MOUNTAIN PORTRAIT
Jim Perrin recalls porridge-fuelled forays on the Isle of Arran, where the southernmost top of the Goatfell massif proved pretty irresistible
“...and the one in the middle goes hey diddle diddle / God, he’s just a pretty face”
ACTUALLY, Beinn Tarsuinn does have an extremely pretty face. It’s called the Meadow Face, is 800 feet high, distinguished by three soaring cracklines, looks into Coire a’ Bhradain with its large, wary flocks of red deer, and is composed for the most part – excepting the occasional loose block or sugary surface skin – of massive grey granite. Coire a’ Bhradain’s a prime place in the Scottish hills: an impressive hanging valley at an altitude of 400 metres, debouching into Glen Rosa, the longest, quaggiest, most impressive of Arran’s valleys. For some years archaeologists have been digging at the site of a Bronze Age settlement here. I know places like this at much the same height in Eryri: high lonely landscapes from which humanity’s tide has long receded because of late Bronze Age climatic changes.
As to mountain topography, the triangular bulk of Coire a’ Bhradain’s Beinn Tarsuinn (‘the crosswise hill’) is one of three by this name on Arran. It reaches 826 metres (2709 feet), is a Corbett, and is the southernmost top of the Goatfell massif. That should give you a sense of the difficulties you’ll face on this ground. It exists in the transition zone from serious hillwalking to where scrambling becomes outright rock-climbing. The ascent by A’Chir to Goatfell is not for the faint-hearted and has seen many fatalities. The same strictures apply to Beinn Tarsuinn. Its complex summit is best approached from the eastern side of Coire a’ Bhradain where a faint meandering squelchy path brings you to Bealach an Fhir Bholga – a name that plunges you right into the origins of Goidelic legend. Did those mythical warriors loose their goose-quilled arrows upon the deer grazing beneath? I cannot imagine their success rate was high.
It was my very good fortune to work on the Isle of Arran for a month in one of those glorious summers in the 1970s. It came about through the good offices of a friend of mine, Bill Bowker, who was Chief Instructor at the Hillingdon LEA outdoor centre in Glasbury on Wye. Bill, one of Britain’s outstanding alpinists in the 1960s, felt that the youth of Hillingdon needed rockier country than Radnorshire, where the centre lay, could provide. So he decided to bus a couple of groups of them for a fortnight at a time up to Ardrossan and across to Arran. Since the terrain there was slightly more serious than the Begwns or the Black Mountains, he was given funding for an additional temporary instructor. I was footloose and fancy-free, the sun shone day after day, and the pay on offer was generous. So one day in July I drove down to Glasbury, met the group, helped kit them out and pack the minibu
