| | ||||
|
The Cairnwell Carn a' Gheoidh Carn Aosda Map This was a day of clear blue skies, on which we only needed t-shirts even at the tops. And sun hats. And trousers. I parked the car at the ski centre in Glen Shee, on the A93. This is quite high up itself so there wasn't much work to do. We climbed directly up the side of the Cairnwell over short springy heather and game tracks - saw a couple of hares, some rabbits, a single small deer with a white bum (fallow deer?), some ptarmigans, capercaillies and black grouse. Devastation at the top where there was the ski-lift, an out-house, couple of masts and 2 oil drums - a complete mess. Still, looking to the north there were good views of the snow-topped Cairngorms about 14 miles away, and our next peak, Carn a' Gheoidh, over to the west across a great bowl-shaped valley.
We left the Cairnwell via an unpleasant, bull-dozed, rubbly track, and had an easy walk round the rim of the bowl across to Carn a' Gheoidh, the best of the day's three Munros. We also saw some dottrells. At the top of Carn a' Gheoidh we sat and had a sandwich and met the only other person we were to see up there all day. A chap who worked night shifts in Edinburgh and had decided to come up on his motor-bike to do the hill because it was a nice day. He took this picture:
We retraced our tracks a bit and finished off with Carn Aosda - more ski desolation, not difficult, rocky summit with cairn. Then a quick and easy descent to the car park.
The trip times were 10.05-15.30. Drove south to minimise the next day's drive and stayed the night at Biggar where I had a veg curry in the Elphinstone Hotel (£5.25). This presumably was the ancestral area of old General Elphinstone who had his army wiped out in the retreat from Kabul 158 years ago. Then we sampled the wares of the Clydesdale Hotel, the Crown, and finally the Fleming, with its unpleasantly psychotic landlord. | ||||
 | ||||
