Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
By the sign for a wee place called Fersit, we pass the place where I rolled a 911 a few
years ago. This was all my own fault and there was nobody else involved. We'll come to
this properly in What Happened to My Car.
We press on, crossing the youthful upper reaches of the river Spey at Laggan. Aileen
seems to be enjoying driving the M5.
'I know. Let's do the new funicular that goes up to the top of Cairngorm,' I suggest,
somewhere around Newtonmore.
'Is this strictly in accordance with the terms of your brief, Mr Banks?' Les asks. Les
usually addresses me as 'Mr Banks' when there's a hint of criticism involved.
'What do you mean?'
'There's no distillery at the top.'
I think about this. 'Ah, who cares,' I argue.
The funicular railway up to the top of Cairngorm is a hoot. There was a terrible ker-
fuffle about building it - an even greater kerfuffle than there was over building the gon-
dola system up Aonach Mor, on the north-west shoulder of the Ben Nevis massif. Both
are there for skiers and ordinary tourists, plus the gondola is equipped to take mountain
bikers and their bikes up the 2000 feet to the top station so they can plummet down the
laughably graded track back to the bottom again (watching lunatic mountain-bikers skit-
tering down the rocky excuse for a trail - more like a dried-up 45-degree river bed than
any sort of path - is probably the single most vicariously hair-raising thing you can do
while in Lochaber - highly recommended).
The Aonach Mor gondola system also happily ferries hill-walkers to the top, whereas
the Cairngorm trains won't; various notices in the bottom station tell you that in the sum-
mer there is no access from the top station onto the hill itself, and people with serious
backpacks will be asked to leave them behind or be refused passage. This was one of the
conditions that had to be met before the funicular system got the go-ahead, the idea being
that such restrictions would keep non-dedicated trekkers off the summit, where the delic-
ate flora and fauna might suffer from the added numbers of walking boots trampling the
heather (people who are absolutely determined to get up there can, of course, just hike
from the bottom).
I don't want to see native species die out, or all of Scotland become like the Lake
District, but I still can't help feeling the place needs more stuff like this; a few more gon-
dolas, funiculars, mountain-top restaurants and so on. And don't get me started on the
lack of decent alpine-style roads on Scotland, or dead-ends that should be joined up …
The day we visit Cairngorm there's still enough snow for skiing and boarding, and
plenty of people are doing both, so the ways out from the visitor centre onto the hill are
open. The weather is positively balmy for Cairngorm, which pretty much has the very
worst weather in Britain. We do the standard tourist things; take photos, browse the shop
