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An Socach, is a munro we've wanted to do as a single and take our time over. Reading up about it on WH we thought it would be nice to do it on one of those days where the weather forecast was good for most of the day with the chance of light rain later, if we were a bit slower than usual or the weather turned sooner, we wouldn't be too bothered, I reckoned between five and six hours would be adequate, so we set off from our little holiday cottage in Ballater in time to be walking by 10:30 am.
As we passed the junction with the B976 in Crathie (the Balmoral side) I noticed a line of black Range Rovers, six of them, emerging onto the A93 behind us, mmm, that's interesting, I thought. We travelled through Braemar and headed up towards the start point at the head of Glen Clunie, we pulled up in the layby noticing another Range Rover parked a little further up the road. At this point our line of Range Rovers was just arriving and turned on to the track leading up the Baddoch Glen. I decided to turn the car around so that we were facing in the direction of Braemar, the single Range Rover had moved and parked behind us, the well-dressed driver got out and approached our car
"Good morning folks, how are you"? the driver asked
"Ok thank you" says I, a bit puzzled,
"What are your plans today" asks the driver
" we're hoping to do the munro An Socach"
" Ahh, that's not possible I'm afraid, there's a shoot up the glen so access onto the hill is not allowed today"
" Oh crumbs that's just typical, we were hoping to do this munro earlier on in the week but changed our plans, so there's no chance then"?
" No, sorry, not today, err, you're not the press are you by any chance"?
" Ha ha, no we just like collecting munros, ok then, we'll disappear thanks for letting us know"
and with that we set off back down the road towards Braemar, we both thought it all a bit strange then, hang on a minute, big black Range Rovers, B976 near Balmoral Castle, could that have been a royal in one of those Range Rovers, it could have been, or another VIP, we did wonder why he'd asked us if we were press after all
So, what shall we do now? I thought about Carn Bhac from Inverey but, considering it was now approaching 11am I thought it might be pushing it a bit to get down before dark so, something else then, I had been looking at the map the night before for a short walk on the Friday and noticed an easy looking Graham, Geallaig Hill, we could do that on our way back to Ballater instead of tomorrow, the WH route starts from the B976 near Braenaloin and there's a track forming a circular walk taking in the summit, right, we'll do that then
There's a big layby to park in at the start of this walk so there's no problem getting the car well off the road, we started the walk through the gate at the start of the track.
We're going up there
This track is easy to follow, it passes some sturdy looking grouse butts as it ascends the hillside. We couldn't see the summit on the way up, however, the views over to the hills next door and the big Cairngorm mountains to the west and south were making up for it.
The weather was improving too, the tops were clearing gradually, and we kept getting bursts of sunshine so a nice sunny break on the summit was looking more and more likely
The track joins a fence as it nears the summit, and we could see the cairn, we were going to get our views
the sun was out as well, even better
The big cairn on the summit surrounds the trig point and gives you shelter if needed. We could see Morven to the
northeast, Brown Cow Hill to the northwest, Ben Avon, Beinn A' Bhuird to the west and Lochnagar to the south so the views are quite extensive, we stayed on the summit for a while just taking it all in.
The sun was illuminating the autumnal hillsides
I tried an Arty shot?? this fence would help in the mist if the track wasn't there
River Dee
Pano shot looking north eastish
We noticed a lot of little pine trees dotted about the hillside and wondered if there was some re-wilding/re-planting of native species going on up here, we also noticed some sorry looking silver birch saplings trying to establish themselves, hard work considering the conditions up here, especially in the winter.
From the summit we re-traced our steps for about 300m to the start of the track heading SW down a broad ridge, this track descends gradually and can be seen for most of the way ahead changing direction as it travels towards the road. At around NO277975 it joins another track, here we kept right as it continues towards spot height 568m on the map where it takes a sharp right and heads down to the road. Once on the road it's about a mile back to the car.
Looking back to Geallaig Hill
and down to the road
A short but enjoyable walk on good tracks, we're glad we decided to do it on the Thursday, Friday was a horrible day weather wise, so I doubt we'd have done this Graham if we'd not changed our plans, we've still An Socach to do but it isn't going anywhere, so, next year hopefully
and we never got to know who needed all those Range Rovers
