Paul Shorrock – One Man's Mountains AKA One Pillock's Hillocks

For the best viewing experience, left-click the images and maps to zoom in to a new window, then exit that window to go back – go on, it really does work!

Our first Cairngorm hill-day of August 2021 (see post #307) had included Cairngorm summit and the Northern Corries, a great introduction to the Cairngorm Plateau for Chris – it had also been a great day out in the sun for Chris, me and Border Collie ‘Mist’.  Our next trip covered a bit of the same ground, but also ventured into more remote territory – we were heading for Loch A’an (Loch Avon).

Loch A’an is a fair-sized loch that the tourists never see, as it’s one that you have to work for.  Both routes (shown in blue and red in the map above) were the same distance to walk at about 12 kms, but the Northern Corries route had a total height gain of 810 metres (2656 ft) against 970 metres (3182 ft) for Loch A’ an.  This is due to a significant height loss to reach the loch, height that has to be regained to get back again!

Looking at the map beforehand, the descent of Ciste Mhearad to the loch seemed steady enough but the return via Corrie Raibeirt looked as if it might be ‘interesting’, with an initial 230 metre height gain over 560 metres of horizontal travel.  That’s an average gradient of 1-in-3 – now that’s steep!   Beyond the initial steep section, the upper section of the path looked to be at a much easier gradient, and we had been able to see most of that on our Northern Corries trip, a few days earlier.

We set out on another sunny Cairngorm day – this was getting to be a habit!  The Windy Ridge path up to the Ptarmigan lift station seemed to go a bit more quickly this time.  Beyond the Ptarmigan, there was a path marked on the map, but nothing materialised, even using GPS for more accurate location.  The tried and tested method of ‘just head in the general direction’ brought us to the hollow of Ciste Mhearad, which apparently translates as ‘Margaret’s coffin’.  Once there, a path of sorts did turn up.

There were a couple of snow patches right at the head of the corrie, remnants of the previous winter.  Not too long ago, patches of snow would survive here all year round, but this has been almost unheard of over recent years.   The now visible path ran next to the small stream, fed by the snow patches and soggy marshy ground above, but the map indicated the path turning away from the stream after about 300 metres, to take a less steep line down to the valley bottom.  Once again, locating the path wasn’t easy.

Once found, the faint path towards ‘The Saddle’ wasn’t easy to follow, and we soon found ourselves in lumpy, bumpy ground.  We had drifted off the path by about 20 metres, but we were below it by now, not a good place to recognise the error. We finally picked up the correct line when we spotted a solo hiker just above us, going the opposite way, and we were soon back on the correct course.  ‘The Saddle’ gives the only realistic exit to safety from Loch A’an in blizzard conditions, when the Plateau might be too hazardous, but it’s a long trudge of over 12 kms round to Ryvoan Pass and Glenmore Lodge to the north.

We weren’t going to Ryvoan though – instead, we turned southwest to follow the lochside round to Coire Raibeirt.  The original plan had been to visit the Shelter Stone, a bivouac site famous in Scottish mountaineering history, but that would have added an extra 2 kms to the trip, and the day was starting to slip away, so we headed straight for Coire Raibeirt instead.   I had never been in this corrie before, but the contours on the map told a tale. The ground ahead told the same tale – it was going to be steep.

We had barely started when we heard the unexpected sound of an aircraft – below us!  I had just enough time to get the camera out to catch the shot of a floatplane that had just taken off from the loch – someone would be home before we would.  That excitement being over, we turned our attention back to getting up Corrie Raibeirt.  The route followed the stream running down to the loch, and in the lower sections, the two ran together.  It would be rather more than exciting if the stream was in spate, but conditions for us were good.

The route was a mixture of engineered path (thank you those who built it) and natural rock steps, some of which required a bit of a scramble in places.  No obstacle to the humans but ‘Mist’ is getting older now and starting to show it – she sometimes needs a bit of help on steps she would have leapt up as a young dog, but I had fitted her ‘Ruffwear Web Master’ harness and a long tether, and gave the collie a tug from above on a couple of sections.  It also helped me to slow her down from behind on the easier sections, to stop her pushing on into difficult ground.

Progress wasn’t exactly swift, justifying the decision to drop the Shelter Stone option, but ‘steady away’ eventually brought us on to less steep ground.  The deep cleft of the Allt Coire Raibeirt became shallower and the path became an easy stroll, despite still heading uphill,  and before long ‘Mist’ was back in her preferred position of being out front.

Our last bit of ascent was to a location known to the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team as ‘Point 1141’ for the simple reason it is marked on the map as a spot height at 1141 metres.   From there it was downhill all the way into Coire Cas, in winter the main ski area for Cairngorm.  The day had been a long one and humans and dog were getting that dinnertime feeling – it was time to head for home.

Text and images © Paul Shorrock

For the best viewing experience, left-click the images and maps to zoom in to a new window, then exit that window to go back – go on, it really does work!

Ben Ledi was the first ‘proper’ Scottish mountain I ever saw.  In 1970, I set off with a mate on what was then a mammoth drive from Lancashire to the Scottish Highlands – back then, the M6 motorway finished just north of Lancaster, and beyond the motorway we followed the old A6 road north through Kendal, over Shap summit then through Carlisle.

Over the border into Scotland, the route improved for a while, with the then dual-carriageway A74 pointing us north, avoiding Glasgow by the towns of Coatbridge and Airdrie.  It took blinking ages!  Eventually we passed through Stirling, and leaving the town headed northwest on the A84.  Then I saw it, our first real mountain after the moors of the Southern Uplands.  That was Ben Ledi, and I spent the next 50 years of visiting Scotland driving past it!

Regular readers will know that I avoid the Highlands over the summer, choosing May or earlier or September or later, in an attempt to avoid the midge (and tourist) season. With several ‘things to do’ already in the diary in 2021, we decided on two trips to Scotland, with the first in August. As the Trossachs area doesn’t get as ‘midged’ as the West Coast, it seemed a good place to get our boots on the ground.  It was also a good opportunity to finally get to grips with Ben Ledi.

At 879 metres altitude, Ben Ledi is far from a high-mountain challenge, though it almost achieves Munro status (a Scottish mountain over 3000 ft/ 915 metres).  A look at the map suggested that there would be great views across the Southern Highlands, and I’m pretty sure that they are there – unfortunately, we started our Ben Ledi day with a traditional background of good old Scots mist.

Ben Ledi is a popular mountain with folk who don’t walk or hike in the mountains all that often, and rightly so with easy access and a non-technical ascent.  It’s thought that in days long gone, the locals celebrated the Celtic pagan festival of Beltane on the summit and in the 18th Century the name of the mountain was incorrectly translated as ‘Hill of God’.  This might have suited the Christian clergy of the day, but it’s now accepted that Ben Ledi is a corruption of Beinn Leitir, which translates as ‘the Hill of the Slope’, which is the long Southeast Ridge leading to the summit. 

After a rising traverse of the craggy east side of the hill, the popular route to the top takes a sharp right turn to head more easily up the broad Southeast Ridge.  With a change of direction comes a change of scenery (hill mist permitting) with the view down to Loch Lubnaig being replaced by the view to Loch Venachar.  Just before the summit, a metal cross comes into view – nothing to do with the ‘Hill of God’, this is a memorial to Sgt Harry Lawrie BEM.

Harry Lawrie was a sergeant in what was then the Central Scottish Police, based at Callander, and also a member of the Killin Mountain Rescue Team.  On 1^st February 1987, Sgt Lawrie and the Killin MRT were involved in a search for an injured climber on Ben More.  A Wessex helicopter assisting with the search picked up Sgt Lawrie and another police officer to ferry them up the mountain, but whilst landing, a rotor blade struck the ground, causing the helicopter to crash into the hillside – Sgt Lawrie was fatally injured.

After standing a while at the memorial, we walked the short distance to the summit for a lunch break.  Whilst being mugged for our sandwiches by Border Collie ‘Mist’, we noticed that the other mist on the hills was starting to clear a bit, giving a view of the alternative descent to the north of Ben Ledi which would make the route circular rather than ‘there and back’.  It didn’t take long to decide on the circular option.

The broad ridge heading north was a pleasant start to the descent, before we turned right at a bealach (pass) to head west down Stank Glen.  After a boggy start, a narrow path materialised, taking us down to the edge of the forest we had started out from.  The forest trails marked on the map turned out to be stumbly, stony footpaths, but for ‘Mist’ it was the way home.  After all, it was getting very close to Collie dinner time.

Text and images © Paul Shorrock unless indicated otherwise. 

The image tagged Gordon Hatton is taken from the Geograph Project and reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence

For the best viewing experience, left-click the images and maps to zoom in to a new window, then exit that window to go back – go on, it really does work!

The Scottish Highlands are well known for the grandeur of the scenery and for their magnificent mountains, but UK outdoor folk frequently use British understatement when describing our highest mountains (e.g. Ben Nevis), often just referring to them as ‘hills’.  In the case of Ben A’an in the Trossachs, the word ‘hill’ is quite accurate, with a height of a mere 454 metres, but get to the top and you can certainly see the mountains.

In fact, Ben A’an is a well-liked little hill.  From the summit, the views towards the Arrochar Alps and Loch Lomond are outstanding, but Ben A’an has another great advantage – it’s a short and easy walk.   Because of these factors, and the close proximity of Glasgow and the densely populated Central Lowlands of Scotland, the popularity of Ben A’an is guaranteed.

On our Scottish trip of May 2021, Chris and I were back in the Trossachs, filling in the gaps of places we had never been to, as well as looking for a short hill day to give Border Collie ‘Mist’ her daily walk – Ben A’an fitted the bill exactly.  Mind you, it is just a little hill, so this is a shorter blog post than usual – hopefully the views in the photos make up for that.

Unfortunately, the promise of the clear dawn over nearby Loch Venachar wasn’t to continue, and before long a blanket of cloud covered the sky.  However, the clouds did occasionally lend a bit of texture to the sky as dog and humans set out.  The Loch Achray path was surprisingly steep in places for such a lowly hill, but the views compensated as we gained height.

According to Wikipedia, “The name “Ben A’an” is an erroneous Anglicization by Sir Walter Scott. Its original name is uncertain, but it has been suggested that it may have been ‘Am Binnean’ which means “the Pinnacle”, although some sites cite its meaning as “the Small Pointed Peak”.  Recent tree harvesting in the forest at the halfway point wasn’t a good look, but the views of the ‘Small Pointed Peak’ ahead of us more than made up for that.

Sure enough, the views improved as we reached the col to the north of the summit, before heading on to the top.  Loch Katrine drew the eye at first but then looking at the monitor screen of the camera on full zoom, I could recognise the distinctive top of The Cobbler, 25 kms to the west, where we had been just eight days earlier (see blog post #301).

With the summit being so popular, I had to wait my turn for pics or run the risk of being ‘photo bombed’.  Ben A’an might be a small hill but it has big views and a big heart, and is as good a way as any to spend half a day surrounded by mountains.  A lunch break at the summit filled in another half hour before it was time to head for home (and the next hill!)

Text and images © Paul Shorrock

For the best viewing experience, left-click the images and maps to zoom in to a new window, then exit that window to go back – go on, it really does work!

In April 2021, the governments of England, Scotland and Wales were finally united in relaxing Covid-19 regulations to allow cross-border travel between the nations – about time too, as we wanted to travel in Scotland and would have to cross out of Wales to pass through England to get there!  First on our list of places to visit was Bute and the Argyll Coast, an area not really noted for its mountains. 

This was probably our least planned trip to date, with decisions on destinations being made whilst still travelling.  A water-service stop for the campervan found us near to Arrochar, a place I had only driven through in the past (also a place that does have a mountain or two!).   Scottish Forestry had opened up a couple of venues nearby for overnighting in campers, one of them just round the corner from Ben Arthur, a mountain we had never visited.  So, that was the next day’s fun sorted.

Ben Arthur (Beinn Artair in gaelic) is much better known as ‘The Cobbler’, so called because the summit rocks are supposed to look like a cobbler bending over his last.  At 884 metres (2900 ft), The Cobbler misses out on achieving the status of being a ‘Munro’ by just 30 metres (100 ft), but the unusual summit features and easy access make it one of the most popular mountains in Scotland – that would do nicely, thank you.

The day started cloudy, with the possibility of rain always there – mind you, that means nothing in Scotland, where you can easily experience all four seasons in one day.   The trick is to ‘travel hopefully’ and as we emerged from the forest on to higher ground, we had patches of blue sky to go with our first view of The Cobbler. Behind us was the impressive profile of Ben Lomond, last visited just seven months earlier (see post #295) and yet another popular mountain in the Southern Highlands at 974 metres (3195 ft).

Our route for the day was a simple ‘there and back’ version.  The area is steeped in mountaineering and rock-climbing history and is known as the Arrochar Alps.  Although this was my first visit, I already knew the history of the two large boulders known as the Narnain Boulders – they were once a popular climbers bivi site, especially in the late 1800’s and the 1920-30’s, when rock climbing exploration was at its peak, but they also provided us with shelter for a coffee break.

Then it was onwards.  The path climbs gradually to a meeting of the ways near to the mountain pass of the Bealach a’ Mhàim – from there, our route headed roughly south up a steep set of steps, but the best views were across to some of the other peaks of the Arrochar Alps, Beinn Ime (1011 metres) and Beinn Narnain (926 metres), both of them Munros.

It’s The Cobbler that commands attention though – there are three high points distinctive enough to be called peaks.  We passed under the North Peak on our way to the Middle Peak, the highest of the three.  The true summit of the Middle Peak, known as Arthur’s Seat, involves a ‘hands on’ scramble ascent of a rock pinnacle with a drop below, but the lower South Peak is accessible only by rock climbers.  We passed a few minutes chatting to a guy who had last been on the mountain thirty years previously, but then it was time to head down.

Returning by the outward route gave us the chance to take in the views from fresh angles, with the distant Ben Lomond competing with the Arrochar Alps for ‘view of the day’.  Near the Narnain Boulders we came across a pair of red deer who were clearly used to humans and Border Collies.  ‘Mist’ likewise showed no interest in them – it was nearly time for the dog’s dinner, and time to head for home.

Text and images © Paul Shorrock except those tagged Colin Park and Peter S, which are taken from the Geograph Project and are reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence