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I was feeling completely whacked after our 2 days in Torridon and could barely get out of bed until early afternoon. After some food Malky persuaded me out and he suggested a short walk near Kiltarlity on some nice easy forest tracks. It seemed like a good idea and being only a short drive away it wouldn't matter too much if we had to shorten the route.
We parked up in a large gateway and headed up the track - although the gradient was not steep, I was finding it very hard work
Malky trying to find signal on his watch
A walk through forestry had seemed a good idea for a day where the wind speed was a bit insane, and it was, until we popped out of the trees and I couldn't breathe
But when we turned around, the views towards Beinn a' Bha'ach Ard and Strathfarrar were lovely
We slowly followed the tracks through the forest - there was nothing overly exciting but it was so nice to be doing a really short walk in a different place (I've walked around the Ness islands A LOT recently!)
There was a short out and back to the hill fort on the top of Phoineas Hill so we followed the track more steeply uphill - this was even harder work for me and Malky helped by pushing me uphill in an effort to try and help
Looking towards Cabrich
Finally at the top we were surprised to see a big radio mast, but a wee path around the side took us to the hill fort which was a pile of rocks with some almost views!
Radio mast (or phone mast?)
If I'd had more energy we could have continued along the ridge towards the trig point and some of the other lumps and bumps with more views, but for today this was a far as I was getting.
We had a bit of a breather and some water which gave me a bit of a break, and by the time we headed down I seemed to be feeling marginally better (or maybe it was just because we were going downhill now
)
We saw a big tree house - we had seen one earlier but it was harder to get to! Not sure if they are bird hides or something else
We decided to have a look... the views were good!
It felt a wee bit unstable in the wind! We continued along the track, again largely downhill, before taking a slightly less obvious path which would cut back across to where we had started. There were a couple more of the tree houses along here
The next section was a little trickier as we had to use a fallen tree to cross a burn (actually easier than it looked, but could definitely be slippery when wet)
Some wooden planks led us safely through some slightly boggy ground before climbing out onto the track we had started out on
Back at the car it was an easy drive back home where I returned to the sofa for the rest of the day. Malky had been right - it was goo to get out, but I was shattered, again