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Our first holiday north of the border was a big change in the way we did things, instead of the usual cottage holiday we'd invested some money in a small caravan so we could move around in persuit of better weather, we travelled up from West Yorkshire late Friday evening 18th May heading for Roybridge. I'd never towed a caravan before but I found the journey a lot easier than I'd imagined and we found ourselves in Fort William at 6 in the morning a lot earlier than we'd anticipated so with no sleep and a few hours to kill before we could set up on site at Bunroy we found a large layby and tried to get a bit of rest.
We spent Saturday afternoon setting ourselves up in our new home, getting used to the rudiments of a touring caravan, we did a reasonable job and satisfied with our first ever efforts we relaxed and started planning our first day in the hills of this holiday.
We decided on a steady day to start with, Beinn Teallach, this was a red balloon we wanted to turn blue just to tidy up the edges.
Sunday dawned grey and overcast, a bit of a contrast to Saturday's blue sky and warmth, the tops were covered but there was no threat of rain so we set off for Roughburn to get our mountain.
We parked up in the small pull in by the bridge near the entrance to the plantation, got sorted and were off up the track that leads through the plantation.
There's a left turn onto another lesser track which leads to the ford over the Allt a' Chaorainn, once clear of the trees we could see Beinn Teallach, head in the clouds so no views today by the looks.
There's a good path leading up the west side of the burn alongside another plantation, this eventually crosses a fence and leads onto the open mountainside.
The path starts to get fainter here but it can be followed as it climbs through the heather.
But we got some views.
Beinn a' Chaorainn in there somewhere.
The ascent is steady and once above the 800m contour it becomes dryer and the path becomes much clearer. By this time we'd entered the cloud so the views were gone. We carried on plodding uphill, near the summit it becomes bouldery, soon the big summit cairn loomed out of the mist so here we were, our first summit of the holiday.
We decided just to do the one mountain if there were no views and the clag remained down so we came off the summit and retraced our route back down, I guess this was a blatant example of "bagging" but it was a nice break in walk in preparation for the week ahead, we took our time on the descent.
Back at the ford we sat down and had a late lunch, the summits were still covered, in the glen it was warm and a little humid, so we took our time.
Beinn Teallach in the afternoon, still cloudy on top.
But we had to go, arriving at the car the usual happened, the clag was lifting off the summits and the sun started to shine, ah well it was only day one and the forcast was good for the week ahead.
