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Beinn Dearg
Map I had a nice breakfast at Braelea and chatted with the landlady who told me she was a teacher and only opened up the B&B for 4 weeks in the year. When I came to pay she smiled and gave me £5 back which was very nice of her. The cloud was starting at knee level in Fort William and Spean Bridge with drizzle hanging despondently in the air. Half-heartedly I drove north towards Loch Arkaig for a few miles but the weather showed no signs of improving and the forecast had indicated that it was going to continue like this all day. Consequently Plan A (doing the three Munros west of Loch Arkaig) was abandonned in favour of Plan B, Gairich, which was itself quickly superseded by Plan C - driving East to where the forecast had indicated better prospects. There weren't all that many eastern Munros left to do but I selected Beinn Dearg near Blair Atholl. Normally this would be a candidate for a mountain bike approach but as I'd not got one with me the old fashioned approach would have to do. I got to Blair Atholl, found the car park and set off at 10.45. Then it took me ¼ hour of faffing about to make sure which road to take but eventually luck, map, compass and GPS prevailed. I followed the route a short distance through woods and debouched into open countryside. Then followed a very long walk along a cart-track, under blue skies and fluffy white cumulus clouds. It would indeed have been great for a mountain bike but never mind.
About a mile from the woods I passed Lady March's Cairn. According to Cameron McNeish, this was built by her on a picnic in the 19th Century and subsequently added to by workmen on the road (called the West Hand Road). A tall, slim cairn over 6ft high.
As I progressed the biggest problem I encountered was the flies. Black flies constantly flying just in front of my face, apparently desperate to land on my nose. They didn't pay any attention at all to my exposed arms but were mesmerised by my nose. Nor would they respond positively to rational arguments that they should leave me alone. 'F*** off you B*****d!!!!!!!' seemed to have no effect at all, no matter how many times or how loudly it was repeated. Perhaps they just didn't understand plain English. Foreign flies I expect - Spanish maybe. Whatever they were, they were a nuisance and persisted most of the way to and up the hill. At the base of the hill I passed a bothy with red doors but no-one was in residence. The hill itself was a great, green mound with a stony summit plateau. Near the top I saw a trio of walkers coming back down and said hello. The actual summit is a pile of stones crowned with a stone windbreak around a trig point. Unfortunately as I got there I entered thin cloud which lingered for the ¼ hour I spent at the top and then, annoyingly, cleared within 5 minutes of me leaving it.
I summited at 2.15, left at 2.30 and was back at the car by 5.35 after an uneventful steady walk back. On the upper slopes of the hill, coming out of the cloud, you could see for mile after mile after mile back the way you'd come, and the same again in the other direction. No houses, roads, fences, souls… nothing but the great, rolling, empty green. On the way back I did try the shortcut which is shown on the map but it gave no sign of rejoining the main track and in the end I had to yomp across moorland to get back on course.
Overall it was an easy ascent with no hard gradients at all - but a long, long approach and those annoying flies. Drove south, giving a lift to a hitch-hiking foreign couple for a few miles, and stayed the night in Crawford at the Crawford Arms Hotel. Cheap enough if a tad seedy. | |||||
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