January to April 1977 - A Compendium

My '1977 slide scanning project' involves scanning some 150 slides that will be reproduced here in four postings. There's also a European Road Trip during which a further 267 pictures were taken. Of these I have found just 50, so I'll be scanning those. The rest must be somewhere; maybe I'll come across them some day, but hopefully the 'best 50' will do for the purposes of this exercise. 

Click on any image for a slideshow.

There are no diary entries for this period, so I'm relying on the slide captions, correspondence, walks programmes, and memories, which after 45 years may be a bit suspect. I'll circulate the links to the 10-20 people who appear and with whom I'm still in contact. Any extra information from them will be welcome. Sadly, some of the participants are no longer with us.

I suspect that 1977 started in Staithes, where a friend of Roger's had a tumbledown cottage that we used to stay in. I remember using a sleeping bag on an upper floor, and waking to snow falling through a hole in the roof. We may have spent New Year's Day in Staithes, as the first picture of the year, above - featuring Roger Freeman and John Clark, is captioned 'Jan 2 - early am near Goathland'.

We must have gone for a walk around Beck Hole, before driving to Northumberland.

West Beck

West Beck waterfall

A view across to the North Yorkshire railway

Beck Hole

A winter scene near Goathland

On 3 January the following pictures were taken near Hexham.

There's a gap in photos to 13 March, when Bob Selig and John Howarth joined me for a walk up Snowdon. Just one photo (below) records the event. Meanwhile, in February, I acquired 'Bluebell' a Ford Capri 1.6 GT, and did the 55 mile Bogle Stroll in a shade over 10 hours. The whole team of 10 finished, in superb weather and average time of 12:15. We may only have come third, though. Around this time, Roger bought his friend's cottage in Staithes for £2000, and we went there for a weekend.

Soon after this, John (a colleague at Thornton Baker) moved to Leicester to work for one of the country's leading tax experts, and with a young family as well, we saw him rather less often.

On 19 March, a trip to the Yorkshire Dales found us in rain above Kettlewell.

The rain didn't really bother us, as we went caving. From L-R: Brenda, Rob Corbin, John Mansell and two who I don't recognise. (Mike Brown in the red - thanks Dave.)

The only picture from 3 April shows a group above Patterdale, 'attempting' to ascend Helvellyn, from which caption I gather that we must have turned back before reaching the summit.

From L-R: Laurie Marshall (RIP), John Howarth (RIP), Rob Corbin, Johm Mansell (RIP),
Brenda, Bob Selig, Dave Sims and Dave Scruby

The next trip - 9 to 11 April, brings this phase of the Compendium to a close by way of a visit to the Isle of Mull. We had several trips there in the 1970s.

Rubha nan Gall lighthouse

Dave Sims and Dave Scruby, on a steep slope with a view to Ardnamurchan

Tobermory

Breakfast at camp, with Lofty, two Daves, Rodney? and Roger

[I think that's Lofty, part of our Bogle Stroll team, but I may be mistaken. As for Rodney, was he Roger's friend who drove around in a Morris 1000 Traveller with a corrugated iron roof?]

A walk at Treshnish

Ruins at Treshnish

Dam of the week

View to the outer isles (Rhum, as it was then known)

Relections

Our campsite, on a grassy patch just outside Tobermory by the high tide mark

A view to the Sound of Mull

Roger cooks breakfast

Dot may recognise her old frying pan, which served me well for years, until I inadvertently left it in a holiday cottage in Scotland in the late 1990s.

Ascending Ben More on 10 April

Dave Sims on Ben More

Rodney on Ben More, at the col

4 to 8 April 1980 - Another Visit to Mull

4/4/80 (Good Friday) - a red letter day in the annals of diary records of our ('our' = numerous different people) trips. Laurie's bird watching notebook was stolen, and Nick recorded the events of the long weekend by way of small, spidery writing on 45 pages of the said A6 notebook.

I'm not, you'll be relieved to hear, going to try to type out the drivel lengthy novel that resulted from Nick's efforts, as some time later Nick himself typed out those words onto eleven pages of redundant audit programme stationery.

There were 14 of us, many of whom located themselves in Tobermory Youth Hostel. The rest utilised the small lawn just above high tide that I discovered in 1971. This was a few minutes walk from Tobermory along the path to the lighthouse.

Ruaridh McPentax busied himself in some rock pools.

We went for a walk near Tobermory.

On 5 April (Easter Saturday) we visited Iona.

Back at camp, on Sunday 6 April, breakfast was served from a cacophony of pans.

We climbed to the summit of Beinn Fhada, with fine views across the island.

From Beinn Fhada, it's a ridge walk to the summit of Ben More.

Here we are on Beinn Fhada's summit. 702 metres.

Yours truly atop Ben More (966 metres).

The last picture taken on this day is of Laurie, descending along a cornice.

On 7 April, Easter Monday, I started with another campsite picture.

Most of us enjoyed a coastal walk towards Treshnish Point, after Dave had open-mouthedly watched a dog cock its leg against his rucksack in Tobermory.

Ian demonstrated 'three shades of Ian':

Climber

Dreamer

Mermaid

We tried to rescue a sheep that was stuck on a ledge above a dizzy drop. We failed. A farmer arrived and pulled it to safety.

The next slide is annotated 'View from Ulva Ferry', but perusal of the diary leads me to doubt whether we actually went to Ulva.

Back at camp, Ian did his Tarzan impression.

Here's an evening view from my tent.

Tuesday 8 April saw us waiting at Fishnish for the ferry to Lochaline and the long drive home.

A view from the road to Fort William

Loch Linnhe

The view towards Fort William from Kilmalieu

Here's the last of my pictures, taken on the approach to the Corran Ferry.

Recently, Bob Selig has sent me a bundle of scanned images. It's hard to relate them to specific trips, but I think those that follow may have been taken during this long Easter weekend.

Dave Simms

Alison and David

Dave and Liz

Nell, Liz, Dave and Johnathan

On the ferry back to Oban - looks like I'm already editing Nick's diary writing.

The next 21 images are Nick's typed up version of the contemporaneous diary from this trip. If you weren't there they will probably make no real sense. If you were there they may well appear to be a work of Nick's imagination. You may need to click on the images and view them as a slideshow in order to read them, should you feel so inclined. (I did enjoy reading it, Nick!)

References to the 'back' of the car refer to the boot, which was frequently used to accommodate passengers in those days. Any reference to frogspawn relates to a bag of frogspawn that was captured and taken to Manchester for Nell's six year old son Mark! Perhaps Mark will remember what happened to it?

Nell remembers: The frogspawn hatched out as frogs – well observed process -  then we took them to the nearest bit of water and disposed (or released, depending om how you look at it) of the frogs in a suitable place.

Reference to 'the diary' generally relates to 'the diary writer' - in this case mainly Nick, with initialled contributions from others.

Now, later, Dave Sims has also sent me some scanned images which are shown in a collage below:

Bob also has this recollection:

On that trip to Mull in April 1980, we arrived at the ferry dock at Lochaline just in time to see the last ferry of the day steaming away into the distance.

We were four (known afterwards as the Lochaline Loafers) Dave Sims, Liz Earle, my brother Jon and me. Mobile phones would not be invented for another 15 years so we couldn't contact anyone to let them know what had happened. The night life of Lochaline was not too exciting, if it existed at all, we never discovered it. Jon and I slept in my car, the gear lever digging into my kidneys. Dave and Liz took their sleeping bags, warm sweaters and groundsheets and disappeared somewhere.

We managed to catch the first ferry in the morning and arrived at the YH in Tobermory just as everyone was having breakfast.

Ali adds:

Fortunately I knew what happened to you, Bob! We managed to get the ferry and waved to you from the boat. That’s some road down to Lochaline and we were fighting against the traffic coming off the ferry.