Perimeter
Quintin Lake nears breaking point as the wind and rain obstruct his epic photo walk
Quintin’s photo walk becomes ever more gnarly as he reaches his breaking point
Each gnarly peninsula of the rough bounds, I’m learning, is more remote and rugged than the last. By the time I reach Knoydart, the weather becomes wilder, in harmony with the increasing drama of the landscape. The elements decide when I can take a photo, not me. When the weather softens enough to let me take a photo the subject is sublime: mountains, mist and vertiginous terrain, like a Caspar David Friedrich painting.
I meet Tom McLean, adventurer, transatlantic rower and former SAS soldier: he invites me in for tea on
the way to Mallaig. He unfolds a map on his kitchen table and outlines the best route to his survival school in Ardintigh. “Bash on, go steady, you’ll be fine,” he says warmly, with a firm handshake. Next day I descend the rough ground to Ardintigh after dark, where Tom greets me with a curt “We’d given up on you a couple of hours ago, but I suppose you’re not in a hurry”. Later on, I discover the last guys who came this way were so exhausted they had to help them take their packs off.
”So you’re the torch guy.” says a man in Inverie. “We watched your light for a bit coming down the mountain to check you were OK, and then we decided to go to bed!” There’s another chap with his foot in a cast: ”I injured myself at the cèilidh last week”.
In the pouring rain at Inverguseran Farm, I’m invited in for tea by the shepherdess Anna Wilson, who shows me her fine pencil drawings as her grandmother places a towel below my chair to stem the pool of rainwater spreading below me. “Oh, don’t you worry, this is a working kitchen!”
I’ve just enjoyed a coffee in my tent to discover a juicy, highly caffeinated, slug curled around the bottom of the mug. When I try to walk, the force of the wind pushes me to my knees on the path. I’m so weary I have to have to psych myself up to climb the last deer fence by torchlight. I wake at 1am with an itch on my waist, where I remove an engorged tick surrounded by a rash.
Five more days go by, in a blur of cold and wet. Each night, I pour water out of my boots before getting into the sleeping bag. After strong gale-force winds and heavy rain my tent starts to leak, so I cover my sleeping bag with my jacket to protect it. I pack up as much as I can, in case the tent collapses in the middle of the night. I write in my diary at 3am: “If it gets any harder, I can’t go on.”