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"Lost in the dark since November
Living by sound and by touch
Watching the clock going nowhere
Sleeping too much
Coal black crows on the rooftops
Icicles hanging from stars
Blue Monday stuck on the jukebox
Down in the singles bar"Daybreaker, Katherine Priddy, 2025 (Words by Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate)
It hasn't been a very fun winter. I'm always resigned to the fact that I don't climb Munros from the clocks going back to the clocks going forward again, but this year there wasn't a single opening for anything, even the odd Marilyn. Storm Éowyn was one of the worst (if not the worst) storms I've ever lived through. My last hillwalk was Dollar Law at the end of October, and a week after that the news cycle, well, collapsed.
Since then I've deleted half my social media apps, left several accounts basically dormant and gone out of my way (sometimes to comical levels) to avoid any news bulletin in any context. Which meant five months of sitting indoors, scrolling Bluesky, Strava and WalkHighlands. Great websites in their own way, but if I'm not going any hillwalks for five months, going on outdoors websites like Strava and WH can feel a bit one-dimensional (while also underlining that I can't do the one thing I want to do). Grim times, ngl...
Bad time to meet this!
Nearly fainted when I saw it, but turns out it's just a permanent gate that drivers have to open and shut themselves. If it was padlocked, I might have wept.
But on Wednesday, it finally ended. I'd booked this day more than a month ago, and decided on these hills by about Christmas. I was dreading even looking at the forecasts, but once it started to form it became clear that this week was going to be a belter.
Another bloke heads towards the Giorra Dam, underneath the bluest sky in the history of blue skies.
The old SMC Munros book tells me that Loch an Damih used to be two lochs before the dam etc. arrived - Loch Giorra and Loch Daimh. Water levels were low on Wednesday (despite the torrents of rain last Thursday and the constant rain last Saturday), so it once again looked like two separate lochs.
Some random muirburn in the background.
My plan for the day was to follow the normal WH routes up Stùcd an Lochain and Meall Buidhe, but then to march over the sprawling moorland towards the Corbett of Cam Chreag. I think the only WH report that goes this way is Jaxter's, and she says it took eight hours. But instead of leaving at 6:30am like I sometimes do, I'd got up later and taken my child to school, so between that and having to suddenly fill up the air on all my tyres in Doune, the walk didn't start until after 11:20am. Not ideal, but if I can get back down from Stùcd an Lochain by 3pm then we might still be on for the whole circuit.
Waited for so long for this walk that I was probably having dreams about these hills (although I read you only remember 1/7 of your dreams, so who knows?) But if I did dream about them, they probably looked like this.
The path is pretty tough tbh (very steep and very eroded, with some mud thrown in). But at around 800m, it passes this cairn and finally joins the ridge up Creag an Fheadhain, joined by some old fenceposts.
There was another steep pull up to the 'Corbett Top', but the Munro Top appeared behind it.
This fencepost accidentally makes it look like the path is closed.
After passing the cairn at Creag an Fheadhain (there's a fair bit of down-and-up in the middle of this walk), I headed across to the Top of Sròn Chona Choirein, eventually branching off the path near a snow patch and finding the cairn after about 1hr 20mins.
Yay, a box to tick at last!
Although I couldn't help wondering *how* this is a Top, since the drop is only 37m (and doesn't even feel like that...)
Stùcd an Lochain appears behind a semi-frozen lochan. And Ben Nevis has appeared behind. It looks like there's going to be classic view of Rannoch Moor from the summit, unless some apocalyptic cloud descends in the next 20 minutes (and given how this winter's gone, I'm ruling nothing out).
Lochan nan Cat finally appears beneath the summit.
One more steep pull and I'll be there. It's actually six months to the day since my last Munro, but mentally it could've been six years.
Just after 1pm, and 1hr 40mins after leaving the layby, I summited Stùcd an Lochain, and literally hugged (hugged!) the cairn. Winter is over, toast, cooked, stick a fork in it, it's done.
The optical zoom is surprisingly good on this thing. Here is the famous view over Rannoch Moor to Buachaille Etive Mor and Aonach Eagach.
The Ben, obvs.
Ben Alder.
Presumably some Cairngorms.
Zoomed in on this and totally forgot what it was, but from the German panorama site I *think* it's Ben Cleuch and the Ochils.
This seems to be the Campsies, with Dumgoyne on the right hand side. The panorama says you can see Windy Standard(!) through the gap, but nah, not today.
Cruachan sticks up behind Beinn Dorain (which doesn't look nearly so steep from the side - is it all an optical illusion?)
Glencoe, Rannoch Moor and Ben Nevis, looking a million dollars.
Stob Binnein, Ben More and the Arrochar Alps.
There was absolutely so signal anywhere except the tops, so I made sure to text my wife and mother to confirm I'm alive. It took a full hour and a half to descend (mainly because the path is pretty brutal from 800m down to c.530m), so just before 2:45pm I arrived back at the layby. Just over 3hrs 20mins feels pretty good for that...actually, maybe it was too good? Have I fallen into the age-old trap of starting out too fast and exhausting myself?
Quite a lot of friendly advice: not as many rules as their 'neighbours' to the East...
I'm not a fan of 'double hillwalks' (climb a hill, drive somewhere else, climb a second hill), as my muscles seem to seize up something awful. The two Munros at Loch an Daimh have got a similar format to a double hillwalk, only you're not actually driving between them. So I figured that, if I kind of sat awkwardly in the back seat for lunch, legs sticking out the side, maybe I wouldn't get too comfy?
(There was time for a schoolboy error, though. I left my lunch and some spare water in the boot in the morning, but the boot was South-facing, so by 3pm the water wasn't that cold and the cheese balls in the sandwiches were melting...
)
The views were obviously still class as I headed North up the track and found the start of the Meall Buidhe path. But right from the start I wasn't feeling great. The lunch break was only 20 minutes, but sitting in a car seat mid-hillwalk is...odd. Already I was starting to look at the watch nervously as I plodded up the boggy path, wondering if I could make it round 'The Jaxter Route' by sunset at 8pm. And if this path was muddy, how muddy would be the peatbogs between Meall Buidhe and Cam Chreag be?
Which brings us to our 'Random Black Pullover Dropped Next To A Munro Path Of The Week'.
I found some cool rocky outcrops over to the right hand side, and sat next to the one that looked like a mini-Tryfan. But a quick check of the WH GPS (an absolute life-saver every day btw) confirmed that I'd actually veered off the normal route. Having said that, it's not so much a proper route, it's really just one of the many Munros where hillwalkers have beaten two or three routes through the grass / rock over the last 40 years, so you have to guess which one is best and which one won't just disappear in two minutes.
Almost 1hr 45minutes had passed when I finally reached the cairn at the 917m top, and the time was already hurtling towards 5pm. The Jaxter Route wasn't happening today: no chance. It's a full 2km there-and-back to the summit, then down over/round Meall a' Phuill and over some peat hags that are probably horrendous (even though the loch was low and it hadn't rained since Saturday, there was still a ton of mud in the hills, because of course).
(At least the views were good again: the east face of Meall Buidhe is quite dramatic compared to the rest of the hill).
Almost 2hrs after leaving, and with the time leaving 5pm, I finally reached the summit of Meall Buidhe, with Schiehallion looking grand in the background. We're off and running for 2025!
The Lawers group and Meall Ghaordaidh.
Ben More appears again behind Stùcd an Lochain.
A mystical view of Loch Laidon and Glencoe.
Ben Vorlich and Stuc a'Chroin, behind the surprisingly steep North face of Meall Ghaordaidh. If you climb Ghaordaidh from the South you'll never even see that whole bit.
Nevis Range, the Grey Corries and the Easains.
I thought about climbing Meall a' Phuill on the way back down (another box to tick?), but in the end even that seemed like too much effort. It was already somewhere close to 1,300m ascent and it was going to be over 7hrs (well, counting the car-lunch bit in the middle), which was more than enough for a first walk of the year.
On the way down I managed to lose the faint path again, but actually ended up on another path that I found slightly better. This one was over to the West a bit, staying on the main ridge as it headed over some rock formations, and maybe it was just because I was going downhill but I found it a bit better. It even came out at a rival cairn on the main track, a few hundred metres down from the main cairn.
Magical views all day.
I got back to the layby just after 6:30pm, so it was pretty much a full 3hrs 30mins for Meall Buidhe. Not sure how I can climb Stùcd an Lochain quicker than Meall Buidhe (especially when you see the time estimates on WalkHighlands), but then I do seem to have a knack for starting hillwalks far too quickly and burning out as a result. Not sure how I can ever fix that, if it's a psychological thing.
I headed back over the Lawers road to Killin, where I was hoping to get some pizza from a place I'd seen on the way up (N.B. The Lawers road is
*wild*. There are laybys on that thing that you'd have to pay me to stop at.
) I was listening to a full Runrig concert (as usual), and I caught a glimpse of the Tarmachan ridge just as Rory sang the line,
"And now the skylines reach my eyes
The ridge stands out in Highland skies
I just can't believe I'm going home."Not for the first time today, I got a bit emotional. Don't think I've got family connections to the Highlands (although my gran and grandad loved going to Skye, Pitlochry, Benderloch and everywhere in between), so maybe it's just the hillwalking thing. Or maybe because it was A Long Winter, and I was starting to wonder if it would ever end.
You also look like you've climbed two Munros and one Top, with c.1,280m ascent in a 17-18km day.
The pizza place in Killin was actually closed (it wasn't even the Easter holidays yet lol, what did I expect?) So I just went home and got my usual curry takeaway place to bail me out. Missing out on Cam Chreag was disappointing, but I think I've finally learnt to know my limits, and it'll still be there next time. At least we're back in the game now, at long long last. And crucially, I've now passed 82 Munros, which means less than 200 to go!
199 Problems left... but good problems to have.
"She’s leaving a town called Midnight,
She’s leaving a house called Snow
The sun’s climbing over the skyline
She’s ready to go
One butterfly tipping the balance
An army of light on the march
Dawn setting fire to the palace
With its burning torch
Daybreaker..."
