Litter is a problem on many hills but how copious amounts of broken glass finds its way onto Scotland's summits is something of a mystery and a nuisance according to Dave Hewitt.
A fair bit has been written about litter on the hill but I'm not sure that much has ever been said about a particular - and particularly nasty - form of litter broken glass. This is something which annoys me most summers and has been on my mind again this past week, so I need space for a cathartic chunter.
As I've mentioned before, as well as occasionally heading off for "new" hills here and there, I'm also out on my most handy hills, the Ochils, pretty much once a week. Quite aside from never remotely tiring of the place, going back to the same hills again and again serves to keep the legs moderately fit and the head moderately straight.
I mention this because one by-product of regular visits to the same chunk of high ground is that subtle changes tend to be noticed. Often these are happy things: the first - and then the last - snowfall of the winter, the return of the summer birds, the sudden burgeoning of the flowers, the gradual drying-out of the paths as the summer settles in (although not this year).
Other details relate directly to human traffic on the hill. Mornings are seen to be busier than afternoons (and both are habitually busier than the near-deserted summer evenings). Weekends are of course busier than weekdays; likewise there is a sudden increase once Easter and BST arrive (although a crisp winter's day often seems more populous than its summer equivalent, with the same number of walkers squeezed into a shorter span of daylight and therefore much more likely to cross each other's path).
What is certainly the case is that the amount of litter left on the hill radically increases during the summer months. It's a moot point whether this is due simply to the greater number of walkers or because some of these walkers are ignorant of the basic hill etiquette of taking rubbish back down to the trashcans of the fleshpots. The evidence is that winter walkers, for whatever reason, are a far tidier crew than their summer-only colleagues.
In summer, in settled weather, I don't often take a rucksack on to the Ochils - the going is so good that even a substantial walk over several tops rarely takes more than four hours and I prefer to travel as light as is sensibly possible. So no sack - just a big bumbag (not that I have a big bum, I hasten to add) - and quite often no cagoule, just a trackie top. But if conditions are iffier and I do take a sack, then I try to remember to shove a spare carrier bag inside, a handy depository for the often muddy and mucky litter found along the way.
Mostly this takes the form of crisp packets (at least those which haven't blown clean off the hill), along with bottles and cans. The bulkiest item is the ever-popular two-litre Pepsi, Coke or Irn-Bru plastic bottle, a stupid and energy-deficient thing to take up the hill in the first place in my opinion. Once empty, this tends to be lobbed into just the kind of tussocky off-track terrain where I tend to find myself in search of shortcuts.
Bringing such stuff back down is routine hill tidying and is at least quick and easy to do. It's an obligation and I'm happy to oblige. Glass is a different - and more fiddly - matter. I'd be interested to know if a similar situation pertains around the summits of other popular hills but on Ben Cleuch, in summer, the ground for a substantial radius around the cairn is liable to be a-glint with small shards of broken bottles.
From time to time, maybe once every couple of months, I spend time picking this up - and so it was one fine evening last week. I set off from Tillicoultry for a quick blast round the ridges, intending a keep-moving circuit of the Law, Ben Cleuch and Whum Hill (the spur between the Law and Andrew Gannel Hill - a neglected but pleasant way on/off). It's hard to know whether I'd eaten a dodgy curry the night before or was simply tired but for once the ascent felt like a slog and by the time Ben Cleuch was reached I'd decided against anything more than a quick descent into the Daiglen (another neglected place - why do people stick to two or three main routes even on sprawling, interestingly beneuked hills such as Ben Cleuch?)
Conditions made it easy to linger on top rather than dash off - a summit-skimming layer of cloud had blown through on the final approach, giving silhouette light effects and then it cleared for the duration. The sun emerged, the central-belt towns switched on their windscreens and glasshouses, the patchwork of fields brightened to yellows and greens and the summer birds emerged - the larks bobbling atop tall columns of song and the high-plateau swifts swooping and banking at speed. Great.
Less great was the scattering of glass beside the cairn, so after a drink and a look at the view I decided to pick up a few bits and bag them. Forty minutes later I was still at it, having moved from the immediate surrounds of the cairn and the view indicator to a gravelly section just to the east where an extraordinary amount of glass was scattered. As I say, I'd had sessions like this before but never quite so sustained. Once started, it was like weeding the garden - just when the task seemed complete, another intruder would catch the eye, and another, and another.
The time of day helped - by crouching down and scuttling about, most of the glass could be easily seen as it glinted in the low evening light. It was also oddly satisfying, as any sustained session of tidying tends to be (although try telling that to my house manager when she complains about the semi-discarded, half-worn clothes heaped in the corner of the bedroom). By the end, I'd filled half a Tesco bag with fragments, then double-bagged them for safety when carting back downhill.
Almost all were tiny pieces, the largest maybe one third of a base of a vodka bottle. Insofar as I could tell, the bits came mostly from spirit bottles - possibly whisky, certainly some green gin glass - along with the ubiquitous 10p-return Irn Bru bottles. The tiny fragments were more unsightly than dangerous - although some animal could easily have ingested them - but the larger bits were sharp-edged and often trampled into the muddy soil of the summit area. As such, they were ripe for being sat on, or for finding their way into someone's hand. Or indeed their foot - I know of one Tillicoultry resident with a fondness for running across the tops sans shoes of a summer's evening. If I helped his cause last Thursday evening, then I did a good thing.
Quite how long the glass had been there was hard to tell. Some was very recent - I habitually bring down large pieces whenever I see them, as surely do other walkers - but various of the smaller bits, those needing to be prised out of the mud, could have lain for months, even years. Even decades, perhaps, along with the glass was one of those old-style ringpulls, the kind that came away from the can and used to be collected for charity by Blue Peter. When did they stop being made?
Anyway, it was a good way to spend a sunny evening and, as they say, it needed doing. It is also, I fear, a never-ending task. The Forth Bridge is visible from the top of Ben Cleuch and glass-clearing is akin to painting the Queensferry girders. I was back on the hill on Monday, four days after the hoovering session and already some new glass had been deposited by scatterers unknown. Maybe they see it as art.
All of which brings us to the question of who actually leaves glass on hilltops. Idiots obviously but who? A bloke who passed by last Thursday suggested it was young kids but I'm not so sure. Certainly a lot of the crisp-packet/chocolate-wrapper detritus strewn down in the glens and Hillfoot gorges is courtesy of kids but by and large they are too lazy/apathetic/fearful to stray above the 200m contour. In years of Ochils tramping I've seen hardly any children or even teenagers on the tops and certainly none unaccompanied by parents or guardians. This in itself is somewhat depressing, as previous generations were much more given to yomping around on mini-explorations than are their be-Playstationed, satellite-dished, McDonald's-nourished successors.
No, I'd say that glass is scattered by middle-aged men who haven't bothered to switch their brains on. Not only that, I'd guess that they're always up there in twos or threes. Peer pressure is a massive thing and whereas a solo swigger would probably take his bottle back down the hill again, when two or three are gathered together the strong temptation must be to come over all macho and bottle smashing.
The oddest thing is that these people are completely invisible - I've never seen anyone do it, nor have I ever heard Nick Lowe's favourite sound tinkling across the glen as I approach. Never mind the Brocken Spectre - Ben Cleuch is the domain of the Broken Glass Spectre. Quite what I'd do if I did catch anyone at it is a concern. Chances are I'd be too timorous to say anything, for fear of receiving a punch in the pus. My order of preferences in such matters runs thus: (1) they just stop doing it unprompted, problem solved; (2) they still do it but people such as me quietly tidy up after them; (3) we get into a big unseemly rammy about it all.
One final thought - and surely the stupidest aspect of this whole stupid business. Presumably if interrogated as to their motives, the smashers would say that bottles are broken once empty to save on weight for the downhill leg. But an empty bottle is lighter than the full one that they've just lugged all the way uphill against gravity. Why not drink the stuff at the bottom, smash the bottle somewhere appropriate (alley, gapsite or - preferably - bottlebank) and just leave the hill out of it?
Dave Hewitt
18/7/2002
Oh, and a note to the mountain biker who evidently suffered a puncture near the top of Ben Cleuch and flung the old inner tube into the grass where s/he thought no one would find it - you're as bad as the glass smashers.
Dave can be contacted at dave.hewitt@dial.pipex.com
