Guest
Natalie Minnis on Scottish mountaineering: Munros (over 3,000ft), Corbetts (2,500-3,000ft), Grahams (2,000-2,500ft) and Donalds (lowland hills over 2000ft) – Natalie Minnis – Ironically it was a health issue that triggered my hillwalking and climbing obsession. I used to run regularly, but I developed symptoms of an underactive thyroid, and found that I was no longer able to run for more than 20 minutes. Instead, I started going for long walks. I joined a Meetup group () and I became an organiser, with the specific intention of posting easier hill walks that someone as unfit as myself would be able to do! After about a year of treatment, my thyroid problems improved and so did my fitness, quite suddenly. That was two years ago. I also started climbing, and I’m a hillwalking and climbing fanatic now. I recently did my Mountain Leader course, and I’m due to take my assessment soon. I used to think it was amazing that I met so many nice people in the hills. Now I realise that it’s because being out in the fresh air, in natural surroundings, puts people in a good mood. Langley Park School for Boys, Nietzschean philosopher Nick Land: God, The Cairngorms and the Dark Enlightenment. Tony Gosling got to know an incredibly knowledgable ‘Nazi Nick’ Land at Langley Park grammar school in 1975 aged 13 and they struck up a friendship playing Diplomacy and SPI wargames every Saturday at Nicks home on the edge of Hayes Common. The pair sat next to each other in Maths and Physics also developing a shared interest in the study of the curious phenomenon of hallucinogenic drugs. Nick had an obsession with the US death and carnage in Vietnam and a ‘dark sense of humour’. In contrast he borrowed Tony’s hardback copies of Catholic writer and Jerusalem Bible translator JRR Tolkein’s Lord of The Rings. Along with two schoolfriends Tony and Nick spent a fortnight or so between their ‘O’ level exams and results wild camping around Wells, Somerset. But over the 1978 summer holidays. Nick ‘disappeared’ and in the new term starting ‘A’ levels at sixth form Nick had now become a Communist and took up with a new group of friends. Not long before they left Langley Park sixth form in 1980 Tony collared Nick at the bottom of the sixth form block stairs to ask a question which had been burning in his mind. After years of discussion about peace and war, right and wrong, left and right, did Nick think God existed or not? ‘Well’, said Nick, ‘Its in the balance isn’t it? I reckon about fifty-fifty’, then dashed upstairs. A few months later Tony pulled over into the Layham’s Road car park to open the envelope containing his ‘A’ level results. Before daring to look he offered up a heartfelt prayer that he didn’t want to go through the rest of his life not knowing whether God existed or not. A wrong decision might leave personal values upside-down as one sets out on life’s journey, an entire life wasted. At 18 years of age, in very personal moment between created and creator,whatever was in the envelope, he asked God to show him that he did indeed exist. As well as loving parents Christening new-borns, praying for spiritual protection of the innocents, all youngsters reaching the end of their teenage should be encouraged to reach out to God. It’s a biggie. Best to make the right decision at the outset. Three months or so later Tony found himself on a pass in the Cairngorms in a sticky situation of his own making. With hindsight it was simply God’s answer to his prayer. From what began as a bright clear day with a good forecast the weather had come down so hard on the tops of the hills that Tony was shivering with cold and hypothermia, to far up to turn back and had lost the path in driving rain. It was late afternoon as he sat on a rock, shivering in thick cloud with the visibility at just a couple of feet. Tony prayed again, ‘I’m too young to die. Please God if you’re out there, get me out of this’. A few minutes later, for fifteen seconds or so, the solid cloud parted and Tony saw a tiny hut about a quarter of a mile away. Triangulating on the sun which was almost lost in haze Tony was filled with hope and energy as he set off through marsh, through the River Dee, up a thirty foot rock face taking best part of an hour to reach the hut inside which a Dutch couple were surprised to see him but had the fire going and he steamed through the night, sleeping fitfully with his back to the stone wall. God had answered young Tony’s question and prayer in a way it would not be easy to forget. George Monbiot’s wife Rebecah Wrigley’s ‘Rewilding campaign’ turns sour in Germany – Al Jazeera – re wilding and wolf attacks. Clean Air Zones. ‘The wolf does not belong here’: German summit convened after animal attacks Farmers express concern for their livelihoods after series of deadly attacks on farm animals
