Geezafu Kinbreack

“Blizzard conditions expected all over north, central and western Scotland. Do not travel unless absolutely necessary. Roads closed. Doom. Gloom. Ball lightning. Horizontal raining frogs. Hailstones the size of basketballs. Blah blah blah.”

…bloody weather forecasters! Bunch of knobs the lot of ‘em….especially that useless tart Heather-the-Blether….

So what was it like? Only about the best sodding weather we’ve probably ever had on a Bothy Meet.

Unfortunately some of the usual Bothy Meet suspects had been put off by all the meteorological bollocks served up and we only had a hardy band of eight Rannochers on duty for this trip.

We had Colin, Shandboy and myself in the 4x4 Stella wagon
We had Gav, Rhona and Shaz in the Beamer Winebox & Make-up Compact
We had JD and blast-from-the-past Rob in the Embra Faggotmobile
…oh yeah and we had Pud ‘n’ Em up for a durty weekend in Roybridge….booked before they knew the Rannoch were going to be in town.

As everyone knows…well nearly everyone apart from a trio of numpties from the Borders…that Kinbreack is just s-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o not a Friday night walk-in Bothy. You’ve got a near 20 mile drive down a shockingly poor single-track road down Loch Arkaig then a 5 mile trudge up a shockingly poor boggy pile-of-shite track over a 500m col and then down to the shed. Why on earth anyone would consider doing that on a rainy Friday night when the alternative is a night in a Bunkhouse barely 50 yards from a pub is beyond me…

The 3-Borderers got to the Bothy at 5am, and were so ill and knackered that they dossed around until about 2pm, indeed one of them was so ill he did a passable impersonation of a dead body for the duration of the meet.

…Right enough maybe the Borders Boys heard that Edinburgh Rob was going to be at the Bunkhouse, and there was a history there…

But sadly, because of my drink-addled brain I simply cannot remember what specifically happened in the past….but I do remember that nearly 20 years ago something occurred between us jolly lads back then that prompted me and Gav to stuff a dead pigeon through his letterbox….a kind of Bastard Squad equivalent of a horse’s head in his bed.

…anyway that was all in the past, and I’ve matured a lot since then and I’m a forgive-and-forget kinda guy. So I can assure everyone that Rob was made perfectly welcome to the bosom of the Rannoch. No hard feelings mate, and I’m sure he’ll be only too keen to come on more Rannoch trips.

But I digress…so we all got steamin in the Roybridge Hotel and crashed out at 2 am….in fact I also remember crashing out of my top bunk at about 3.30 am and nearly killing myself before struggling firstly to find the bogs and then secondly to find my way back to my bunk. Must be something in the water up there.

Somehow, we all got our acts together and our kit-and-caboodles down the hellish drive along Loch Arkaigside to Strathan by around 10 am, and it was with sore heads and heavy rucksacks that we trudged up the hill, albeit in good weather, over to Glen Kingie and the bothy.

I got to the col, and with the visibility being good I set off to bag Sgurr Mhurlagain. I dumped my sack at what I thought was an obvious (but not too obvious) place and legged it up the hill on my tod. Never having done such a thing before, and not having a GPS device, I found myself heading up the hill constantly worrying that the weather was going to clag-in. I continually peered back to pinpoint where my sack was…and rather foolishly I was halfway up the hill before I realised that I had left my map & compass in the rucksack (D’Oh!) and that just added to my anxiety. Not very sensible at all, but it all ended OK with the hill in the bag and the good weather holding out.

All that remained then was to get down to the Bothy and…er….do Bothy-type things like sit around drinking copious amounts of beer, be offensive to everyone and fall about a lot. All of which were achieved with aplomb.

Everyone got back down the hill safely from various jaunts and by mid-evening even the ‘Dead Guy’ in the corner was coming round a bit. The Girly and Embra teams had planned a magnificent three course feast including; Blinis with Brie & Cranberries, pate de foie gras and smoked salmon with oatcakes, followed by home-made vegetarian chilli with wholegrain rice before finishing off with chocolate muffins with vanilla custard.

I actually did a little better that those pretentious gourmand bon viveurs…I had FOUR courses each consisting three cans of Stella. C’est magnifique!

I must say the fire we got going was superb, JD and Shandboy had lugged in some coal as had the Border Lads and there was a fair bit of old wood lying around for burning. There really isn’t anything much better that sitting around in a Bothy with a cracking big fire roaring and copious amounts of drink on hand. ….

…..though some half decent company would be nice for a change.

Still, there’s always next year I suppose.

Big Al, 28^th November 2005