Council file · L-01 · Lairs of note

The Hollow Mountain

Every villain wants a lair inside a mountain. Scotland built one in the 1960s, a kilometre inside Ben Cruachan on Loch Awe, and it makes electricity. The Council has a file on it. It is a file of admiration, not a plan.

The Cruachan dam: a long concrete buttress dam across a green corrie high on Ben Cruachan, with a pylon in front — The only part of the Hollow Mountain you can see from the hill: the dam. Picture: raining girl, CC BY 3.0, cropped.

This file is in two halves. The first half is real, with its sources at the bottom, and you can go and see it. The second half is the Council’s. Villain Con has nothing to do with the power station or the people who run it. The Council just admires it from a distance.

The real mountain

Cruachan is a power station built inside Ben Cruachan, the highest mountain in Argyll at 1,126 metres, on the banks of Loch Awe. From outside you can see two things: a dam high on the mountain, and an office block by the loch. Everything else is inside.

A road tunnel a kilometre long slopes down into the rock. At the bottom is the machine hall, a cavern about 90 metres long and 36 metres high: big enough, says the guidebook, to hold a seven-storey building standing on a full-size football pitch. Its floor is 36 metres below the level of the loch. The rock that came out was tipped into Loch Awe, and the visitor centre stands on the new ground.

Looking out of the mouth of the Cruachan tunnel: a round concrete arch framing a green hillside, a strip of loch and blue sky — The way in, looking out: the mouth of the tunnel in 1968. Picture: Alan Reid, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped.

It was built in the early 1960s and opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 15 October 1965. The men who dug it were known as the Tunnel Tigers. Thirty-six men died building the power station and its dam.

The loop

Cruachan is a pumped-storage station, one of four in Britain. When the country has electricity to spare, its four machines run backwards as pumps and lift water out of Loch Awe, up through the mountain, into the reservoir behind the dam. When the country needs power, the water falls back down through the same machines, makes electricity on the way, and goes back into the loch. Then it goes up again. It has been doing this since 1965.

Looking down from the top of Ben Cruachan on the dark Cruachan reservoir in its corrie, with Loch Awe and its islands beyond — Both ends of the loop: the reservoir on the mountain, and Loch Awe beyond it. Picture: Scott Cormie, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped.

From a standstill, each machine reaches full power in two minutes. Kept spinning in air, ready, it takes seconds. Before it pumps, each one is spun up to speed by a pony motor of 10,000 horsepower. Where the water comes back out into the loch, screens stop fish being drawn into the power station.

The loop: Every day since 1965. Nobody has asked it to stop.
The speed: Full power in two minutes. The Council takes longer than that to post a notice.
The pony motors: The power of the horse, ten thousand times over, a kilometre inside a mountain. The Resistance of Justice Society has been informed. It has not replied.
The screens: Hammerhead has asked which half of him they apply to.

The legend on the wall

Ben Cruachan has a story older than the power station. The Cailleach Bheur, the Old Hag of the Ridges, guarded a spring at the top of the mountain. Every sundown she covered it with a slab of stone, and every sunrise she lifted the slab away. One evening she fell asleep. The spring overflowed, the water rushed down the mountain and burst out to the sea through the Pass of Brander, and the flood drowned the valley below. That, says the legend, is how Loch Awe was made. The Cailleach was turned to stone, and she sits high on the mountain above the Pass of Brander to this day.

Her story is on the wall of the machine hall, in a mural by the artist Elizabeth Falconer.

The Pass of Brander from the Cruachan visitor centre: the loch running away between steep wooded hills, a picnic table on the grass in front — The Pass of Brander, where the flood went through, from the visitor centre. Picture: Colin Park, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped.

The Council’s reading: a guardian did the same thing at sundown and at sunrise, every day, in a loop. She fell asleep once and made a loch. Now machines do her job inside the mountain, and the guidebook calls it the mountain that never sleeps. Villain Con 26 told you to stay asleep. The Council would like it known that it read the legend afterwards.

Kilchurn

At the north-east end of the loch, on a rocky point, is Kilchurn Castle, built around 1450 by Sir Colin Campbell, 1st of Glenorchy. In 1760 it was struck by lightning. The top of one of its turrets came off and landed upside down in the courtyard, and it is still lying there. The castle was abandoned, and it was a ruin by 1770. Turner painted it on one of his tours of Scotland, with the mountains of Cruachan behind.

“Cruachan!” is the battle cry of the Campbells. The Council does not have a battle cry. It has notices.

The Council approves of a castle that leaves things where they land. Hammerhead would like it known that on Day 4 he did not land. He dived.

The Lord of the Loch

When he is at Loch Awe, Lord Kris Adams goes by the Lord of the Loch. The title is unofficial. The loch has not been consulted. It is 41 kilometres from end to end, the longest freshwater loch in Scotland, with ruined castles on its islands and a power station in its mountain.

Lair: The Hollow Mountain, Ben Cruachan, Loch Awe.
Status: Occupied. By a power station, since 1965.
As a venue: Ruled out. It has a visitor centre and a café. The Council regards a café as cheating.
Admired for: One dam, one office block, and behind them a cavern you could stand a seven-storey building in. Running in a loop since before the Council started counting.
The Lord of the Loch: Lord Kris Adams, at Loch Awe. Unofficial. The loch has not replied.
Instructions: Admire it from the visitor centre. Leave the machines alone. This is a file, not a plan.

The Beast of Loch Awe

Loch Awe has a monster of its own: the Beathach Mòr, the Great Beast. The folklorist John Gregorson Campbell wrote that it had twelve legs and could be heard in winter, breaking the ice. Some said it was like a horse, others like a large eel.

Hammerhead has applied for the part. Casting have asked about the legs. He has asked them how many they think he needs. They have also pointed out that Loch Awe is fresh water. He says it is wetter than the Sahara. See his casting file.

Going there

The Hollow Mountain is real, and you can go. The Cruachan visitor centre on Loch Awe is open, with an exhibition and a café. Guided tours into the mountain are suspended until 2028 while the station is upgraded, so check Visit Cruachan before you set off. Kilchurn Castle is in the care of Historic Environment Scotland and is open in summer.

Sources

Cruachan: The Hollow Mountain, the station’s guidebook: the legend, the machine hall, the loop and the pony motors.
Visit Cruachan: history: the Tunnel Tigers and the opening. Drax: Cruachan Power Station.
Wikipedia: Cruachan Power Station, Ben Cruachan, Loch Awe, Kilchurn Castle, Scottish loch-monsters.
Pictures from Wikimedia Commons, each credited under the picture.