Dad sitting :-)

I’m sure it’s been a pure peach of a day here on Raasay because it’s been a topper of a day in Glen Sheil and toasty in Inverness 🙂 This I know for a fact because I’ve been watching my pop and wifey’s been to snecky with me mammy 🙂

It was the usual rush to catch the first ferry of the week, rush because it involves a twelve year old boy, feeding twelve pigs and a person who is not ‘good with mornings’ 🙂

It was a fantastic morning with a fresh dusting of snow on the Storr

which looked like this just 14 hours earlier 🙂

Dun Caan was also snow capped but I was hastening for the ferry dodging potholes with a crabbit wife and sleepy boy so I gave the photography a miss. At least I didn’t have to get out of the car to snap those 🙂

 

After saying goodbye to the Dude for the week and departing the ferry I stopped briefly to take pictures of the ‘spud leg’ barge next to the Loch Striven. Could be ‘interesting’ getting in and out of there in a breeze of west wind 🙂 Lord knows how much all this is costing but I bet it’s a good wedge of the total budget for the upgrade to the ferry terminal. Surely they must have done all this thirty years ago when they built this one, do they not keep records ?? is the ground 10m to the east of the current slipway going to be so different ?? OK, I’m no expert so I’ll just shut up before I disappear down some bottomless muddy hole cos there’s no rock to stop me  🙂

Dealing with dementia

An hour or so later we met my parents on the main road at Sheil, wifey jumped in with mum and headed east, dad stepped in with me and I took him the five minute drive to his familiar surroundings. My father may be ‘as fit as a butchers dog’ but he suffers from dementia and likes to be on his ‘home turf’. This would be a first for both of us, the first time my mother has left him for the day and the first time I’ve watched him.

It’s a cruel affliction rendering many sufferers abusive and violent as well as having virtually no short term memory. Fortunately my father only has the latter and is still extremely fit, not just for an 83 year old but for anyone, he can still walk me into the ground at 27 years my senior. In fact he could probably see off many of today’s teenagers, addicted as they are to exercising their thumbs and not their legs.

My father did the Cuillin  ridge http://www.walkingstories.com/story_full_details.cfm/story_ID/17/menu_ID/2/title/The_Cuillin_Ridge  in a day in his seventies just a few years after having most of his stomach removed due to cancer. I haven’t read all of that link but this made me smile.

“Third attempt at the full traverse of the Cuillin Ridge in Skye: 11 munros, 13,500 feet of ascent, 7 miles, 68 tops. Wow this really is a cheeky little monkey of a walk. To cut to the quick, I descended after 31 hours on the ridge, 3 munros short of the end, dehydrated, knackered and delirious muttering “god damn it, it chewed me up and spat me out” and “I’ll be back!” as I staggered downward in search of water. “

He also did the ‘West Highland way’ with a man fifteen years his junior, well he did until the ‘youth’ dropped out knackered, so he carried on on his own 🙂 Of course being brought up on a mountain in Liguria helped, especially when the elementary school was four miles away at Piana Batolla in the valley floor several thousand feet below 🙂

 

Of course the road (just like at Arnish) did not arrive until the 1970s and (just like Arnish) was not tarred until the 1980s. I lived there as a child but was fortunate enough (perhaps not) to return to England for my education 🙂

I have to confess at feeling a little trepidation at spending the day with pop, for he’s seldom, in the last sixty years been apart from my mother and now I’m not even sure he knows who I am. I need not have worried for we had a great day together and dementia, as I found does have a few advantages 🙂

After a cup of tea and a few pleasantries we went out for a walk over the forestry tracks and one of General Wades military roads near Ratagan   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_military_roads_of_Scotland#Fort_Augustus_to_Bernera

Fort Augustus to Bernera

The barracks at Bernera on the mainland shore opposite Skye were constructed in the early 1720s.^[16] Caulfeild engineered the road through the West Highlands from Fort Augustus to Bernera Barracks in 1755 but Telford’s commissioners remade it in the 1820s. It initially headed west through Inchnacardoch Forest climbing to a height of over 1,280 feet (390 m) before dropping into Glen Moriston. It appears to have crossed the River Moriston somewhere near the confluence of the River Doe with the Moriston, and then taken a route somewhat to the north of the present day A887 road and A87 road north of Loch Cluanie. The road descended Glen Shiel to Ratagan before rising over the Bealach Ratagain (Ratagan Pass) and into Glen More and thence to the barracks at its western, seaward end.

Here’s the ‘old goat’ permanently ahead of me on the two mile walk through the forest and down to Letterfern with the ‘wee dug’ leading the way 🙂

This is a mountain above Inverinate who’s name means the ‘silver mountain’ and my dad tells me they used to mine silver there. He may not know who I am or what day of the week it is but he can recall much from times past with clarity.

At the foot of ‘the silver mountain’ is Inverinate House owned by a wealthy Arab family.

 

I know that my mate Calum Don has been working in this vicinity of late, I wonder if this is his handy work 🙂

 

More spectacular scenery, this time my dad could not recall the names, other than Beinn Fadda in the cloud, though it’s probably not spelled that way 😦

 

Silent, low and very graceful for 35 tons this Hercules transport http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-130_Hercules passed by at least three times, either lost or on training 🙂

After the first walk we did a spot of hedge trimming,

 

well we did when we found all the tools.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, for every time we looked for something he kept going on about this person who kept borrowing his tools and not bringing them back. It was only late in the afternoon when he went to look for a rake that he said “it’ll be on Raasay with all my other tools”. That’s when I realized that this person who stole all his tools was me and he obviously had no idea who I was 😦

Still we really had a great day, all of us, the dogs got several good walks, my mum got a break, my wife got to Lidl and I spent some quality time with my dad 🙂 As for him, well he’s quite happy looking at the view and walking the dogs 🙂