Through Cona Glen to Aryhoulan - to where the river meets the sea

Day Nine - From Glenfinnan through Cona Glen to Aryhoulan, where the river meets the sea (15 miles)

We head back to Glenfinnan in the vans to pick up the walk from where we left off two days earlier.

We are immersed in amongst the zillions of cars parked beneath the curve of the railway bridge. Here where the mass of tourists await the steam train crossing the viaduct so they can have a taste of being in the Harry Potter world of good and evil, wizards and magic - all underlined by the difference between those who head to boarding school and rule our world, and the rest of us muggles who are hardly worth writing about. Even crap social systems - for maybe ‘especially scrap social systems’ - need compelling stories told early to embed the story of how things are, a story that runs counter to our lived experience of underlying equality, of the magic being in coincidence and care, off hope being in each other not in some fantasy power rescuing us from ourselves. 

In the gift shop they give us free coffees because we’ve arrived and will leave on foot, and one of those working there voices strong appreciation for the Palestine/ Scotland flag. Instead off walking the unbelievably fast and dangerous road edge, we cross it to a wooden footbridge, cross that to a broad ‘logging’ type road, and turn east and south for Cona Glen.

We meet guys in two big caterpillar trucks digging the drainage diches by the side of the logging road we are walking. When I tell one of them we are walking because the land needs to come back to the communities and people, he says “I can’t argue with that”. 

While others sing, I am bizarrely on hold to KLM trying to confirm the plane ticket for Kipchumba, a Sengwer indigenous community member from Kenya who is due to fly out the same day but has had his ticket blocked. I dance to call centre music as we walk between the trees and the meandering river.

Finally we rise up through the heathland, heading for the mountains and - over the pass - Cona Glen.

On the way we meet two local women. We explain the walk and one of them speaks total support. She talks of residents owning less than 8% of the land, of one landowner owning half of all the land. He says the land is precious and needs protection, but what this means is local people aren’t allowed to have a shop or other developments that they need. Everything is made to serve a particular picture of how the land should appear, and not to serve the needs of local people, needs that - if met - could mean young people could afford to live here rather than have to move away. The two women aer happy to talk but - when Alec arrives with his camera - there is some real concern. Neither want to be filmed or named for saying what they’ve had to say.

We pause to eat our lunch sandwiches before reaching the pass at the top of the Glen. Ben suggests that from there we have the 20 minute walk in silence we normally have each day. He suggests we end it with a minute of silence together. He thinks that Cona Glen means glen of wolves. After the 20 minutes, and then the minute’s silence, we are over the pass and into a vast landscape where the mountains sweeps round like a giant amphitheatre to our right, and there is a track to our left that we follow around a curve until we are descending towards the river snaking acoss the moorland below. 

Following the river we eventually reach trees - many many Scots pine, all looking a bit spaced out and solitary but taken together they are a tall spacious ancient forest gradually gathering as the river starts to curve through deeper earth where highland cows and deer munch or roam between the trees.

We find a couple of metal crossings the span the river. The first is solid grating, good for bouncing on. The second is simply one high wire to balance your feet on with two wires to hold to steady you. Much malarkey is had, as well as tree climbing and cartwheeling.

Manu, who one of the vans picked ups as he was trying to hitch hike to Skye, is walking with us. His van is in a garage at Broadford where the walk began, but he is now heading the opposite way with us. He asks about conservation in Africa and I explain how conservation organisations see beautiful land and then throw off the very communities who have conserved that land and so made it attractive to conservationists. I give the example of Mount Elgon, straddling the Kenya/ Uganda border, where the Ogiek community on the Kenya side has managed to stay on their land and so the elephants and biodiversity flourish. In contrast, on the Uganda side, the Mosopisyek have been thrown off their land to make way for conservation’s control, and the result is that much of the wildlife, including all the elephants have been completely destroyed. 

There are just 12 of us walking at this point. 

Manu asks “Is a Glen the same as a valley?” 

Ben replies: “Yes, in a way, but it means it is in Scotland, and differs from a Strath which is way broader”

I tell them one of my favourite bits of poetry. It tells the geological, ecological and social history of Scotland in 3 lines, and is by Alec Finlay.  It’s titled: ‘What is a Glen?’

Water where once there was ice

Heather where once there were trees

Air where once there was breath

Finally the glen opens into wider woodland and we are into the final meandering where the river meets the sea at Aryhoulan.

The driving and cooking crew (of Eva, the two Davids and Gabs) have cooked up a delicious pasta meal, and set up man of the tents, as well as the toilet tent a bit away. No need for the gazebo because there is thankfully no rain. We arrive in the semi-dark, with many picking dozens of ticks off themselves. We go to sleep within the sound of the river, with the sea not far away.

Day Ten - Aryhoulan

Rutting stags sounded their strange echoing call in the night.

In the morning we enter a day of banner marking creativity, of washing in the river, of sitting in the sunshine under the trees, on a tarp where possible because of the zillion ticks. 

Driving to the Corran Ferry to drop folk off, on the return =talking with the local man at what was the manse. He has a wee brewery and a pizza place where the whole community and everyone else gathers under a tarp (“Build it and they’ll come” he says).

A local tells us of how the Estate’s ghillies doe muir burning at the same time of year each year in preparation for the pheasant shooting season, damaging biodiversity. The ghillies always say they don’t know how the (illegal) fire happened.

Someone tells us how back in 1400s the Macleans came from Duart, murdered the ferry man and many others and got the land. They probably took it from someone who held it because of his murdering someone else. An accident of birth means the estate owners can do what they like. Here the estate recently cleared a huge area of mature deciduous woodland to sell as timber, without consulting anyone. 

The Community body that wants to be able to use the community hall as collateral for a mortgage can’t find any agreement that says it belongs to the community. It will have been a ‘gentleman’s’ agreement between the lady of the estate at the time, the Minister and the Postmaster. The community can get help to improve the hall, but in the end it is improving a place that someone else ultimately owns, not opening a way to an empowered future.