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With absolutely rotten luck, my only attempt at a Munro is the incredible two months of sunshine in late May/June/early July 2014 was on just about the only day of grey clouds and rain! A friend and I reached the summit of An Caisteal, but turned back rather than attempt to Beinn a'Chroin, partly due to the weather and partly due to our tiredness after hacking through fields, fences and small streams for the first 50 minutes! We parked at the wrong car park...
Cheers mate, I'll bear it in mind.
The most frustrating thing about my faux pas at the start was that it was right next to a big sodding road. We didn't even get lost in the wilderness!
We squeezed past an old ruin next to the railway line and eventually managed to cross another stream to land on the same blinking track we were supposed to start on. Hmmmmm, think I botched this one...
Once through the gate we turned right and basically went straight up the hill to locate the path at the start of the ridge.
This ended up being quite steep but eventually we reached the ridge itself and the hard work was over.
The path climbed gradually up the Twistin Hill ridge towards the summit of An Caisteal.
This was quite a surreal sight. For the month before this and the month after this, I was sweltering in a non-stop heatwave that covered pretty much the whole of Scotland, but today we were wading through patches of snow in thick cloud!
At least by mid-June it was melting, mind.
Hooray! Couldn't see a thing from the top, much like when I climbed the neighbouring Beinn Chabhair. But great to reach another Munro summit.
As we reached the summit much later than planned (because of that blasted mistake at the start), we headed back down the same way. The views finally started to open up towards Crianlarich the new bypass and the hills beyond.
The view back towards the summit of An Caisteal.
The new bypass was coming on leaps and bounds.
An Caisteal and Twistin Hill from the car park.
After a typically tasty dinner at the Drovers Inn we headed back to Glasgow. As a red sunset developed over the city I was left to wonder what the views would have been like from the top of An Caisteal. Perhaps the blessing in disguise is that Beinn a'Chroin has left for another day, and I can get the chance to try and scale its many (6?) summits...