Free Season in Strathglass by John; Fowler

showing all the hills he's climbed circled in pencil, one tight group interlocking like the Olympic logo. Sgurr na Lapaich is marked off, Tom a’ Choinich, Mam Sodhail, Carn Eighe and several more. Tomorrow he'll round off with Carn nan Gobhar above Loch Mullardoch, which sparks my interest. I might join him.
    David tells me that, before he retired, he was headmaster of the King Edward School in Oxford, rather a prestigious place, I imagine. Yet his origins were humble. He spent his boyhood in Bo'ness on the Firth of Forth where, at the age of seven, he learned that he was adopted. At 19 he was taken on as an unqualified teacher at a tough village school near Stirling. When he asked how to keep order, he was told, ‘Belt the hell out of them.’ Once he was mystified when a boy knocked on the classroom door and asked if he'd any shoes. ‘Only what I'm wearing,’ he answered and the boy retreated without a word. Later he learned the school ran a cobbling class and shoes for repair were collected every week. It sounds like good practical education – not on offer now, I guess.
    He progressed – went to college and ended up lecturing. After a spell at an international school in Luxembourg, he was headhunted by Winchester before moving to Oxford. And he still speaks with a good Scots accent.

    David, stiff from his climbing, heads for home, leaving Alastair to his final hill. As we drive up Glen Cannich, I fight to keep pace with the lemon yellow coupé as Alastair flings it round the bends and twists of the road. He's a man in a hurry.
    We park under the bleak wall of the dam, where stags with ragged coats are browsing. We search but do not find a reasonable track at the end of the loch. By rights there ought to be a route along the shore but the grey bouldery waterline, scored by fluctuating water levels, offers no practicalaccess. Down below us on the grey foreshore – you can't truly describe it as a beach – we see Carl the Dane's boat hauled up with a tractor beside it but there's no sign of a track along that rocky shoreline. Alastair says they paid Carl a tenner each a couple of days ago to reach the hills at the far end of the loch and back.
    Mud, mud, black peat and stony ruts gouged by some vehicle. Spongy and waterlogged, it's hard walking till we find traces of a barely defined track. We contour above the loch, avoiding the worst bogs, till we reach the Mullardoch burn which we follow upwards. This echoing burn enlivens a dark landscape of muted browns, greens and greys turning to black as it tumbles over shelves of rock, pausing briefly in shallow pools where (a passing thought) it would be good to plunge into on a summer's day. It is not that day. The reach of loch below us is the colour of slate. Spits of rain turn to a steady drizzle. Strands of mist cling to the tops and a band of cloud looming on the horizon indicates bad weather on the way.
    We are lapped by rounded hills crumbling here and there into rocky outcrops, with a band of snow under what could be (but isn't, of course) the summit ridge. Carn nan Gobhar (Hill of the Goats) is no craggy fell but a featureless dumpling ‘of no great distinction’ in the words of the Munro book. Nevertheless, for the true Munroist (not me), it must be scaled. Alastair, tall, fit and trim, strides upwards and I grit my teeth and keep pace step for step with an increasingly leaden distaste.
    Why am I doing this?
    Somewhere above the 600-metre mark my determination falters. I'm conscious that nothing will be seen from the top in this weather. I'm tired, not at my best, and my spirit fails.
    Go ahead, Alastair, I'll loiter here.
    I watch him advance to the head of the glen, a lone figure moving fast and briefly silhouetted against the sky. I'd expected to see him turn to the left and continue to what appears to be the summit ridge but he disappears from sight. This is another hilltop that hides itself behind a bulky shoulder.
    Now