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Not a great forecast for going up any high hills or doing anything at all to the west, but fortunately not bad enough everywhere to avoid hills altogether ... so a good day to get another two smaller hills done.
Creag a'Ghobhair
8.2km, 340m ascent 2.4hrsShortest route to bag the summit would be to start a little further up the road and go up the track by the waterworks building. I wasn't in a great rush though so parked on the area of grass next to the crossroads (room for 2 or 3 cars off the road), by a sign for Migdale Stores. I walked along the single track road to just past the turn off for the Migdale Farm Stores, where a gate and track goes off to the left shortly after. Fortunately the track was a good one, as I'd opted to do the road and track walking in trainers and had a pair of wellies for what I suspected would be boggy ground away from the track.
- Parking at the crossroads
- Along the road to this point where the track starts on the left
- Looking back down the track to Migdale and Bonar Bridge
- Creag a'Ghobhair and Loch a Ghobhair. I left the track before reaching the loch and headed across the wet ground to the hill
Nice easy walk up towards Loch a' Ghobhair. I then changed footwear and left the track to head across wet tussocky ground to the base of Creag a' Ghobhair's south western slopes and headed straight up there. I'd vaguely intended to go up there then back down to the waterworks and down the road, but I reached what looked like it was maybe the summit on the western top and decided the eastern top was maybe slightly higher. So I headed over to that and once over there, decided to go and take a look down on Loch a Ghobhair's eastern end ...decided it looked okay as a descent route that way, so headed down to the dam. There's no proper track joining the good tracks which run to either end of the loch, but there's a faint trodden wet path of sorts so took that to head back to the western track. Back into trainers and back to the car, a nice easy walk with a new summit ticked off.
- Once the wet lower ground was crossed, the hillside for the ascent was mainly low heather. This is looking back at the ground just crossed.
- Cairn on the western top. You can just about see the tiny bobble of the cairn on the eastern top, I headed over to that as I wasn't sure which was the proper summit. Beinn Dhomhnaill is the nearby hill in the background on the left.
- Beyond Bonar Bridge and Ardgay, the corbett Carn Chuinneag was the only hill really visible today, most hills to the west were in cloud and rain
- Cairn at the eastern summit of Creag a'Ghobhair, looking back to the western one
- Brighter to the east, glimpse of the Dornoch Firth
- Today's next hill, Beinn Domhnaill. In nicer weather I'd have done the 2 hills on one walk, but with the recent rain I wasn't sure what the river / burn would be like to cross, I could just see it marked on my map but had no idea how big it was and whether crossing would be a problem after rain.
- Headed down to the eastern end of Loch a'Ghobhair, more short heather slopes
- Dam at the eastern end of the loch. I took the grassy path which heads up the slope on the other side and then makes its way west across boggy grass to the track I walked in on
- Looking back over to the Creag a'Ghobhair ridge I'd just walked along
Timed things well, as a shower hit just as I got back to the car, so I sat and had my sandwiches before driving up the minor road to the track entrance for Beinn Dhomnaill.
Beinn Domhnaill
6.9km, 245m ascent 1.9hrsRoom for my small car to park off to the side at the entrance to the track, though there were also bigger grassy areas off the back of passing places along the road where more cars would be able to park in the unlikely event multiple people were to decide to tackle Beinn Dhomnaill at the same time. Nobody else here on a grey October Wednesday though. Bit of a conflict at the entrance with one sign saying 'No Entry - Construction Site' and another saying 'Walkers Welcome', but in the absence of any sight or sound of construction activities at this location (there had been some further back along the road for electrical infrastructure), I paid heed to the latter sign rather than the former.
- Start of the track to Beinn Domhnaill, walkers gate to the side
- Not a track that's easy to lose....! Looking back down to the start beside Loch Buidhe having passed a phone mast and power lines
The track is a big one designed for vehicles, so again I decided to stick with trainers for the walk in. I could see from my map that I wanted to stick on the track until the forestry ended on my left and then just go up the slope alongside the forestry edge. I went a bit further than intended before realising I was starting to descend slightly, as the area not marked on my map as forestry now has saplings. I backtracked 50m and headed up the hill (in wellies now), no problems with the spaced-out small trees, but the route could be trickier in a few years. Small cairn at the summit, then headed back down the same way to return to the car.
- Left the track once the dense forest ended and went up where the sparsely planted saplings were
- Summit in sight now, just had to go down and across this dip before getting up to it
- Beinn Domhnaill summit with a view to Creag a' Ghobhair, plus Carn Chuinneag in the background
- Back north west to Loch Buidhe
- Walking back down towards the track, the route goes through that new area of small trees not marked as forestry on my map
Not the most challenging of hills, but good ones not too far from home for today's cloudy windy weather.