Ime bored Dad!

[snowdonia7]

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Two months had passed since my northern odessey and I was keen to grab a couple of munros, but this time I thought it would be nice for some father/son bonding. I asked Joe if he fancied coming to Scotland with me to do a spot of hill-walking. He wasn't too keen at first; he might have been interested if it were possible to do munro bagging on the x-box!

Anyway he came round to the idea eventually and we booked a couple of nights in the Crianlarich YHA (I thought camping might have been stretching the bonding thing, particularly as the weather forecast wasn't looking too promising).

I'm not sure he would have agreed had he known that I intended to get up for 5am to start the drive north (I don't think he realised there were two 5 o'clocks in the day).

We arrived in Arrochar after a 5 hour drive up from North Wales and headed off up the hill in glorious sunshine (if anything a bit too hot).

I slowed my pace as much as possible to try and prevent Joe from getting too disconsolate, but whether it was the heat, his first mountain walk this year or the early start, he was flagging from the outset, but instead of admitting that he was tired kept saying that he was bored and couldn't be bothered walking.

Joe with his head down near the summit of Beinn Narnain

Arriving at the top it appeared that there might be a change of weather looming, so we only paused for a couple of photos before moving on.

Summit of Beinn Narnain

Joe on Beinn Narnain

The bealach climb to Beinn Ime was fairly wet, and as we reached the summit if did indeed start to rain, so on with the waterproofs (difficult to belive we were roasting only an hour earlier).

Summit of Beinn Ime

Joe on Beinn Ime

As we descended back towards Narnian it looked as though there was a helicopter rescue going on near the summit.

The slow pace meant that I was feeling good and could have dashed up the Cobbler, but I knew that if I had suggested this to Joe it would have probably spoilt the weekend.

The Cobbler

Just as we reached the meeting of the paths between Narnain and the Cobbler the curse of the glass ankle struck again and I went down as if shot by a sniper. Thankfully it didn't feel as bad as the other 3 times I've done that ankle this year, and I was able to walk on it fairly quickly.

As is often the case the weather improved once we had lost the height and it was a pleasant walk back to the car finishing in 4 hours and 58 minutes and then headed off the the YHA at Crianlarich.