Royal McNabs

05/01/2005

MESSAGE FROM THE OLD HOUSE. A CANCELLATION MEANS THAT THE OLD HOUSE IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR WEEKS COMMENCING 30TH JULY AND 6TH AUGUST.

Dearest Dottie chases me from the Great Bed of Trollaigh in the early dawn to drag me up the hill as a start to a regime of fitness. Great gusts of wind whistled around the Tower of Glen Trollaigh last night, but it is calmer in the dawn as I pull on my boots and gather the pack to head of up the Alt Trollaigh with Dotty. It is a bit murky with spots of rain from the east, although the breeze backs west while we are on the hill. Our task is to check the burn for drowned animals following the heavy spates of two days back, and we do drag a couple of ewes and a couple of lambs out, swept to their deaths trying to cross the watersheds higher on the steep hillside. Lachie has been muttering about the deprivation of foxes on the lambs, but I think our loses have been fairly light. The telltale signs of heads and limbs nipped off before the remains are taken back to dens are evident, showing signs of foxes, but no clue about a resident pack. We must be vigilant. John phones to report a camper lost in the River Orchy and certainly we see the police helicopters in the distance, however inviting a wilderness may be, it must be treated with great respect and although we all are saddened by loss of any life, it serves to remind us that life in the mountains can be tough. But the joys of our isolation are all around us with the swallows and house martins fairly whizzing about the Tower, new life both animal and vegetable pushing up all around us. A call from America reminds me of the of the golden age of The Royal McNab, sadly for one reason or another now almost unobtainable. Mhairi is most indignant as I sit in the kitchen with an illicit Sunday lunchtime dram and wistfully recall that golden August of ’58 when everything was possible and many of us young wasters managed to achieve our goals. Was it that year that Kilwhinnie won through to the Double Royal? Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.