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Carn Gorm Meall Garbh Meall a' Bharr ('Top' 3294 ft) Carn Mairg Creag Mhor Map Cloudy and raining first thing. Nevertheless we drove to Invervar in Glen Lyon and got ready. It wasn't actually raining then so we set off. Soon it started to rain again - it stopped and started repeatedly all day and we ended up wet through. We couldn't see any views as we were in cloud most of the time and this made route finding a bit difficult. Fortunately, however, a good part of the way the path was marked by the remains of a fence - a line of rusty old fenceposts. The route is a big loop taking in the five peaks. I had to moan and argue to get Andrew to go up the last one. Told him it was better to follow the path than get lost trying to cut straight down. As it was after getting to the top of the last one we ended up losing the path anyway (trad). I think he may have been a bit exasperated at that point. I had a chesty cough this trip too, which was worse at night so I think I kept him awake coughing, wheezing and groaning, although I did try taking some of that useless, gruesome Venos cough mixture. I seem to remember, as if in a dream, a voice saying at some point in the night 'For God's sake, Alan, can you turn on your bloody side!' We stayed the night in Crieff (£16) - Number 67 in the main street whatever it was called. The chap there - stocky, bearded, gingery Scot - took tourists on guided trips up the hills etc to see the wildlife. His partner was a German girl - they had 'Deutschsprachig' written on the B&B sign - blonde, glasses, nice. She did a good tasty breakfast - scrambled egg and mushrooms - she did the eggs nice and light and put some herbs and stuff in - also in the mushrooms. Garlic maybe. Exotic German cuisine. In the evening we went into one pub and Andrew asked for a pack of cards. It was Sunday of course. He was told they didn't allow it as it lowered the tone or something like that. At the same time this bloke was noisily saying something to a mixed crowd about 'that fucking big... fucking... etc'. Then a couple from the same bunch went over and put something on the juke box - horribly loud of course. It was 'Ruby don't take your love to town'. As soon as it got to the chorus the ladies in this up-market pub all bawled out their own version of this - something along the lines of 'Rooobeeee, don' tek yeer knickers doon!' shouted out with rollicking gusto. Just as well we hadn't wandered into one of the down-market pubs then. |
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