Only Young Twice

Meall nan Tarmachan

So, back in the van after a month or two mostly indoors in yoga training.. I headed back up to Perthshire. The forecast was good and Meall nan Tarmachan was in my sights. This lovely beast sits on the North side of Loch Tay, alongside the Lawers range.

Having not been in the van in a while, I was able to complete an *inordinate* amount of faffing while I assembled and packed my hiking kit. Also a bit (lot) of dithering and squinting up at the summits while I tried to calculate whether it was worth lugging the ice axe up the hill for the patchy-looking snow at the top. I took it. Because you’d all shake your heads at me if I didn’t and slid off the mountain into a hospital bed.

To ice axe or not to ice axe? Didn’t really need it but the extra weight will only make me stronger 💪

I started hiking somewhere not far off 11am…(!). Imagine my embarrassment when early on I met a lovely pair of ladies on their way down the hill who had set off from home in the borders at 3am that morning. I had camped *in the car park* and still couldn’t get my lazy ass onto the trail much before lunchtime. Champion. Though I read in a book once that being a morning lark (not me) or a night owl (absolutely me) is mostly genetic, so lets not stress about things we probably can’t change hey.

Quick selfie shoot just for a wee bit more pre-hike procrastination..

The hike up was lovely, if lung-busting. My body had clearly gotten used to nice yummy yoga practice of pretzeling around on a mat, and was happy to forget that cardio fitness is a thing. A thing I don’t seem to have. Fortunately the nice weather meant I could pretend to be admiring the view rather than fighting for air.

A chunk of the way up (that’s the official distance) I stopped for my first fake-cheese roll (since I’m now a vegan hiker) with a view of Beinn Ghlas and Ben Lawers. Vegan hiking is much the same as non-vegan hiking, except I seem to eat more, which is one of the big bonuses of being vegan they don’t tell you about. 👌

Lunch (no. 1) with a view. Ever seen a bluer sky?!

The stretch up to the summit of Tarmachan presented a choice of slushy slip and slide, or very steep grassy slope. I took the slip and slide because it looked pretty fun and I had brought the ice axe after all. I questioned that decision halfway up with the slush melting under my boots. But it wouldn’t really be a proper hike without at least one slightly-dicey moment no? 😅

As I hiked it in to the cairn, the sun really belted. It’s hard to beat sitting on top of a snowy peak in full sun. I made a new friend – Chrissy – who enthusiastically took some cheesy snaps of me pulling out some mountaintop yoga poses. 😂

I stayed at the top enjoying the sun for a while, and the absolutely spectacular views. I decided I was having a chilled hike today, so I headed back down, saving the rest of the Tarmachan ridge for another day.

Beinn Sgulaird, forever ago

For everyone who’s forgotten who I am since its been ages since my last post… Hi I’m Ashley👋, and I’m living in a teeny tiny van while I camp my way around Scotland attempting to tackle munros and find yoga classes (and showers).

Anyone who follows my instagram might know I’ve been busy doing yoga teacher training in Edinburgh through February and March. For anyone who doesn’t follow my instagram… its @only.young.twice – follow me to join on the journey!! I’ll write a bit about the yoga training at some point. For now, the short version is: it was an utterly fantastic, life-changing, discombobulating, enormously enriching, incomparable experience. It’ll probably take me a while to put the long version into words – I’ll get back to you on that.

Anyway here I am, now a qualified yoga teacher (oh heck! 😅) and once again living in the van wondering where I’m going next (also heck! 😅). Fortunately, this first week back in the van has been accompanied by very un-March weather, making the adjustment all the easier (though I don’t mean to be ungrateful but I do have mixed emotions about the unseasonably warm weather if it’s thanks to climate change?).

It’s been a strange experience hiking some munros *without* 40mph+ winds, hail, rain, thick gloomy clouds etc. To be honest it’s also been strange *not* to need 4 layers of jackets to step outside the van for a minute. But I’m expecting we’ll back to business as usual on that stuff by next week.

With all the other stuff I’ve been up to, I’ve not yet managed to write about a hill I hiked, with a new hiking friend(!), way back in January. I want to take a moment to cover that because (1) (some of) the pictures are good and (2) it turns out a core part of being a munro bagger is Remembering Which Munros You’ve Hiked (think this calls for another oh heck! actually 😅).

I met Nic through Bumble Friends – a ‘dating’ app for meeting friends – where I’d put a “would anyone please like to be my friend” profile up. Nic and I are both trying to knock off some munros, so we weren’t chatting long before we’d gotten down to business on which hills we’d each done and agreed to meet for a hike. And it turned out we had both been defeated in our first attempts of Beinn Sgulaird (see here if you want to re-live my pain), so that seemed like the fitting choice for us to team-up and conquer it together.

I wasn’t overly keen on the weather forecast of (yet more) 40mph winds, which I was thoroughly sick of walking in. But Nic was highly enthusiastic, so I figured her enthusiasm would probably carry us up the hill. Nic’s brother was also visiting, and I got the sense his enthusiasm was more on a par with mine in the Let’s Just Get This One Over With camp. 😂

The day started with a thick layer of grey cloud which weighed heavily over us. Still, if you ignore the grey, and focus on the bit beneath it, I think these pictures are slightly better than last time.

We hiked the annoying Up, Down, Up Again route to get up to the ridge, which always seems unnecessary to me (can’t we just go up when we’re going up, and down when we’re going down please thanks). It felt easier this time, maybe because the pain was shared, and the good conversation distracted my attention from my legs.

I was *extremely* pleased to make it further than I managed on my first attempt, so much so that I took a triumphant selfie the soon-to-be-hiked summit. I was also smiling because the forecast winds we’d been bracing for never showed up. Maybe the wind missed the memo. But all we got was a moderately strong breeze, maybe 15mph. Lovely.

And would you look at that, lo and behold, we made it! And I claimed Yet Another selfie with a cairn on a white background. I was genuinely relieved to have knocked this one off and no longer have unfinished business hanging over me. The list is now back to two clean categories of “bagged hills” and “unattempted hills”, just how I like it. 👏

And the way down was a celebration. Maybe the hill gave up on trying to deter us and dutifully provided the reward we had earned for (finally) making it to the top. Either way. The clouds parted. The sun got stronger. The whole place lit up. I took a *lot* of pictures. Here’s a small selection.

But what *is* that yellow thing in the sky??

So there we go. I’d been putting off take-two of this hill for ages, but it turned out it Wasn’t All That Bad. I had a blast with my new hiking buddy, the weather came through for us in the end, and I’m absolutely delighted that this hill is now firmly In The Bag.

And if you’d like to see all this captured in a 1 minute video… here you go. Enjoy!

Ben Challum

I walked this hill back in January. I could tell you that this post is overdue simply because I’ve been busy. But let’s be honest, its at least partially because I’m a little bitter (read: a lot bitter) about this walk. And – it gets worse – I actually changed my plans to walk this hill. But every so often in Scotland, the weather forecast genuinely is change-your-plans good, and my Ridiculously Optimisitic Brain is only too ready to believe it. So there I was having rescheduled my intended visit to my Dad’s, and a planned modification to the van, all to walk this sodding earthy lump.

But oh man, that forecast. The summit was going to be sunny, with a wind speed of approximately *zero miles-per-hour*. I know it sounds too good to be true, but who could pass up the chance that it might just be exactly as forecast? Not me, apparently.

I set off later than planned – as usual – and by the time I got to the layby my only option was to tuck in at the end, having to go well onto the verge to be clear off the road. How did that go, you ask? Let’s take a look shall we.

I don’t think there’s anything I can say other than *I’m really really sorry* 😬🤦‍♀️

Still, no time to dwell, the hill was waiting, so I stuffed my guilt about this horrific parking into my bag with everything else, and toddled on. The walk starts on part of the West Highland Way, and this section of the route passes some ancient graveyards, a ruined chapel and a rainbow.

Apparently I didn’t take a picture of this on the way out but here’s one from the evening

This was all Very Nice so far, wandering along on the flat. But the minute I started to climb my legs began grumbling. In fairness I had conquered a lot of munros in the previous week. I won’t detail the ins and outs of negotiation between me and my legs to get up this, but this was a slow ascent, ladies and gentlemen.

Pretty soon I was into serious bog country. This is the type of bog you don’t negotiate with – so over the fence I went. But 20 paces on after crossing the fence and – oh look! – bog on this side too. I must’ve been back and forth over this fence half a dozen times. What a joy. 😐

In case it wasn’t *abundantly* obvious, I have a distinctly grumpy memory of this walk. So imagine my displeasure at looking through the photos for this post and finding these delightful snaps. I don’t know how they found their way into my phone, doesn’t look anything like the walk I was on. But feel free to enjoy them anyway.

What I do remember about the slog up this hill is that it was gradual, and lasted for circa All Of Eternity. And when I got closer to the top, I was subsumed into a weather pattern that I’m pretty sure was manifested solely to take the piss out of me. As if to say “you believed a forecast of 0mph winds? Haha! Fool! We don’t blow below 40mph up here – show some respect!”.

What a delight

Anyway. One very cold sandwich stop later I started the slog down, only pausing to dig out the waterproof troos since the wind seemed to think it’d be funny to forcefully cover me in wet cloud. Lovely. 🙄

And at least I had some pictures that accurately reflect my memory of this trudge. I swear 90% of the walk looked like this:

So was there anything good about this walk? Well. I will admit, reluctantly, that this one view was pretty special. I am a sucker for a ready-to-set sun, sitting in blue sky, above some clouds. I made some peace with the hill for this. One redeeming feature for this trudge up a mountain and complete trolling by the weather. Was it worth it? Not sure. Would I do it again? Certainly.

Beinn a’Chochuill and Beinn Eunaich

It amazes me every time how bright the moon can be on a clear night. I camped in one of the forestry commission car parks – miles away from any light pollution – and spent a fair amount of time standing outside the van staring at the sky. My phone put up a fair effort to capture it in a picture (kindly proving I didn’t imagine it).

The next day I had two hills on my hit-list – Beinn a’Chochuill and Beinn Eunaich. These are the two that sit behind the Ben Cruachan ridge which I’d walked back in September. I was a bit trepidacious when squeezing the van into a teeny-tiny layby – not just about the van-squeezing but also about the amount of ice I could see up on the the ridge (I hadn’t managed to get myself a pair of crampons by this point). But I set off anyway to give it a shot and soon realised the ice was really on Ben Cruachan and its shoulders, not so much my hills, so I had no excuse to do anything other than crack on.

I was greeted by the welcome-party of heilan’ coos. For the most part they stared at me with bemusement as I walked among them, trying not to step in their cow-pies, meanwhile also taking a video and (most importantly) doing my best to look “casual”. They didn’t seem particularly impressed. I was though – they were a bunch of stunners.

Think I need to work on my close-up skills

The route soon became a steep walk up a grassy slope. “Lovely”, I thought sardonically. Though I realised it actually had been rather lovely when I got over the top and discovered this steep wall of grass had been sheltering me from the extremely icy wind a-blowing at the top the whole time. This wind isn’t remotely interested that you’re wearing gloves, it’s gonna freeze your fingers off anyway. I got a move on along the ridge to the first summit (further than I expected, as always), took my uber-quick-pics, and about-turned in search of shelter for a sandwich! While I’d be busying along the ridge, the sky behind me had been developing away, readying itself for my snapping of pictures.

I was starting to think the wind was going to succeed in its vendetta against my fingers. But… sister to the rescue! My sis had bought me some handwarmers as a slightly-jokey Christmas present. But joke is on her (or maybe the joke is on the wind?) because I whapped them into my gloves and my hands were too hot again in no time! While I had been busy fussing about handwarmer and glove arrangments, the views had been getting better and better.

The light in Scotland can rival the wind in its ability to take your breath away. Especially in Winter. No amount of cold stops me from getting the camera out to try and capture it, even though no picture ever truly does it justice. Because when its in front of you, you feel it as much as you see it. I’m struggling to choose my favourite of the following pictures, so I’m not going to, and will just add them all instead. Feel free to pick your own favourite.

I eventually turned my back to the wind and let it not-so-gently push me along my walk down. I had the joy of walking along a long ridge, with the slowly setting sun to my side.

Once I was back down to Earth, I sauntered along the track to report back to the coos on my successful walk. One of them had also had a successful day, achieving clear dominance on the hay pile which was now more bed than it was food. I congratulated him on his achievement (he seemed pretty non-plussed about mine).

Beinn Chabhair

The weather forecast for the day after Beinn Tulaichean and Cruach Àrdrain was promising yet another sunny summit, clearly it had no consideration for how tired my legs were. But since we had started Tulaichean so early in the morning, we were back by early afternoon which left me plenty of time to get a shower at the Green Welly Stop and plan for the next day (maybe this is why so many people do early starts?!). To appease my aches, I struck a compromise with my body that I’d just do a one-munro-walk this time. I chose Beinn Chabhair (this is pronounced more like “Ben Whore”, but I’m not judging).

This walk starts from the Drovers Inn at Inverarnan so I headed there for a spot of dinner, and thankfully they let me stay the night in their carpark. The Drovers is slated as Scotland’s most haunted pub. I didn’t see any ghosts (I’m not sorry about that), but the menacing menagerie of stuffed animals definitely gave me the creeps. I had some (vegetarian) haggis, neaps and tatties which was very tasty, though it looked much the same as it would c. 14 hours later once processed 😄.

Am I entering a horror movie?…

….the door clearly thinks so…

It was close to 10am by the time I coaxed my sluggish self out the next day. Oops. Anyway along I went to hike up the side of the Beinglas waterfall, ignoring the complaints from the legs. There’s then a long walk over boggy moorland before you even get to the munro. Once I was up the waterfall though, I found I was in the mood for an amble. I stuck an album on (Christine and the Queens if you wanna know) and wandered. Once I got to the actual Munro I stepped it up a gear and powered on up to the top – even over took a lovely pair (after chatting to them for 5 minutes).

I was confidently marching through the familiar wet grey cloud, with full belief in the sun predicted for the top. And I wasn’t disappointed. For once it was even better than I had hoped for. I emerged from the cloud onto the ridge. Finding myself between the sun and the cloud meant… if I turned to my left…. yes! A brocken spectre! Always such a treat to see one of these.

Can practically reach through the cloud and touch it…

Yesss!! And a wee Brocken spectre to officiate the welcome

As I hiked up the last of the ridge it got sunnier and sunnier. I triumphantly got my cairn selfie, and carried on snapping away. There were hills poking out of the clouds on all sides. This was actually as useful as it was beautiful – it’s not always easy to tell from the forecasts which hills have more or less ice and snow lying on them, so I was taking lots of mental notes.

I found a nice place to sit and had my sandwich. Ordinarily after my lunch I’d head back down the hill. But… I didn’t want to leave. I stuck around, wandering around the top, chatting to lots of different people – it was a busy day up there! One guy was pitching his tent for the night – I was quite envious, though he told me it was his third attempt at pitching after his nearly got blown away from the first two spots he’d chosen. I made a mental note to come back and camp here… in summer.

I found a little outcrop ledge to sit on, and practice a bit of meditation. I’m not very good at meditating but I do try. Often people meditate with their eyes closed, but up here that seemed like such a waste. It felt more natural to sit looking into the cloud, calmly watching it drift along. When my mind wandered I brought it back to passively observing the cloud. This was one of the most nourishing meditations I can remember. I could happily have watched this all day, just sitting breathing, filling my lungs with the delicious air. But eventually my motionless feet stopped feeling.

Fortunately when I got up and moving around again, there were yet more people to talk to, including a couple who had brought a stove, fresh coffee and an aeropress up the hill. They very kindly offered me a coffee and I practically bit their hand off. 😁 It was absolutely delicious. Everything seems to taste better up the hills.

Eventually even this couple headed back down the hill and still I stuck around, hoping to catch the start of sunset. In the end I tore myself away by around 3.30, having spent about 3 hours up there. Even as I started walking out, the sky kept developing and there were more pictures to be had right until the mist engulfed me again.

I got a move on for the walk out – I stuck on another album (DRAMA this time) and marched away. I made it down pretty fast, overtaking a few of walkers on the way. I managed to avoid getting the head torch out (even though I was almost feeling my way down the side of the waterfall 😅), enjoying the feel of the dark. Almost as much as I enjoyed the pint of shandy and round two of the vegetarian haggis back at the Drovers.

Beinn Tulaichean and Cruach Àrdrain

I had a new walking buddy for this pair of hills – Ian – who I’d found on the WalkHighlands forum. And I was so fired up for another walk after such a good day on An Caisteal, that I even agreed to an 8.30am kick off. People who know me well, know that this hurt.

Fortunately it was a nice morning. Looking at An Caisteal and Beinn a’Chròin from the other side in morning light I could barely believe I’d been up there two days previously.

Looking over to Beinn a’Chroin – a recent addition to the bag

This hike up the grassy slope was pretty damn steep, which the route description had decided not to mention. Brutal start to the day. Still, at least it was sunny, even if we were melting under our winter clothes.

We made it to the first summit. I was starving (even though it was only about 11am) and chose a spot to sit for a sandwich, which I confidently declared was sheltered. This “sheltered” spot was possibly the coldest, windiest spot on the hill. Amazingly, Ian went along with this, without complaint. He must’ve been hungry too.

We headed on into the wind to tackle Cruach Àrdrain. We descended down to the bealach between the two hills, into the significantly-more-sheltered place where we *should* have eaten our sandwiches.

The second hill of the day was significantly icier – ah so we are in winter after all. We both had a series of bambi-on-ice moments on patches of solid sheet ice, and dancing over iced up boulders. It was a busy day on the hill – the good weather had pulled a lot of people out – and the ice was a great leveller with most of us as helpless on it as each other. (There was also a few folk who trotted around gracefully on the ice like it was nothing, but I don’t want to talk about them).

The second summit beat the first. Some light clouds had started rolling around, which only accentuated the crisp winter light. Maybe it’s just me, but I always feel light clouds make for a more dramatic sky than a boring expanse of blue.

Picking our way back down this hill over the ice was trickier than the way up. Ian had predicted early on in the day that at least one of us would go down before the end of the walk. To his delight, it was me. I did a spectacular slowmotion slide-fall in soft snow. Followed by the long pause where I can’t get up for laughing so hard. To my frustration, Ian did about 4 or 5 almost-falls, where he somehow managed to catch himself into a complex breakdance freeze, usually with his bum about 2 inches off the wet/snowy/boggy ground. He tried (unsuccessfully) to take me down with him on at least 3 occassions. Still, he couldn’t save his hat from the bog so he didn’t come out completely unscathed. 😂

An Caisteal and Beinn a’Chròin

I’ve always found with running that it’s the run *after* a really bad running experience that is the good one. And it might be the same with walking.

After such a Bad Time on Beinn Chonzie, I had to battle with myself to work up the resolve to head out and up again. But I headed up to Ben More lodge, which is campervan friendly, for a bite to eat and to stay in the carpark. I got chatting to the staff who were very interested and enthusiastic about what I’m doing. And, when you’ve told people you’re here to walk up the hills.. well, you’ve kinda gotta walk up the hills.

The staff were very supprotive- asking if I needed anything for the van like tea bags or loo roll. I said I was all fine, though possibly in need of a shower(!). In a wonderful act of kindness, the barman came over to quietly let me know they’d had a cancellation and I was welcome to shower in one of their lodges if I liked. Yesss! Though he asked me not to tell his boss – so please don’t say anything 😉

I set off the next day, with the morning sun illuminating the morning mist rolling through the valley. I couldn’t get enough of this light, it was pulling me on down the track. I kept wanting to see what it looked like from the next high point, or round the next bend…. Eventually I found I’d massively overshot the point at which I was meant to start heading up the slope. My options were to retrace my steps waaay back to pick up the nose of the ridge at the bottom… or head up the side to intercept my intended path. I decided to go for the latter, though as a consequence (or as punishment for not paying attention?) it was a LOT steeper. On this plus side I got this picture which I love.

Before long I was engulfed in the standard wet cloud you come to know well up here. It was a bit of a slog up the hill, as always (if anyone tells you hiking gets easier the more you do it, they’re lying).

For a while in the gloomy wet mess I’d forgotten all about the glimpses of sun I’d seen. The cloud was all-encompassing. But after a LOT of climbing, it started to brighten. I could sense the sun above the clouds willing me on. As I got closer and closer… it was almost a giddy feeling. Eventually I just sort of stumbled out and into the open expanse of sky, sun, and a thick carpeting of cloud. There was a noticeable warmth to the sun too. When it combined with the heat I’d generated hiking up, it felt like a brief escape from winter. (Though to be fair, winter doesn’t exactly feel like winter this year).

The other mountain-top islands were poking through the fluffy white and greeting me. I easily recognised Ben More and Stob Binnein which I’d hiked with Daniel back in September, and gave them a wave. 👋

I was up in another world, and I had this world all to myself. I wondered whether people at ground level had any idea of what they were missing.

You won’t be surprised to hear that I took a LOT of pictures. Buckle up.

Eventually I had to get a move on because I had a whole other munro to do – Beinn a’Chròin. I descended back into the cloud down a steep rocky path… to go back up another steep rocky path. I was merrily scrambling away when I came to a wall of rock. I didn’t remember reading about this in the route description – though to be honest I always read about 2 sentences of these and glaze over. I tried a couple of different approaches, without committing, and stepped back a couple times to puzzle it out. There was a drop behind me, impossible to size since it fell down through the clouds. It had a bit of an overhang so I took the bag off and shoved it up onto the shelf along with the poles. I paused for a second.. and quickly removed my gps doodah from my bag and slipped it into my pocket(!) lest I fall and need to claw my way back up the hill, no doubt with broken legs, to summon a helicopter. After all this faffing it was time to woman-up (no pun intended). I did a highly un-graceful push up on the rock, and manouvered my knee onto a shelf, fighting to keep my weight forward. I felt the spike in adrenaline from my brain screaming that I was definitely about to fall to my death… and then I was up. Just like that. What was all the fuss about? Easy Peasy. 😅

Looking back down at the drop I didn’t just fall down

Life on the second munro of the day was possibly even better than the first. This one came with serious Lord of the Rings vibes. And the sun was starting to think about setting. I took another truck-load of pictures and hung around a while, weighing up how much walking out in the dark I was up for.

Look I spend a lot of time on my own ok?

The walk out was pretty long on this one, and through the bog to end all bogs. I was glad I hadn’t stayed until dark when I came across some pretty suspicious footprints…

I marched my way out through the bog, pausing to say hello to this keeper of the Glen.

Ben Chonzie

Worst. Hill. Ever. 0/10 would not recommend.

Admittedly, I wasn’t really in the mood. Headache and quite tired after hosting in the van for a couple of weeks, and always a bit gutted when a friend has just left. But I thought maybe getting high up would raise my mood.

Ben Chonzie is “an easier ascent by munro standards” said the WalkHighlands website. Also “keep a look out for mountain hares – this hill has a large population of these fast-running creatures”. Sounds like a good one for a day when I Don’t Feel Like It, maybe the hares hopping around would cheer me up.

The route up started out as extremely slippy slimy mud which gets all over your boots and has you sliding around like someone has oiled the path. And as soon as you graduate past the mud, the path becomes… solid ice. The kind that pulls your back foot out from under you with every step, so you walk up the hill like you’re doing the Running Man in slowmo. Not as fun as it sounds, trust me.

Eventually I got off-path and onto heathery slope intermixed with sections of bog. This would have been a small improvement if it hadn’t taken me into high winds blasting me with wet clouds – one of Scotland’s favourites in its playbook of mountain weathers. The thing about this weather is it effectively blinds me. The wind constantly blows wet cloud across my glasses, which unfortunately aren’t fitted with windscreen wipers. So I end up stumbling around like a drunk donkey.

This was also one of those hills where you think you’re at the top, but the top is actually ages away over rolling moorland. There’s often a cairn which makes you think you’re approaching the summit, but it’s actually there to guide you back off the hill. Gets me every time. So by the time I eventually made it to the real cairn I was Not A Happy Bunny. Speaking of bunnies: how many mountain hares did I see? Nada. Not a One. It’s all Lies.

This is the top, but I can’t say I was happy to be here

Delightful

This was no place to sit and have a sandwich, so I about-turned and hot footed it back the way I came. I was battling head first into the wind now, and the wind won. I stayed upright.. but ended up significantly off-path and had to ditch the glasses which were now fully opaque and completely useless. I decided to heck with the path and took a shortcut off the mountain by wandering down the steep grassy slope in the general direction of my van.

When I re-joined the path I ran into a pair of walkers I had briefly met somewhere near the summit. “I didn’t recognise you without the steamed up glasses” one of them said. Funny. Nevertheless, I walked the rest of the way back chatting with this lovely pair of humans, which was probably the only redeeming thing about this walk.

I was glad to get back to the van and eat my very late lunch. I decided to head back to town in search of a shower, but unfortunately got caught in rush hour traffic.

Meall Greigh in the snow

By the last couple days of his holiday, Rex was feeling just about recovered enough from Ben Lomond to tackle another Munro. I excitedly set about the important process of hill choosing, with a combination of route descriptions, maps and weather forecasts. We settled on Meall Greigh (apparently pronounced Meall Gree-aah) which sits at the end of the Ben Lawers range, overlooking Loch Tay.

There was a bit of snow lying in Aberfeldy, and we’d had a pretty slippy walk round the Birks the day before. But Meall Greigh is covered in thick heather and grasses, so I was expecting a walk though crunchy frozen heather with maybe a touch of snow. Wrong!! Right from the getgo the field leading up to the hill, we were in ankle deep snow!!

The snow made it pretty tough going on the way up. Fortunately we weren’t the first up the hill (neither of us are morning people), and there was a path of footsteps which seemed to be heading up the route we were aiming for. As we climbed, a light blizzard showed up to join us – lovely! Eventually we met some of the folk who had made the footprints we were following – I chatted to them about the weather at the top, and Rex glazed over in bemusement, unable to comprehend a word they were saying in their (only moderately) broad accents.

Once the gradient eased off a bit higher up, we started having a bit more fun. A hidden snow drift swallowed one of my legs entirely and I was helplessly foundering around in the snow, laughing too hard to free myself.

We were vindicated for not setting off at first-light (love it when that happens). The clouds started parting here and there, with the sun really trying to break through. Some patches of bright blue sky were even appearing!! The whole landscape started to look magical, like a dreamscape.

The last push to the cairn was a bit of a struggle – Rex started using his pole like a grandad with a Zimmer frame and had nothing left to celebrate reaching the top. Hahaha.

We were frozen after eating our sandwiches, so we got a move on. And we had some more dramatic views to feast on for the way down.

The snow was only too happy to help us on our way down and the faster we went the more laughs we had. There was no way to predict which footsteps would sink to ankle deep and which would sink you down to the knee – full snow roulette. Hahaha. We wished we had brought sledges… but there was no need to let that hold us back…

Highlights of a quick January road trip

In the space of about 10 days Rex and I covered a fair amount of Scotland. Without aiming to do a blow-by-blow, thought I’d stick up some of the highlights – and there were quite a few. Ready? Ok here we go.

We camped almost entirely off-grid, including in one of my favourite spots on the West Coast. It’s such a secluded place there’s no light pollution, and we had a clear sky filled with a full blanket of stars. Rex had popped out the van for a sec and came back saying “You have to get out here!”. We were treated to a crisp winter morning the next day. We sat with coffees watching excited dogs running around on their morning walkies before heading out for our own walk by the water.

Being American, Rex was keen to see some old buildings. Like really old. Preferably fully-original, not restored, lets-see-how-much-is-still-standing stuff. Every castle we went to Rex would wander round saying “Is that the original door?”… “Is that the original stonework?”… “Is that the original information board?”… “Is that the original fire exit sign?”…and so on. We did a tour of Stirling Castle, though to be honest I was disappointed they’d focused the tour more on the Mary-Queen-of-Scots-early-life stuff, which is all a who-will-marry-who drama. I’m way more interested in the sieges of Stirling Castle – particularly the one in early 1300s when Edward I “the Hammer of the Scots” bombarded the castle with “Warwolf” – the world’s largest trebuchet. Go have a read – its a cool story.

We did manage to fit in a fair few castles, including Edinburgh, Stirling, Castle Campbell (which sits at the top of Dollar Glen), Dunstaffnage Castle (which sits on a massive rock), Inverlochy Castle, Castle Roy (which sits alongside Murdo the heilan’ coo’), Loch an Eilean Castle (which sits in the middle of Loch an Eilean). And to see something even older, we hiked up to Dun da Lamh fort, which is estimated to date back to around 500bc.

That wall is over 2000 years old ladies and gentlemen

In fact, the walk around Loch an Eilean was so good, lets have a few more pics from it:

Since we were in the depths of winter, we didn’t see a huge amount of wildlife on our walks. No deer, no mountain hares, no creepy crawlies. Clearly the critters and creatures had more sense than us, and were hiding away in their burrows from the worst of the winter. So we took a trip to see the Cairngorm reindeer who were smugly enjoying the weather in their ridiculously insulated coats. They were pleased to see us, probably because we brought breakfast.

We did a fair few other walks – too many to chronicle here – including one more munro which deserves its own post. But all in all it was great fun and the weather wasn’t too unkind to us. We meandered our way back to Edinburgh, and rounded off the trip with a walk up Arthur’s seat, where we caught a pretty fantastic sunset.