Tilt soured after Chlamain clag-thrash

[old danensian]

There are some days when you know you should have read the runes. After a couple of stonking trips out recently, maybe I should have realised that payback time was round the corner.

But, I’d promised myself a repeat visit to Glen Tilt after doing Beinn Dearg a wee while ago and the travails of Mountain Love on her bike before tackling Carn A Chlamain hadn’t put me off. I too wanted to pop up this Munro at the head of the glen and was hopeful of some moody photographs as fluffy summer cumulus jostled with the occasional shower, all to the backdrop of an ultramarine blue sky.

So, on the day when some mug in the Met Office forecast 27 degrees in Scotland, the tips of the wind turbine fins disappeared into the cloud as I passed over Fenwick Moor on the M77; when seen from across Glasgow, the pimple of Dumgoyne was capped with cloud; and then it rained as I drove past Perth.

An optimistic view up Glen Tilt

Ever optimistic, the bike was whipped out of the back of the car and I set out from the Old Bridge of Tilt car park with a ceiling of cloud revealing a streak of blue every now and then. After ignoring the weather runes I paid a similar level of disdain to the mechanical ones that then tried to send me a message.

Within ten minutes of leaving the car bits began to fall off my bike. OK, one of them was my light and I was unlikely to need that later in the day. Then, facing an incline I wanted to take at a steady pace, I changed gear: my chain fell off. For the second trip running, oily fingers were wiped on the grass and I was grateful that it wasn’t another puncture like the one I suffered in Glencoe the previous week.

About a mile further on I felt a trickle down my right leg. The hose on my new water bottle had decided to leak and it looked as though I’d had an accident on the way to the gents or the privacy of a trackside bush. Tap problems resolved I was on my way for a third time.

Once past Gaw’s Bridge I spotted the wall descending from Sron a Chro beside which I hoped to return to the glen in a few hours time. I secured the bike to a clump of grass and, after crossing the bridge at Slochd Dail Mhoraisd, headed off for the long nose of Faire Clach Ghlais and a steady climb upwards.

The track wends its way up the ridge ...

... and wends its way further and further ... into the cloud

I took it at an easy pace, no need to push, no need to rush. With the forecast in the back of my mind I reckoned on the cloud level slowly rising as my saunter took me closer to the top. The afternoon was to be better I recall being reassured. The sun would greet me as I loitered by the summit cairn.

The trails breaks off across the heather ... and into more cloud

On reaching a tiny cairn that marked a departure from the wide track, I broke out across the gentle slopes of short heather. I correctly assumed that this cut across the loop the original track made to ascend through the small crags of Glac a Bhuic Eairb. By now I was in the cloud and the conditions showed no sign of improving. A cairn emerged from the mist, but I knew there was still some distance to climb as I calculated that I was now on Grianan Mor. The mist got thicker and it was sometime before I came across the main track again and found myself standing by the larger cairn that sits a hundred feet or so below Carn a Chlamain’s summit.

There's a limit to the power of optimism on the top of Carn a Chlamain

At one time on the top, the cloud thickened to such a degree that I could barely see ten metres in any direction. And then it started to rain. I’m nothing if not persistent at times: others would say I’m a stubborn Yorkshire b****r. So I waited, had lunch, and expected it to improve.

It didn’t. The rain just got heavier.

I’d originally planned to complete the horseshoe of the Gleann Craoinidh, but the challenge of navigating round a succession of humps on a succession of bearings lost its appeal. I know, we should practise our skills, be on our mettle to cope with anything the hills throw at us.

Persistent? Stubborn? Sod it. There are days when it’s not worth the candle.

From the cairn on Grianon Mor the track heads back down ... into more cloud

Rubbing salt into the weather wounds, the cloud level was a good couple of hundred metres lower when I descended back into Glen Tilt. The rain at times got heavier and, when I finally dropped below the ceiling, the prospect down the glen looked more like November than the end of a flaming June.

As in so many aspects of life, there are days when we have to take the rough with the smooth. We recently went with a group of friends to a National Theatre of Scotland performance of a production called “Yer Granny.” Gregor Fisher was supposed to add a bit of spice while Maureen Beattie provided the class: it was tosh. Last week the same group assembled to see Tom Conti in a stage production of “Twelve Angry Men.” Marvellous: what a contrast. You win some: you lose some.

I’m afraid Carn a Chlamain was the mountain equivalent of “Yer Granny,” and the charms of Glen Tilt were confined to the glen itself rather than its surroundings.

And of course as I drove south on the A77, the Galloway hills were silhouetted against a blue evening sky, Goat Fell stood proud, and Reporting Scotland covered those basking on the beach in Nairn. And as for Wimbledon ....

[trederdog 100]

Nothing like a good bit of clag to enjoy a hill with! I had Wimbledon envy as well, getting texts from down south asking if I was enjoying the 28 degree heat! Plenty of clearer walks to be had in July!