Carn Daimh against the clock

[thepigguy]

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A bit of soreness in my right knee after the previous morning's battle with the bogs on The Buck persuaded me to keep my target for the day to the fairly modest circuit up to Carn Daimh from Tomnavoulin and it turned out to be a great decision. This is a really nice walk.

The Walkhighlands route for this circuit goes clockwise and there's a good reason for that as the Glenlivet estate waymarked "yellow" route runs that way, the yellow arrows being on one side of the markers only. I missed the left turn (probably fiddling with my walking poles or something), went anti-clockwise and was actually pretty happy with the result.

Parking area just outside Tomnavoulin

To follow Walkhighlands route, turn off here - I missed it and reversed the route

I followed the forestry track until it broke out of the trees and a gate led out onto the hillside. The grassy track from here led to a stand of trees where I should have followed the less obvious path off to the right. Instead I was too busy looking at The Bochel and the Ladder Hills and marched straight on instead. I climbed a gate and didn't realise my mistake until I reached a point where the path started to go downhill.

Leaving the forest track into open countryside

The Bochel and cloud down over the Ladder Hills

Wrong path.

Beautiful colour in the heather

I could have corrected my mistake by turning right here, but didn't!

The mistake was easily rectified along animal tracks through the heather until I reached the Speyside Way spur to Tomintoul. Strangely enough, this shaved some distance off the walk, but added about 20min. From there it was an easy enough uphill walk to the top of Carn Daimh where I lingered enjoying views on (by the standards of this dreadful summer) a decent day.

Heather-bashing time. Carn Daimh summit in distance

Speyside Way "spur"

The walk is well signposted if you follow the Walkhighlands route.

Carn Daimh summit looking at Ben Rinnes

Creagan a' Chaise from Carn Daimh

Ben Rinnes

Looking over towards Ben Avon

The Bochel and Carn Mor (now clear of cloud)

Views admired and sandwiches eaten, I checked the reverse side of the waymark post for a yellow arrow and headed down the straight track towards more forestry. There were three fallen trees along this section of the route. Some attempt has been made to clear them, but all are easily avoided or climbed over.

There are still some trees down over the waymarked route - easily avoided

Forest trail on the way back

Another look at Ben Rinnes

Coming out of the trees on the way to Westertown, there was a field of cattle including mothers and calves and they showed some interest in me as I quickened the pace a little to get through incident free. After a while I picked up a track which took me to the 279m point on the OS map near Eastertown and a very overgrown stile which I only saw as I was climbing the gate next to it. That got me on the right side of the fence and a gentle amble through trees back to the start.

Back through the trees to the start