Lost on Rannoch Moor

Why do sensible people make silly decisions? The story of the seven railway surveyors, with their two umbrellas, who set out across Rannoch on the last January day of 1889. [1300 words 6 mins

Walking the moors: it’s for those of us who like our outdoor fun to be – putting it in its simplest terms – not actually all that enjoyable. There’s the Wigtownshire Moors that form such a dispiriting first three days of the Southern Upland Way. There’s the 42-mile Lyke Wake Walk across Yorkshire, themed around the famous Mediaeval dirge: When thou from hence away art past, To Whinny-muir thou com'st at last.

But few have had so little fun in a moorland crossing as the seven  gentlemen, aged between 28 and 60, with top hats and (luckily for them) two umbrellas, who set out across Rannoch on the last day of January 1889 to survey it for the West Highland Railway. From the safety of a century after the event, we can look backwards and agree: we’d never do anything so ill advised ourselves.

We wouldn’t. We really wouldn’t.

Would we?

The seven included Robert McAlpine, 41, founder of the engineering firm that still bears his name; three more engineers; two land factors; and a Fort William solicitor called Mr Mackenzie.¹

Day One was to be a trip by boat to Lord Abinger’s shooting lodge at Creaguanich, at the head of Loch Trieg. Day 2: the 24 mile crossing of the moor itself. On foot (or rather, on fourteen feet). On the last day of January, with roughly seven hours of daylight. Most of the way over pathless bog. Yes, in the words of Blackwood’s Magazine: “Grave doubts arise as to whether a practical programme had been evolved among the wise heads of the party.”²

Their journey started with the 2 1/2 mile path to the foot of Loch Treig. Here already they managed to get lost, their guide having failed to turn up. After some further delays (they couldn't find the boatman either), they launched off in a leaky rowing-boat along the six-mile loch. It got dark. Bailing the leaky boat with their boots, they crawled along close to the eastern shore so as to shelter from the waves and a vicious easterly wind with sleet in it.

After five hours of zigzag progress they spotted a light.³ The light wasn’t Creaguanich Lodge but they headed towards it anyway, and they ran aground.

Two of them now got out to head for the shore. Well, when lost in the darkness, what else do you do but split up the party? Thus lightened, the boat floated off, to run aground again a bit further along. However, their shouts had brought out rescuers in a more loch-worthy vessel, and the damp party reached the shooting lodge at midnight.

Creaguanich Lodge is now abandoned.

A ghillie had been sent through Lairig Leacach to pre-warn the lodge. This ghillie, too, had managed to get lost, so the seven damp gentlemen were not expected; there was no hot food and no beds. But there was a nice dry shed with some deer carcasses hanging in it.⁴

Rain continued overnight. By morning the bridge over Abhainn Rath had washed away, which meant 3/4 mile down to the loch again to cross the outflow by boat. (What’s now the Treig Reservoir extends right up to the lodge, but the loch was smaller then.) The shepherd escorted the seven up the track to the edge of the moor and left them to find their own way for the remaining 23 miles. ⁵

“Sheets of sleet chased one another in raking columns, blotting out the horizon, and rendering the visible landscape as if it were a desolate isle in a waste of vapour. The moor extended in front in an apparently limitless expanse of peat moss, and hummocky ridges of scatter’d boulders, which loomed large and far distant, assuming weird and fantastic forms through the driving mist. A more desolate scene it would be difficult to picture,” the anonymous ‘W. J. G. F.’ would write in Blackwood’s Magazine 37 years later.

Across Rannoch Moor, northwards from Meall Mor.

But John Bett, the 60-year-old factor for Breadalbane Estates, is a local and aware of January weather; he’s equipped himself with top hat and waterproof cape, as well as his umbrella. Mr Mackenzie the solicitor has his umbrella as well. And the surveyor James Bulloch has crossed the moor before, so maybe he leads them by the old drove road along the eastern edge, following the lower slopes of Carn Dearg past Old Corrour Lodge. If so, they have relatively easy going for the first 10 miles, to where the wide, rocky Garbh Ghaoir river cuts across their path near today’s Rannoch Station.

Garbh Ghaoir river, a formidable obstacle even in summer.

Here they have a rendezvous with Sir Robert Menzies of Rannoch Lodge, to discuss some minor realignments of the line. Sir Robert himself has been far too sensible to head onto the moor in such weather. But on the off chance that the idiots might actually turn up, he’s sent his head keeper.

The keeper invites them down the road to Rannoch Lodge. But with three full hours of midwinter daylight left, and only 14 miles to go, they decide to press on. The keeper rows them across the river, and they head off into the empty moor.⁶

Rannoch Moor, with Telford’s road of 1803 (now the West Highland Way) and the railway as eventually built, but not the modern A82 (built 1935). The walker’s rendezvous with the head keeper was at the outflow of Loch Laidon. A useful track ran (and still runs) from Gorton along the north side of Loch Tulla to Inveroran Inn.

View south from Rannoch Station, near their meet-up with the keeper

This part of Rannoch Moor was, and is, pathless. It’s a network of peat hags and wandering black streams, sprinkled with small lochans where the wild geese nest. Patches of stony moraine, left behind by the former Rannoch icecap, are now covered in knee-high heather.

As night falls, old John Bett can go no further. So they decide to divide the party into four groups. The masterful Robert McAlpine is determined to press on as planned, southwards across the moor.⁷ James Bulloch, who’s been here before, heads off to look for Gorton cottage: Mackenzie the solicitor and Foreman the chief engineer will follow on behind him. Major Martin and young Harrison stay with Mr Bett, improvising a shelter for him – he is now unconscious – with the two umbrellas.

After about four miles of stumbling through the darkness, Bulloch trips over a fence, and lies stunned for, the story says, three or four hours. When he gets up again, he follows the fence down off the moor to the small cottage of Gorton, under the high slope of Beinn a' Chreachain. The shepherds from the cottage retrace Bulloch’s steps, and in due course their shouting is heard by Foreman and McKenzie, who have been sheltering  below a boulder. The shepherds escort the two exhausted men to their cottage, then set out again into the nght.

Gorton cottage, now a bothy maintained and managed by the Mountain Bothies Association.

Meanwhile Major Martin and the young engineer are running around in the darkness, trying to keep warm. In doing so they lose sight of the umbrella. Once they find it again, they tie a white hanky to it. They light matches to watch the slow hours passing on their pocket watches: Mr Bett remains unconscious, but alive.

Some time after midnight they hear dogs: it’s the heroic shepherds from Gorton. They rouse poor John Bett into semi-consciousness, and drag him on a horrendous crossing, two miles in two hours of falling into the peatbog in the dark. At 3am they reach a stalkers’ hut beside Avon Dubh river – the site is now under plantations and close beside the railway.

At daybreak the shepherds return with a breakfast of tea and buttered scones, ready to guide them the 5 miles to Gorton. But where is Mr (later Sir) Robert McAlpine?

As dawn breaks, McAlpine finds himself looking down into the misty valley of the River Tulla, somewhere above Achallader farm –  just a mile or two short of the concete bridge on the present-day A82. He, alone, after 14 hours trekking through the night, has crossed the moor!

“His night of wandering was reviewed in a flood of disjointed phraseology, selected mainly at random from an unpublished vocabulary, but amongst which certain words could be recognised, such as “ belly,  precipice, head-first,  neck, muck, filthy slime, water,” interspersed with frequent invocations of a beneficent Deity, the general effect being an impression of a ghastly night of horror, wretchedness, and imminent peril.”

The party continued by horse and cart. As they reached the Inveroran Hotel, a little snow started to fall. By morning the drifts were a couple of feet deep.

Scotrail ‘Sprinter’ train crosses Rannoch Moor along the line walked in 1889

1. The source for all this is Blackwood’s magazine Sept 1927 p342; found online here . The West Highland Railway by John Thomas (David & Charles, 1965) supplies further detail, including the names of the walkers.

2. James Bulloch, the surveyor, had crossed the moor before. Why didn’t he speak up? Two possible reasons. First off, Mr Robert Macalpine was not only his boss, but the boss of the whole company. Also, James’s previous crossing will have been in summer and with a guide, possibly one of the competent shepherds from Gorton cottage. Which will have made it seem quite easy to find the dry ways through the morass.

3. Wherever the light was from is now underneath the waters of the reservoir

4. The deer carcases aren’t recorded in Blackwood’s Magazine, but from my experience of sleeping in such a hut I’m assuming they were there.

5. The horrific night trip up Loch Treig may have been their “Hinterstoisser Traverse” (see next week’s post). Meaning they would now have put all thought of returning the same way behind them. I suspect that as they set out into the moor, it was with a sense of relief at having got shot of all incompetent ghillies, and their fate now under their own control. Though poor Mr Bett may have already been feeling anxious.

6. My thought here is of how cold, tired, oxygen-starved brains default to the simplest possible thinking. Press on with the existing plan, that needs much less thinking through than ‘how the heck would we get from Rannoch Lodge back across to the west side of Scotland, you’d have to go round by Perth would you?’

7. Well, he was the boss, wasn’t he. They were’t telling him what to do.