Tag: Inverness

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Munros and trails – Part 1

I It is almost midsummer night and the strawberries in my garden are still a greenish white unripe colour. Last year, today I returned from the East2West trail, and I was eating strawberries from my patch every day. Summer is not yet here and I can feel it. There is a lingering tiredness that reminds me of the old rat race life back in the Netherlands. Therefore, instead of pushing through long trails, I took some Munro days and pushed hard through my leftover winter blues.

There is a big difference in the type of fitness necessary for munro bagging or long-distance mountain trekking. It is not just the gear you carry, but the energy expenditure management, the feeding and drinking pattern and the rest between strained efforts. In both cases, I have found myself walking distances between 12k to 40k in one day and elevation gains of 1500m (in Scotland). While on a munro day you carry a max of 6 kg of luggage, I have carried about 18 kg through my long trekkings. 

The only munro I hiked with a backpacking tour was Ben Lomond. It was the first and the last I bagged with a giant backpack. When I got to the top, the people who kept passing me as they ascent with no bags started clapping. I didn’t really know I was going beyond the normal efforts. I usually begin my munro days after a well slept night in a bed and a good breakfast, ride, walk, and return to that same good bed, food, and shower. Trekking finds me day after day sleeping outside in a tent, on a mat. On a munro day, I might stop twice for food, a snack stop and a lunch stop. On a hiking day I will stop at least 3–4 times, take a good stretch, drink and eat regularly snacks. The energy expenditure might be similar, but I don’t get to rest and stuff my face the next day. Thus, they are unique in timings, confort and recovery. Now, I wonder, how can I do both through a very lengthy trek, from the borders to Cape Wrath?

Big bag day up Ben Lomond, 2021

For my next challenge, I have been studying maps and reading stories of a longer cross-country hike in Scotland. tHis unmarked path requires both, long days of walking and going up some munros, bealachs, and walking along ridges while carrying gear to overnight and food for several days. I am not sure that I can make it this year, work, family business and my current fitness level might need more time to get ready for this demanding trail. And, spring is just over. So the goal is to do this next year May and June. Meanwhile, I am taking the rest of this summer and autumn to train, test, asses gear needs, navigation, food, etc. 

Beinn Bhrothain, 2026

Ia m not sure why I am taking on this personal challenge. I am sure I will be thrilled to spend 6–8 weeks in the hills. I am not a competitive person, I can’t care enough about anything to compare myself to others or to waste my energy on building a false sense of superiority. My achievements in any areas are to prove those interiorised critics from childhood and teen years how wrong they were. And to spend time outside, in silence, with myself reflecting, rethinking and thus rewiring myself.

I’ve been up 5 Munro’s in the last two weeks and I’ve learn so far that, I need lighter gear, that I will need some navigation tech and not just my OSMap app/paper maps and that I will have to re think shoes, as trail runners have been useful but will wear off sooner than later during such a long trail… Oh, and that I shouldn’t do leg day before a hike.

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The pretty, the beautiful and the the sublime.

After an intense and magical solstice, contained by stone walls whikle the roof were the stars, and under the bright moonlight, I had a vision. It involved overlapping timelines and parallel universes. My field of vision and tact was altered under the almost full moon on the darkest night of the year. The whole landscape became crisp, everything defined and distinct and yet faded depending on the layer of reality I was trying to understand. The trees were both small and gigantic at the same time. The abandoned cairns were being functionally used and yet forgotten, new and old. The beings were ancient and newly borne. No substances were added to my brain chemistry that day, but the exhilarating experience of sharing this magical night with many and my soul brother with whom I have a deep, dark connection that remains a mystery to me now that he is long gone from my field.

We sneaked out from the group, standing long after the celebrations were finished, glued to the fire pit in the parking area. We walked into the central cairn inner circle. There is no artificial light out there, but the silver moonlight made it all spooky, and I doubt I would venture to stand inside the cairn if it wasn’t for his presence. Both safe and scary, loving and despicable. I don’t know if it was the intensity of the solstice energy or that we finally made it to a proper ancient celebration together. Still, he held both my hand and his friend’s, a tender act I didn’t see coming but brought me back to when we just met and we had ideas and hopes of love. It moved me deeply, and as I write this, I think this tenderness, this one moment of humbleness he expressed for the first time after we reunited, triggered the visions.

Like the feeling of knowing that there is something inspiring, beautiful, powerful and yet vulnerable, pure, deep and kind between you and me, and nevertheless, it has the potential of being terrifying, capable of wrath, destruction and pain so intense that understanding and imagination can no longer comprehend. Just like this is how I see you and how I see me. Eternal and finite, ephemeral and timeless, swinging between being and non-being. Battling between preconceptions of how and who we should be and the humbling surrendering to unknowable loving forces compelling us to feel above thinking. I am happy this doesn’t scare me. I am happy I can move beyond the fear of the known attachments into the fierce dream of the rebel soul whose ideas are unrealised in time and space. That night, I saw beyond this time and the forms of human connection that destroy freedom and consume identities.

I wish you could, too.

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Kessock Bridge (Drochaid Cheasaig)

A personal challenge, my private hell. Even before I got close enough to appreciate its size and height, I knew I would have some panic attack while biking across this bridge to the Black Isle. Indeed I did. I put on a stoic-Buddhist cap twice. Although this is my primary stance in life, in cases of anxiety or panic, stressful situations, or unexpected turn of events, we all tend to get a bit overwhelmed by these intense states and stumble, lose our balance or (humanely) fall to the ground (or of a cliff…).


The first crossing found me dismounting the bike not even halfway (the bridge length is just above 1km). I was alone, with no other passer-by or biker to reassure me that it was ok, that I would not be blown away by the strong winds or trip over my foot and fall down in the Moray Firth, some 30m below. I wasn’t as proud of myself as I set out to be. I realised I was a lot more uncomfortable with the self-challenge. And although walking seemed like I chickened out, I did not give up. Humbled by the experience of feeling small in the vastness of the landscape and vulnerable to the elements and the man-made structure, I was alone in this challenge since it was all in my being, and I knew the irrationality of the state I was in. Therefore, I continued in the simplest way I could: I walked.


After 3 hours of cycling around the Isle, I cleared my senses open. The smell of the forest on Ord Hill, the steep climb I took, the bike on my shoulders, the rolling hills and fast cycling down to North Kessock rearranged my mind. On the second crossing, I cycled through the bridge back to Inverness in one go, and honestly, I could not lift my eyes from the ground in front. My will to overcome the fear provided the strength to maintain a single-focused mind. And I was aware of my surroundings (and profusely sweating) but kept it going despite the raging adrenaline rush provided by the fear. However, I could not deny its reality. Emotions and feelings precede rationality. I have recently heard so much talk on rationalising emotions, yet I am not convinced we can do such a thing or should. We meet the world in emotional states as we discover ourselves and the things around us. We are born emotive, feeling, sensing, and perceiving. The sense we make of the world is based on our use of language, a tool we have to convey those feelings, sensations and perceptions to others. Emotions are the roots of our “thinking”; they are like tree roots. The depth of our connection to everything else nurtures them. Denied them, and you’ll deny your primal nature, the source. And your thoughts, like cut leaves and flowers, will wither.