The singer/songwriter Dougie Maclean wrote a marvelous song about forced exile and emigration, although it could also be interpreted as a longing for home. The words of it came to mind during a period of working in Glasgow when, in the city’s midwinter gloom, some of the lines had a particular resonance;

“in the darkness struggle cold, I think about a garden valley,

Gentle as the leaves unfold, singing out along the Tay,

Distant and so far away, there is no peace for me…”

I couldn’t resist the thought of “singing out along the Tay” so, on my way home to Badenoch I swung off the A9 just beyond Dunkeld and took a stroll by the river, little realising the full relevance of the musical connection.

As I wandered along the riverside path below some magnificent mixed woodland little did I realize that the old oak tree I was approaching is known as Neil Gow’s Tree. Apparently the greatest of the Perthshire fiddlers used to sit below the spreading branches of the tree and play his fiddle tunes, many of which have become the mainstay of Scotland’s country dance repertoire.

In her book, Memoirs of a Highland Lady, Mrs Grant of Rothiemurchus tells of hearing Gow play in the Inn at Inver where she was spending the night. The music thrilled her so much she apparently had to take a walk along the riverbank to calm her down before going to bed!

And a fine walk along the Tay it is. The river is broad and stately as it winds round the grounds of the Dunkeld House Hotel with trees lining the riverbanks. I followed the path as far as the River Braan, crossed it by a footbridge and took the quiet, minor road to Inver where Niel Gow lived for most of his life.

Gow was born in nearby Strathbraan in 1727 where there was strong musical tradition and the young Niel soon showed his aptitude for the fiddle. He eventually came under the patronage of the Duke of Atholl and became one of Scotland’s finest ever fiddlers.

There’s not a lot to the village of Inver but the Inn is still there, and a large caravan site. At the far end of the village a path runs up to and alongside the busy A9 for a couple of hundred metres before entering the car park of The Hermitage.

The extensive woodlands surrounding The Hermitage were gifted to the National Trust for Scotland in 1944 by Katharine Duchess of Atholl and an attractive woodland walk runs below spectacularly large Douglas firs to the amazing folly, Ossian’s Hall, overlooking the Black Linn waterfall of the River Braan.

Ossian’s Hall was built for the 2nd Duke of Atholl in 1758, and originally featured mirrors on its interior walls and ceilings to reflect the cascade of waters outside and must have been pretty impressive. It certainly moved Dorothy Wordsworth to exclaim; “we were at the entrance of a splendid room which was almost dizzy and alive with waterfalls that tumbled in all directions…”

The musical connection continued here – Ossian was the bardic warrior son of Fionn MacChumhail, or Fingal, leader of the fabled Fianna warriors, although I suspect his name was adopted for the Duke’s impressive Hall out of sheer romanticism. Sit above the falls though, close your eyes, and it’s easy enough to imagine the young Ossian sitting above the turbulent waters strumming his Celtic harp!

From Ossian’s hall good tracks runs through the Craigvinean Forest all the way back to the car park and by the time I reached it my midwinter blues had well and truly evaporated.

Photo: Ossian’s Hall

The DVD of the BBC Scotland, Sutherland - The Empty Lands? is now on sale. You’ll find it in the SHOP section of this website. The film portrays me walking a route that I’ve called The Sutherland Trail, between Lochinver and Tongue in the north-west highlands of Scotland and in the course of the route we climb Suilven, Foinaven and Ben Loyal as well as descending into the caves of Inchnadamph, camping high and light on the ascent of Foinaven and sea kayaking out to Handa Island with sea kayaking legend Brian Wilson.
As well as the television film we’ve added an Info & Facts section, a substantial photo gallery to whet your appetite for this marvellous corner of wild Scotland, and a short interview about looking after Gore-Tex products with John McDonald of WL Gore.
The DVD costs £15.99, plus p&p.

Writing in the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal in 1892 author Lional W Hinxman described Beinn Bhan of Applecross as having “every attribute of hell except its warmth.”

In wintry conditions Beinn Bhan can certainly display a savage imagery, made no less dramatic by the vertiginous slopes of no less than six impressive corries that have been bitten out of its east-facing slopes. The hill, a Corbett at 2939ft/896m, gives the impression of being an elongated and steep-sided ridge, rising rather gently from the head of Loch Kishorn and dwinding out, some four miles later, amongst the anonymous knolls and bumps of the Applecross Forest, but in actual fact the hill forms the most eastern and highest part of an elevated plateau of Torridonian sandstone that occupies much of the south-eastern area of the Applecross Peninsula in Wester Ross.

A rather infamous road, due to its steep bends and precipitous embankments, climbs from Kishorn up the steep glen of the Allt a’ Chumhaing to the Bealach nam Bo at over two thousand feet, one of the steepest roads in the country, before dropping down towards Applecross village.

Beinn Bhan is probably best viewed from the east, somewhere on the Shieldaig road. From here it appears as a small range of peaks and domes, corrie-bitten and impressive and pretty remote. However, a good fisherman’s path runs north from the foot of the Bealach nam Bo road at the head of Loch Kishorn and climbs up over the moorland to Loch Gaineamhach.

I’d climbed this hill a couple of times many years ago and the vision that was at the back of my mind was of steep slopes and a fair bit of hand-on scrambling. With temperatures below freezing and the boggy ground near the Kishorn bridge looking like an ice-rink I decided discretion was the better part of valour and I’d take the easier route to the summit. I must confess that the fact that I’d left my crampons at home played a little part in my decision.

There are two popular routes to Beinn Bhan. One follows the fisherman’s path up towards Loch Gaineamhach but before you reach it you have to peel off from the path and climb the slopes that lead to Lochan Coire na Poite. Beyond the loch a steep and narrow ridge drops down from A’Chioch and offers a good, “sporting” route to the summit plateau. At the top of A’Chioch there is an intermediate top to cross before a steep and rocky climb presents itself as a barrier to the summit plateau. One of the modern SMC guides suggests that in winter conditions climbers should prepare themselves for a Grade 2 snow and ice climb to the reach the plateau. Without crampons that might have been tricky…

The alternative route is to follow the ridge that forms the north arm of Coire na Fhamhhair, just a little north of Lochan Coire a’ Poite. This only really involves some mild scrambling, an easy enough route in summer which, in winter conditions of snow and ice, can also morph into a full scale climb.

Sans crampons, I drove round to the west side of the hill, to where a track runs north to Loch Coire nan Arr. An easy enough climb over the heather took me onto the hill’s south ridge, which I followed happily enough up to the hill’s first top, above Coire Each. By this time it was quite clear that any ascent from the east would have been a fairly adventurous undertaking and by the time I reached the ridge above Coire na Feola my breath was taken away by the sight of the wintry A’Chioch ridge, a sharp fin of sandstone, streaked and gullied and precipitous, whose horizontal lines of stratification split three independent tiers of sheer cliff. In summer the tight-rope route over the crest of this hill is a magnificent high level scramble, today it appeared horribly daunting.

Coire na Feola, Coire na Poite and Coire an Fhamhair are certainly amongst the most impressive corries in the western highlands – the latter is the “giant’s corrie” for good reason. I must admit it felt good to be looking down into them – Coire na Poite’s twin lochans were frozen over and great cornices hung over the corrie lip, beautiful and impressive sculptures of snow, created by the intense cold and the wind, beauty formed by malevolent forces. I guess that’s the essence of winter hillwalking in Scotland – it can be cruel and unkind, it can be vicious and ferocious, but out of those negative influences comes intense beauty and an inner satisfaction. As I sat by the summit trig point and gazed around me at the sprawl of these west highland hills the fact that I had climbed the hill by it’s easiest and safest route didn’t matter a jot. For a few moments I could have been on top of the world.

Photo: Beinn Bhan’s A’Chioch ridge

The car park in Glen Doll was rain-soaked and the car’s windscreen wipers were working overtime. After travelling the best part of a hundred miles we were loath to simply turn round and drive home again, although the temptation was great.

For almost three weeks the winter weather had been Alpine – sub zero temperatures at night and frozen hillsides. The thaw, no doubt welcomed by the vast majority of sensible folk, was greeted with dismay in the McNeish household, particularly as it decided to arrive in time for the weekend!

Glen Doll in the Angus Glens can be the starting point for some great high-level sorties into the eastern Cairngorms, including the Mounth roads that run from Glen Clova to Ballater (the Capel Mounth) and from Glen Doll to Braemar (the Tolmount) as well as the two Munros of Mayar and Driesh.

Secure in the knowledge that the weather always looks its worst from inside a car, we wrapped ourselves up in waterproofs and set off towards Jock’s Road, on the promise that if things didn’t improve we would simply make the most of a low-level walk then go home.

The path that climbs up the length of Glen Doll north of the White Water has become known as Jock’s Road, although traditionally, the route is called the Tolmount. Jock’s Road, named after a climber by the name of John Winters, is the steep section that climbs out of Glen Doll opposite the dark crags of Craig Maud. By the time we reached this steeper ground the rain had become sleety and the wind was blowing a gale. We took shelter and thought back to desperate events that occurred here just over 50 years ago…

It was New Year’s Day in 1959 and five hillwalkers set off from Braemar Youth Hostel intent on walking up Glen Callater then over the Tolmount to Glen Doll. All the men were committee members of the Universal Hiking Club in Glasgow, an active Roman Catholic club with about 80 members.

After attending Mass the men left Braemar just after eleven and not long after mid-day they were spotted by Charles Smith, a local shepherd, near his house at Auchallater in Glen Callater. According to Smith it was cold and breezy with rain and sleet falling. He was the last person to see any of the men alive.

Friends and family members were due to meet the men at Glen Doll Youth Hostel at about 6pm but by that time the weather was so severe the road out of Glen Clova became blocked with snow and the single telephone line to the hotel at Clova was cut.

The storm continued for two days and it was some time before the police could be informed of the missing climbers. It was January 4 before an “official” rescue team could set out and they were hampered by horrific blizzard conditions and deep snow. Despite the conditions they soon found the body of young James Boyle above the head of Glen Doll near Craig Maud. That night a temperature of –19.5C was officially recorded in Strathdon in Aberdeenshire.

The search continued on the Monday and Tuesday but was then abandoned as the frozen ground conditions made access to the hills difficult and dangerous. By then, it was felt there was little possibility of finding anyone alive.

The others victims weren’t found until a thaw had set in at the end of February. Most of the bodies were found by Davie Glen, a well known hill gangrel who knew the area intimately, but it wasn’t until April that the final body was discovered, that of Frank Daly. He was discovered in a metre of snow near the upper reaches of White Water.

This Jock’s Road disaster was a sobering reminder of how conditions can quickly change. Below us the White Water tumbled through a wild and rugged landscape before vanishing into the green choke of conifers that covers much of lower Glen Doll. On the other side of the glen Corrie Kilbo and Corrie Fee opened up beyond the steep and glistening crags of The Dounalt and Craig Rennet. We gave our thanks to Jock for his path as we climbed over the lip of Glen Doll onto the grassy plateau beyond – the traditional Tolmount route took a wet and scrambling route up the ravine that contains the nascent White Water.

Once beyond the confines of the glen the path passes the rough howff known as Jock’s Bothy and follows the ridge that runs to Crow Craigies before dropping down into Glen Callater bound for Glen Clunie and Braemar. We huddled down just below the cairn of Crow Craigies, ate some lunch, and decided that enough was enough. We retraced our steps back down the glen as the wind grew stronger and the rain lashed even harder. We looked forward to a hot drink in Glen Clova but the dark cloud of the disaster’s 50th anniversary hung over us all the way home.

The singer/songwriter Dougie Maclean wrote a marvelous song about forced exile and emigration, although it could also be interpreted as a longing for home. The words of it came to mind during a period of working in Glasgow when, in the city’s midwinter gloom, some of the lines had a particular resonance; “in the darkness struggle cold, I think about a garden valley, Gentle as the leaves unfold, singing out along the Tay, Distant and so far away, there is no peace for me…”
I couldn’t resist the thought of “singing out along the Tay” so, on my way home to Badenoch I swung off the A9 just beyond Dunkeld and took a stroll by the river, little realising the full relevance of the musical connection.
As I wandered along the riverside path below some magnificent mixed woodland little did I realize that the old oak tree I was approaching is known as Niel Gow’s Tree. Apparently the greatest of the Perthshire fiddlers used to sit below the spreading branches of the tree and play his fiddle tunes, many of which have become the mainstay of Scotland’s country dance repertoire.
In her book, Memoirs of a Highland Lady, Mrs Grant of Rothiemurchus tells of hearing Gow play in the Inn at Inver where she was spending the night. The music thrilled her so much she apparently had to take a walk along the riverbank to calm her down before going to bed!
And a fine walk along the Tay it is. The river is broad and stately as it winds round the grounds of the Dunkeld House Hotel with trees lining the riverbanks. I followed the path as far as the River Braan, crossed it by a footbridge and took the quiet, minor road to Inver where Niel Gow lived for most of his life.
Gow was born in nearby Strathbraan in 1727 where there was strong musical tradition and the young Niel soon showed his aptitude for the fiddle. He eventually came under the patronage of the Duke of Atholl and became one of Scotland’s finest ever fiddlers.
There’s not a lot to the village of Inver but the Inn is still there, and a large caravan site. At the far end of the village a path runs up to and alongside the busy A9 for a couple of hundred metres before entering the car park of The Hermitage.
The extensive woodlands surrounding The Hermitage were gifted to the National Trust for Scotland in 1944 by Katharine Duchess of Atholl and an attractive woodland walk runs below spectacularly large Douglas firs to the amazing folly, Ossian’s Hall, overlooking the Black Linn waterfall of the River Braan.

Ossian’s Hall was built for the 2nd Duke of Atholl in 1758, and originally featured mirrors on its interior walls and ceilings to reflect the cascade of waters outside and must have been pretty impressive. It certainly moved Dorothy Wordsworth to exclaim; “we were at the entrance of a splendid room which was almost dizzy and alive with waterfalls that tumbled in all directions…”
The musical connection continued here – Ossian was the bardic warrior son of Fionn MacChumhail, or Fingal, leader of the fabled Fianna warriors, although I suspect his name was adopted for the Duke’s impressive Hall out of sheer romanticism. Sit above the falls though, close your eyes, and it’s easy enough to imagine the young Ossian sitting above the turbulent waters strumming his Celtic harp!
From Ossian’s hall good tracks runs through the Craigvinean Forest all the way back to the car park and by the time I reached it my midwinter blues had well and truly evaporated.
Map: OS 1:50,000, Sheet 53
Distance: 5 miles
Approx Time: 3-4 hours
Start/Finish: Newton Craig car park. Turn off the A9 just S of the bridge over the River Tay where a signpost points to Dalguise and Grandtully
Route: From the car park return to the road, cross it and follow a narrow path under the railway then under the A9 bridge. Follow the path alongside the River Tay all the way to where the River Braan flows down from the right. Turn right here, go under some power lines, pass under the A9 again and cross the Braan by a footbridge. Turn right down a path to meet a minor road. Turn right onto it and pass the Inver Mill caravan park. Turn right over an old bridge and into Inver village. At the far end of the village a path leads to the A9 and runs alongside the main road for 200m before turning left into The Hermitage car park. Go through the car park and follow the path to Ossian’s Hall. When you leave the hall take the path straight ahead of you for a short distance before turning left on to a forest track. Continue on this track, over a crossroads, then for another kilometer to where the track suddenly bends sharply to the right. About 50m beyond the bend a footpath runs off to the left. Follow it down to another forest road. Turn right onto it and back to the car park where you started.