On a long white road

6 hours ago , by Richard Lutz

RICHARD LUTZ heads south over Rannoch Moor

Think of it this way: you get off at Britain’s highest rail station in the Scottish Highlands. The train slowly chugs off and you’re left with a warm breeze and lots of space, lots of air, a quiet Loch Ossian. A white path curves off its southern shore, Glen Nevis to the north, an 11 mile walk across the emptiness of Rannoch Moor.

Luckliy, today, the moorland is blanketed not by mist, rain, or bleak unbroken weather. But by blessed sunshine and a gentle southwest wind that shields us from the recent British heat wave. We walk due south from the remote Corrour Rail Station to the equally tiny Rannoch train stop.

All the time we follow the white track, known as The Road to the Isles. You really don’t want to wander onto this moorland, this expanse of 50 square miles of rough terrain that some find bleak; others find entrancing.

You really want to stay on this track. Look one way it’s an unending ribbon of stoney white. Look the other way, it’s the same.

Rannoch Moor is composed of bog, mire, marsh, peat. And when you walk through it, it’s hard to make out landmarks.

The first indication of where on earth you are is when you pass the remains of The Old Lodge by a bubbling stream that cuts across the white path at 550m altitude. At least then we can reference ourselves on our map and phones. Then we can find other place names. We are following a massive shoulder of a mountain called Cairn Dearg as it lumbers north/ south in this empty world.

There is little tended wildlife here, no cattle, no sheep. Just the sound of a summer wind, the call above of warblers, pipets and the music of skylarks.

But stop and look down and the June warmth is bringing out sturdy plant life such as bog myrtle which has the sharpest of fragrances.

It tastes of the Highlands.

And where you find bog myrtle, you’ll probably find this on the moors:

It’s cottongrass and its wispy heads blow the Scots wind.

Look down and there’s wild clover:

And a form of low-growing thyme…

We straggle into Rannoch, really no more than a dead end railhead with a remote hotel, some cabins and a single deer lunching on a grass patch unimpressed by visitors about to sit, take a load off tired feet and wait for a train to Corrour back up the Highland rail line.

additional pix- Richard Webb / Geograph