Hill Log
Wilderness Untamed
Twenty-six hours in the Great Wilderness of Fisherfield
I often find myself wondering why I climb hills, why I’m not prepared to enjoy normal holidays which involve pottering around pretty towns, lying on the beach, or visiting theme parks. I think my experiences of almost two weeks far north of the Great Glen, in the hills vaguely close to Ullapool, helped to answer that question for me: it’s clearly a feeling of achievement, of going somewhere only a tiny fraction of the population will ever go. Why I insist on having this feeling of achievement while also walking through the driving rain, however, is still an open question. But in the hours I spent in Fisherfield, alleged to be Scotland’s only real wilderness, I asked myself this question many, many times.
More Munroing Milestones West of Drumochter
My hopes of completing the Cairngorms Munros were fading fast as the fine weather of the summer starts to collapse into the rain, wind, and cold temperatures of the autumn. I’d made vague plans to head up North towards Dalwhinnie on Friday, taking the day off to try and climb the four hills West of Drumochter, but the weather looked pretty abysmal. The forecast for Saturday was a lot better, but plans would be scuppered by rail strikes. And so it was that I’d given up hope of big hills for this weekend, only for a serendipitous suggestion to pop up on a Westies WhatsApp post: does anyone want to run the Drumochter hills on Saturday?
Cairn Table Hill Race
With perhaps the worst conditions of all the Bog and Burns so far, Cairn Table started in a downpour, and had no view at the summit (though I was briefly able to see the enormous cairn at the summit from the start line). At times more akin to an obstacle course race than a hill race, with plenty of boards laid to bridge some of the worst areas of bog, which could themselves be more of a liability to negotiate than the mud. A very runnable clim, followed by a good descent made this one of my better races of the season, and it was the only one where everyone got a medal at the end.
Beinn a' Ghlò
It was yet another sunny day as we drove up the A9 to reach Pitlochry, and start up the winding, steep singletrack road to the start of the route up Beinn a’ Ghlò. There’s a small car park at the start of the walk, just beside a small area of forestry plantation. From the start of the walk the first hill of the day was clearly visible as a pyramid rising from the lower ground, and while we had a short walk-in to get to it, it provided a very quick climb up to the high level of the ridge. From the first Munro, Càrn Liath, there were good views across Perthshire, and we were left on the fine, gently meandering ridgeline out towards the next two Munros.
Maddie Moss Hill Race
There had been the threat of rain most of the day, but things stayed clear, however conditions were very windy. The climb started slightly further up the hill than the previous week’s Law Breaker, which avoided the bottle-neck up the steps from the car park. I felt weaker than the previous week on the ascent, though it seemed to go more easily, and I felt pretty good coming off the summit of The Law, to be hit by the strong wind (almost as bad as Tinto in 2021!) on the run across to Ben Cleuch, though the terrain was good and dry, and despite the wind I made fairly fast progress. From Ben Cleuch onwards I had a much-needed tailwind out across to Andrew Gannell Hill, and then much of the descent was extremely runable, even by my standards, with just the last 500m or so presenting any really steep terrain.
Law Breaker Hill Race
While we passed through a heavy shower on the drive across, we were fortunate to just arrive in time for the weather to clear. The race route started at the car park in Tillicoultry, and went straight up the steps towards the Mill Burn, and presented a bottleneck at the start of the race, which I probably failed to fully recover from during the climb. The climb itself was harsher than I’d anticipated; this was by some way the greatest elevation in a race I’d done since Beinn Dubh which felt a long time ago. The race route presented at least two false summits, which was somewhat demoralising, and I probably walked the route a bit more than I’d have liked. However, once I’d made it to the top the descent went pretty well and fairly fast. If nothing else, a good warm-up for Maddy Moss the next week.
Beinn Bhrotain and Monadh Mòr
The final set of hills for my big trip to Braemar were to take me back into some of the remoter parts of the national park. It was a warm and clear day, and I set off with the bike one last time on the Linn of Dee Road, and then onwards to White Bridge. I left the bike around 500m past the bridge, and set off at a jog towards the hill, feeling my relative lack of fitness (I’d been nursing knee pain since the end of May which was still affecting me while running).
Beinn a' Chaorainn and Beinn Bhreac from Derry Lodge
I’d been in the Cairngorms for over a week, but the start of that period I’d kept away from the big hills thanks to high wind forecasts (and, as it turned out, high winds in reality). So the second week of my trip was going to involve back-to-back days of hills, and this was the third in a row. I was just about starting to feel it, and my legs grumbled a little at cycling out to Linn of Dee yet again. This time I was joined by Andrew and Shona, who were themselves up in Braemar, also here to climb Munros. We met at the Linn of Dee carpark and then cycled on along the same track I’d taken two days earlier to get to Derry Lodge.
Ben Avon & Beinn a' Bhuird
After excellent conditions the day before on the Macdui horseshoe, I was out again in search of more hills the next day. This time the forecast was slightly less favourable, and I’d have a substantially longer walk-in, to reach the most easternly region of the plateaux, and the impressively large Ben Avon.
Again I set out by bike, this time headed for the Linn of Quoich, which brought one of the most difficult cycles of my trip to the Cairngorms. The majority was fine, and along fairly well-compacted landrover track, until a point where the old path had clearly been washed away in a flood, and had been replaced with a stretch not marked on the map which climbed steeply and directly up the hillside. An unexpected and slightly unwanted surprise!
Ben Macdui Horseshoe
After a weekend of high winds over the massif, and a general lack of favourable walking conditions, on Monday the forecast had finally turned favourable. So it was that I set off on an early bike ride from Braemar, past Linn of Dee, and out to Derry Lodge, ready to tackle one of the bigger rounds from this trip. Compared to some of the other ride-ins in these parts, this one felt like a breeze, though I took a slight detour from the road, and took the landrover track which I’d climbed Creag Bhalg from a couple of days earlier. On the way out I passed a fair number of walkers and cyclists (including one braving the landrover track on a road bike): clearly the hills and walks from Derry Lodge were in demand.
On Morrone
The poor weather outlook was set to continue for at least another day, though by now I was itching for something a little bigger than a Graham, and decided that it was finally time, on my third visit to Braemar, to actually climb the hill which rises above the town: Morrone.
I left quite early on a Sunday morning, and the village was quiet; the wind was strong, and it was cold, despite being almost mid-summer, and there was the smell of a peat fire from one of the houses on the Chapel Brae as I walked up to the duck pond. The climb up Morrone is fairly easy, and short. It briefly crosses the birkwoods before continuing straight up the northern side of the mountain over what’s mostly a good path, though there are a few boggy bits. It’s not all that long until you’re well above the town, and the summit comes into sight, decorated with various radio masts, which I later learned are, at least in part, to allow radio signals to be transmitted into the deep Cairngorm for mountain rescue.
A Graham in Deeside
The forecast was for strong winds on the main plateaux of the Cairngorms, and all of my remaining big hills for the trip were up in that direction, so I decided that it was time for an easier day, up a slightly less celebrated, and hopefully less exposed hill. Once again taking the bike from Braemar I headed out (for the first time) to Mar Lodge across Victoria Bridge, and then headed up to the road on the far side of the valley, failing woefully to find the landrover track I’d planned to take to get to the hill.
Ey Five
The weather forecast was not fantastic, but looking ahead things didn’t appear to be getting any better. So I took a risk, and set off on what was to be the longest and most remote of my planned walks for this trip, which would take me deep into some of the remotest mountains on the margins of the Mounth and Atholl.
The cycle in, through Glen Ey, felt quite long, and had plenty of climb. That wasn’t entirely helped by my bike GPS deciding that my route didn’t look sufficiently hard-core for a mountain bike, and giving me an extra 80 or 90m climb as a small but frustrating diversion. I knew, however, I’d make up for all the climb later (and wouldn’t need to do it on foot either).
Rolling into the Deep (Cairngorm)
It was day one of a holiday which had already got off to a somewhat chaotic start. I’d relied on getting the train to Aberdeen, and then the Stagecoach bus in to Braemar in order to get a mountain bike up for a grand expedition into the mountains.
It was not, however, to be. The train part of the journey went smoothly, the bike travelling happily up from Queen Street. I got to Aberdeen, found the bus station, and waited an hour or so for the bus into Braemar to arrive. The website had assured me it would carry a bike, but, as it turns out, the website was not accurate, and the small bus which arrived was very clearly incapable of carrying a bike the whole way! Fortunately, Magnus was able to give me a lift in, and disaster was averted.
May Day on Beinn a' Bheithir
Squinting at the night sky, the Ancients (and sometimes, the surprisingly moderns) allege to have seen the figures of twins, fish, virgins, sextants, and giraffes imprinted on the heavens. In comparison I normally expect geology to be… down to Earth. I’ve spent the last few years trying to muddle my way through learning little bits of Scottish Gaelic, and while it’s been fascinating at times, it’s had a rather catastrophic effect on my understanding of the romanticism of the hills. “Beinn Dearg” becomes simply a red hill, “Beinn Dubh” the dark hill, and “A’ Bhuidheanach Bheag” the little yellow place. Perhaps a little mystery and romance is left in some of the places after all… A hill name where this romance and mystery is not lost through greater knowledge, however, stands above the small town of Ballachuilish (the town of the narrows) on the A82 between Glasgow and Fort William. Its name, Beinn a’ Bheithir, is often translated as “the hill of thunder” or something along these lines, but really, this hill which bares over the aforementioned narrows, is named for a mythical dragon or serpent.
Reaching the hundred above the A9
I’d spent a lot of time trying to decide on the perfect hill to complete my first century, the ton, of Munros on. I’d thought about trying to make it something spectacular (maybe this was the time to do Ben Nevis?) or geographically appropriate (my first was the most southernly, Ben Lomond, maybe I should aim for another cardinal direction?). I’d actually planned to make Mount Keen my hundredth, and then realised that over the winter I’d misremembered my count, and carefully laid plans to start the year on number 100 turned into plans to climb my 99th.
A Culter Fell round
The weather forecast was good, and there was a bank holiday. Perfect conditions for a hill walk. We’d considered heading up to do Stob Binnein and Ben More at Crianlarich, which would have been a repeat for me, but Shona still needed to bag them. The forecast indicated there was a chance of rain in the afternoon, and there was also still a chance of some snow at this stage in the season on the high ground, so instead we opted to head down to Biggar and explore some Donalds.
Five Sisters of Kintail and their Three Brothers
At some point during the planning of a trip to the Highlands and Islands, which was already to involve running a half marathon, it seemed like a good idea to try and fit in a nice ridge walk, and in the process bag six munros.
We’d arrived back on the mainland from Skye the night before, and we’d camped at a site in Glen Shiel, just past Shiel Bridge, and close to a bus stop, so that we could make the connection onwards to the Cluanie Inn in the morning. We ended up almost missing the bus, since we’d arrived at the site too late the night before to pay, and the office didn’t open until 9am; fortunately the bus was delayed, and we were under way to the Cluanie.
A Night on the Mountain
After yet another week of un-Scottish summer, I formed a plan to get as far away from Donald Trump, who was forecast to arrive in Scotland, like an unwanted storm, on Friday to play golf. A quick look at the map, and a battle with the Citylink website suggested that heading up to the munros near Bridge of Orchy was a real possibility. Armed with this knowledge, and aided by the University closing at 3pm for Glasgow Fair I caught the bus, and headed North, away from the US President.
Baking in the Bynacks
The bubble of heat was truly upon us by Tuesday, and even in the midst of the mountains it had been a very warm night. I planned, therefore, to set out for Bynack More early, hoping to finish the run before the Glens reached their forecast 35-degrees! The forecast was also for a bit of an oddity; a cloudless inversion, with the peaks of the Cairngorms basking in 29-degree heat early in the morning.
Beating the Tyndrum Four
We’ve entered the third month of the exceptional summer of 2018, and it only seemed right to continue working on the T-shirt tan, and put a few more munros in the bag at the same time. After a few minutes of looking at the munro map I decided that the four munros near Tyndrum looked like a good target. With the plans made, I caught the train after work with Andrew and headed up to Tyndrum, where we met Shona at the camp site. Within 20 minutes I had my tent up, and we made as quickly as possible for the Tyndrum Inn to avoid the swarms of midges which were also calling Tyndrum home for the evening. Appropriately refreshed, we all turned-in early, ready for a fresh start on Saturday morning.
Beinn Sgritheall and Glenelg
It was clear that neither the weather forecast nor the morale favoured another trip onto the Glen Shiel ridge to visit the famous Forcan Ridge after the [previous day’s escapeade]({%post_url 2022-08-20-glen-shiel-south %}). After a very leisurely breakfast we parted ways, though not before discovering that “Glen Shiel Chocolates”, which inhabits the old Shiel Bridge petrol station, was only open two days a week. After some indecision myself and Declan decided to try running up Beinn Sgritheall; given we were at the end of the long road to it across the Glenelg peninsula.
Càrn a' Chlamain
It’s comfortably into the part of the year where it’s easy to declare that summer is over while not really being able to make a strong case that autumn has arrived. This also means that the long, light evenings of the summer are behind us, and the chance of poor weather is ever increasing. Overall, any Munro trip could therefore be the last until next spring. So it was that I had put much effort into planning out which hills I’ll try and climb in October, only to end up having the last weekend of September clear itself.
Closing-in on a milestone: 99 Munros Bagged. Part 1
- Do not remove this line (it will not be displayed) {:toc}
I’m now fast approaching climbing my hundredth Munro (indeed, until I recounted while preparing this blog post, I thought I was sitting on 99 already, but it turns out I’m not quite there, though by the time you’ll be reading this I should be!). I’ve been pretty bad about writing walk reports for each individual hill so far, and it’s high time I sorted that out by producing one great omnibus collection. It’s turned out that walking Munros has become one of the major focusses of life outwith work, so it seems only fitting that I give the effort so far a reasonable write-up.
Closing-in on a milestone: 99 Munros Bagged. Part 2
- TOC Line {:toc} I’m now fast approaching climbing my hundredth Munro (indeed, until I recounted while preparing this blog post, I thought I was sitting on 99 already, but it turns out I’m not quite there, though by the time you’ll be reading this I should be!). I’ve been pretty bad about writing walk reports for each individual hill so far, and it’s high time I sorted that out by producing one great omnibus collection. It’s turned out that walking Munros has become one of the major focusses of life outwith work, so it seems only fitting that I give the effort so far a reasonable write-up.
*I’ve ended up splitting this into three parts in order to try and keep the size of each post under control. This one covers 2019, and 12 Munros. Part one covers 2015 (just one Munro!) and 2018 (31 Munros). Eventually 2020 (26 Munros), and 2021 and 2022 together (25 and 1 Munros, since 2022 has only just started…) will get posts too.
Closing-in on a milestone: 99 Munros Bagged. Part 3
- Do not remove this line (it will not be displayed) {:toc}
I’m now fast approaching climbing my hundredth Munro (indeed, until I recounted while preparing this blog post, I thought I was sitting on 99 already, but it turns out I’m not quite there, though by the time you’ll be reading this I should be!). I’ve been pretty bad about writing walk reports for each individual hill so far, and it’s high time I sorted that out by producing one great omnibus collection. It’s turned out that walking Munros has become one of the major focusses of life outwith work, so it seems only fitting that I give the effort so far a reasonable write-up.
Closing-in on a milestone: 99 Munros Bagged. Part 4
- Do not remove this line (it will not be displayed) {:toc}
I’m now fast approaching climbing my hundredth Munro (indeed, until I recounted while preparing this blog post, I thought I was sitting on 99 already, but it turns out I’m not quite there, though by the time you’ll be reading this I should be!). I’ve been pretty bad about writing walk reports for each individual hill so far, and it’s high time I sorted that out by producing one great omnibus collection. It’s turned out that walking Munros has become one of the major focusses of life outwith work, so it seems only fitting that I give the effort so far a reasonable write-up.
Completing the Ochil 2kers
I had spent the last couple of weeks trying to organise a trip up to Glen Feshie, which remain the least accessible Cairngorms Munros which I’ve still to climb, and this was my one weekend where I’d be in Scotland in September (or so I thought at the time). It was not to be, however, a mix of a poor forecast (gale force winds) and logistics made it impractical. Instead I resolved to return to them in October, and to head somewhere more local instead.
Crossing the Aonach Eagach
I’d been putting-off one single hillwalk for some time, and none of the other Munros south of the Great Glen have quite the reputation of the Aonach Eagach, reputedly the narrowest and trickiest ridge on the British mainland. However, the opportunity to tackle it came up on a Thursday afternoon in a WhatsApp chat with other IGR folk, and so I found myself being picked-up at 6:30 in the morning by Ross, then meeting Thejas before driving north to park in the three sisters carpark in Glencoe. The forecast was for the weather to be very hot as the day went on, and we’d hoped to be able to complete most of the ascent as early as possible in the day.
Meall a' Bhuachaille
After a reasonable amount of indecision over whether to head for Beinn Mheadhoin today I finally came to the conclusion that it was high time I had a rest day. The forecast for Thursday was arguably better than it was for today anyway. Rest days are for the Corbetts, apparently, ans so I set out after a slow morning towards Meall a’ Bhuacaille; the climb conveniently sits right behind the hostel. Almost all the way there is a well-engineered path, and the ascent to the ridge was quite fast, and from there it was only a short additional climb to get the summit (810m) of my third Corbett.
Pen y Fan and the Central Becons
I found myself in Cardiff for a LIGO meeting, but with a weekend between parts of the meeting. So the only logical thing to do was to leave the confines of Cardiff on Saturday morning and head straight for the hills. Things started with a little confusion on my part over bus times, but I sis eventually work things out and got a bus to Merthyr, and then changed onto another which would take me to the Storey Arms, at the bottom of the most popular ascent route for Pen y Fan.
Skye
God is in the mountains, I mused to myself as I drove North on the A82, past Loch Lomond, in the early afternoon at the start of June 2023. It is very easy to believe that statement as you take in the spectacular beauty of this part of the world. The mountains rise as great green masses beside the brilliantly blue loch. If there were hills in Eden then Ben Lomond and Ben Vorlich were clearly transposed from there to Scotland. The only evidence that this isn’t some sort of Earthly paradise is the A82 itself. The thought came somewhat unbidden, but I think I can trace its source. As I headed North I found Psalm 121 bouncing around in the recesses of my consciousness: “I lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence commeth my help”. I know why this is on my mind, and it connects various strands of this story.
The Centre of the Cairngorm
The final big walk of my second trip to the Cairngorms for 2022 was to be one which would take me deepest into the plateau, to the arrow-head shape of Beinn Mheadhoin. Walk Highlands makes it seem remote by not combining it with any of the other hills around it, but this was to be a day of tops and summits for me. I started out on the bus from just outside the hostel which took me up to the ski centre car park. There was a lot of construction going on around the funicular, which is in the process of being reinforced, and it took a couple of minutes of wandering about to actually find the way onto my path. In a minor novelty for the last few weeks I was actually able to see my breath as I left the centre and climbed up Windy Ridge.
The Eastern Monadhliath on Fair Monday
With the warmest days of the summer forecast, and increasingly dire warnings about the danger of a 40-degree heatwave reaching the UK, I was lucky to find myself having made plans months before to visit Glenmore, with a view to finishing off the central Cairngorm Munros. On Sunday I caight the train up to Aviemore from Queen Street, and then walked the 10km from the station up to the youth hostel, arriving in good time to take a (wetsuited!) swim in Loch Morlich (it being two weeks until the Loch Lomond triathlon, which I’m slowly starting to feel, if not confident, then less worried about).
The South Glen Shiel Ridge
It was 2018 that I’d last ventured to hills above the Great Glen, to the hills above Glen Shiel, when myself and Magnus walked the [Brothers and Sisters Ridge]({% post_url 2018-06-22-five-sisters-kintail %}) on the north side of the glen, on a blisteringly hot day on our way South after the Benbecula Half Marathon that year. I’d planned to climb the hills on the South the following year with Andrew, but we scrubbed that plan thanks to heavy rain, which ended up making our already logistically complicated plans to do it with a single car unravel. So it was in June 2012, after two years of pandemic, that plans came together for me, Magnus, and Declan to take-on these hills over the Platinum Jubilee weekend. Only for me to contract COVID-19 and spend the entire long-weekend in bed. Eventually a new date was set, 20 August, and Andrew and Shona would join.