ACTIVE OUTDOORS: Author Cameron McNeish is still mixing politics with pleasure – on and off the hills

A lifelong passion for the hills of Scotland has seen Cameron McNeish enjoy a successful career in writing, editing and broadcasting about the subject of the ‘outdoors’.

The 73-year-old has plenty of stories to share about his various adventures – and misadventures – over the years, but his enthusiasm is as fresh as a pair of new walking boots.

Having only recently recovered from an operation on his toes which has allowed him to reacquaint himself with the hills he had been separated from for too long – something he describes as akin to a bereavement – McNeish has enjoyed trawling through decades’ worth of newspaper and magazine articles for his latest and last instalment of his autobiography.

One section of the book focuses on the long walk in, something quite personal to McNeish.

“I quite like peaks that require a long walk in, and I often think back – and it wasn’t that long ago – when the public road here in the Cairngorms stopped at Coylumbridge, and that was then the walk into the Cairngorms,” he says.

“I thought how wonderful that is, to go through the forest and then you see the trees getting more stunted as you go higher, then go through that alpine zone and the arctic-alpine zone and then on to the big plateaux; it just seems holistic in many ways – instead of getting out of a car at 2500ft!”

McNeish has long argued – often through his weekly columns in the Strathy which he wrote for 32 years – to retain the wild feel of the Cairngorms, including criticising the funicular railway which is still experiencing problems to this day, as well as successfully campaigning against extending the current skiing area with a new shuttle road across the front of the magnificent Northern Corries in the 1970s and early 80s.

The value of wild land – not untouched by human hand but far enough removed from the day-to-day comforts and developments as to give an experience of self-reliance and sustainability to the hill walker or mountaineer – is understood by many of us who love the outdoors.

It’s something that has become more widely talked about in society since the pandemic with the vital contribution the outdoors makes to people’s wellbeing and mental health. Wild spaces are not a luxury for many of us; they are vital to our mental health – and the long walk in to a remote peak many miles from the nearest public road is all part of that.

“It’s great that we still have areas of Scotland that we can do that,” says McNeish. “Knoydart is a good example if you walk in from Kinlochhourn – it’s a fabulous walk along Loch Hourn to Barisdale and then onto Ladhar Bheinn and the other hills.”

It’s for this reason that McNeish, a former editor of The Great Outdoors magazine, is keen to point out that writing on the outdoors is about more than describing routes – it covers everything from wildlife and nature to history and politics.

He explains: “I had a dreadful job when I edited TGO for 25 years with people getting angry with me for writing about politics. OK, we took a left-wing stance in The Great Outdoors. But people would say politics doesn’t have a place in the outdoors – well, it has to. You can’t get away from that, because in many ways we can’t do what we want to do unless the politics is on our side.”

McNeish is one of a number of prominent figures in the outdoors world who have fought over many years for that side, and he continues to criticise where he sees fit today – including directing fury towards Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park’s camping bans and government handouts for new foresting schemes he claims will lead to further ‘reconiferisation’ of swathes of land as well as access-blocking fencing schemes.

He says looking back over his articles for the past 40 years, he’s been writing about the same topics and feels a certain level of frustration that many of the issues remain unresolved. Even the access issue, he argues, is something we need to continue to fight for, despite legislation giving us arguably the best access laws in the world.

“We got the Land Reform Act through in 2003, and I remember the night before the legislation was launched, we had a bit of a party in Edinburgh,” he says from his home in Newtonmore.

“Some of the politicians came along and I remember Dave Morris – who at the time was director of Ramblers Scotland – stood up and he said, look, this is really just the beginning. The battle is now starting – look for a kickback from landowners in the future, they’ll try and get this overruled in the future. And that is exactly what is happening now.

“I think a lot of this has come from Loch Lomond national park. It’s so ironic that the first big obstruction to the Land Reform Act came from the office bearers of one of our national parks in what they did with the camping ban.”

However, his main concern is over climate change and our willingness as a species to tackle the emergency situation we are in. He has faith in scientists to help but says we need politicians and individuals to make changes to our current lifestyles – from what we eat and where we holiday to how we travel.

“I think we do all have a personal responsibility – get on your bike, don’t just hop in the car to go to the paper shop,” McNeish says. “All these issues are important, I think.”

Asked if he still has hope for the future, he adds: “I have faith, I think things will come good.

“The most wonderful thing of all is our mountains remain immutable and really kind of unchanging – sure, lots of things change, the forestry on their flanks changes and footpaths get more eroded, but fundamentally our hills and mountains stay the same.”

However, with a word of warning, he says: “We live in this world of the selfie – go up a hill, take a selfie at the summit, put it online and go off. But so many people who go up the hills have got to start thinking deeper about the mountains. That’s what I’ve tried to do in this book, just delve a bit more deeply into some of these issues and how we can make sure our youngsters can get the same benefits we’ve had.”

• An Eye To The Hills by Cameron McNeish, published by Sandstone Press, was released on October 20, priced £24.99 (hardback). www.sandstonepress.com