Sometimes you know in advance that things are not going to go your way. My plan is to walk around the coast, out of Gelncoul bothy and hitch five miles back to my car. That way I will have achieved something fairly unique in a mountaineering trip, I’ll end up lower than where I started. Normally in hillwalking you go upwards, it’s sort of the done thing. Overall, however, I’ll be descending, I might start a trend, perhaps I’ll start The Downhill Mountaineering Club. I left my car on the hill road that heads over the pass and down towards the bridge at Kyelesku, and now, by coming over the hill, I’ve descended to sea level and I can walk out to the road from here, hitch across the bridge to my car and, overall, I’ll have lost more height than I gain. “Simples,” as the Meer Kat says, but I am filled with foreboding. You see there’s a sign on the far side of the river, in the direction I want to travel, but it’s too far away for me to read it. I’m going to have to wade the river to get the path on the far side, then I’ll be able to read the sign. As the water fills my boots the sign gets closer but it’s still too far for me to read. I emerge on the far bank of the river, soaked from the knees down.
Then I read the sign. DEER CULLING IN PROGRESS. WHEN THE RED DOT SHOWS DO NOT PASS THIS POINT.
Now, see if you can guess, is there a red dot? What do you think?
Of course there’s a bloody red dot.
I ponder for a while. Do they mean it, is the estate shooting, should I risk it? Will I enrage the land owner? Do I care? Will I get shot?
Is the whole thing a trap? I scan the heather nervously. Even now I could be in the cross hairs of the sights of His Lordship’s 303. “If he passes that sign McTavish I’ve got him!” whispers the master of all he surveys from his tweed clad hide out to the grey whiskered ghillie lying beside him, armpit deep in heather.
McTavish, takes another nip of whisky from his flask, “Well, I was thinking Milord, you could shoot him now and we could, erm, move the sign afterwards.”
“Good God man that wouldn’t be very sporting would it?” bristles the aged aristocrat, “Not a bad idea though. I’ve not bagged a hill walker in ages,” his trigger finger twitches in anticipation.
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