by pinkmongoose » Sat Jul 30, 2011 9:22 pm
Date walked: 30/07/2011
Time taken: 6 hours
Ascent: 800m
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Lochearnhead by bus on a sunny Saturday. (BTW, not the date shown - date fail - was a few weeks back)
Passed by the church on the roadway up towards the cycle path. The cycle path zig-zags up the hill passed more orchids than I've seen in a long time, including butterfly orchids. Reached the flat part of the cycle path at c. 200m and passed through the gate to the left (the cycle route departs from the old railway at this point as you come south). A rough path (bordering on no path) leads NW up across a field to the right up towards Meall Reamhar. There's some forestry clearance gone on here but the going is easy.
From Meall Reamhar (followed the fence posts as I ascended the top of this) the going changed from grassy to a mixture of peat hags and what I call "bog 'n' tuffet" (grassy lumps in mossy ground, easy for turning ankles). The best bet here seemed to be to follow the line of the fence posts all the way to Meall Sgallachd, where they fizzled out. Every time I departed from them, I ended up back with them again.
The summit at 809m gives some good views and is nice and craggy.
I returned to the col west of Meall Sgallachd and decided I didn't fancy the boggy bits and had plenty of time. So instead struck NNE down the burn side more or less for about 1.5 km until the edge of the woods around Lochan Lairig Cheile. This was quite easy going but I imagine could get quite wet.
At the edge of the woods, I was a tantalising 200m or so from a proper woodland trail. The best bet would probably have been to go north around the woods. I decided to go through them. This was quite steep, bits of tree stuck out all over, and I found sticking to deer trails the best bet. It took a fair while to inch through the woods down to the woodland trail. At one point I encountered new planting, but this was only for a few meters.
The trail leads around the loch (but not that close to it - its margin was boggy) and comes out onto the A85. I returned by the old railway line to Lochearnhead.
Despite the easy location at Lochearnhead, there was no one on the mountain I recall seeing apart from me. Does nobody do Corbetts?
Last edited by
pinkmongoose on Sat Jul 30, 2011 11:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.