The Great Outdoors – August 2019

What makes

the TGO

Challenge?

WE BOTH HAVE very different memories

of the 40th TGO Challenge. This year

it was Sue’s turn to do the worrying at

Challenge Control while Ali did the carefree

wandering across Scotland but we both

found ourselves reflecting on why the

event has been so successful over the last

four decades. A lot of the credit must go to

Hamish Brown’s excellent idea and Roger

Smith’s ability to transform it into the event

we continue to enjoy. But there’s another

big factor in its success, and that is Scotland

itself.

At the end of her first day Ali was only

15km from her start point but, perched at

880m on a snowy col, it felt a world away

from the hustle and bustle of normal life.

The combination of a large area of wild land

bordered by two stunning coastlines about

two weeks’ walk apart lends itself neatly to

a backpacking adventure. On the west you

can walk straight in to the hills, and the most

popular finish points require only a day or

so of walking through farmland or forest to

reach the spectacular east coast beaches.

By then many knees are grateful for flatter

ground! In between there are beautiful

glens, enticing ridges and of course enough

wet, boggy ground to really make it a

Challenge. However, the remoteness is

tempered by welcoming Highland villages

every few days to refresh and resupply.

Heather, bog and uneven or rocky

ground make for slow going but Scotland’s

history frequently comes to the rescue

with a network of ancient rights of way:

drove roads along which cattle would once

have been driven many miles to market,

military roads intended to help subdue the

population but just as often used by locals

to escape and fight back, coffin roads,

minister’s paths, and – since the inception

of sporting estates in the Victorian era – a

multitude of stalker’s paths. Stringing these

together is part of the art of planning a

Challenge, and the book Scottish Hill Tracks

from Scotways is an invaluable aid.

The middle of Ali’s Challenge crossed

To celebrate the 40th TGO Challenge, we are
running a series of short articles on the finest
backpacking event in the world. TGO Challenge
coordinators Sue Oxley and Ali Ogden consider
what makes the Challenge special.

swathes of rough and truly remote land with

no access to a public road for many days.

The first of these took her over to Gaick,

down a precipitously steep hillside she

wouldn’t have contemplated without the

carefully crafted zigzags of an old stalker’s

path, then along the steep-sided gorge

of the Allt Garbh Ghaig where another

old path picks a walkable line through

seemingly impossible ground. She found

herself thinking of the people who created

and walked these routes and how their lives

were helped or hindered by them. Many

of these paths, especially those that don’t

give access to Munros or Corbetts, are now

fading into the heather. Quite possibly the

sudden increase in footfall every May helps

keep some of them visible. It would be a

shame to lose them – and something of an

irony that the recent profusion of wide, hard

new tracks is obliterating many of them.

Could the Challenge happen anywhere

else? Within the British Isles it would be

difficult. Northern Ireland has the most

restrictive access laws of any part of the UK

and the situation in the Republic of Ireland

isn’t much better. England and Wales have

a tradition of rights of way enshrined in law,

and the CROW Act of 2000 legitimised

access to uncultivated land, so plotting a

route would be feasible. However, wild

camping is an integral part of the Challenge

and though unofficially tolerated in some

areas it remains essentially illegal.

There are other parts of the world – in

particular many Nordic countries – where

there is a right to roam across wild areas, but

the scope of Scotland’s right of responsible

access, codified in Scots law in 2003, is the

envy of many. It is therefore no surprise that

a fifth of Challengers are from overseas and

many of the rest are from other parts of the

UK.

Though the right of access was only

formalised this century, the tradition of

universal access is a longstanding one. Much

is often made of unfriendly landowners

trying to limit access but there are many

more examples of welcoming behaviour

even before the economic benefit of

encouraging outdoors enthusiasts became

widely acknowledged. Abandoned cottages

or shepherd’s huts have long been used as

bothies. Many are now maintained by the

Mountain Bothies Association but there are

also private bothies and huts, maintained

by the estates essentially for their own use,

which are left open for anyone to use.

So Scotland itself is really what has

made the Challenge endure. The freedom

Scotland offers to plot many different

routes so that even the most seasoned of

Challengers can explore somewhere new

is one of the reasons they keep coming

back. To answer our earlier question: no,

it’s not impossible the same idea could be

used elsewhere in the world. Scandinavia

is a possible venue for a self-planned

backpacking event. We’d certainly be

interested – but as participants not

coordinators!

Photo: © Martin Rye

Leaving the

Culra hills

TGO Challenge Partners 2019

24 The Great OutdoorsAugust 2019

ALMANAC