After a night interrupted by hail showers and a gourmet brekkie at the Ceilidh, we were ready for a 12-mile walk to Culnacraig, the most easterly of the Coigach’s hamlets.
Although he thought about it, the author of the 2013 Cicerone CWT guidebook decided not to include his Coigach-Assynt option (can't do a link yet) in the book for safety reasons. Must say that from the CWT reports I’ve read here, this stage doesn’t seem that much more dangerous or remote than a few other hairy sections on the regular route.
The actual route Iain H suggests on his website also meanders around a bit. We figured we could come up with something better and a little more direct that would still be doable and satisfying to non-raft-carrying hikers.
As this was one of the few occasions where the CWT touches the coast, from Ullapool we set off on David Paterson’s original route along the foreshore towards Rhue lighthouse at Rubha Cadail, only about 5km away. The lady at the Place explained: over the bridge, cross the golf course, sea on the left, follow your nose. She also added there’d been a lot of rain lately which didn’t bode well for the stream crossings later on. The forecast that morning wasn’t so good either: a calm day with rain clearing but by tonight strong westerlies would be belting the west coast just prior to turning very cold and stronger winds. At the time, tomorrow looked like the worst day prior to the snows. It was also our most complicated day: two or three paddles ending at a remote camp below Suilven. To simplify and shorten that stage I decided once we got to Culnacraig tonight we’d carry on in the dark for a few miles and make a sheltered camp near the (closed) hostel at Achininver.
Over Ullapool River footbridge.
A promising sign, but at gone 9am it’s still so gloomy our cameras struggle not to blur a simple shot. Plenty more murky photos to come.
Over the golf course, the best tended expanse of grass for miles.
CalMac ferry arrives from Stornoway. To the right you can just make out the white speck of Altnaharrie Inn on the south side.
We walk along the beach, passing one of Ullapool’s hidden gems: the Rubber Glove Fence.
Soon the beach disappeared as the slope comes right down to the shore, with awkward fences to cross. No path or stiles so we set off up Cnoc na Moine hill (103).
On top it’s clear this was all taking longer than I thought. The daylight, if you can call it that, was slipping through our fingers and crossing the Allt an t-Strathan river on the way to Rubha Cadail might mean a time-consuming detour unless the delta panned out. We had the precipitous ‘Postman’s Track’ to get across yet – not a place to stagger about in the dusk. So I decide Rhue and our planned route back on the north side of Meall Mor (165) to Ardmair will have to wait till next time.
We walk down to the Strathan river bridge and around lovely Ardmair Bay where we de-cag and have a quick soup. Up ahead the wall of Ben More Coigach below which we’ll pass shortly.
Out of Ardmair a kissing gate (120980) led down through some woods to the back of a cottage. It’s a right of way, though I read on a blog that the owner tends to disguise access a bit.
If coming the other way (towards Ullapool), head up the steps by the trailer and towards the gate at the back of the garden, then follow the path uphill and left to the road.
From here we took the metalled track along the river past Keanchulish House (pictured). See the cascade behind the house; it's about a mile to the north, over the river. The Postie path to Culnacraig starts just to the left of it at 118010.
Across the new-looking wooden bridge. Walking in from Culnacraig one midge-infested day several years ago, g-friend and I got into a right pickle around here. The coast path had taken much longer than we thought and we blundered around at the signpost and gate (118010) along dykes, finally staggering towards Blughasary bridge and the road to the A835 (now, the Cicerone option, see map below).
The problem is what’s marked on the map as a track becomes more of a dyke, and was currently a flooded trench. Right after the bridge we crawled up an embankment to reach a track/stream and followed it anticlockwise round to 118010. Alongside the fence below the main slope (where Cicerone joins from the east) this involved a lot of awkward hauling over sodden sidestream ditches – very slow going. Next time I’d try the ‘clockwise’ red route which might actually be- and remain a track. There were JCBs and workers here, possibly making a deer fence.
Anyway, at 1pm we finally squeezed through kissing gate at 118010 (the start of the Postie path), giving us 3 hours of daylight to cover the 4.5 miles to Culnacraig. I knew it’d be slow going, but surely we could manage 1.5mph?
Soon we were sweating like kippers as we rose above Isle Martin and the bay.
The track gets a bit thin, but occasionally some finely made stone posts appear where the original wooden markers have rotted away or fallen.
This exposure can be intimidating as you friction across wet rock slabs or totter, toe to heel across a 1 in 1 slope. Somehow tripping, then tumbling down and splashing into the sea feels less agreeable than simply falling off your typical ’Striding Edge’ type ridge walk.
This exposure, added to my heavy load, the odd route-finding stumble, picture taking and stream crossings is our excuse for the slow progress. The inlet just after Geodha Mor and the Garbh Allt stream crossing above it was a key point. We didn’t want to arrive worn out at what might be the sketchy ford, to set off in poor light along the final precipitous section. But we didn’t really want to be camping out here when that overnight storm came in either.
Option two was looking more and more likely, especially after I spent 10 minutes wringing out my clothes having slipped on a simple, two-step stream crossing. Today was actually not so cold and more importantly, calm (a great day to paddle across Loch Broom in fact). Making a mistake like that in tomorrow’s high winds and plummeting temps would have been bad news, but it shows how easily such things can happen.
Amazingly the fleece shed its water like a sponge, the Icebreaker less so and the sodden trousers and Sealskins would have to wait. What was important in the pack was in a submersible kayak bag.
The faint track was still throwing up some tricky sections of scrambling or clinging to heather for handholds. Frazzled by my dunking and in a rush to ‘get off the mountain’ before the dark, the cold and the winds, it occurred to me this was a textbook accident-inducing scenario. A couple of years ago a day walker fell here and got promptly rescued by the Stornoway SAR. Around the same time a woman flipped her kayak out in the Summer Isles and, without a PFD, got into difficulties so the chopper was able to scoop her up too!
They can’t have too many days like that and I didn’t want to start another, so I began eyeing up pitchable platforms that weren’t water-logged. There was one at Geodha Mor, right above the beach where a mate and I had lunched when we’d paddled from Achiltibuie to Ullapool one time. Hoping for something better, as you do, we turned up the Garbh Allt inlet for the steep climb along the old fence below Ben More Coigach. Alongside us the burn was in full spate, a continuous cascade of white water all the way to the stony shore. But halfway up the gradient eased briefly into a level, room-sized pitch. It was now about ten to four.
‘Let’s camp here’ I said.
‘It’s as good as it gets. We don’t want to rush that ford plus the track gets exposed again after.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
Only a mile and a half from Culnacraig, we dumped our packs, Robin went off for water and I staked out my untried Nallo. I heard they were good in the wind so bought it especially for the CWT once I’d read about some CWT waterfalls periodically doing back flips. Meanwhile, Robin was bedding down in a modified £30 bivi bag strung to the fence and hanging from our crossed walking staffs. At least one of us was going to be having a rough night.
