SOMETIMES THE STORIES find us,
and sometimes we find the stories. The
best scenario is when the two are woven
together.
Still fairly new to Scotland, and having
moved north of the border for a job with
the John Muir Trust, I became aware of a
big circular route partly on the Trust’s land.
I mentioned Ramsay’s Round to a friend
I’d met while walking the Haute Route
Pyrenees and we quickly resolved to attempt
it together as a backpack, as a means of him
trying some Munros for the first time. For
me it was a fascinating corner of British
mountain culture, as well as a neat package
to persuade him that he should come north.
The trip didn’t happen. I fouled up the
schedule and my friend Andy couldn’t get
the time from work at short notice. But as
this plan imploded, the man himself got in
touch, completely out of the blue. Charlie
Ramsay had seen a photo I had taken of
Knoydart in The Great Outdoors and wanted
a copy to use in his upcoming talks about
the Round (he used Knoydart as a training
ground). “Sure, no problem, I said. “You›re
based in Edinburgh? The Round is 35
years old this year? Um... would you mind
meeting for a chat?”
There was a degree of synchronicity I felt
I needed to acknowledge. Because Charlie
had got in touch unsolicited and done me
the honour of meeting, I wanted to try for
the route myself. I felt bad for being away
when my partner’s parents were visiting, and
worse for going solo and not with Andy, but
as Tanya said: “You have to go now”.
In the end, I didn’t make it. On my first
attempt, I bowed out with as much grace
as I could muster in the time I had and
managed an augmented version of the
shorter Tranter’s Round, exploring some
of the ‘valley section’ and being bitten half
to death by cleg flies into the bargain. I was
obviously moving too slow... but by then I
understood just enough to have no idea how
people run these hills in 24 hours or less. So,
there it was; the seed was sown. Two of my
colleagues at the Trust who had completed
the Lake District’s Bob Graham Round as a
run enthused about my much more modest
efforts around Glen Nevis, and down the
rabbit hole of discovery I went, excitedly
noting the Welsh Paddy Buckley Round into
the bargain.
There were other synchronicities that
conspired to keep me pointing in the same
direction. A favourite haunt of mine when
I lived in Edinburgh was Aberlady Bay, the
nation’s first Local Nature Reserve, reached
by a rickety wooden bridge from the road
into Gullane. The historical novelist Nigel
Tranter took daily walks there and called it
“the bridge to enchantment”. His son was
Philip Tranter, who devised the route around
Glen Nevis on which Charlie Ramsay later
based his own round.
Then there was Chris Brasher, a pacer for
Roger Bannister in the first ever sub four-
minute mile and a steeplechase gold medalwinner, who later helped develop British
Orienteering and the London Marathon.
Chris was a chief instigator in both the
Welsh and Scottish Rounds and had a role
in the running careers and lives of both
Charlie Ramsay and Paddy Buckley. He
tried for a sub 24-hour Bob Graham three
times and never quite made it, but he did
meet Charlie and Paddy in the process,
goading and planning and pushing them on
to do great things.
Brasher’s name was also important at
my workplace. He was one of the original
‘gang of four’ who, alongside ecologist
Denis Mollison and journalists Nick Luard
and Nigel Hawkins, set up the John Muir
Trust in the aftermath of the successful[previous spread] The first evening of my first Paddy Buckley Round, overlooking Yr Wyddfa, 2015
[above] Jasmin Paris readies herself to take the Ramsay Round record, 2016THE BIG ROUNDS
48 The Great Outdoors July 2019