Mountain Stories

Cairngorms Light

Although Cairngorms Light is more a painting than a writing project it is still a mountain story. This is my attempt to capture and convey through oil painting the things I've seen and the feelings I've had about these things when spending time in the Cairngorms.

At home in Yorkshire through the pandemic autumn and winter lockdowns I wrote and illustrated a book - Mountain Stories - in which I sought to visit the Scottish Highlands and Islands through memories. I missed the mountains and found this to be a way of connection from a few hundred miles away.

Mountain Stories is now published. You can order a copy here and read a few chapters I first put online here. In the book I remember my own journeys in the Highlands and Islands, visiting places like Knoydart, Assynt and the Far North, Fisherfield, Skye's Cuillin and Mull. I also explore the ways in which these places have influenced my painting, how other artists and writers such as Norman MacCaig, Sorley MacLean and Nan Shepherd have been inspired by them, taken my own inspiration from their work.

When writing the book I surprised myself that I did not write about the Cairngorms. My journeys into them, over and around the edges of the plateau, during the snows of midwinter and the long light of midsummer, have been some of my finest.

Different to the mountains of the western highlands, the Cairngorms are a unique environment, a high plateau with recesses rather than a group of jagged peaks. Through the years their granite beauty has captivated many, not least of course Nan Shepherd, who captured their essense in her prose masterpiece The Living Mountain and also in her poetry.

One of her poems in particular - 'Embodiment' from her only published collection In the Cairngorms - blew my mind. One of those pieces of writing that stays with me, haunts me, inspires me whenever I read or think of it.

There is no substance but light.
The visible worlds
Are light
Undergoing process of creation.

These words make me want to paint mountains. They make me want to show them as I see and remember them, stark and sheer but with colour and contrast that suggest a mood. As Shepherd says, it is light that makes the mountains look as they do, different every time, no repetition or monotony (except those misty days when you cannot see a thing).

When I finished drafting Mountain Stories, as often happens when I have been working intensely on a writing project, my head turned to something else. This time oil painting, it had been over a year since I last painted on canvas. As I found myself doing this again, my style had changed. I’m suddenly all palette knives and texture rather than the previous smooth, blended strokes with brushes I had previously made. With this change in style has come a need to express the form and texture of mountains more boldly. I want to try to capture emotion and feeling as well as the scene itself.

When I got some new canvases and picked up a palette knife, to begin with I painted Lake District scenes. As I grew more confident and the desire to express my feelings grew, my head turned to the Cairngorms.

Instead of words, I think my mountain stories of these hills are going to be expressed through painting. At the moment it feels like it’s going to be a series based on photographs of three journeys I have made into the Cairngorms, two in midwinter, the other in midsummer.

So far I have painted three of these scenes.

One looks to the north-west, over the ridges, peaks and granite tors of Stob an t-Sluichd, Creag Mhòr and Bynack More. Stob an t-Sluichd in the foreground is a golden yellow in the light. The hills behind are dark, graduated in their blueness.

Another scene looks towards the summit tor of Leabaidh an Daimh Bhuidhe. The heavy grey cloud behind this top makes it appear bright, the land around it coloured by granite boulders and the muted green artic tundra. With my palette knife I tried to capture the shape of the tor and its place rising from the plateau. This flat landscape fascinates me. With the exception of Ben Nevis, the highest mountains in the land rise up out of it, but it is really one mountain, worn away through the epochs to the rounded peaks and depressions that we see and feel today.

A third is of the Pools of Dee, looking to the south from the high-point of the Lairig Ghru, that renowned highway that connects Deeside and Speyside, cutting deeply through the Cairngorm Plateau. Here is the early River Dee, just beginning to flow amongst the pinky-grey granite scree that lines this high pass, the greens and darker greys of the steep grass and craggy gound that swoops down to this bealach, on one side from Braeriach, the other Ben Macdui. South beyond the immediacy of the Pools of Dee, two mountain profiles rise up – Cairn Toul and Bod am Deamhaim (or Devil’s Point), greyed and blurred by the heavy rain of an incoming front. This memory is from late June 2019 when, after three days of good weather running about exploring these mountains, I could see I was going to get very wet.

I will keep on with these Cairngorm landscapes for a while yet, scenes from some of my journeys over and around these mountains. The snows and low-light of winter on the plateau contrast with the haze, breezes and noises of summer. I want to explore this some more through painting, to see where it takes me. I will add new paintings to this page as I go.

May 2022

Loch Einich, Loch Coire an Lochan, Braeriach, the Pools of Dee

My last visit to the Cairngorms was in May 2022. For the first time I headed north overnight, on the Caledonian Sleeper. I'd always wanted to go to the mountains in this way. The train left Preston at half past midnight and arrived in Aviemore at 07:37.

This time I wanted to head to the western end of the massif. Here, nestled between two high points of the plateau Braeriach and Sgor Gaoith, is Loch Einich. While I have visited the far eastern end of the plateau (the tors of Ben Avon) and the central areas around Loch Avon, Ben Macdui and other high points and recesses, I'd not been over to the far west.

I also wanted to go and take a look at Loch Coire an Lochan. This high pool sits at around 1150 metres, just below the summit of Braeriach, facing north-west on the side of the plateau.

I woke in my seat (I hadn't managed to book a bed) in the sleeper train carriage at around 5am. Drawing back the blinds I saw the Perthshire countryside, quite different from the Lancastrian post-industrial landscape I had left. Late spring, sunshine and I was in the mountains again.

On leaving the train station in the centre of Aviemore I headed into the Rothiemurchus forest. Intially following the trail that leads to the Lairig Ghru, I soon branched off to the east, along a track that would take me past Lochan Deo on the edge of the forest to the open mountainside and Loch Einich.

While the high points of the hills were covered in a familar layer of cloud, lower down their slopes it was a bright, breezy May morning. A bit chilly perhaps but the birds were singing and the place was very green. These ancient forests of the Cairngorms are destinations in themselves, the trees carry their memories for so many generations of us humans, most of whom (including me) pass by all too quickly, not thinking in the slow time of the Caledonian pines.

Given I was on a solo trip, intending to camp somewhere about the plateau, my rucksack was heavier than usual. I intermittently jogged and walked the trail, making steady progress into the forest, towards the mountains. Just after leaving the forest I stopped by the burn and made a brew, dozing for a while, catching up on a bit of sleep. In no hurry, it was good to feel the space and land around me.

Feeling refreshed after cups of tea, chocolate and a sleep, I followed the wide track to nearly reach Loch Einich. On the far side of the water rose Sgor Gaoith, a peak of the plateau that sits on the opposite side of the gouge forged out by the loch on this flat, high space to Braeriach. It was this latter peak I would climb towards, the mountainside by then steeply rising up ahead of me.

As I climbed I started to feel fatigued. Maybe the scant sleep I'd had on the train catching up with me but I was also being careful with my post-Covid body. It had been five months since I'd last had it, but during those weeks the viral feelings had occasionally returned. Taking it steady, I sat down for a while and looked to the steep buttresses of Sgoar Gaoith. Suddenly the light changed, the greyness of the day had been lingering, but now the sun was breaking through. I took some photographs of the golden light and shadows, feeling sure I would paint them at some point. So often it pays to just stop and look.

On getting going again I reached the plateau. The going was easier but the air was cold, a fresh wind blowing. Heading towards the summit of Braeriach, I paused to look to the Wells of Dee. The source of the river, these high pools reflected the sky above them, a glistening blue.

As I got closer to Braeriach, before I reached the summit, I took a bearing to head off the plateau to the west, avoiding the crags on the mountain's north face. They dropped down to the bowl formed by Loch Coire an Lochan, the place I was heading to sleep next to for the night.

As I lost height I turned with the curve of the coire, descending the hard snow drifts still lying on the less steep ground at it's mouth. Looking for a small patch of flat ground free enough from boulders to comfortably sleep, when I found a spot I quickly pitched my little tent.

Soon making a brew and sipping hot tea I lay in my sleeping bag, looking out on the world, filling myself with the peace of the place. It had been a bit of a journey to find and I had needed it for a while.

September 2021

Loch Avon, Shelter Stone, Choire Ethchachan, Derry Cairngorm, Ben Macdui

In late September 2021 I got the train to Aviemore with my friend Sarah. For two days we ran around and about the central plateau. Starting from the train station in Aviemore we ran along the trails and Caledonian pines of the Rothiemurchus Forest, past the ski station and up towards Cairngorm.

From the summit we descended towards Loch Avon and made our way to the Hutchinson bothy via the Shelter Stone. For a long time I had wanted to take a look inside the crag's namesake bivvy spot, underneath a large leaning boulder lying in the pink-grey moraine below the buttress.

By then the daylight was fading. Continuing up and over the bealach between Carn Etchachan and Beinn Mheadhoin and by the side of Loch Etachachan, we then turned eastwards into the coire and the bothy.

The shelter was welcome as during the night a storm blew in. With the fire in the stove burning and warm, we made dinner and relaxed for the rest of the evening. As the daylight arrived the following morning we waited a few hours for the lingerings of the bad weather to pass. While it stayed very windy all day, by mid-morning intermittent sunlight arrived. I put my book away, packed up my bag and we headed out the bothy door.

As we climbed south-west from the bothy, up the faint paint that follows the burn, towards Derry Cairngorm and Ben Macdui, the light was sublime, the autumn colours on the plateau and its recesses a delight. Taking a few photos, in time I worked from these to paint the scene above.

As Sarah and I left reached the rim of Coire Etchachan, returning to the plateau, we found the wind. Fiercely blowing, gusting, at times pushing us backwards, leaning into it we began the gentle climb up to the summit of Derry Cairngorm.

Maybe because of the wind I found myself looking more to the ground beneath my feet. All around me were the patterns made by the scree. Although I say 'patterns' in reality the only pattern was their randomness, while some rocks looked nestled together forever, others seemed to be just resting a while before continuing their aeon-long, rolling journey of erosion. While the plateau is home to the second highest peak in the Highlands, this is really one big, flat mountain, decaying in deep time.

Perversely the mathematician part of my mind loves this randomness. Maybe that's because a significant part of how I apply maths in my job is in finding order in seeming chaos. But for the wind I could have just looked and looked. Thoughts of Brownian Motion - slow movements of relatively small things in a sea of other small things. Could they be considered to be random, independent of each other? How does this matter? It doesn't to me and I think this is another reason why I love looking. These rocks will still be making their way long after I'm gone.

December 2017

Cairngorm, Ben Macdui