HE FIRST TIME I heard of Aonach Eagach (‘the notched ridge’) was in the bar of the Manchester Arms, which used to stand on the corner of Wellington Road and Petersgate in Stockport. I’d tail along there on Thursday nights throughout my teens in the hope of a lift at the weekend to somewhere interesting. Usually these lifts were to the Mynydd Mountaineering Club’s cottage in Crafnant – a cosy little den often thronging with boozy old idlers (though not all of them by any means were thus!). But one Hogmanay, I struck lucky and was offered a place in an old side-valve Ford Anglia
