free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
Our usual routine for a hike is probably like most peoples. Get up fairly early, get to the start as soon as possible and then get on with the walk, usually finishing early afternoon. For this walk we decided to try something a bit different and set out in the early afternoon in the hope that we could be suitably high up when the sun was setting so that we got the best opportunity for a glorious sky. Torches packed we set off to bag Ben Vane, which we thought would be fairly straight forwad given the road that takes you all the way to the bottom of the mountain.
Check out the full walk video on Youtube:
https://youtu.be/C_RP7b1AgG0Given it was a weekday we were surprised by the number of people we met who were on their way down. Everyone mentioned that it was extremely windy at the top, and they were not wrong. It was almost perfectly calm until we stepped onto the summit plateau, which we were almost blown straight off of.
We didn't stick about for long at the summit and started to make our way down, just in time for sunset. Whilst the sky wasn't absolutely spectacular it was still a better than average sunset. The views to the other nearby Munros and hills were lighting up during breaks in the cloud which made it worth while.
