Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
(I add to my growing collection of wooden train whistles and buy a notebook that you
can allegedly write on in the rain which I'll almost certainly never use) and have a fairly
bog-standard chips-and-beans-with-everything lunch.
We stand breathing in the clear mountain air before taking the funicular back to the
car. Les looks around as though trying to gauge something. 'Altitude?' he asks.
'Eh? What?'
'You mean you didn't bring your altimeter?' Les says innocently. 'Dearie me.'
'It's in the car,' I say, lamely.
Altitude problem
.
The altimeter is something of a sore point. I bought it many years ago in Nevisport in Fort
William.
I have a weakness for these outdoors-gear shops. I have far too many hiking jackets,
pairs of gloves, Swiss Army and other knives, torches, compasses, camping stoves, sets
of binoculars and other assorted outdoorsy paraphernalia. I long ago collected all the
50,000-scale maps covering Scotland and now I seem to have started doing the same thing
with the orange-cover 25,000 series. Les claims that there must be a bell that goes off
when I enter one of these establishments, and possibly a red flashing light as well. Prob-
ably in the staff room or manager's office. Maybe even a sign that illuminates: Attention!
A fool and his money have just entered the building! Opportunity! Opportunity!
The altimeter is his first and favourite example of my gratuitous overspending. I saw
it in the shop and just wanted it. It's a proper piece of precision engineering and it had an
orange lanyard and everything. I justified it to myself as a safety measure; out on the hill
you might
think
you knew where you were on the map by compass bearings and all that
sort of stuff, see, but double checking via the contour lines would
definitely
help confirm
that you really were where you thought you were. Sold. However, I didn't want to be too
extravagant, so I even looked at the price, first: £39.99. Very reasonable for such a quality
piece of kit, I thought. I took it to the counter and the shop assistant rang up £139.99.
I stared at the figures glowing on the till read-out and then at the price sticker on the
altimeter itself. Yup, the first numeral on the sticker had printed across the left-hand edge
of the little box the price was supposed to be printed inside, and it really was a hundred
quid more expensive than I'd thought. I couldn't even get away with just keeping quiet
about this piece of gratuitous overspending, because Les was there at the time, at first
looking on incredulously and then trying to suppress his laughter. He didn't quite get to
the stuffing-the-hanky-into-mouth stage, but it was a close-run thing.
I never did take the damn altimeter hillwalking. It lives in the M5 now, slotted into
one of the cup holders. It works off atmospheric pressure and every time I pass the Slochd
summit sign on the A9 south of Inverness, or the sign at Rannoch Moor summit (both of
