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In the second half of July I was able to get away on a two-week vacation. I decided to go off “Munro-bagging” in the Scottish Highlands. Hotel accommodation being difficult in the Highlands in the summer, especially for a single person, I hired a caravan with a car to match. Driving north the first day, I got precisely to the Scottish border immediately south of Jedburgh. The evening was beautifully fine. I argued I didn’t want to spend the whole of the morrow driving, if indeed the morrow was going to be as clear as this. The obvious tactic was to be away at the first light of dawn. By ten o’clock I could be well across the Lowlands. Then I could spend the afternoon “doing” one of the southern peaks, perhaps in the Ben Lawers range.

It fell out as I had planned. I reached Killin not much after ten a.m., found a caravan site, bought fresh meat and other provisions in the town, and set off for Glen Lyon, with the intention of walking up Meall Ghaordie. The afternoon was as fine and beautiful as it could possibly be. I quitted the car at the nearest point to my mountain and set off across the lower bogland. I moved upward at a deliberately slow pace, in part because this was my first day on the hills, in part because the sun was hot. I remember the myriads of tiny colored flowers under my feet. It took about two hours to the summit. I sat down there and munched a couple of apples. Then I laid myself flat on a grassy knoll, using my rucksack for a pillow. The early start and the warm day together had made me distinctly sleepy. It was not more than a minute, I suppose, before I nodded off.

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