Lovely evening last night with David Lintern who many of you will remember as the producer of a series of podcasts with Chris Townsend, Alan Sloman and myself. David was also a Guest Blogger here while I was away on last year’s TGO Challenge.

We met to catch up with each other, to talk about his trek along the Pyrenean HRP last summer, to compare notes for our routes for next year’s TGO Challenge and to talk about David’s new Challenge as he prepares to move North and develop a new career with the John Muir Trust.

Our conversation was a reminder that in these difficult and austere times the exploration of wild land doesn’t need to be massively expensive and yet can still provide you with one of those rare, life changing, experiences. There is – quite frankly — nothing I like better than talking about the Pyrenees. As we sat in a Pizza Express in Soho we ranged across the globe and backwards and forwards in time as we discussed the life of great wilderness explorers and mussed on the challenges faced by wild land over the coming years.

I was pleased that David remains an optimist although as a seasoned campaigner he appreciates how hard it is to really win your case. In my experience the best and most successful campaigning organisations are those who retain a real idealistic edge to their philosophy but who are focussed and pragmatic in their campaigning. I pleased to see that the JMT fits into this category and I’m sure we are going to see some interesting campaigning from them over the next few years.

I’ve supported JMT in the past but now I thing I’m going to become a member. They might be the kind of organisation to make a real difference in just the way — to be fair — that they have in helping communities in wilderness take control of their own destinies, like they did when they became key partners in the creation of the Knoydart Foundation.

Evenings like this are not only fun and exciting but I come away from them brimming with ideas. Now, all I have to do is to spend some time making a few of them happen!

The Scottish Highlands are wild and wonderful and each time I’m walking through them I find myself being frustrated at the short timescale of each visit. I should be finding some way to facilitate a linger trip. This summer I’ve bumped into two people who have managed to spend really big chunks of times in the Highlands and, to some extent, they were both fascinating characters but travellers who, nonetheless, only hinted at a small part of they story.

I met my first ‘Highland Hobo’ during the TGO Challenge in May. The weather had been appalling and we were a day behind our schedule when we dropped down to the bothy in Loch Chiarain (a morning’s walk out of Kinlochleven). This a fine and sturdy bothy sitting above a small and picturesque loch. We set ourselves up in oven of the downstairs rooms to brew some hot chocolate and make some lunch when we are joined by walker who descended from the upstairs room.

I didn’t catch the name of the walker but he told us that he had spent the previous evening camping near Corrour Station, but that the weather had been so bad that he ‘d moved along in search of some more substantial shelter for a few days. He told me that he was up in the Highlands for the entire summer, indeed this was how he spent very summer — he’d been mounting these long trips for (I seem to remember) over fifteen years. Each summer he made his way North spending some o his time working on bothy restoration and maintenance and the rest of his time walking in the mountains. Almost inevitably there was a solitary feel about him. I found myself wanting to express real admiration but just held back as I could sense another side to the story, the need to escape, perhaps? Or a desire to forget? Before I could go on he announced that this would be his last summer in the Highlands. The trips were taking their toll and there were other things in ice to consider, though he didn’t elude to what they were. He wasn’t in anyway an old man, being in his mid forties somewhere I guess.  There was a sense of transition in the conversation, a maybe a notion of reaching a tipping point. The benefits of spending such a long time in the hills were there, but they were — maybe — beginning to be out-weighed by other factors. It would have been nice to have carried on the conversation, and he looked like a man in need of a longer chat. But we had to push on and left to march on to Loch Ossian with fellow Challenger Rob Slade.

I met my second ‘hobo’ during a trip to the North West in August. My walking partner Carl (the bagger) and I descended from Maol Chean-Derg to the small bothy that sits alongside the Fionn-abhainn on the descent to Coulags. The weather was ciil and miserable and the rain had been coming down for reveal hours, not a deluge but that fine Scots rain that seems to find its way through any layer of clothing.

In the bothy we met Graham, a backpacker and hiker who had spent much of the Spring and Summer on the road. He had set off from Gloucester and had walked up to the Highlands and then seemed to cover quite a lot of Highland ground. I think Carl was surprised that Graham had chosen to spend the day warm and cody in the bothy — there was  warming fire burning in the hearth. (Carl was busy trying to convince me that the weather was gorgeous and that we should knock off another five Munros before dinner).

Graham explained that he only had a tarp for shelter and that as the weather had deteriorated he had made camp in the bothy. He was not a lightweight hiker though as I could see from his gear which was strewn all over the bothy table. His cooking kit was strong and robust and his outdoor clothing was based on thick, Highland woollen jumpers rather than on the latest, featherlite, fabrics.

Graham told us that he had left both his job and his rented home to tackle this trip. He only had a few days left and next day was due to begin to make his way to inverness and the train journey home. He would be sleeping on the floor of friends. His first task was to find work and the second to find a home.

Such dedication to hiking is admirable but, again, there was a strong sense of walking to if not forget, to put life and the world in a better context. Whatever Graham was seeking, I hope that he found it in the Highlands.

There are both only fleeting contacts and yet they seemed to say so much. Graham told me of a number of other ‘hobos’ that he had met during his travels, including one man who had been living in bothies for several years. Although permanent bothy dwelling is frowned on I’ve heard enough stories over the years to realise that this goes on quite a bit, indeed I remember reading somewhere of a bothy dweller who was a skilled furniture maker and who built a fine piece of furniture for his bothy only to really annoy other bothy owners — who liked things as they were.

I can’t help having admiration for walkers like these two. There may well have been some deep-seated reason for spending extending summers amongst the heather and blue of the sky and the water, but there was clearly great joy and pleasure to be derived from them as well. Some plan such trips with a clear objective — say to climb the Munros in one tripe — but for these folks just ‘being’ in the hills was reason enough.

These two reminded me of the importance of movement and travel to us all. The late writer and adventurer Bruce Chatwin felt that travel was very much the natural state of humans, and that walking was our natural speed of movement. I’m sure he is right.

Somehow — and without being able to tackle such a trip myself — I felt better for knowing that there were still people who would, whatever their reasons or their motivation.