Munros 2019 – July 4th. Up, up and away –

Friends, collies, disturbed dogs,

Since springtime my poor tummy has been in a state of turmoil, watching all the packing up and arranging that has been going on at home, disturbing the even tenure of my days. Every evening after her work, instead of sitting down beside me, B is to be found organising our new Munromobile: hanging blinds, making our beds and generally stuffing the back of our Renault Kangoo with as much paraphernalia as its meagre capacity can cope with, arranging and then rearranging and then… “This might come in handy”, I’d hear her say to Dave. You’ll never use it I thought, knowingly.

When we got to filling the water container and squeezing in the beer I knew lift off (so to speak), was imminent. Sadly, so far this year, I haven’t been one of the things that might come in useful and have been left behind. On these occasions David has made full use of the smaller amount of space in our Fabia and, luckily, that has included me. B would drive north and go Munroing without me and David would take me, broken-hearted, to our caravan in the Lake District. That is until I had my dinner and long walks playing ball.

I had almost given up hope of climbing any Munros ever again when, without any notice, B arrived home early from work. I was whisked up and harnessed to the passenger seat of Tanka, our Kangoo, and then we were on our way. Oh my goodness me, what excitement but… what apprehension too. Things don’t tend to go smoothly where B is involved. My anxiety juices were bubbling up and the butterflies in my tummy beginning to get started on an elaborate workout.

I have to admit that we made swift progress, unlike many a previous occasion. After stopping just west of Edinburgh, and a bite to eat, the butterflies seemed to settle on a bit of restful Ti Chi, for which I was extremely grateful. I’m always more at ease once I have hard evidence that my food has been packed.

It took us five hours to get to Glen More in the Cairngorms but, once there, all we had to do was tuck up for sleep. We found a lovely, peaceful spot, to park up for the night where I expected to put my head down and dissolve into dreams. Holy Moses, what had she done to me? I knew my high rise bed was resting on some of those useful things that would never be used, but no one had warned me about the gaps in between. Well, I spent all night trying to find a circumference of solid matter, beneath my cushion, big enough to support a curled up sleeping pose. The trouble was as soon as I stretched, as I’m prone to so do, I would start nose diving down one of the crevices in between the unused, useful things. Our restful night was destroyed and my vestibular given a hard time, as I spun round and round, in an ever more frenzied state, trying to eke out a place that approximated to something I knew of as a solid bed.

And so to bed – of sorts

 

This might not be the best preliminary to starting out on four days of Munro bagging, I thought, as B wiped sleep from my eyes. Let’s see how it turned out in my next posts.

Love Ben