Dr Rennie McOwan
(1933-2018)
Roly Smith pays tribute to the Champion of access to the Scottish hills
I
t’s a strange fact but my 25-year friendship with
the distinguished Scottish access campaigner
and writer Rennie McOwan, who has died aged
85, began with a heated argument conducted in
an inflatable boat speeding up an icy fjord in Arctic
Svarlbard.
As Rennie and Hamish Brown compared the
surrounding, snow-clad peaks with the ones at home
in the Scottish highlands, the discussion turned to
National Parks for Scotland. As a former National Park
employee and a long-time supporter of the idea, I
found myself at odds with both Rennie and Hamish.
“There’s no need for another level of bureaucracy in
Scotland,” insisted Rennie. “Anyway, the whole of
Scotland is good enough to be a National Park and
should be treated as one.”
But from that initial disagreement sprang a
mutual respect and lasting friendship that I’ll always
treasure. I never needed to mention the fact that
Scotland eventually gained two National Parks (in the
Cairngorms and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs),
because Rennie was also a pragmatist whose undying
love of the Scottish hills and their protection for future
generations was ingrained in his very soul.
“the Percy Unna
of his generation”
It would be no exaggeration to say that Rennie
McOwan was the Percy Unna of his generation, such
was his campaigning zeal for the freedom of access to
the Scottish hills. Percy Unna was a great wilderness
campaigner and generous benefactor to the National
Trust for Scotland in the 1930s, who famously set up
a list of rules which Rennie, as a former Deputy Press
Secretary with the NTS, always strenuously upheld.
The Unna Rules were intended to ensure that
land which was held on behalf of the public should
be preserved for their use in a primitive condition,
without development or active management. Rennie
fell out with the NTS over this principle, notably in
Glencoe, scene of some of Unna’s greatest bequests,
over the construction of the footbridge leading to Coire
Gabhail (the ‘Lost Valley’), and a proposed visitor
centre near the Clachaig Inn.
Rennie, like me, was a journalist by profession,
starting as a cub reporter with the Stirling Journal
before moving on to The Scotsman as a sub-editor and
later Scottish Desk Editor at the age of 23. He regularly
contributed to Scottish newspapers and magazines,
notably The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, and the Scots
Magazine. He was a founder member of The Scotsman
Mountaineering Club, now the Ptarmigan Club, of
Edinburgh.
He later became president of Ramblers Scotland,
appropriately in the year that the Scottish Parliament
passed what is widely regarded as some of the finest
access legislation in the world with the Land Reform
Act (Scotland), 2003. Rennie had played a key role in
8 Outdoor focus | winter 2018
A smiling Rennie as he’ll always be remembered, pictured on a
boat in Svarlbard (John Cleare, Mountain Camera)
getting that legislation onto the Statute Book.
Rennie was a prolific author of more than 15 mainly
historical and children’s books, and his Light on
Dumyat (1982), an adventure by a group of youngsters
called The Clan and set on the 1,375ft western rampart
of his native Ochils, was a particular favourite. One
reviewer sagely commented that The Clan “could
outwit the Famous Five any day of the week.”
In 1996, Rennie was awarded an honorary doctorate
by Stirling University, where he lectured in film
and media studies, for his contribution to Scottish
literature and culture. He was awarded the Provost
of Stirling’s Civic Award for Arts and Culture, and in
1992, was the founder of the Friends of the Ochils.
The late Walt Unsworth, president of the Guild,
presented Rennie with the Guild’s coveted Golden
Eagle award at our annual dinner at the Moat House
Hotel in Harrogate in 1997. Always the proud Scot,
Rennie turned up in a kilt in the McOwan tartan.
Typically, in his acceptance speech, Rennie appealed
for the Guild to set up a working group to look into the
whole question of access to the countryside of Britain.
Rennie always took a keen interest in introducing
young people to the hills and regularly visited schools
and colleges as a lecturer under the Scottish Arts
Council’s ‘Writers in Schools’ and ‘Writers in Public’
schemes.