Thursday 31 May 2018

The Hill Before

A couple of weekends before the beginning of the Challenge, I wanted to test my fitness a bit and my new rucksack (Osprey Ariel 55 AG), on the spur of the moment, we went off to climb a hill we’ve been looking at from a distance for quite some time. It’s a very prominent, rounded lump, along the west of Loch Ness south of Drumnadrochit, Meall Fuar-mhonaidh. Off we set, having purchased our Meal Deals from Tesco, to drive to Balbeg and then abandon the car neatly just before the pottery.

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The lump we were heading for

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After leaving the car park, we followed a road for a short while to its end, then a path lead us to a pretty silver birch wood.

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The path through the trees eventually gave way to open hillside and the path continued gently upwards.

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There were showers around about us, but none came our way all day.

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Still heading up.

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A stile to cross the deer fence, good practice…

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And the views just kept coming

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Along the Great Glen towards Inverness and the Moray coast

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…glad we weren’t caught in that downpour…

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The obligatory…

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My first primroses of the year

P4282065A bench, or a stile to nowhere?

I make no apologies for the amount of photographs, it was a glorious day and we had a fabulous day out. My pack was beautifully comfortable, although it was only half what I might expect to carry on the Challenge.

Roughly 9.34 km total distance 523m total ascent and 2.4km/h



1 comment:

AlanR said...

Cracking day out and lovely photos.