If the Swiss had invented porridge, they’d have a bloke in lederhosen throwing a cuckoo clock, perhaps a bit less ginger
I’d never heard of Suilven, nor even seen the word until one day last year, when I was chatting to a nice couple in some marina or other and enquired about the odd name they had given their boat. “Sioolvaiiinnnn” she breathed, dramatically, in her best Gaelic as if momentarily posessed by the spirit of some Scots ancestor, “is a very special mountain in the far north.” I remember taking a mental step backwards in case she had incurred the wrath of some Scots god by saying the word out loud; it all sounded a bit too mystical to me, and frankly rather scary. This was at a time when I was very scared of the far north in general, and the conversation made me all the more determined to sail past it as quickly as possible to avoid evil spirits and mountains that might take a dislike to Englishmen in boats.
A year later I had sailed into Lochinver more respectful of the far north than scared, and marvelled at the very distinctive completely conical mountain standing on its own at the head of the loch behind the village. Not the tallest around by any means, it was by far the most unusual, looking more like a child’s painting than a real mountain.
This, you will have guessed, turned out to be the legendary Suilven, and I could see what the fuss was about. I’m quite sure that if JRR Tolkein ever holidayed in Sutherland (yes, we are even further north than Wester Ross now) he would have put it into the Misty Mountains and populated it with dwarves and dragons and treasure. A day in Lochinver a few weeks ago looking at it and it had cast its magic spell: I had to climb up it, and a few lazy days’ pottering presented the perfect impetus to get off the boat and stretch my legs, so I made a day in the schedule to tie the boat up to the Lochinver pontoon (a two nights for the price of one deal made that decision easy) and give my legs rather more stretching than they had bargained for.
First, I had to pay a visit to the Badcall Islands, mainly because they had such an entertaining name, but also because they are ever so slightly further North than Stornoway, so I would feel I had ticked another box over last year. They lived up to their name: on a proper summer’s day they would have been as delightful as the Summer Isles further south, but in the heavy drizzle it was a bit bleak, so I took a picture or two that look rubbish, wrote 58° 19’ N in the logbook and headed south.
Lochinver was as friendly and secure as I remembered, the toilets all had working seats, and I was detained by a man with an excitingly fast trimaran who had broken his windlass. I was delighted to give him the name of my preferred windlass spares provider, even more delighted when they found the part he needed, and made me feel – if only briefly – like a proper cruising yachtsman.
And so to the mountain. I had come up with a plan so cunning that etc etc – I can’t outdo Ben Elton – which minimised the amount of walking involved by cycling as far as I could. I am more of a cruising yachtsman than a proper hill walker (not a high bar in either case). The tiny folding boat bike earned its considerable weight in gold here as it dispatched the three miles to the start of the walk in about ten minutes, although I wondered if I’d be able to walk at all after putting my knees under such inappropriate strain. Leaving it in some trees just past a Victorian shooting lodge in the middle of nowhere, now run as an upmarket lodge-cum-hotel by the Assynt Community Trust, I set off up the very well-made track. I’d done a bit of research (thank you Andrew for pointing me towards the Walk Highlands website where a range of propely Scottish-sounding folk posted in awestruck tones about Suilven – “iconic”, “one of the finest peaks in Britain”) and discovered that the Trust had recently improved the path: so firmly it turns out that it bounced up and down on the bog – a very odd experience but better than squelching through it.
This is a sailing blog not a hillwalking one, of which there are rather too many by the looks of it, so I won’t bang on too much about the walk but it was very long and relatively flat…
…and then very short and vertiginously steep…
…followed at last by a recognisably just hilly bit up to the summit.
The sun was out in the valley but as the magic mountain came into view (and what a view, even just looking at it) it was perhaps inevitable that its head was in a cloud. I began a series of prayers that the sun would burn it off, but they seemed to have the reverse effect. I overtook a chatty couple from Lancashire struggling under monstrous backpacks (they were planning to spend the night wild camping on the mountain). “What do you think?” they kept asking, “do you think we’ll get the view?” I passed a young German couple sitting on a flat rock in the sunshine having elevenses (which, now you say it, could mean something else in German). “Hallo!” he bellowed from about six feet away, “will we be lucky and see the view, do you think so?” “I’m praying”, I answered, trying to be optimistic. A sweaty man in what I believe is termed ‘technical clothing’ overtook me. “What do you reckon?” were his only words as he strode past and disappeared up what looked ominously like a vertical gully leading to the ridge.
It was, and as I laboured up it step by step, stopping every few seconds to gasp for breath, look at what could be the last of the view, and put on another layer of clothing as I approached the cloud, any hopes of seeing the view from the summit were ebbing away, along with what little enthusiasm I have ever had for actually climbing up actual mountains as opposed to walking up hills. Luckily the Trust had done a good job of turning rocks into steps and I had to admit that if you can face a bit of vertical then you are rewarded quite quickly with views which are an upgrade on your average fell, or even Hampstead Heath:
Sure enough this stairway did indeed lead to heaven in the shape of a cold, damp cloud in which the visibility was just enough to show me that if I walked more than a couple of feet off the path on either side I would be back down at the bottom in a matter of moments, but having come this far I was jolly well going to press on to the top, and so I did. This brought two more interesting encounters: I had been following a couple some distance ahead up the gully who appeared to be having a loud argument in what I am fairly sure was Polish. As I neared the summit I met the woman coming down. “I can’t go any further, it’s too steep!” she said as she passed, quite cheerfully. This did seem a bit odd, since she had made it up the longest and steepest gully I had ever climbed, to now chuck it all in on a really quite manageable bit and sit in a cold, damp cloud waiting for her other half. It turned out she waited quite a while, because at the top I came across him carrying, of all things, a large Primark bag.
I marvelled at what scale of picnic he’d brought and the commitment to carrying it up a significant mountain, and how pissed off she would be about not getting any.
The summit turned out to be a broad, flat, grassy dome with nice rocks to sit on, so I opened my rather more meagre picnic and sat down to admire the view, which was of the inside of a cloud and some grass, some of which was as much as ten metres away. Of course, this being Scotland, there was 4G signal so I decided to wait half an hour reading The Guardian on my phone, just in case things improved a little. They didn’t, and I had read all the news, so I got up to leave, and then the miracle happened. I bent down to pick up my rucksack and when I stood up again the clouds had parted and the view had appeared: first out to the coast, where I could see all the lochs I had sailed past and into, starting with Kylescu and Badcall Bay…
…to Lochinver where I could clearly make out Blue Moon on her pontoon…
…around to Loch Broom and the Summer Isles…
…then inland to lochs and mountains stretching away over the horizon.:
I spent another half hour wandering slack-jawed around the summit looking first one way then another as the gaps in the cloud got bigger and eventually I got the full 360 view that the walking websites rave about. I could see why: I am not an expert but in my limited experience most mountains are quite large and bulky so their summits have views mainly of other mountain summits; Suilven however rises up out of the valley on its own so the view is almost as unobstructed as from the top of the Eiffel Tower, and a whole lot more interesting. Sorry Paris but you really are rather flat and rigidly laid out. By design, I know.
I could have stayed all afternoon, and now I could see everyone’s point: I could understand the walker-bloggers’ enthusiasm, last year’s sailor’s mystical raptures and even the internet’s overblown assertions that “Suilven has a special place in the heart of every true Scot”. I would even have joined the Lancastrian campers, in spite of my lifelong hatred of camping, just to be able to stay and see the view change in the evening light, and wake up to look at it again In the morning. But I had a date with a boat so I began to retrace my steps, and straightaway came across the German couple. “I had never before believed in the power of prayer,” he said, portentously, “but now I do.” This could have been either a very good joke or an entirely literal religious conversion, you never know with even the nicest Germans. Then there was a buzzing noise overhead and we both looked up. It wasn’t a picnic the Polish man had in his Primark bag, it was a drone. I headed down again quickly before any historically resonant scenes developed. Mrs Pole was sitting on a rock further down waiting for him, now in the sunshine, reading a paperback. I hope she had both picnics.
On the gully staircase I met the Lancastrians who had mercifully left their rucksacks down below (so they wouldn’t see the view in the morning, I thought). “Did you get the view?” they asked. “Do you think we will?” Further down three blokes telling each other jokes to take their minds off the climb. “Did you get the view?” they asked. An hour later, on the flatter path back, a cheerful Scottish couple with a dog. “Did you get the view? We’ve left it late deliberately, there’s more chance of the view.” There was indeed blue sky throughout, but a cloud had returned and was hanging around Suilven’s head, thinning every now and then but never completely disappearing. Just as I made it back to the lodge I was overtaken again by sweaty man (where had he been? He must have climbed both peaks, or perhaps had a little sleep after his exertions). “I reckon we timed that about right,” he said, nodding back at the mountain as the cloud grew thicker. I was hoping to get the last laugh as I whizzed past him on the bike but he must have been staying at the lodge, or have been a particularly sweaty ghost, as he had disappeared.
The only possible way to cap that semi-mystical experience was with another, and watching England win the Men’s European Championship, in Germany, in a Scottish pub, sounded about right, so I made plans accordingly. A gentle sail back down to Ullapool would be the icing on the cake, with a stop for lunch at a gorgeous spot called Isle Martin where they have a wood-fired outdoor shower. I was tempted, but the thought of a gas-fired indoors one in Ullapool drove me on. The harbourmaster was on even more detailed form: there was a rowing skiff regatta and he gave me very specific instructions on how to go round the very obvious marker buoys, where the start was and the helpful detail that they would start at the start and row to the finish. I wanted to tell him I had rowed in more regattas than he had lectured yachts, and never needed to be briefed on that particular quirk of the sport, but held my tongue.
This did mean that the friendly waterside pub I had selected as my football watching venue was rammed with cheerful and slightly moist rowers, but that only added to the atmosphere. There was a fascinating demographical arrangement: English campers and caravanners sitting down in the big room with the big screen, other nationalities on holiday standing behind them, locals and visiting rowers (all Scots) at the bar with the smaller screen.
Arriving late, I found myself in the middle group, next to a Spanish family in a you-couldn’t-make-it-up kind of way. They were sensibly keeping themselves rather quiet I thought, even when they predictably took the lead. I thought I sensed goodwill, or was it sympathy, from the Scots behind me too, and the English fans were sensitively restrained when we equalised, or perhaps a long day on the NC500 had taken its toll. We’d all resigned ourselves to extra time and penalties when suddenly the ball was in the back of the net with only a handful of minutes left and we knew it was all over. Beside me the Spanish kids could keep their nationality quiet no longer and were jumping up and down screaming, while behind us it turned out that the goodwill was in my dreams. “Vamos!” yelled a huge Scottish rower and the whole bar took up the chorus, roaring with laughter and trying to think of words other than Viva Espana and Olé!. I swear I heard one shout something about the Malvinas, which betrayed political and cultural insensivity on many levels. This carried on with much hilarity until the final whistle, when the Spaniards found themselves being hugged by huge sweaty Scots, which will give them a unique ‘where were you when we won the Euros?’ story to tell when they go back to school.
I slunk away to see if there was any Laphroaig left on the boat. Luckily there was.
Blue Moon's trip around the UK 
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