HEIGHTS

Stravaiging at Howwood

November 2019

Stravaig is one of my favourite Scots words. It expresses that sense of roaming freely, without defined purpose in rugged countryside. 

But thank the gods for what they've sent,

O' health eneugh, and blythe content,

An' pith that helps them to stravaig

Owr ilka cleugh an' ilka craig”

 Robert Fergusson 1773

Overall, I don’t think it’s too much of a misappropriation to use it to describe my favourite form of running.  With my son, we were surely stravaiging through the landscape south of Howwood on a freezing morning; owr ilka cleugh an’ ilka craig.

The side roads there were treacherous with black ice, so we quickly revised our initial notion of where to start, commencing instead from Main Street, and tried to seek out  a way upwards to open hillside.

The idea had been to make our way towards Walls Hill with only a vague idea as how to get there.  We were already off course, skirting our way out the village and zig-zaging up the brae.  I knew there were routes through forestry that would take us near the hill.  However, the darkness of conifers felt uninviting, it wasn’t the route we wanted that day.  The early light was too beguiling, and we were drawn to the golden white of open fields.  We made our escape through a fire break.

There was a father, son thing going on.  Passing on stravaiging tips: how to scout ahead to pick out gates and tracks.  We tried to anticipate and avoid frozen rutted ground and find spots easy to cross.  There’s an art in getting over (or under) fences safely without causing damage.  Legally we had the right to roam, nonetheless we kept a discreet distance from the nearby farmhouse. 

The freezing fog pockets that clung to hollows ebbed and flowed, advancing over the woods then retreating.  It shaped our movement too, we wanted to keep in sunlight and enjoy the moment.

The land plateaued out to fields fringed with frosted long grass and gnarled hawthorn.  A small, promontory, Muirsdyke Mount, caught our attention and we made a beeline to explore. We followed the course of an old enwrapping drystane wall.  This had once protected the last rebels of the 1635 Argyll rising, holding off Government Dragoons.   At the summit was the reward of panoramic views northwards.

On the way back, we spied a path and made a stumbling route to it, over fence then through rough grass.  There we said morning to the first person we had seen.  He was a sprightly guy, in his 80’s walking his dog.  He asked if we were lost.  That started a chance conversation.  It was a freewheeling blether that somehow covered Islay, London City farms, boats, families and wildlife around Howwood.  He mentioned coming across a distressed hind caught in a fence and freeing it, complaining about shooting, “they are always killing things up here”.  If it had been warmer, we could have talked longer, but chilled, we bade our farewells, and headed back, recharged, to the car.

 

Cato's Run

July 2019

The grain of the Central Belt follows the direction of the prevailing wind - southwest to northeast. The low-lying landscape of the Lochwinnoch Gap, between braes and hilly moorland, stays true to that, with river, road and rail channeled through. 

We left from Howwood, and headed along the side of the river towards Castle Semple and Lochwinnoch.  It felt good running and chatting with my son along this apparently benign pastoral idyll. past widely spaced mature parkland trees.  Darker clouds, however, had begun to gather above the "temple",  perched on the small hill to our right.

Let’s cut to the chase - this grand designed landscape was constructed on the back of the slave trade.  In “Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past – The Caribbean Connection", edited by Tom Devine, there is a harrowing account of how the landowner, William McDowell, accrued his fortune, concealed for three hundred years with tales of fortunate marriages and military careers. 

The temple itself was a classical styled 18th century building,  In Victorian times it had been struck by lightning and is now a ruin.  Built to impress, it was originally complete with a deer park - white deer that appeared free to roam.  In reality, they were segregated from the Black Cart by a ring of ha-has.  Erosion and the encroachment of vegetation have slowly softened that barrier.  Simple sleepers provided us with a crossing, and we wound our way to explore the folly, taking in the view towards Lochwinnoch and Misty Law.  We shared the space with cattle,  standing at the recent sculpture that celebrated local exports, looking on nonplussed at our efforts.

Through the estate the evidence of former wealth was everywhere.  We passed water courses, little more than ditches, that had bridges of dressed masonry, a small burn, engineered into a series of cascades, a huge walled garden, ponds, grottos, policy woodlands, and exotic plant species from across the globe.  The paths through the woods appeared designed to disorientated, the rhododendron walk, in particular, twisted tightly round the contours of Courtshaw Hill, a precipitous labyrinth.  Overgrown, we had to duck under or pull back branches to keep moving forward. 

McDowall had taken enslaved Africans to Castle Semple.  One of them, Cato, made his bid for liberty, and ran away in 1748.  No one knows what happened to him after that.  I wonder which route he took on his bid for freedom - whether towards town, coast or into the shadow of the hills.

Part of the works envisioned by McDowall was the draining of water bodies that stretched for miles.  That plan ultimately failed to control and subjugate the wildness of nature. Instead, there is a legacy of rich wetland habitats - water meadows of rush and meadowsweet. During the run we had to constrain ourselves to paths and drifted away from the wetlands as we sought out the routes through the estate.  There were no such issues for the species of birds sharing the space with us, including a flock of geese, flitting with complete untethered freedom between land, water, and sky.