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We had a bit more of an adventure that expected on this little hill. We managed to take the wrong path right from the start, near the huge transmitting tower near Breachloch, heading east on a wide forest road instead of north-east from the tower. This wasn't surprising since that path turned out to not exist, but more on that later... It was only when we arrived at a junction that didn't look as expected that we realised our (ok, my
) mistake, but that just meant we would do the planned walk in reverse. It was only when we arrived at another junction that didn't look as expected that we realised that the left we should have taken was through a gate onto a muddy forest track, not down the forest road we were on. Rather than turning down another muddy forest track to try to intersect with a larger path marked on the map, we decided to retrace our steps to a side track we'd passed. Having done that and turned down it, we dismissed a path through the forest as being too small to be our next turn. It was only when we didn't arrived at any other junctions that we realised it was the path after all, so headed back to it. By this point it was becoming obvious that the walk was going to be twice as long as expected - I'm glad we'd packed sandwiches! The small path was a little muddy in places but not too bad, and a fallen tree provided a nice spot to sit and eat. As expected (for once!) the path came back out onto a main track, which we followed to the path on the right that quickly leads to the towers near the summit. A small path continued on past these and we were losing hope of finding the trig point when we spotted a small cairn showing the way to a path through small trees and gorse. The gorse was particularly bad around the trig point, making for a very prickly last few metres. Although the description of the hill says it's heavily forested, the trees have been cleared around the trig point so for now there are views, particularly if you climb onto it, as this photo from my partner shows.
![mount eagle.jpg]()
After basking in the glory of our achievement (possibly a recent article we'd read on K2 had gone to our heads) we headed back to the main track and continued on, glad that the end was in sight (literally - we could see the huge transmission tower). We nearly turned down the first path on the left by mistake, but 'luckily' we realised our error this time and continued on to the point where the map showed the path we were following almost west forking to go south west and north west. Unfortunately what seemed to be the south west path just stopped after a few metres, and a bit of wandering on either side revealed nothing else resembling a path either. So did we head back to the path we'd almost gone down by mistake? Or carry on to another path heading south west a bit further along the north west fork? Oh no, we decided that we could see the transmission tower was 'just there' so if we headed straight towards it through the heather, what could go wrong? The plan went fairly well for a while, until the answer to that question came in the form of both my feet disappearing into water that was deep enough to fill my boots. Luckily the day was the warmest for a while, but the sloshing wasn't very pleasant. We stubbornly refused to turn around and continued on down the non-existent path with a bog factor of 100% bog, until at last we reached the end of one of the supports of the tower and were able to follow it to the tower and the road. With another walk to add to our collection of 'not ideal at the time but will make a good memory', we stopped at the Avoch Chippy for some warming chips and tried once again to drill into our heads - "the long way on the path will be easier than a short cut".
