Communing with the lonely mountain

Suilven - the lonely mountain. That is actually what 'Suilven' means. Suilven is the huge beehive shaped mountain peering over the hill at the seaside village of Lochinver.

Click here  to watch the trailer of Edie, a brand new movie released the day after we climbed Suilven, to get a bit more of an idea of our walk and climb as my photos do not really convey just how steep it is. The movie is about an 83 year old who climbs Suilven. If she can do it, so can we. The movie director was sitting at the table next to us in the pub in Lochinver when we treated ourselves to a nice meal after our hike to Suilven. He was there for the world premier of Edie the next day, being shown by the Screen machine which is a cinema in a semi-trailer that tours small Scottish villages.

Suilven looked like this at the beginning of our 9.5 km walk to the base of the mountain.

Its shape changed as we got closer.

As we walked toward Suilven we could not see where the track was going to take us. It all looked like a huge vertical wall. Finally we could just make out tiny people on the front of the wall. The track did indeed go almost vertically straight up the centre to the lowest point on the ridge between the two peaks.

It was a real WOW WOW WOW when we made to the top of the ridge. Like Stac Pollaidh the day before, we could see ocean, islands, mountains and hundreds of lochans in all directions and a ridiculous massive great big stone wall stretching about a hundred metres back down each very, very steep side. What the?

Who would do this?

Why? It would have been very difficult and dangerous to build.

Later, we found out that this is a "Destitution wall" It was a pointless task set by the lairds and officials administering the famine relief program in the 1800s. They decided that improverished people should earn their relief. How cruel to make starving people walk 9.5 km from the nearest town, and then drag huge heavy rocks up an incredibly steep slope, often at the mercy of strong winds and bad weather, to build a stupid pointless wall. 

We were lucky, blessed with clear sunny skies and no wind.

We ate our lunch perched on the saddle of Suilven. We decided not to make the final short climb up to the very top as it involved more rock scrambling and we had already done a little bit of scrambling to get this far.

Anyway, the journey is not about conquering the mountain; it is about taking the time to commune.