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IAN HAS A TIME WARP

We all drove down to the end of Dave's massively long run out where Diana and Ian were to meet us, having returned from Cairngorm. The car was needed for me to take Rob and John up Glen Muick. I went off and phoned Molly who had been taking a stream of messages all day so that Tony could ring in and monitor progress. She had heard nothing since Ian had reported his finish. As time advanced and Dave's arrival seemed imminent, Pippa had decided that she would drive Rob to his start. If they did not appear, the mothership would have to take over.

When Dave finished, he was rather unhappy to see Pippa driving off, but the mothership would have taken much longer.

Ian writes:

I handed the baton over to Ed on that windy col below Cairngorm and made vain attempts to retrieve the scattered remains of the gear that Ed had brought up. Indeed by the time I had rather untidily stuffed all these contents into my rucsac I was chilled to the very marrow by the clutching fingers of the icy blast. The euphoria of my excellent run was now fading into a numb reality intensified by the biting cold.

I wasted no time and paced off down the ridge to where Diana was waiting below in her state of deep slumber. By the time I reached the Coire Cas car park, the combination of cold, sore feet and drained energy had reduced my pace to a clumsy stumble.

Diana supplied me with welcome cups of coffee and we drove off towards Aviemore. Soon however I realised that I could endure no more without some sleep so I enjoyed several hours of slumbering bliss as we parked by the shores of Loch Morlich. That morning time seemed to have little meaning to us both as we meandered through the next few hours at Aviemore. Sleep by Loch Morlich was followed by several hours of entertainment which combined several forms of pleasure from eating a mammoth breakfast to window shopping and reading the morning papers … such are the trappings of civilisation.

I had a memorable shower in the Coylumbridge Hotel where I announced rather casually to the reception staff that “I have just run over from Deeside all through the night and need a wash.” This feat meant little to the staff however and after not a little persuasion it was decided to indulge me free of charge. In the shower room I met a fellow bather who seemed much more receptive when I expanded on the details of the relay. He was so impressed that he made a special trip to his locker and handed me a generous offering … surely a first in fund-raising terms, the taking of money from a naked man in a shower.

By the time the excesses of the morning had been fully indulged, Diana and I suddenly began to be acquainted with the concepts of real time and realised that we had better get a move on as the car would soon be needed for the next section of the relay at Mount Keen and Lochnagar. As time slipped by with the miles our metal chariot sped us over the long and convoluted route to Deesaide via Tomintoul and the Lecht. We were beginning to get carried away with ourselves again enjoying the combined atmosphere of piped car music and the beauties of the Scottish landscape.

We were jolted free from this state of carefree casual indifference when greeted at the mothership with anguished cries of “Where were you?” and “We were about to phone the police.” Apparently time had floated by twice as fast for the rest of the team than it had for us that morning, although I doubt if explanations of the concept of relative time would have been appreciated at that particular moment. Anyway apologies were in order and my and Diana's apparent relapse was soon forgotten as despite our late arrival disaster was averted with Pippa's car being used to ferry Rob and the baton up to Loch Muick for his excursion out to Mount Keen.

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