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We are staying in Speyside this week and so have a few options for Munro bagging, but none very close to our accommodation. Over the years we've bagged all of the Cairngorm hills that are viable in a day from the North so I thought that Drumochter or Monadh Liath were probably our best bet.
We wanted something fairly straightforward as this was daughter Katy's first Munro walk this year and I'm was carrying a bit of a cold.
Last minute checks on the Met Office mountain weather forecast showed that we had probably had a decent weather window between noon and 4pm. Before that there was potentially heavy rain and after that, again heavy rain
with the added bonus of poor visibility.
All things considered we decided we would take on Carn na Caim and A Bhuidheanach Bheag.
I have read various reports on these hills posted by walkers who were not too impressed by them, but we needed a walk and this seemed to fit our needs.
There was quite heavy rain as we drove down past Aviemore and Kingussie but it had stopped by the time we pulled up at layby 88. We set off walking at 12.15.
- Start of the track up the hill, we can see the route ahead
- View across to the Western Drumochter hills
We followed the obvious track up the hill to the plateau
- I think this is the "quarry" referenced on the map just before the plateau.
From here we headed left (NE) following a vehicle track and very soon a line of fence posts as well:
We followed the line of the fence posts as it turned to the right and this lead easily to the summit of Carn na Caim
- Summit of Carn na Caim
So far this had pretty much what we had expected, an opportunity to walk in high open spaces with some decent views. The view of Meall Chuaich from the top of Carn na Caim brought back happy memories of a day about a year ago when I walked it with my wife
- Meall Chuaich
We headed back to the top of the hill near the "quarry" and carried on following the vehicle tracks towards A Bhuidheanach Bheag.
In my mind I expected pretty much a re-run of the Carn na Caim easy stroll, but I obviously hadn't taken enough notice of the map because it is much more strenuous in terms of ascent/descent and terrain after leaving the vehicle track:
- Descent and ascent to cross after leaving the vehicle track
We reached the summit of A Bhuidheanach Bheag:
We didn't hang around long at the summit of A Bhuidheanach Bheag because we were already approaching the end of our expected weather window and the clouds did look to be coming in.
As it turned out the weather was very kind to us and held out until we got back to the car at 5.30, but only just it was pretty heavy rain on the drive back.
All in all a very enjoyable day. It gave us exactly what we wanted
