Steps (and quotes) to Loch Enoch (and back)
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Those of you who know me, or have read Discovering Crockett’s Galloway (Volume 1) will know that my love of Crockett’s work stems partly from the landscape, and my personal challenges in attempting to get into that landscape. Without wanting to go back over all ground, I shall briefly say that I first came to Crockett through Walking in the Galloway Hills by Paddy Dillon, in 1996. At that time, getting out into the Galloway hills was first my firm intention, and rapidly became an impossible dream.
I am happy to report that more than two decades later, and in no small part thanks to The Galloway Raiders, I have now achieved several of my Crockett/landscape related dreams - and less than a month ago, I completed my greatest challenge - to get to Loch Enoch (and back) in one piece.
‘‘Loch Enoch is the goal of our desire. For nights past we have dreamed of its lonely fastnesses.’
This quote became very important to me over the years, and last year I attempted (and failed) to follow Crockett’s route from Glenhead to Loch Enoch as a personal commemoration of the 125th anniversary of their first journey.
Was it in a cave in the Galloway hills that Robert the Bruce had his encounter with a spider? I took the message to heart and I tried again. (All the time prepared to follow Samuel Beckett’s advice ‘fail better’) But I succeeded. I have held the silver sand. I have paddled in the Loch (on the warmest, most beautiful Galloway day I think I’ve ever known.)
This adventure was quite a challenge for me - even taking the ‘easy’ route. But now having added it to the tally of my trips to Glenhead, and Back Hill o’ the Bush, it is not going to be my last Crocketteering Adventure. Now I have seen The Sheil of the Dungeon (from afar), I harbour some hope that I will get up (or down) the Nick o’ the Dungeon and maybe even see the Wolf’s Slock for myself. And I will, if at all possible, be back to Loch Enoch more than once before I am 60.
All of this is possible not just because of Crockett’s writing, but because of the friendship and cameraderie of others with an interest in Crockett’s writing and the natural beauty of Galloway (the two things really do go obviously together). I can confirm that: ‘Enoch is held up to the firmament as upon a dandling palm of granite rock by Nature’ is not an exercise in hyperbole, but a fair and accurate description.
My own ascent via the Pulscaig Burn can be paralleled in this following passage where Crockett reports McMillan as saying: ‘‘I will show you a new world.’ He strides on, a very sturdy Columbus. The new world comes upon us, and one of great marvel it is. At first the haze somewhat hides it—so high are we that we seem to be on the roof of the Southern Creation—riding on the rigging of all things, as indeed we are. Half-a-dozen steps and ‘There's Loch Enoch!’ says Columbus, with a pretty taste in climax.’
Like Juliana in Silver Sand… I can say:
She had not dreamed of finding anything so fair in this high wilderness of moor and mountain. So she went down to walk by the waterside, fearing (as all must who look upon Enoch from a distance) that such beauty must vanish into nothingness, as when one walks towards the end of a rainbow.’
It took two Macmillans to get me to Loch Enoch. Thanks are due to Galloway ‘herds’ (or ‘sherpas’ as we jokingly call them) Mark Hannay and Allan Wright who took time off work and helped me (sometimes literally) every step of the way, I have seen ‘a new world’. They showed me it. It was a life-enhancing and life-changing experience. One I will never forget. One I will always be grateful to have achieved. And one I can now revisit in Crockett’s spectacular fiction as well as in my own, less spectacular photographs. As he said in Raiderland:
‘In making the journey to Enoch, fatiguing enough in any case, the beauty of hill and water is so amazing that the traveller (if he takes my advice) will see as much as he can, draw, photograph, observe, and—read all about it in the next copy of ‘The Raiders’ which comes under his hand.’
There are of course other Crockett works which pay tribute to Loch Enoch including Men of the Moss Hags and the other works in the Raiders Trilogy.
While we almost expected to bump into Crockett and Macmillan over the brow of each hill, I can also confirm that:
Probably no part of the Highlands is so free from the presence of mankind as these Southern uplands of Galloway, and
'in the summer weather, there is ever a sense up there that somehow heaven is near, and the evil things of the earth remote. ‘Not with change of sky changes the mind of man,’ saith the ancient. But where Enoch is held up to the firmament as upon a dandling palm of granite rock by Nature, the Great Mother, the souls of men seem insensibly to grow larger and simpler, if not conspicuously wiser.'
My final point, should it need to be stated, is that reading has many unanticipated benefits. If one goes beyond the text and uses stories as a start point for exploration, friendship and learning on a deeper level, it can entirely transform your life. In a good way. In the past five years I have invested a lot of time, money and energy into The Galloway Raiders. On 27th June 2019 I knew beyond all doubt that it was all worth while! That is a realisation I shall hold on to.
'Such was Loch Enoch as we saw it. And the sight has remained in my mind, from which so many things more important have utterly faded.’
My adventure involved laying two commemorative slates at Loch Enoch (one ‘in’ the Loch to be more specific) and you can share in the #GoCrocketteering adventure by laying, or finding, some of the 160 slates which are now spreading across Galloway in The Galloway Raiders 160th commemorative grassroots literary tourism project. To find out more head for the #GoCrocketteering page on this website.
Cally Phillips, July 2019.
Those of you who know me, or have read Discovering Crockett’s Galloway (Volume 1) will know that my love of Crockett’s work stems partly from the landscape, and my personal challenges in attempting to get into that landscape. Without wanting to go back over all ground, I shall briefly say that I first came to Crockett through Walking in the Galloway Hills by Paddy Dillon, in 1996. At that time, getting out into the Galloway hills was first my firm intention, and rapidly became an impossible dream.
I am happy to report that more than two decades later, and in no small part thanks to The Galloway Raiders, I have now achieved several of my Crockett/landscape related dreams - and less than a month ago, I completed my greatest challenge - to get to Loch Enoch (and back) in one piece.
‘‘Loch Enoch is the goal of our desire. For nights past we have dreamed of its lonely fastnesses.’
This quote became very important to me over the years, and last year I attempted (and failed) to follow Crockett’s route from Glenhead to Loch Enoch as a personal commemoration of the 125th anniversary of their first journey.
Was it in a cave in the Galloway hills that Robert the Bruce had his encounter with a spider? I took the message to heart and I tried again. (All the time prepared to follow Samuel Beckett’s advice ‘fail better’) But I succeeded. I have held the silver sand. I have paddled in the Loch (on the warmest, most beautiful Galloway day I think I’ve ever known.)
This adventure was quite a challenge for me - even taking the ‘easy’ route. But now having added it to the tally of my trips to Glenhead, and Back Hill o’ the Bush, it is not going to be my last Crocketteering Adventure. Now I have seen The Sheil of the Dungeon (from afar), I harbour some hope that I will get up (or down) the Nick o’ the Dungeon and maybe even see the Wolf’s Slock for myself. And I will, if at all possible, be back to Loch Enoch more than once before I am 60.
All of this is possible not just because of Crockett’s writing, but because of the friendship and cameraderie of others with an interest in Crockett’s writing and the natural beauty of Galloway (the two things really do go obviously together). I can confirm that: ‘Enoch is held up to the firmament as upon a dandling palm of granite rock by Nature’ is not an exercise in hyperbole, but a fair and accurate description.
My own ascent via the Pulscaig Burn can be paralleled in this following passage where Crockett reports McMillan as saying: ‘‘I will show you a new world.’ He strides on, a very sturdy Columbus. The new world comes upon us, and one of great marvel it is. At first the haze somewhat hides it—so high are we that we seem to be on the roof of the Southern Creation—riding on the rigging of all things, as indeed we are. Half-a-dozen steps and ‘There's Loch Enoch!’ says Columbus, with a pretty taste in climax.’
Like Juliana in Silver Sand… I can say:
She had not dreamed of finding anything so fair in this high wilderness of moor and mountain. So she went down to walk by the waterside, fearing (as all must who look upon Enoch from a distance) that such beauty must vanish into nothingness, as when one walks towards the end of a rainbow.’
It took two Macmillans to get me to Loch Enoch. Thanks are due to Galloway ‘herds’ (or ‘sherpas’ as we jokingly call them) Mark Hannay and Allan Wright who took time off work and helped me (sometimes literally) every step of the way, I have seen ‘a new world’. They showed me it. It was a life-enhancing and life-changing experience. One I will never forget. One I will always be grateful to have achieved. And one I can now revisit in Crockett’s spectacular fiction as well as in my own, less spectacular photographs. As he said in Raiderland:
‘In making the journey to Enoch, fatiguing enough in any case, the beauty of hill and water is so amazing that the traveller (if he takes my advice) will see as much as he can, draw, photograph, observe, and—read all about it in the next copy of ‘The Raiders’ which comes under his hand.’
There are of course other Crockett works which pay tribute to Loch Enoch including Men of the Moss Hags and the other works in the Raiders Trilogy.
While we almost expected to bump into Crockett and Macmillan over the brow of each hill, I can also confirm that:
Probably no part of the Highlands is so free from the presence of mankind as these Southern uplands of Galloway, and
'in the summer weather, there is ever a sense up there that somehow heaven is near, and the evil things of the earth remote. ‘Not with change of sky changes the mind of man,’ saith the ancient. But where Enoch is held up to the firmament as upon a dandling palm of granite rock by Nature, the Great Mother, the souls of men seem insensibly to grow larger and simpler, if not conspicuously wiser.'
My final point, should it need to be stated, is that reading has many unanticipated benefits. If one goes beyond the text and uses stories as a start point for exploration, friendship and learning on a deeper level, it can entirely transform your life. In a good way. In the past five years I have invested a lot of time, money and energy into The Galloway Raiders. On 27th June 2019 I knew beyond all doubt that it was all worth while! That is a realisation I shall hold on to.
'Such was Loch Enoch as we saw it. And the sight has remained in my mind, from which so many things more important have utterly faded.’
My adventure involved laying two commemorative slates at Loch Enoch (one ‘in’ the Loch to be more specific) and you can share in the #GoCrocketteering adventure by laying, or finding, some of the 160 slates which are now spreading across Galloway in The Galloway Raiders 160th commemorative grassroots literary tourism project. To find out more head for the #GoCrocketteering page on this website.
Cally Phillips, July 2019.