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As a newbie, but having completed 9 Munros since February, myself and my brother were feeling that we had to do something a little bit different for number 10. With good weather forecast for most of Scotland, we fancied doing some of our own route planning for the first time. Better now in good conditions than in bad.
So off we set from a Sunny Stenhousemuir at about 10am for Ardlui. Our mission to take on Ben Vorlich from the north, adding in the smaller hills of Stob an Fhithich (SaF) and Stob nan Coinnich Bhacain, (SCB.) An hour and a half later we arrived at Ardlui station and parked up. The station just suddenly appears after rounding a bend and we were heading north, while the layby is on the south side. There is no station car park as such, just a layby across the road. (They obviously don't get a lot of commuters here!!

) However, a quick parking manoevre later and we were parked behind only 1 other car and were soon booting up. We set off north along the A82 towards the Loch Lomond Outdoor Centre at the head of the loch, just after the marina. Here we found an opening off the northbound side of the road. To call this area an eyesore is an understatement, hunks of abandonned white goods, cars, lorry trailers, and other equipement all rusting away in a spare bit of ground between the railway and the road. Something more at home in a Falkirk junkyard than the Southern Highlands. However, the waste ground had something hidden away at the back that we were looking for... a creep under the railway. When I say creep, I mean creep. Clearly designed for animals and not humans, I had to bend double to manage my way through.

This creep was marked on the map, but somehow I don't think it's the main way through to Stob an Fhithich! After passing through it, we spotted a large cairn off to our right and with it being in the general direction we wanted to walk in, we made our way over to it. The front of the cairn bore a partly worn plague clearly in memory to someone, though the words were in Gaelic and it's a language that I have no mastery over what so ever. (Nae neck Lowlander that I am!

) Is there a fellow WHer who can translate it?

From here we kept contouring round the side of SaF, with no clear way up the rather steep sides of the small hill. Eventually we just bit the bullet and up we went at a place where the trees were thinnest.

It was a half scramble, half walk effort, but it was overcome easily enough and soon we rounded a set of crags to sit beside the tiny cairn at the top of the hill.

I had to rebuild the cairn as it had been blown over, despite it's low height, here felt very exposed and the boggy ground we had to cover to make it to our next target, Stob nan Coinnich Bhacain just added to that feeling. Thankfully, the prevailing weather recently has been dry, so it wasn't as bad as it might have been but, we still had to weave our way around muddy and boggy spots before climbing relatively easily up to SCB.
On our way up SCB, we discovered a wee lochan that wasn't on the map, the water from which tasted brilliant in the heat.

From the lochan it was only a short hop up to the summit of SCB and I have to say the summit of SCB was one of the most delightful I have ever sat at in my short walking career. I thoroughly enjoyed a cup of flask tea; a bite of flapjack and the great views while sitting on the grass by the cairn, enjoying the sunshine.

Even from here, I felt I could see most of the West Highlands, even the moon came out to enjoy the scenery.

From here the north summit of Ben Vorlich looked within a steep, but not too difficult reach, the only difficulty being the boggy ground in the bealach inbetween SCB and Vorlich at the top of Coire Creagach.

So we descended steeply at first, then easily across the col and up onto Vorlich's lower northern slopes. It was here we picked up our first proper path of the day, which either came up from Coire (though I doubt it... see later.) or up from the dirt track road that scars hillside down in Strath Dubh Uisage below the lochan of the same name.

The path was steep, but zig zagged a bit taking most of the gradient out of the hill, it clearly hadn't seen a lot of traffic in recent times and we saw only one set of old, small footprints heading up the hill. At a bit where the path levelled off and split into three different courses that wound through some rocks, before ending up at the same place. We had the surreal experience of being on our own, then suddenly seeing 8 people all swarming down the hill. Having been on our own all day, it felt like being in Argyle Street on a busy Saturday afternoon. None of the others spotted us though and we made our way past unnoticed and off up to the snowline.
The higher we climbed, the better the views became behind and we kept turning around to admire them as we plodded through the melting patchy snow. We also noted the other group had stopped for refreshments as we neared the northern summit.

Heading south we made our final assault on the northern summit off to our right we could see the Paps of Jura and Ben More on Mull. Behind us Bens Lui, Oss and Dubhchraig were very obvious as were the Glen Lyon hills. To our left An Caisteal and his pals were snow covered domes, behind them Ben More and Stob Binnein were prominent, further still Ben Lawers could just be seen and no more. A little to the south of them the other Ben Vorlich, Ben Ledi and Stuc A'Chroin were easily made out as was Ben Venue and even little Ben A'an could be clearly made out at the other end of Loch Katrine.



The other Arrochar Alps were also in fine form, each summit clear, though from this angle The Cobbler was hidden by Beinn Narnain.

The north top, with Ben Lui over my shoulder?

From here it's an easy walk across to the main summit and then the southern summit. The central summit is the highest point and is marked by a large cairn. The South Summit has a trig point and cairn, but it slightly lower than the central one.


From the south summit, it had been our plan to turn left (east) and follow the ridge of the Little Hills back to the main road at Stuckendroin Farm and then make the 1/2 mile walk back up the A82 to Ardlui to collect the car.... that was the plan. However, we made a mistake right from the off. The direct route from Vorlich proper to the Little Hills is blocked by near vertical and quite high crags. We made the mistake of following them to our left, then left again... (north) which seemed sensible choices to avoid the drops. However, we should've went right, then right (south) to round the crags. So instead of being up on the Little Hills we ended up down in the Coire Creagach. Which is wet, very wet. I would NOT recommend this at all. It was a bogfest verging on a quagmyre in places. It took us ages to pass through it. We followed the course of small burns down until we met the bigger stream that is unnamed on the OS map, but emerges into Loch Lomond near Stuckendroin Farm. It made for some steep descents down the sides of side streams and we had to cross the main stream several times to keep on walkable ground. Needless to say I promptly fell on my backside in a muddy bit, which all added to feeling of frustration at an anticlimatic end to a great day. I don't think this would have been possible in really wet weather or after a big thaw. The way would've simply been too waterlogged.
We did see one or two nice waterfalls though and the sun was still shining by the time we picked up a landrover path near the farm and finally found the gate we had originally planned to exit the walk by. It was still fun and overall very enjoyable and I think I have found a new favourite mountain... sorry Ben Venue




