Surviving planet Earth

Surviving the weather - Part One

No doubt some of you may be considering travelling to Scotland for a holiday and indeed millions do every year and why not? We have some of the finest views in Europe, some of deepest lochs, probably the best whiskies and some of the oldest cities. Scotland has more castles than just about anywhere else, more Munros than even the most terminally enthusiastic climber could want, huge swathes of forests in which to hide and more glens than a country and western society.

But if you are travelling up here soon, or indeed even if you are a seasoned Highland traveller, wouldn't it be nice to know a bit more about this land fabled in literature, film and music?

The first thing you will notice as we begin the slow ride up towards the higher latitudes is likely to be the weather. Now, I know you were probably expecting a bright orb set against a blue sky, possibly just above the crest of a mountain and if you had decided to visit in summer, it may well have been the sight greeting you through your window.

But its winter just about now, I'm afraid, and things are rather different. The noise you hear, as you look hopefully through the wet glass, is rain. Not the type of rain that falls with delicious sweetness upon a parched earth to refresh and renew both your spirit and your fellow beings, but the type of rain that is so far beyond the laws of gravity that it falls not just sideways but upwards. Were you unwise enough to step out of our cosy little cabin it would appear that every little needle-like drop would steer immediately towards and make a concerted attempt to dissolve you.

I won't lie, Scottish rain hurts, particularly in the Western Isles, and this is because of the way the whole of the United Kingdom is orientated. The more mountainous parts are generally in the North and West which is the direction, incidentally, from which the weather systems come and being hilly it is rather exposed to the wind. Just how windy it can get here was recorded by a, presumably rather startled, Head of Ski Patrol in the Cairngorms national park on the 8th of December 2008. An anemometer (a machine used to measure wind speed) was inspected and found to have a reading of 194 miles-per-hour, about the top speed of a formula one car, or rather more lift than needed to get a jumbo jet airborne.

Unfortunately due to a 'technical problem' the machine failed to print or otherwise record this information for posterity and because it wiped its memory clean every other day, there was no corroborating evidence except for the lonesome ski patrol who happened to come by, presumably heavily chained to a nearby boulder. The fact remains that Scotland is the windiest part of the UK of which the Western Isles, though which we are now passing, is officially the 5th. But the region's topography is also responsible for the physics-busting rain.

Because air tends to carry moisture up mountainsides, it tends to get dropped as rain, so the more mountainous the area, at least in what is laughingly called a 'temperate' region, the more rain will fall. If you do a search on 'wettest part of the UK' you would expect a clear result, wouldn't you? But you would be wrong. Depending upon which website you favour you will learn that it could be the top of Ben Nevis (Scotland's highest mountain at 1,344.5 metres above the sea and about which more will be discussed later) Cardiff in Wales, Dorset, Dartmoor, Newcastle, Glasgow or just about any Westerly town, city or landscape.

 Isn't the internet great?

The combination of wind and rain is why a trip outdoors at this time of the year is an adventure in the realms of both hypothermia and pain in which the word 'stinging' assumes a new dimension.

I say this because shortly after moving here (I don't know why I chose mid-winter, but there you go) I decided to take my children on a day trek down one arm of the many peninsulas that cut a swathe in this region. Their existence is owed to the vast sheets of ice, several miles thick, that once completely covered Scotland and much of England as well. As these behemoths started to melt they were carried inexorably toward the Atlantic, grinding and gouging rock to form the landscape we have today. To get to where we wanted to start the walk required a relatively short drive down a single-track road (about which more later) and the opening and closing of two gates. Here the road ended, although calling a track with some tarmac on it a 'road' could be stretching the meaning of the word. The day was gloriously sunny and rather warm for a change. That is one of the beauties of this place because you cannot always tell, even with the most up to date forecasts what the weather will do next. This was going to be one of those days.