Sunday 12 September 2021

Adventures with Ellie - West Highlands 24th August 2021

We had an opportunity to go away with Ellie towards the end of August, so the Tuesday night saw us making our way towards Invergarry in order to park up overnight and then walk Gleouraich the following morning. We were aware that the A82 was shut at Invergarry and we had to follow the signed diversion. This however did not go to plan, the road we needed was also shut, despite having followed the diversion, so we stopped in the next large layby, luckily away from the road and sheltered by a large bank of trees, so any noise from passing traffic was deadened significantly and we had a reasonable night.

In the morning, we returned to the junction and were able to continue on our route, towards Invergarry before taking the road to Kinloch Hourn. It's a narrow and slow road, and we arrived at the parking area just before lunch. Our sandwiches were ready, so we packed them in our packs, put on our boots and set off.

We have tackled this hill before, last time in May 2010, when we had hoped to be on our first Challenge. We hadn't made it off the standby list but had hired a VW van, Rosie, and gone away for a few days. I didn't make it to the summit on that occasion. This time, it was a really warm, dry day, with little breeze and a cloudless sky. I remembered the beginning of the walk quite clearly, the neverending zigzags up hill, passed by two ladies on their way down, continuing until we eventually reached a memorial. I had waited here last time for David as he quickly climbed to the summit and I had rested. There was another name added to the plaque since we were last there. This time we were plagued by flies. They were buzzing around our heads and landing on us, on our faces, necks and arms, on our heads and burrowing into our hair and biting. They refused to be swatted away and couldn't be flicked off, they had to be nipped and pulled off. They were keds and are quite vile. From this point on the keds were our constant companions.



We continued on, climbing to a false summit where we paused to allow the young lady who had caught us up and two young lads coming towards us to pass comfortably. Then we continued up to the summit cairn. I had to coax myself on after the memorial, the path was at times close to what felt like a precipitous edge, I do not enjoy such exposure and need to stay focussed and calm, trying to keep my breathing controlled and relaxed and DON'T LOOK DOWN. The summit cairn was surrounded by a huge swarm of keds, but I had to touch it to be able to claim the Munro, so I held my breath and shut my eyes for the obligatory selfie. I quickly moved away once done to get photographs of the views, but the swarm came with me and I didn't linger too long before we started the return journey.







Again, I had to coax myself and muttered my mantra "You're fine, you're okay, you're doing fine." until we eventually reached easier ground again. Once round the corner and onto the zigzag path, we lost the swarms of keds, which was a relief, but the path just seemed to go on forever. We were caught up and passed by another chap, an older gentleman who was some kind of mountain goat, powered by the call of a flask of coffee in his car. He quickly disappeared from view.

As we neared the bottom of the path,  we found the handle of a walking pole, I thought it was from a folding pole and had seen the young lady had been carrying a pair, so I thought it might belong to her. I wondered if we could leave it at her car, but once back at the car park I wasn't confident which was hers and didn't want to leave it in prominent position in case she didn't see it or it wasn't hers and was therefore litter, so we opted to take it with us and bin it.

Once back with Ellie, we had first replenished our water bottles, added a hydration tablet and drank at least a litre each. We then ate the lunch we had carried with us as with the keds for company, we had not wanted to stop and eat on the hill. We didn't want to sit too long as we weren't sure if the road was going to shut overnight again, but we needed a rest before setting off for our next overnight stop, which we had decided would be at Creag Meagaidh car park.

We had no problem getting through Invergarry and were soon in the local Spar in Spean Bridge to buy vital supplies, beer, pudding and chocolate. Then we were on our way again.

Creag Meagaidh is part of a nature reserve looked after by Scottish Natural Heritage. There is a large car park and they welcome campers (admittedly, they probably mean in tents) as long as people behave respectfully and maybe make a donation, which we did. There are also toilets up the hill a bit, so we visited them. The toilets are to the side of a shelter where there was information on the reserve and its wildlife. The toilets were clean and well looked after.

Roughly 8.76km and total ascent 918m

There were several vans and a couple of tents that pitched overnight, it was a busy little car park with some comings and goings late into the evening, but we had a pleasant evening and a reasonable night. In the morning we had a relaxed breakfast and made use of the facilities again before heading for home. As we were about to pull off, David noticed one of the newly arrived cars was very familiar, then recognised the driver, our young lady from the hill! He was out of Ellie and across the car park in a shot, she was somewhat surprised as he approached her but when he explained we thought we might have her walking pole handle she was utterly delighted, it was indeed hers and she had greatly missed it the day before when coming off the hill. I retrieved it from our rubbish box and we reunited owner and handle.

On the way home, we stopped by Ruthven Barracks. We've passed by so many times, but have never stopped and had a look, so today we did. We had a pleasant wander around the impressive ruins (mostly, but people...) before re-joining Ellie and trying to decide where to have lunch. We ended up in car park near Feshiebridge where we popped the roof and made coffee to go along with our sandwiches and biscuits.

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