Road to nowhere

[Strathlassie]

I’d been reading the SMC’S route description for this hill and then came across Gld73‘S walk report of his/her descent. We’d recently been up boggy wet hillsides, so the thought of walking up a dry path to nearly the top of the hill was irresistible. We drove from Laggan in glorious sunshine to Garva Bridge and parked the car next to another car with an interesting sign on it.

Garva Bridge

Interesting sign on the car at the start of our walk

We crossed the bridge and simply followed the path to nearly the top of the hill. It was totally straightforward, no navigation needed.the only thing was that the path takes you away from the hill top which plays on your mind. But it was worth it. At the end, there’s a turning circle!

The turning circle at the end of the road!

So much money has been spent on this road, two great bridges over burns and the surface is fantastic. We joked that you could have driven most of the way. It took about ten minutes to reach the trig point from the end of the road, at first across peaty hags but then across soft mossy ground. For once we got great views.

The trig point

So all in all a nice hill with an easy path up if you want to take it.

A substation that’s being built on the way up

[gld73]

I’d been reading the SMC’S route description for this hill and then came across Gld73‘S walk report of his/her descent.

Her

And glad it's not just me who thought it was a bit of a mystery why the road just ends after all that engineering effort!

[Skyelines]

If you look at the Bing Maps and Google maps aerial shots of this you can see that in the Bing shot the road goes all the way to the wind farm and is a very large scar on the ground. The Google shot shows what appears to be a restored area each side of the track to the turning area and completely removing the track through to the wind farm. Also some areas of the workings for the wind farm also appear to have been restored.
Perhaps the track was left in place for the estate after the wind farm works were completed.

[gld73]

Oh, that makes more sense if the road went to the windfarm, thanks. Good to see they're getting rid of some of the construction infrastructure once it's served its purpose. Maybe I should have guessed that was the case, as further along from Garva Bridge, the WH walk description for Gairbeinn and Corrieyairack Hill when I did it described having to cross the landscape blight of the construction road for the Denny-Beauly powerline when going up Gairbeinn ...but it was no longer there when I did the route (the WH route description has subsequently been updated to take account of the changes).