Rum is an amazing island, with a quirkyness resulting from its ownership by the eccentric Victorian George Bullough. His father made a huge fortune from inventing a device that helped keep cotton damp while it was being spun, and had bought the island in 1888. George splurged money in all directions, including commissioning an early steam yacht, building roads, shipping in acres of soil from Ayrshire and building a castellated mansion made of sandstone brought from the Solway. He equipped his extravaganza with all the latest luxuries, including a jacuzzi and an orchestrion, a mechanical orchestra. He later had a huge Greek-style mausoleum built for his family in a remote corner of the island, and both castle and tomb are still there, bizarre cuckoos in a Hebridean landscape. George died in 1939 and in 1957 his daughter sold the island to the Nature Conservancy as a reserve, which it still is. It's been a pioneer in ecological research, particularly on deer and was the original springboard for the hugely successful reintroduction of Sea Eagles to Scotland.
Hallival and Askival, two of the five main peaks
Even ignoring its history the island is quite a place, dominated by a zigzag spine of gabbro peaks, a baby version of Skye's Black Cuillin (the name Rum is probably pre-Celtic and may come from a semitic word meaning high, which would certainly fit). It's the high bit that attracted us there, of course, "us" being a group from Aston University Mountaineering Club up for an easter week. There were originally seven of us, but only five actually made it to the island due to a series of foul ups, the initial one my fault. I hitched up via couple of good snowy days on the Loch Shiel hills to arrive at Mallaig ferry pier in plenty of time for the 6 o'clock ferry. I watched the lunchtime ferry leave, then discovered that the "extra ferry" that I had booked us onto left at 6am not 6pm ☹️.
The others arrived an hour or so later, by which time I'd rebooked us onto the next ferry in two days time and arranged a key to drive up the estate track to Corryhully bothy in Glenfinnan for the next couple of nights. We had a soggy trip around the two Glen Finnan Munros on the day in between, followed by a raucous night in the Stage House Inn to celebrate my birthday. When we got back to the bothy Richard decided that he must have left his wet trousers in the pub. Phil nobly drove him back to pick them up, waking up the bar staff to scour the pub before it was pointed out that Richard was wearing the offending garments round his neck!
The Glen Finnan hills on a much nicer day
The next day we set off for Mallaig and the 12 o'clock ferry, only to miss it again, this time because John's car broke down near Loch Eilt. As it was capable of progressing in short hops Phil, Dave and I drove to Mallaig in Phil's car to try and hold the ferry. After waiting for half an hour the captain gave up on us and it left. John had got as far as a layby near Arisaig and soon we were all reunited on the sea front. Arisaig was shut so we camped at Keppoch, from where Phil & Ian decided to head back to the Lakes. As soon as they left the weather, which had been consistently awful up till then, improved markedly. We had a beautiful afternoon on the craggy Sgurr an t-Sasunnaich, only 1000 feet high but with a superb summit view out to Rum and Skye.
Dave, John, Richard and Keith below Sgurr an t-Sasunnaich
At the third attempt we finally caught the ferry! I hitched and John's car made it in only two hops. He rang the RAC relay, saying "Don't pick us up today, come in 5 days time". After a certain amount of mickey-taking from the warden of the Nature Reserve on the subject of our four day hiatus we camped on the foreshore at Kinloch and wandered along to the Skyemen's Village. This dates from the 1840's, when the chiefs of MacLeod and MacDonald connived to kidnap the population of a couple of Skye villages and ship them to America as indentured labour. Once the clansmen realised where they were going the ship's water barrels all sprung mysterious leaks and they had to put in at Rum to resupply. The abductees then all jumped ship. They had no method of getting back to Skye and there were houses available on Rum, which had recently been cleared, but interestingly the Skyemen didn't want to use those in case the original inhabitants returned. They built their own houses further down the shore, which are still there. Presumably they were eventually cleared from there too, and the houses are now occupied by a noisy population of Black-headed Gulls.
Camping at Kinloch
On our first night there was a slide show in the village hall for a school group and we went along too, learning a lot. Keith and John had been drinking revolting puritab-flavoured water as they had been told that Rum water might contain snake's eggs, but one of the things we learned was that Rum has no snakes 😁. We also found out that the south face of Barkeval had an eagle nesting on it and was out of bounds at the moment, which unfortunately ruled out the amazing Narnia Ridge, one of the best easy climbs in Scotland, and something I had hoped to climb. It was another 18 years before I finally got to it.
Narnia Ridge
The next day we walked round the coast to Dibidil Bothy, spending the afternoon and early evening exploring the shore nearby, scrambling, birdwatching and jumping the several deep but narrow ravines which cut into the cliffs. John spent ten minutes crawling about in bogs stalking a deer to photograph before discovering that they were so tame that they would walk almost right up to you. I had masochistically lugged a guitar all the way round and once it got dark we returned to the bothy for a good sing song.
At Dibidil Bothy
Although Friday was cloudy it didn't rain much and Richard, John and I set out to do the Main Ridge Traverse. Greasy scrambling on Beinn nan Stac was followed by a weird set of pinnacles on the South Ridge of Askival, the island's highest peak. John and Richard wimped out of descending the Askival Pinnacle but I inched my way down it precariously. It was quite hard in the wet, with long moves between good sharp holds.
Askival Pinnacle
After crossing Hallival it still hadn't cleared so John packed it in and traversed back to the bothy. Richard and I went out to Barkeval, where it did clear briefly, then cut across the top of Atlantic Corrie to Bealach an Oir, where the eagle came to have a look at us.
Ainshval from Trollval on a much better day
The east ridge of Trollval was easy, then we had a rather hairy direct descent on wet slabs. The greasy direct start on the way up Ainshval was even scarier and Richard sensibly went round the side. From the top of Sgurr nan Gillean he cut down to the bothy to pack up and go round to Kinloch, as he wanted to go fishing the next day. I wandered out to the minor peak of Ruinsival, returning to the bothy via the idyllic spot of Papadil Lodge. One of the conditions of the sale to the Nature Conservancy was that Papadil Lodge should be destroyed, as Lady Bullough had spent her honeymoon there and didn't want her memories tarnished. This wasn't done, but the Lodge was abandoned and the subsequent rise in the water table flooded it to a depth of a foot or so. I paddled through stunted trees to have a look. It was a spooky spot, with bushes growing through the floor and electric wires sagging though peeling wallpaper.
Papadil, the Lodge is in the trees on the left
The weather had finally cleared once I had left the ridge (doesn't it always) and a sunny evening gave me superb views out to Eigg and the mainland. Keith and Dave had also been to Papadil, although Keith was less enamoured of the place, mainly because he sat in the wrong place and picked up hordes of sheep ticks, spending the rest of the week extracting them from assorted parts of his anatomy. Richard offered to burn them off with a cigarette but for some reason Keith wasn't enamoured of this idea! Apparently there was a photo of this process in the Aston Meets Book but thankfully it doesn't exist in my copy 😁. Dave left on the evening ferry as he had to be back in Sheffield by Monday.
Bloodstone Cliffs
Saturday started well but got quite wet in the afternoon. Richard spent the day fishing in a hill loch, without much success, while Keith and John climbed Orval and visited the huge sea cliffs at Bloodstone (nearly 1300 feet high, although not vertical). I went to Harris, where the surreal Bullough Mausoleum dominates the empty valley. The story is that originally Bullough had a tomb of black Italian Marble built there, but when he proudly showed it off to the then Prime Minister the latter described it as "looking like a public urinal". Bullough had it blown up and replaced by a copy of the Parthenon, in which he and his family are buried.
Harris
In the evening there was a ceilidh in the village hall, at which we all made fools of ourselves, being out-danced by 9 year olds. Fiona Guinness, who ran the deer research station at Kilmory, invited us for afternoon tea in her cottage at Kilmory the next day. It turned out to be a beautiful day, warm, sunny and clear, with Skye and the mainland seeming really close. John walked round the coast from Harris, Keith over Fionchra and I had a manic zigzag over all the hills in the Orval range, out to the island's north-west tip and along over the Bloodstone cliffs.
Keith at Kilmory
Fiona had lived on the island studying the deer for 15 years, could recognise all the individuals by names she had given them and had a huge chart of their heredity on her wall. John was most impressed that she offered us a choice of several varieties of tea, including Lapsang Souchong. In the Meet Book "A. Pleb" (probably me) has written "Vile stuff, give me Tetleys any day". Back at Kinloch we had a roaring fire on the beach for our last night, our singing even being applauded at one point by our presumably tone deaf neighbours.
Allival Slab
In the morning I had just enough time to cut round the coast and scramble up Hallival via Allival Slab This gets Diff in the guidebook, but presumably for a more direct version avoiding all the big holds. Then it was back to Mallaig, where we deposited ourselves in the Clachan Bar to wait for the RAC. The tow truck arrived conveniently at closing time and gave us all a lift back south, dropping me off at Tyndrum, Richard in Carlisle and Keith and John at their front doors in Whitehaven and Millom respectively. I stayed in the Highlands for a couple of days but didn't climb anything as the weather was disgusting, hitching back to Birmingham in just over 7 hours for the 350 miles, with less than 15 minutes spent actually hitching 🙂. A brilliant trip despite the unpromising start.
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