neatly onto the turntable and they listened to the soothing sounds of the soldiers knocking five bells out of each other. ‘Some of them fought and left blood on the spot.’
As always Boswell faithfully recorded every morsel that they ate at Anoch, ‘We had a broiled chicken, mutton collops or chops, mutton sausage, eggs of which Mr Johnson eat five and nothing else. I eat four, some chicken and some sausage, and drank some rum and water and sugar.’ How did Johnson eat five eggs? Was it a party trick, did he pop then into his bulging cheeks like a conjurer? Did he line them up in a row? Perhaps the horses had shaken his bowels into a state of flux and this was the remedy.
They talked with MacQueen their landlord about emigration and press ganging. Johnson presented his daughter with a book of arithmetic. The perfect gift for a young girl. ‘Put aside the Barbies, forget the subscription to Jackie, look at these sums!’
The sleeping arrangements left much to be desired. ‘There were two beds in the room. A woman’s gown was hung on a rope to make a kind of separation between them. Joseph had the sheets which we brought with us laid on them. We had much hesitation whether to undress or lie down with or clothes on. I said at last, “I’ll plunge in! I shall have less room for vermin to settle about me when I strip!’’ Mr Johnson said he was like one hesitating whether to go into the cold bath. At last he resolved too.’
Boswell then provided a touching cameo of them chatting in bed before Johnson said, ‘God bless us both for God’s sake. Good night.’ I pronounced “Amen’’. Mr Johnson fell asleep immediately. I could not have that good fortune for a long time. I fancied myself bit by innumerable vermin under the clothes, and that a spider was travelling from the wainscot towards my mouth …’ That’s what you get when you stuff yourself full of mutton.
In the morning, once Boswell regained his composure after seeing the naked Johnson with a coloured handkerchief tied round his head, they compared thoughts. During the night they had both considered the possibility that their host, in league with the soldiers, was planning to rob them.
Instead they are offered breakfast. ‘Fried, poached, scrambled or boiled Doctor?’ Far from robbing them, MacQueen chums them for several miles and reminisces about being a member of the Highland army post Culloden. Ever the sentimentalist Boswell revealed that ‘I several times burst into tears. There is a certain association of ideas in my mind upon that subject, by which I strongly affected. The very Highland names or the sound of a bagpipe, will stir my blood …’
As they passed through Glen Shiel Johnson is determined to be underwhelmed by the scenery. When Boswell called one of the mountains immense, he was grumpily corrected with the put-down: ‘No, but ’tis a considerable protuberance.’
The protuberances looked especially fine from the bus windows. The trees nearest to the road passed in a blur while those across the water maintained a statelier pace. We saw a man with a canoe on his head. The pylons were of an unusual shape hunched up, flexing their upper bodies. The low levels in the loch had the effect of creating real beaches along the edges. Soon whole drowned villages would re emerge, shaking off the water like wet dogs, and resume their identity. Then the carcasses of Wellington bombers would stretch, propellers unbuckle, and take once more to the skies after sixty years of biding their time. The wind had ploughed swimming lanes the length of the loch.
No sooner had the bus dropped us off at Shiel Bridge than a monstrous goat ran into the traffic, causing some heavy braking. It was a huge hairy goat complete with black dreadlocks and full Masonic regalia, an escaped regimental mascot. Or as Roy preferred, an emissary from the devil; a satanic visitor sent to warn us not to complete the journey. With trepidation we sought refuge in the nearby garage that had the air of the deserted village about it. Instead of a till there was an honesty box.
Within a hundred metres of the main road we passed a meadow of clichéd beauty. Four motionless horses were arranged symmetrically. One large brown mare stood in the dark green grass with a stillness and majesty that dispelled any lingering bad goat thoughts.
Near to this spot Boswell and Johnson found themselves surrounded by curious locals in a village that has now disappeared without trace. They sat on a green turf seat at the end of a house and accepted two dishes of milk that ‘frothed like syllabub’. To counteract the Arcadian spirit of this encounter Boswell ‘gave all that chose it snuff and tobacco’. As none of them could speak or read English they must have ignored the government warning that smoking kills. Boswell’s tear-soaked sentimentality did not extend to his view of the curious onlookers and bearers of syllabub, ‘Some were as black and wild in their appearance as any American savages whatever … I said to Mr Johnson ‘twas the same as being with a tribe of Indians. “Yes,’’ said he, “but not so terrifying.’’’ Boswell the lustful, also slyly observes that one of the women ‘was as comely as the figure of Sappho’.
Johnson reveling in his new role of dispenser of largesse and shillings made the children line up and ‘distributed his copper and made them and their parents all happy.’ Word soon spread that Christmas has come early and the crowd swelled as cottages, byres and latrines empty. Boswell offered to pay for the syllabub. After frantic consultation the old woman who provided the dubious brew suggested half a crown when offered a shilling. Boswell gulped and handed over the money which in 1773 was the equivalent of the GNP of a small country. Thus the modern Scottish tourist industry was born.
The road soon climbed up towards the mountain pass known as the Mam Ratagan. Despite being lighter in the pocket Johnson struggled with the ascent. The horses nearly buckled with his weight while he huffed, puffed and cursed in several dead languages. Boswell conceded ‘It is a terrible steep to climb’. At the summit they encountered a Dutch army officer who, to their delight, recognised them.
In a car park near the top we encountered two Indian tourists equipped with deep mist-penetrating binoculars. To our disappointment neither of them recognized us. We also made the mistake of making friendly eye contact with a man in the back of a parked camper van. He looked startled. Moments later a very disapproving female face emerged from below the level of the window. It was time to move on.
Roy noticed a tiny shrew on the road. It was not in robust good health and we speculated that it had perhaps been struck a glancing blow. The absurdity of a shrew being dazed by an encounter with a passing Land Rover dawned on us both. What then, a butterfly wing, a small zephyr, an angel?
The descent proved problematic for the early travellers. The party had four horses between them and the guides decided the nags might live longer if they took it in turns to carry the corpulent and increasingly truculent burden between them. Johnson went into a sulk and declared that he was prepared to be carried by either the black or brown horse but did not fancy the grey ones in the least. Hay (an excellent name for a ‘common ignorant horse hirer’ as Boswell charitably dubbed him) hit on a cunning ruse to distract Johnson from his infantile petulance. Having observed how he had enjoyed watching goats frolicking earlier in the day he took out his I-Spy Goat Book. ‘Just when Mr Johnson was uttering his displeasure, the fellow says, “see such pretty goats.’’ Then whu! He whistled, and made them jump.’
Fortunately I had fewer problems with Roy. He only became challenging when he misread a sign indicating the proximity of an otter hide. After wondering why anyone would like to hire an otter he answered his own question with unwanted bawdy speculation. ‘Two hours with an otter sir, you won’t regret it; take a slippery one sir, well worth the extra expense.’
Having sulked his way down the hill Johnson became distraught when Boswell went on ahead to secure their accommodation in Glenelg. ‘He called me back with a tremendous shout, and was really in a passion with me for leaving him.’ Beneath his apparent indifference to the scenery Johnson was disconcerted by the unfamiliar environment. For days they had travelled in the bro
oding shadow of the hills over genuinely challenging terrain. He was an old man, entitled to a moment of panic.
Increasingly bored with the incremental tedium of the walk Roy regaled me with a medley of marching songs that became more Tyrolean and Neo-fascist with every step. Soon tomorrow would truly belong to him. He then changed channels and launched into a horrible ballad in a cod Irish accent that apparently involved a traveller having consensual sex with the daughter of Riley, the landlord. By all accounts the experience was mutually pleasurable but the traveler launched a preemptive strike against the landlord’s wrath by waving a pistol in the air.
Roy then took his hobby of collie-teasing a stage further and deliberately provoked a bull that was brooding lustfully beyond a mercifully secure fence. The animal roared and stamped in response to the verbal taunts. I think it was love at first slight.
On the outskirts of Glenelg we came to Bernera barracks, the last of the several forts built by Cumberland to warn the locals not to think of insurrection ever again. After the lavish and flattering hospitality they had met at both Fort George and Fort Augustus we can understand why Boswell ‘would fain have put up there; at least I looked at them wishfully, as soldiers have always everything in the best order. But there was only a sergeant and a few men there.’
We went one better and finding a partial gap in the barbed wire defences broke in to the derelict, roofless barracks. After eyeballing giant nettles we stood in the central square. To our right the stables were still visible, small bushes grew from the arched windows and in a corner of an outbuilding we found the remains of an oven that would have glowed red with fire as fresh bread was shoveled from its maw.
We had booked into the Glenelg Inn, Boswell and Johnson’s final destination before they left for the Isles. The site of the original inn is now a posh private house adjacent to the jetty from which they sailed to Armadale. In its day it was a fairground house of horrors, a monument to squalor and botulism. In Boswell’s words, ‘A lass showed us upstairs into a room raw and dirty; bare walls, a variety of bad smells, a coarse black fir greasy table, forms of the same kind, and from a wretched bed started a fellow from his sleep like Edgar in King Lear.’ Johnson has his own simile to describe the apparition who rose to greet them. ‘Out of one of the beds, on which we were to repose, started up, at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge.’
Boswell's Bus Pass Page 13