A Cairngorm Chronicle
Before dawn on a June day in 1904, three young men set off from the Shelter Stone, where they had rested after descending from Cairn Gorm the night before. By the time they reached the Dell of Rothiemurchus at the end of the day, they had covered thirty-eight miles and climbed 9,300 feet and nine Munros. Such a feat is still a major achievement today but at the time it was almost unheard of.
A F Whyte’s account of that long Edwardian summer’s day forms a major part of A Cairngorm Chronicle. Other chapters recall other outings, with digressions into history and the subtleties of the Gaelic language.
At its best it gives us writing which lights up the landscape … and a clear and sturdy sense of place, reinforced by Whyte’s wide-ranging and apposite literary allusions. Perhaps most seductively of all, it affords us a glimpse into a world long-gone and innocent pleasures now too rarely appreciated—a world which is not a literary or historical construct but the very centre of one man’s lifelong passion.
Val Randall, The Alpine Journal 2008
Fred Whyte was born and educated in Edinburgh, elected Liberal MP for Perth in 1910, appointed president of the Legislative Assembly of India in 1920 and had a long and distinguished career as a journalist and lecturer. He put A Cairngorm Chronicle together in the 1940s from writings and memories spanning half a century. The MS was found after his death by his daughter Anne but not published until this Millrace edition in 2007.
- cover
- hardback
- dimensions
- 170x120mm, xviii + 158 pp, b&w drawings
- ISBN
- 978 1 902173 238