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Basing ouselves in Roybridge for the first part of the holiday was an ideal opportunity to take the train to Corrour station and have a go at these two remote munros.
The Bunroy camp site is very close to the station in Roybridge so there was no need for the car, it's just a 10 minute walk from the site.
I'd done a bit of research on train times, looked at past walk reports to get an idea of how long it was taking people to do them which, in turn, led to a plan to have a go at Beinn na Lap at the same time, about 9 hrs if we pushed it, if we got the early train, 08.05, we'd not have enough time for the three and catch the 15.25 train back so it would be a long wait for the last train at 21.20, me, thinking we had a good chance if we went for the 12.02 train decided that's what we'd do, well, as it turned out, over caution and timetables played a part in us not being brave enough at the crucial time, well, we're going back at some point, put it that way.
We had a lazy morning on the 23rd of May, glorious sunshine, not a cloud in the sky absolutly perfect. We had an early lunch then set off for the station to catch the 12.02 train to Corrour, it arrived a bit late, 12.10, but that didn't matter, the weather was spot on.
I thought nothing of it until we arrived at Corrour station and realised our already "pushing it" time schedule had been erroded by 10 mins and after a bit more fannying about after getting off the train our "pushing it" schedule had been reduced by half an hour, by 12.50 we finally set off at quite a pace knowing this was going to be a bit of a route march.
The track from the station is perfect for a bit of fast walking.
and the station was soon getting far far away.
Beinn na Lap.
We arrived at Peters Rock just over an hour from the station. There's a feint path heading uphill just opposite the rock so we set off on this seeing that it was heading in the right direction into Coire Odhar Beag, it was a bit steep and we lost it further up but looking at the map and with the weather being superb we just carried on up to the skyline finding it again further up.
Views from the climb.
We arrived at our intended point on the skyline at NN411668 about a km from the summit of Carn Dearg
Sgor Gaibhre.
and scooted up to the cairn as quick as our tired little legs would take us.
We were on the summit at 14.40 and I was thinking we might have made up a bit of time, with this in mind we had some munchies took a few pics
Alder?
and set off for Sgor Gaibhre.
It looked a long way off, and there was a drop of 200m into the bealach, it was warm with a light breeze, we decided to slow down a bit and get into a steady plodding pace especially for the climb up Sgor Gaibhre, it looked a massive pyramid of a mountain from where we were.
We didn't do too bad, really, it took us an hour summit to summit and just short of three hrs from the station, had we gained enough time? I guessed if we could get down to the Corrour Shooting Lodge by 17.00 at the latest, we stood a chance to do Beinn na Lap as well.
Summit No:2
Views.
Towards the lodge
We didn't, it took longer than anticipated, bu$$e*, infact it was 17.25 by the time we'd got down, 1.5 hrs after leaving the summit. We walked very quickly to the bridge over the Allt Loch na Lap where a path leads through the trees alongside the burn, we got there at 17.45 and made the decision to go for it.
We headed through the trees, it was warm, we got out of the trees, it was still warm, we got the first glimpse of the steep side of Beinn na Lap. you're joking, what, up that and down the other side in 3 hrs!!!, too risky I was thinking. There's a footbridge over the burn at around NN398697 we went over this, and climbed up to the top of a lump to take a better look.
Lump views. Beinn na Lap is out of shot here, it's rising to the left, an attempt at a pano, failed miserably but gives an idea of distance
I reckoned from here to the summit it would take the lions share of 1.3/4 hrs leaving about 1.1/4 hrs to get to the station in time for the train, nah, not riskin' it, if we had an extra half hour we could do it but we're not missing that train, it's a very long wait for the next one. We turned tail and went back down to the track leading alongside Loch Ossian.
We took our time along this track knowing we had plenty of it, it was nice to stop to take a few photo's and just look at the views.
I'm sure we made the right call, we were tired, that was the main factor, if we had longer we'd have gone for it, I'm not a fan of racing around the mountains and not taking in the views, especially on a day like this. We arrived back at the station at 20.10, we had an hour or so to wait but it was a lovely evening and the cafe sold coffee for Denise and COLD beer for me.
I took a few snaps.
Nighty night.
I'm glad, in a way, this was the outcome, Corrour station is a remote and lovely place to be, missing out on Beinn na Lap has it's advantages, we'll have to go back and that's going to be no trial at all.
