So it begins

[Pastychomper]

After years of occasional jaunts around the Cornish coast path and over English hills, we took advantage of a visit to Scotland by sampling my first Scottish mountain. The following is edited from a short report I wrote at the time.

We set off from Caithness around 9:00, heading for Ben Hope. The weather showed some mist potential at the top so we settled for Ben Loyal instead, which stayed completely clear all day. This was my first introduction to this beautiful area.

We met several frogs, which were the same species I know and love from a string of garden ponds but had different colouring. I took a picture of the first one, little knowing what I was starting. Unfortunately I've lost that picture, so if you need a frog fix, try one of my other summer reports.

We parked near the house at Lettermore and walked anticlockwise around most (all?) of the peaks. On the way up the first, Rusty the springer spaniel had fun sending up a pair of grouse. That is to say, as he lumbered on ahead, the birds saw us coming and decided to head skywards as a precaution - or was it out of courtesy? We also inadvertently scared a skylark, and she left it so late to move off that we saw where her nest was. A brief look told me there were three eggs, plus a forth rotting in the adjacent stream.

Eggs (zoomed as we didn't want to get too close).

Ben, Rusty, Loch Craggie and Loch Loyal

Loyal from somewhere on Heil

We stopped for lunch then headed up and over the two main peaks of Ben Loyal. It struck me that the whole area was trackless apart from a well-beaten bit immediately around each top, where the grass looked a little greener and smoother than the rest.

Kyle of Tongue

Rusty near a top

Ben on a Ben

Ben Hope from Loyal

Along the ridge

On the Castle

Descending from the ridge, we went up again over a smaller hill, almost certainly Cnoc nan Cuilean. It certainly had a steep descent that proved the hardest of the lot.

On the way down that slope I had a 'phone call from a friend in darkest Englandshire. I was still getting used to carrying a mobile 'phone with its terrible side-effect of being almost always reachable, so that call did a lot to spoil the illusion of remoteness. Still it would take a lot more than that to spoil the walk.

Waterfall

We carried on down past a waterfall and a small hut with a pipe across the stream, by which time I'd developed a limp but was not too badly off, and took an easy walk back to the start.