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I have wanted to see Glen Etive for a few years but never got round to it. So this time I thought I would finally turn off the main road through Glencoe and into this mysterious and supposedly quiet glen. Actually it was very quiet, away from the Glencoe highway, but there were quite a few people - campers mainly. I wasn't surprised to later see a photo of a Landrover which had been completely filled with rubbish after a Glen Etive clean-up. There was discarded clothing lying on the ground where I got out of the car.
Thanks to my customary navigational error (which generally occurs at the start of my walks), I marched up the wrong hill and didn't really realise until I was halfway down the other side. I had done a lot of unnecessary marching up a very steep, pathless, incline and missed out one of the three hills I had intended to climb. With hindsight it was probably a good thing though - the shortened version took me 8 hours anyway and I had a 6 hour drive immediately afterwards so one more munro might have been excessive.
Otherwise, pretty uneventful. The bright start turned into cloud and mist as I neared the top of Ben Starav, so I wasn't deprived of that 15 minutes of confusion and stumbling round the moonscape in my attempt to find the top.
Glen Etive is as nice as the reviews suggest, although a bit more 'populated' than I had expected, and I got the distinct impression from their signs and high fences that the inhabitants are a bit sick of walkers and campers and would prefer it if we just went away and left them and their little glen to themselves.