Mountains and Lakes and Saved by the Phone

Ben Nevis from a cabin outside Fort William

This stay was a highlight of our trip to England and Scotland. When I shared the photo, my friend Russell said, “that’s where we go for Hogmanay to get away from the city!”

Big mountain, small world. Scotland seems big because of the mountains, you need to drive around instead of straight. It took us five hours to get from Skye to Glasgow, behind camper vans on twisty roads. Not a billboard in sight, and around every bend is another mountain, somehow different from the rest, beckoning you to pull over and have a gander. Here is one of the most picturesque.

The Wee White Cottage or Lagangarbh Hut at Buachaille Etive Mòr, near Glen Coe, Scotland. The mountain is quite striking enough without the cottage in the foreground, but it gives scale to the magnificence of the West Highlands. There’s a sense of desolation to the bare peaks, but there were plenty of people on the trails in the foothills enjoying the unseasonably warm weather.

The Lake District of northern England is also quite beautiful, but the weather there turned cloudy for our boat trip on Lake Coniston. The tour was enjoyable, with a guide like a circus barker. This island in the middle is the setting of The Swallows and the Amazons by Arthur Ransome, and you can see why it evoked a story of summer adventure.

The Lake was also where many speed records were set, as it is the longest lake in England. We passed the spot where Donald Malcolm Campbell was killed in a power boat accident in 1967 after going 310mph. The only boaters on the lake for our trip were kayakers and tours, and this steamboat was pleasant to see chugging along on the dreary day.

I wasn’t traveling at 300 miles per hour, but my phone saved me from a terrible injury today.

At my local mountain biking trail, someone decided to alter my favorite downhill jump to make it spicier. I’d been away for a few days; maybe a week? They’re setting up a track for the yearly race. They don’t usually make changes like this, so I was mid-jump when I discovered that they’d turned a tabletop into a double.

That video will give you an idea of the difference, if you care to watch. If I’d been going faster I might’ve made it, but due to rain and erosion I took the downhill with caution and didn’t clear the second rise, landed badly, and went over the bars into the brush.

Thank goodness I missed the trees and rocks, and seem to have landed on my right thigh, where my phone was in my pocket. Why is this good? Because my phone snapped off my shifter lever and took the impact, spreading it out across my upper quadriceps, which was not punctured or torn, only contused.

Oh, it still hurts. The seat horn bruised my right glute, and I’ve got scuffs here and there, but I put my smashed phone in my pocket and was going to ride for an hour until I realized I couldn’t shift. Now, I know people who ride fixed gear bikes on MTB trails, but I’m not one of them. I felt like I was pushing my luck, so I walked the bike uphill and rode to the car, happy to walk away from what could have been a whole lot worse.

The phone was only 2 years old and I wasn’t planning on upgrading any time soon. The shifter will cost about seventy bucks to replace, so it was an expensive Friday the 13th.

But I walked away.

So it was a good day.

Not as good as a day at this cabin, listening to the Wagtails and Housemartins and the sheep, while Buzzards circle overhead. Like Magpies, Wagtails are charismatic, brazen birds that are hard not to like. For me, at least. This was my first time seeing one.

We saw many birds, including many Puffins, but Wagtails are among my favorites. The feral Rose-ringed Parakeets, escapees living wild since the Great Storm of 1987 broke their aviaries, are also quite charming. I may have seen a Mandarin Duck from afar at Chatsworth, but I’m not counting that. I also saw some Great Tits, and I will continue making puerile jokes about them. If I ever stop, it’s because I’ve been concussed in a bicycling accident.