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Sunday the 29th of July was a windy day with heavy rain forecast for the afternoon, but the morning showed some promise, so we decided to nip up a local Sub'2000 Marylin, Carn na Dubh Choille. As we discovered, it is an interesting wee hill in itself and a fantastic viewpoint, well worth recommending if you are local to Inverness and are fed up with the umpteenth march up Ben Wyvis.
There are a few different approaches to this hill, we chose the one from the south-east as it follows forest track for most of the distance.
The best place to leave cars is a public car park off the A835 near Silverbridge (2km north Garve), which is also the starting point for the Silverbridge River circuit (highly recommended easy walk!). We had been here multiple times, exploring the forest, picking mushrooms and blueberries, but this was the first time we didn't cross the road to the other side, but followed along the A835 for a short distance, to the entrance of a track leading into the woods. This track soon joins the old drovers road, but don't get mislead by the word "road" in the title
Silverbridge waterfalls:
The track through the forest:
After about a mile, the track divides, we took the right hand side branch leading uphill. If you're confused, this signpost might help:
The track is eroded and wet in places, but nothing too drastic (not as bad as Beinn Chabhair bogs we walked the previous weekend!). After another mile, we encountered the first gate, closed but not locked, and honestly, it was on the verge of falling apart
The old drover's road continues...
...and it offers some very nice views en route, especially west to the Fannichs:
Panorama west, with the pointy shape of Fionn Bheinn to the left:
Fionn Bheinn zoomed:
A couple of km and another gate further on, we encountered some serious bog:
Ehmm, don't try it without green wellies
Having emerged from the woods eventually, we saw our target summit right in front of us. The track shrunk to a path at this point. We continued past one more gate and Lochan nam Breac:
Looking back at the approach via the old drover's road and the final gate:
Past the loch, we left the path and climbed the straightforward slopes to the summit. It's only about 150m of ascent from the loch to gain the top of the Marylin. I was trying desperately to find some rock for scrambling but with no success
View back to Loch nam Breac and the mountains beyond:
It was windy once we reached higher ground but I was still a happy bunny. Glad we didn't aim for anything bigger that day, it would have been hard walking in that wind!
The summit has a trig point and superb views in all directions. Much better than we expected! Sub no. 36 (23 for Lucy):
Kevin still smiling - it was his last hill before a forced break from hillwalking, caused by injury at work:
Despite the gusty wind, we spent some time on the top, mostly using our cameras. Forecast said it was going to rain in the late afternoon, but so far the weather held
Admiring the north-west panorama including Loch Glascarnoch:
Glascarnoch Dam zoomed:
View south to Loch Garve:
Lochluichart Widnfarm turbines are the only element not exactly fitting the landscape, but to be honest, I'm getting used to them now. After all, it's hard to find a hill in Scotland with no wind turbine to be seen from the summit. Sometimes, Kevin and I play a silly game "spot the windfarm". Who spots one first, wins
Very rarely, the game goes unsolved (no windfarm was spotted on an outing).
Ben Wyvis very dark and moody:
...whereas An Teallach basked in sunshine:
After sinking in the views and a quick tea break, we discussed the descent options. The easiest way is to retrace your steps back to the old drover's road, but we wanted to do a circuit, so we chose to drop down the south-eastern slopes to a forest track above Black Water. Initially, it was easy going despite the gusty wind getting even stronger.
Our descent route seen from above:
We descended to the edge of the forest and followed a wet ATV track for a short time, before dropping straight to the forest track across a freshly felled ground. Despite sounding very scary ("freshly felled" - I don't even know if such expression is grammatically correct
), the ground was not too bad, a bit bumpy and wet in places, but I discovered a good excuse for frequent stops: fresh raspberries! For free!!!
Raspberry fields forever:
Eventually Kevin persuaded me to leave the fruit feast and join him on the forest track:
...which we then followed all the way back to the starting point at A835. Of course, the return walk took much longer than Kevin wanted due to... the uncontrolled actions of Raspberry Ripper
The whole circuit took just over 4 hours (half of that spent picking raspberries
). May be just a Sub, but it's one of the better small hills in Inverness area. Fantastic views and you are not likely to see anyone here (we didn't). Would be a good one for winter
....................
Sadly, a few days after the above described outing, Kevin tore one of his abdominal muscles while handling something heavy at work. The injury was not serious but painful enough to stop him from hillwalking for three weeks. He's almost recovered since, but still careful when picking routes. So my next three reports will be about my husband's road to recovery. Starting with a local Graham on the 18th of August. TR in progress.
