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There were so many things that seemed like a great idea when we planned this late on a Tuesday night. Abbie had made it up from Manchester at about 11pm and we decided we'd set off nice and early the next day. Of course the reality was by the time I'd foisted my elderly dogs off on our neighbour and done the packing I should've done the night before it was about 9am before we left Edinburgh. Abbie had packed her new boots, she assured me she'd broken them in and decided against packing any other sensible shoes, opting for a pair of converse in the bottom of the bag for wearing once camped.
We were aiming for maximum views from the tent preferably facing out to the west for best sunsets so we decided we would aim to camp on top of beinn a chaisgein mor. In fact we were so enamoured of our chosen future camping spot we decided we'd camp there all three nights. It looked small on the map. It probably wouldn't feel like much of an ascent at the end of each day and once we'd lugged all our stuff up there on the first day, we'd be flying up it with light rucksacks on the next two days. We'd pretty much convinced ourselves that the walk up to the summit was flat despite the map contours and as it also happened to be my birthday I decided to pack a litre and a half of vodka and my lightweight camping chair.
2 hours into the long walk in to Carnmore Abbie's feet were in bits thanks to the new boots. Not wanting to waste the fantastic weather she instead opted to dig the converse out of her bag and carried on. The walk was long and after carnmore very definitely not flat. Round about the point we left the path to head up onto the shoulder of beinn a chaisgein mor both of us were having a massive sense of humour failure and neither of us were speaking. My pack was incredibly heavy and by the time we got to the top Abbie was entertaining thoughts of sacking off the rest of the trip.
Thankfully the views were incredible and the sunset that night was every bit as great as anticipated. I sat in my chair, we drank vodka, watched the sun go down and started to feel like actually this had been a really good idea. We did still have the issue of Abbie's feet but after drinking almost half of the vodka we had hatched a plan.
We would call our friend Scott in Edinburgh and demand that he pick abbie up a new pair of fell shoes (which she assured me would sort her feet right out), he could then drive up to Poolewe, walk the 20 something km up to the top of beinn a chaisgain mor and drop them off for us. We would sell it to him because the weather was amazing and he would get to hang out with us and go hillwalking. Luckily we had enough signal to call him and amazingly he agreed to this and so we went to bed happy in the knowledge Abbies feet would only have to cope with one more day in the awful boots.
Day 2 we meandered over to the westish ridge of beinn dearg bheag. Abbie had taken every available painkiller and was determined to make the most of the day, giving the dreaded boots a second chance. The vodka had not done too much damage and as we picked our way round a very pretty lochan, all seemed well with the world. We felt optimistic and full of excitement for the ridge ahead. I made some very bold claims about scrambling straight up a very steep section at the start of the ridge but having made it to the bottom of this section thought better of this and found a nice easy scramble to the side.
We only saw one other couple on the hill who awkwardly turned up behind us just as we were louldy discussing how best to avoid looking like we had multiple chins in selfies. It then turned out on closer inspection of these selfies that they were in the background of all them and laughing at us.
Abbie announced fairly early on that it was only an issue for her feet going up and going down was not an issue. How lucky then that we only had to get back up to the top of beinn a chaisgein mor at the end of the day. Having said that the ascent onto beinn dearg mor wasnt too bad and we were rewarded with incredible views all around. After twatting about getting the necessary photos of each other on top of the buttress to the side of the summit, we headed down the steep south easterly slopes of beinn dearg mor aiming to join the track towards carnmore while not losing any unnecessary height. This turned out to be pretty steep and not much fun on tired legs so we were very happy to reach the track. And then we realised how much uphill we had ahead of us.
At this point Abbie changed back into the converse and as she took off her boot what looked like half the skin off her ankle came with it. More silent grumpy walking followed and when it started **** it down with rain the atmosphere was tense to say the least. We arrived back at the tent exhausted at which point Abbie disappeared into her sleeping bag in a rage leaving me to cook dinner etc. At some point we remembered that Scott was supposed to be joining us by that evening and dug out our phones to see a string of messages asking where exactly we were camped. Wherever Scott was he didn't have any phone signal so we quickly gave up on trying to contact him and went to bed.
We woke up fairly early on day three as the sun was already beating down on the tent at around 5am. As I stuck my head outside to assess the weather who should we see coming over the brow of the hill but Scott. He'd seen the rain coming in and decided to bivvy further down to avoid getting wet the previous night and most importantly he had Abbies new shoes. Luckily they fit perfectly and after a lot of fannying about we dug out the map to plan our day. The original plan for day 3 had been to attempt all of the Fisherfield 6 and then head back up onto beinn a chaisgein mor. Again. Thankfully we saw sense (sort of) and given the state of Abbies feet, we decided to head up onto a'mhaighdean along the north westerly ridge, following the ridge onto ruadh stac mor and then back onto beinn a chaisgein mor. Again. It was incredibly warm and we stopped for multiple naps along the way. This led to some pretty horrendous sunburn on scott's part as for one lengthy hour long nap he had fallen asleep with a buff over his eyes but not the rest of his face.
The views back over Fionn Loch are incredible all the way up to the summit of a'mhaighdean and the ridge itself is a fairly easy scramble, all of us were enjoying ourselves hugely and Abbies feet appeared to have made a near miraculous recovery. Much less enjoyable was the scree going up onto ruadh stac mor but the views again were spectacular.
Having finally made it back up to the tents we were rewarded with another spectacular sunset and a gloriously wind and midge free evening. The vodka was polished off and we went to bed with deer and a hare wandering around just outside the tents.
The final day we trudged out towards Poolewe. The packs didn't feel massively lighter despite the lack of vodka and depleted stocks of food. There was some chat about dumping the packs at the bottom of beinn lair and then nipping up to the top but when we got to where the path forked off it was sweltering and all of us were gagging for a pint. Instead we chatted away ten to the dozen all the way back to Poolewe and then found ourselves outside the Badachro Inn enjoying the sunshine and cold beer. This got a bit out of hand so we found ourselves cramming into the back of scotts van at 3am for a final night before heading home for a good wash the following day. It was a pretty epic birthday, and on one which I learned many lessons which I thought I knew already, something to do with not packing the kitchen sink for lengthy walks. Abbie certainly won't make the mistake of wearing new boots on a big trip again any time soon.