The Road to Errogie

[nigheandonn]

When I came up to Inverness I had my eye on a tiny epic, picking up as many as possible of a cluster of four subs to the south of Loch Ness, but having retreated after the first to go somewhere with more than a few metres of view, I'll just call the report after the tune instead - I hadn't really taken in that this was where the famous Errogie was, and was a bit surprised to see it on the sign at Dores.

It had been a late arrival into Inverness, and a fairly early start - 8:10 at the Castle steps, after a dash to the co-op for breakfast and lunch supplies. So it was still pretty early when I was beside the loch at Dores - it was a bit grey, but the forecast wasn't terrible, and the view was good regardless.

Loch Ness

The bus was heading on along the lochside to Foyers, but I was heading uphill from the junction, into the little tangle of roads here - a part of the world that I'd hardly realised existed, vaguely taking everything between the loch and Strathspey as emptiness.

The Road to Errogie

The idea was that I would walk up the road towards Loch Ruthven and eventually pick up the afternoon bus on the upper road, detouring to tiny hills, and also just getting some distance under my feet.

It was more of a climb up out of the village than I'd realised, steadily uphill until the bend and the junction at Kindrummond, where it eased off a bit. Up here there was a tiny scattering of snow by the sides of the road - quite a welcome decoration at this point, because I haven't really seen any snow this winter.

A small amount of snow

Further up it was lying artistically on the gorse bushes, and looking far more than a winter wonderland - there was no sign of old snow at the edges of the roads, and it was already melting, so it did just seem to have been a dump overnight.

Snow on gorse

Still, I didn't quite know what I would be getting myself into - the first hill had a track all the way to the top, so it would be a good test of the conditions.

This first stretch of road had been a decent part of the whole distance, about three miles to the first hill - past another junction, this time with an even more minor road which wandered off towards Inverness, and then the first views of a wintry Loch Duntelchaig.

Wintry landscape

I had my first view of Tom Bailgeann now, with its very top in the cloud, which was more disappointing than the snow - I'd checked the visibility on the weather forecast and it was supposed to be quite good, and I hadn't thought I was that far up. At the farm at Achnabat sheep were being moved about, and then I came to the junction with the tiny road to Loch Ruthven which would be my main route for the day.

For the moment I was heading slightly past the junction to get to the bottom of the track - a car was drawn up in front of the gate, and I wondered if another walkhighander was daft enough to be up here, but it was just some people stopped and listening to music.

I had to climb the fence beside the gate - brushing a bit of snow off first - since it was locked. The first part of the track was only lightly dusted with snow, and climbed quite directly.

The start of the track

Further up the track slanted off to the left, and then back to the right - still not too bad underfoot, but not much of a view.

Slanting upwards

The long last slant to the left was more unpleasant - fresh snow lying over completely unfrozen mud and boggy bits, and quite slippery on the last little steep bit.

Snow on mud

At the top the mast came looming out of the cloud - at least there was a very definite marker that this was the top!

Reaching the mast

On the map it looked like the trig point and the mast were in slightly different places, but it turned out to be tucked in right at the foot of the mast.

Tom Bailgeann summit

The grand total of the view was a very faint glimpse of the mast at the other end of the little summit ridge, so there was no reason to linger, and I turned back downhill.

Summit view

The cloud seemed to have got even lower than it had been when I first set off uphill, which meant a bit of thinking on the way down - I could cope with the snow underfoot, or I could probably cope with the visibility, but both together just didn't seem that much fun, especially when the views should have been one of the best bits of the day. There was little point just heading up to the other road, because as far as I knew there was no bus along it until much later in the day, and although it was supposed to clear up by 3, that was a long time away when it was barely 11.

I did think about heading up to little Stac Gorm, the other one of the hills that I'd really had my eye on, and working my way back down the road if things improved, but it suddenly occurred to me that if I just retreated to Dores and Inverness I could head up to what had originally been one of my Sunday options if things really did clear up in the afternoon - a much more appealing plan.

Further down I had about half a view of Loch Duntelchaig, but Creag nan Clag across the road from me was still very much living up to its name.

Half of Loch Duntelchaig

So back down that long road, only to find that although there was a lunchtime bus through Dores, as I had vaguely remembered, it didn't come until nearly 2, and it was only about 12:30. But it was fine - I bought hot chocolate from the van, and walked on the so-called beach, and looked in the shop, and wandered to the church, and finally went to a sale of work taking place in the village hall, where I bought home baking and ate my lunch in the dry sitting at a table in the vestibule, not a bad time at all.