Jamie Whittle's Blog
El Rio Speyo
Last Thursday I spent the whole day waist-deep in water. In a strong current, amidst the arcs of sand martins, downblasts and squalls casting different patterns across the surface. Rain at times heavy and unwelcome to nearby farmers hoping to harvest. Then the weather later easing, a warmth rising from the rocks, an osprey hovering close by, wind in the many willows, the occasional torpedo of silver heading upriver.
Between casts as the line would belly round, the mind wandered upstream from Fochabers to the hinterlands supplying the River Spey with water. This immense and intricate network of ways, the land tipped ultimately north-eastwards from the Monadhliaths and Cairngorms to funnel rain and snowmelt to the sea.
There’s a lot of country to take in. The Boar of Badenoch guiding water into the River Truim, sublime views of Loch Avon, kingfishers at the Boat, old pines of Knockando. Ruggedness and creamy barley.
Three headwaters I particularly love are the Feshie, the Dulnain and the Livet.
I first explored the Feshie when I was fifteen when we hiked up Glen Tilt from Blair Atholl to the crossroads of the Cairngorms, then dropping down through the ancient forest to Auchlean. Glen Feshie means ski-touring up onto Sgor Gaoith and across the Arctic realms of Monadh Mor, returning westwards in the evening alpenglow (or pea soup!). Swimming at the bridge in eternally deep pools, and meandering through the meadows down towards the Spey.
My grandparents moved to Dulnain Bridge in the early seventies, and so I’ve known the lower Dulnain for the best part of my life. On a school trip aged thirteen, we spent the night high up the river in the bothy at Caggan. Space in the Grey Mountains. Running downstream around Sluggan Bridge, the tree canopy expanse and washed up timber across the stones spell visions of the Canadian North.
Walking up the Livet to Suie, where nearby place names include Elf House, Kneedeep and Thiefsbush Hill, it’s hard to believe how much illicit whisky making used to take place in the glen (some 200 illicit stills in 1820) and all the stealth production and smuggling and high spirits. Country that’s off the beaten track where the water is treasured. I once got hopelessly lost in cloud on Muckle Lapprach, startling some stags from downwind as I hoped that the burn I was following would lead me back to the Livet.
For a fascinating read on the river, I highly recommend Donald and Brian Barr’s “The Spey: From Source to Sea”. The mix of history, ecology and culture that pours forth from this watershed is just so rich and varied. One day soon, I hope to read a copy of Wendy Wood’s “The Secret of Spey” published in 1930 which was once recommended to me by a retired fisherman from Lossiemouth some years ago. Lest I forget, if you’ve never read Nan Shepherd’s “The Living Mountain” about the Cairngorms and which covers so brilliantly the water of the Spey amongst so many other elements, you’ll find it featured in “The Grampian Quartet” - it really is something special.
This evocative piece took me back not only to many ventures into the Northern Cairngorms and Monadhliaths but also to my copy of Nan Shepherd’s ‘The Living Mountain’. Published by Aberdeen University Press in 1977 (actually it is the 1984 reprint I have - oh for a first print run) it has a series of fine illustrations by Sheila M. Clouston. In her introduction Nan writes warmly of the mountain rescue service so I wonder what John Allen makes of it. It remained unpublished for thirty years after completion and of this Nan writes, ‘The only person who read the manuscript then was Neil Gunn, and that he should like it was not strange, because our minds met in just such exeriences as I was trying to describe. He made a couple of suggestions as to publication, but added that in the circumstances of the time a publisher would be hard to find.’ I would not exchange my copy for a diamond.
By Robert Davidson on Thursday 27th August 2009 at 6:43am