Adventures with Ellie - East Grampians

Thursday evening David said we should go away with Ellie Saturday morning, as he was on call for work on Friday evening. This threw me into a slight panic, as obviously I hadn’t thought we’d be going away, but a bit of last minute packing and planning saw us driving off the drive a few minutes past nine in the morning.

The best plan was to stay relatively close to home, so we headed slightly east before heading south with the intention of bagging The Buck. As we drove through The Cabrach there was an unexpected amount of snow, not covering the road, but deep enough in the laybys we were passing to cause concern. On reaching the parking at the side of the road for The Buck, it was immediately obvious that leaving Ellie there could be problematic, so without even pausing we continued on to the second hill I’d popped onto the list in case we had time, Tap o’ Noth.

The car park is accessed from a very narrow lane, which has a very exciting turn off from the road, but Ellie is surprisingly nimble and negotiated both with no issues. There was a little snow and ice in the car park which had a sharp slope, but we were soon on our way on the marked footpath. The path was well kept and clearly very popular, also quite uphill from the start. Although this was not a big hill, the snow got deeper with the progress up hill, I did not envy the footwear of the chap we met on his way down, slippy, slidey canvas shoes. After about 45 minutes we were admiring the rather impressive vitrified fort at the top of this wee lump and bagging the trig. In between the drifting clouds, we could clearly see the deep snow a top The Buck, we decided we’ll save that for another day. After a bit of exploration, we made our way off the hill, back the same way we had arrived. A very enjoyable little stroll.

Approximately 3.03 miles and 999 feet total ascent

Having returned to Ellie, we headed off to find more level ground to stop and have lunch, eventually stopping in a lay by near the junction of the A97 and the A944. Quite a nice spot, with some very lively cows in the field opposite providing some entertainment  but a surprisingly busy road. After lunch, we headed off to find somewhere to park for the night, a treat to arrive in daylight and be able to see our surroundings. Except people had obviously stayed there before us and other people are quite disgusting.

We woke Sunday morning to a bright but cold morning. Or at least, some of us woke, some of us had not slept enough to be  wake and I started the day with a headache. The passing traffic had quietened down at around 22:30 the previous evening and apart from one or two vehicles that had passed during the night, it had not started again until about 07:30. As David put the gas on to make the first cup of coffee, it became immediately obvious that we were a little low on fuel. Very low in fact.. So low we ran out before the kettle had even boiled. Disaster.

So the day started with a Danish pastry and a drink of water. And paracetamol for me. We then drove about 1.5 km to the Bennachie Visitor Centre car park where we made use of the facilities, made sandwiches and got our walking our kit on. We were on our way by 10:00, which is quite early for us. It was a very busy car park, with dogwalkers and mountain bikers mainly, but also some early Sunday walkers. We seemed to leave them all behind once we left the main forestry, but we found many, many more once we’d made our way to Mither Tap. The walk was mainly on really good, well maintained footpaths, until we headed for the less frequented paths later on in the day.

Mither Tap, our first target, is a rocky, gnarly little lump with a trig point. We obviously approached from a less used route, of which I was glad there was no audience for my pathetic efforts at scrambling. As we reached the top, there were a couple already up there and as they left, a couple and their young, really underdressed daughters arrived. They must have been absolutely frozen as the wind had a real bite to it.

I had a moment of mild panic as we decided to head off ourselves. Despite watching the young family leave with little difficulty, it looked a steep drop to me, then David had a little slip on the smooth rocks as he took his first step towards the top of the rocky steps down and I bit back a whimper and tears filled my eyes. I gave myself a serious talking to and made my way to the same point as two young men bounded their way up. The second slipped and struggled slightly as he had shorter legs. This actually made me feel a little better. I chose to ease my way down on my bum for the first few steps, there were one or two higher ones to negotiate, but I made it and felt happier.

This was the worst bit over. There were three other little rocky nobbles I wanted to visit whilst we were up here, the first being Craigshannoch. The path on the plateau is well kept and clear for the most part, and very, very busy. We saw few other walkers, other than the two large groups we encountered, who were equipped for the conditions we encountered, it was bitterly cold in the wind and very exposed for the majority of our walk. There are signposts all along the route up and on the plateau, but I can’t say they were overly useful. The names featured don’t feature on the map we were using, perhaps the tourist map would be more useful, but therein lies a problem as I believe this is one of the reasons people get in to trouble, they use tourist maps expecting the same kind of signposts, but in most places there aren’t any. These same people don’t have and can’t use a proper OS map, so they get in to trouble. Add to that the fact these signposts don’t carry useful information like distance and ascent, uninformed decisions can be made as to whether a route is suitable.

Anyway, we reached Cragshannoch, nothing spectacular, and continued to our next goal, Oxen Craig. This was easily reached. We arrived at this gnarly little lump just as one large group left. We ducked down out of the wind to eat lunch and as we finished another large group arrived and we beat a hasty retreat. and then we headed off for Watch Craig. This where the path changed, it was obviously more frequented by the mountain bikers and was deeply rutted and eroded. We were joined at the top by a noisy group of four and we were happy to leave ahead them, hoping they would retrace their steps rather than following us, which they did and we left their noisy chatter behind.

We continued heading downhill on a trail more used by MTBs than people, but it was still progress. The weather had taken a turn for the worse, quite wet and colder, so we just plodded on for what seemed like an eternity. We knew we were getting closer to the car park when we started to meet people, a chap on a bike with his dog, a bedraggled couple, another couple with extremely well trained Beagles (unusual for Beagles, really head strong dogs!) and then several more. We nearly got suckered in to a wrong turn, but quickly realised our mistake and just about managed to put it right without anyone seeing, koff.

Once back with Ellie, we got out of our wet kit and boots before stowing everything away safely for our journey home. I was glad to be heading back, but I my headache was quite severe by now and I was feeling quite grim. As the journey progressed, it became clear I was in trouble. I struggled for the entire journey home and barely made it out of Ellie before disaster struck. After struggling into the house, I crawled upstairs to my bed, where I remained for the next few hours before the migraine eventually wore off.

Roughly 14.2 km and 667 m total ascent