There is a way from the gate of Blair in Atholl to Ruthven in Badenoch. Made by David Comyn Earl of Atholl for carts to pass with wine and the way is called Rad na Pheny or Way of Wagon Wheels.
(Old manuscript quoted in Highland Highways: Old Roads in Atholl by John Kerr)
I CAN HEAR the crunch and slosh of Mick’s boots behind me. The rain is teeming down, and grey-black clouds brush the dun-coloured moor, so close you could grab them and wring them out. He pulls up next to me, rain dripping from his hood onto his nose, sniffs and looks around. “One minute I’m in awe, walking an ancient medieval cart track,” he says. “The next minute, I’m thinking ‘Stef, where the hell have you brought us?’”.
It’s a fair cop. This weekend we’ve swapped summits for a near-forgotten highway across the Grampians that for much of its length exists now only as a theoretical line on the map. Autumn rainstorms have arrived too. Right now, high on the moors with miles behind us and miles to go, I’m wondering for the thousandth time why we do these things to ourselves.
And yet, ahead of us, there’s a terrace in the heather, bare and stony in places, that slopes down to cross a burn and faintly traverses the hillside opposite. We’re back on the road. Pale
