Up the east coast of Islay

[nigheandonn]

Monday 30th July

The last chance for my Islay trip was the final Monday and Tuesday of my holiday - the forecast was good enough, an ordinary highland mixture of sunshine and showers, and I was keen to get to one more island, having already visited seven in the previous couple of weeks!

I'd been fascinated by the path marked on the map up to the McArthur's Head lighthouse for far longer than I've known anything about hills, so this was a kind of composite plan - over two hills and down to the coast, and up past the lighthouse to the bothy at An Cladach, and out again over Sgorr nam Faoillean the next day.

Since I'd gone straight to Tarbert from Uist where I'd camped for odd nights, I had my sleeping bag and everything with me, but one thing I'd never thought about was a proper rucksack - I had the ordinary one that I'd left some extra stuff in for my family to take down to Tarbert with them, and that was all. So it was a matter of seeing what I could fit in - sleeping bag and mat, fortunately the little one, and then odds and ends squeezed round about, waterproofs and pyjamas and toothbrush and map and tablet and not much more, except bits and pieces of food. But it worked, more or less!

You get a beautiful view of the hills from the ferry over - Dun Da Gaoithe on Mull is another one like that, where you sail more or less to the foot of it. And you get a lovely view of the coast as far as the lighthouse from the ferry from Port Askaig, so I'd be finishing off with another grandstand view of my trip.

Islay hills

It was never very likely that I would catch the 9:10 bus to Ardbeg, which left just as the ferry was due in, and I didn't - it drove off while the ferry was only just thinking about tying up. So I had a bit of time for pottering about Port Ellen, although I knew I should be saving my feet for the long walk later on, and went for a cup of tea.

Port Ellen

The bus runs out past three distilleries to the little junction at Ardbeg and then stops, with about six miles more to go to the road end - I could have walked it about as quickly, but I didn't want the extra distance.

Ardbeg distillery

So the start of my walk was along the road, passing some nice little bays and some unexpected peacocks. The road is marked with solid old milestones, surprisingly impressive for a road to nowhere in particular.

Milestones

After a while the road is so straight that it seems like Romans must have been, although I think it's just that Islay is quite flat by Scottish standards!

Straight road

The turnoff for the little church and cross at Kildalton is about four miles in, and I couldn't resist the detour although I've been before, on a bike. There are two things that I particularly love about the cross - the way that its carvings stand out from it, rather than being cut into it, and the fact that it's slightly squint - even in those days I'm sure it could have been measured out straight, but instead it's a perfect circle, and a cross apparently drawn freehand by someone who knows what a cross looks like.

Kildalton cross

The cross also had a self-service cake stall, which was a nice touch, but I decided I had enough cake with me already!

As I came round towards the end of the road the hills stood out above the farmland beside the road.

Nearer to the hills

The last bit of the road runs beside a beautiful bay - rocks and pebbles just like the Kintyre coast opposite, and a lovely sweep of sand - and I found a spot in among the rocks to eat my lunch.

Claggain Bay

That was the end of stage 1 of the journey - I went on to the gate at the track to Ardtalla to see the Humorous Sign (although it turned out to be the fraternal twin of one at Kildalton), but my way was through a gate just before it, onto the hillside rather than along the coast.

Not a very friendly gate, either - the bolt was stiff and bit the heel of my hand hard enough to draw blood - but beyond it a good track ran on towards the hill.

Hill track

On the map the track ran out quite quickly, but on the ground it swung round to the left and kept going - not quite the direction I would have thought of, but it was running along towards the base of Diollaid na Fiadh, and it had to swing towards the hill somewhere, because it wasn't going to drop into the steep river valley. So I followed it, and followed it, and followed it a bit more, and eventually decided that I was wrong, and that there was nothing to do but to climb up its bank and straight uphill, although I knew it was going to be awful ground - and it was far worse than that, deep dragging grass and scratchy plants and invisible holes, big enough to make me scared of a bigger one - although when I finally did fall into a (wo)man-eating sort of hole it was only about knee-high and did nothing except make my feet wet, and I wriggled out again quite easily.

But it was exhausting, and it was horribly slow, although it can't really have been very far - eventually I struggled to the top of the slope, and the welcome sight of the upper fence in front of me (one more fence than is marked on the map, maybe) - but a few steps further on what did I see between me and the fence, but the track again, finally swung round and running almost parallel! Still, it was quite useful - the fence was the tall deer kind, and the track had to lead me to the gate - which it did.

Shortly after that gate the track just stopped, but a faint path led on up the shoulder of the hill, while some wet weather came in - a mix of sun and rain, but enough to make me regret feeling smug earlier on, as I watched some nasty weather pass over Gigha while Islay basked in sunshine.

Path on the shoulder

Some even blacker looking weather was lurking over in the direction of Ireland, but I could only wait and see if it was coming my way, and what it would bring if it did.

Weather from Ireland

It was a steady climb up to a cairn on a first little top - by that point the cloud was sitting over the little hills to the west and the rain was threatening. This time I got round to putting on my waterproof trousers, although there wasn't a lot of point, because the seams round the crotch had been crumbling for a while, and now the tape went all at once and just left a great hole - I decided that they would keep the wet grass off my legs at least and kept them on!

Cloud on the hills

The first cloud brought rain, but the next wave hit the hills itself and swallowed me up in a great grey mist. I was up on a much flatter top now, a mix of scattered stones and short heather and grass, and I could just keep plodding on - as long as I was going uphill I was heading the right way.

But I soon ran out of uphill, which baffled me - the cloud was coming in thicker and thinner patches, so I decided I'd have a rest and wait for a thinner one, and quite quickly it cleared much more comprehensively than I expected, showing me that I was still only on the edge of the first summit, with the long ridge ahead of me - the cloud had muddled all my distances.

Visible summit

So I still had too far to go, but it was a beautiful little ridge, and that seemed to be the last of the bad weather, as it passed on towards the mainland - everything I could see around me was clearing rapidly, and the distant views were coming back as well.

Gigha and Kintyre

I knew the summit had a trig point, which is how I knew I wasn't there in the mist - it was in its own little shelter, without much room for anything else!

Beinn Bheigeir summit

Until now I'd been cut off by the hills from the rest of Islay, although the views had been quite extensive everywhere else, but now from the highest point I was looking across the island as well, to Loch Indaal and the Rhinns.

The Rhinns of Islay

It was just after 4.30, but that didn't really matter - I hadn't started walking until 11, and it would be light until at least 9.30, so I was just shifting the whole day's walking a bit later than usual. I did consider dropping into the valley, but I thought it would probably be as easy walking on the hills, and there was always the option of dropping out at Proaig if something went wrong.

I started my descent a bit too far to the east - not only was I dropping down towards the valley rather than the bealach, but everything below me looked a bit steeper than I thought it should, so I decided that I had learnt something from the back of Schiehallion and headed back up to try again.

Not the way down

The second attempt was more successful, down a heathery slope - it was fairly steep but very grippy, and I never felt uncomfortable.

Descent to the bealach

Then it was on over flatter but lumpier ground until it began to rise again. The more I looked back at my descent route, the less possible it looked - down the broad green streak in the middle, and onto the gentler slope down to the right, rather than vanishing into a gully - but it had all felt quite reasonable at the time. The recognised WH route leads down the skyline to the right, I think!

Looking back

It didn't matter very much exactly what route I took from there - I climbed a tiny side ridge onto Am Mam, just because the start was slightly closer, and found a way along dodging all the higher ground until the final ridge to the summit. It was quite a different kind of hill, with rock showing through all the highest parts rather than loose stones lying.

Ridge to Glas Bheinn

A great valley ran away right from the summit, joining the valley of the Abhainn Proaig to reach the sea.

Gleann Coire Liunndrein

A good cairn at this summit, and a good view of the Paps of Jura - it's odd how the focus of the view shifts even within quite a small area.

Glas Bheinn summit

At this point, sadly, something went wrong with my camera, so there are all sorts of things I can't show - the long slope down, and a lot of deer crossing my path, and Proaig from the inside and outside, and all the caves and arches along the shore, and An Cladach and its bay - it was pretending to save photos as usual and then not doing it, so that I didn't know that the time that anything was wrong.

I had wanted to walk up past the lighthouse for far longer than I had wanted to climb the hills, so my plan was to use the 'standard' descent to Proaig down Uchdach Brisdidh Cridhe, which I knew was an easy slope, and join the path marked along the shore to the lighthouse - I was only a little bit worried about the section after that, where no path was marked, but from the map it looked like there was a flat place above the shore all along.

The descent was easy enough, apart from patches of long slippery grass - I kept to the right hand side, away from rocks, just because that was the side I started on, and further down picked up a kind of track leading towards Proaig, where I was glad to be on the right side of the river. It was habitable but not very welcoming - it had a roof, even if you could see odd chinks of light through it, and a wooden bedframe, and a hard chair and a soft chair and a table and even a spare duvet, but it was a great bare barn of a place, and I had more than two hours of light left for a mile to the lighthouse and two miles beyond to reach An Cladach.

There wasn't really a path, in spite of the map, but between the hills and the sea there was nowhere else to go - along the edge of the shore past Proaig, and round a smaller bay, and picking up a better path to come into a narrow stretch with cliffs towering above, and in one place the remains of a little landslide. The tide was right in, and once or twice I had to go round with my toes on little ledges on the rocks - the kind of thing I've been doing all my life, and a slip would only have landed me in an inch or two of water, but not quite what I expected from a marked path.

From the next little point I'd hoped I would see the lighthouse, but instead the view was of a headland ahead that seemed to have no way round the bottom at all - there was really nowhere that I could have lost the path, but I had a look at the map, and discovered that I wasn't on the path at all - just where there had started to be a path on the ground, I should have been ignoring it and going up over the hill instead. I decided that back would be safer than on - I should still have time to get to the lighthouse and turn back if necessary (it seems silly now, but I was still worrying about the pathless stretch beyond it!) - and picked my way back.

Not far round the corner of the little bay was a kind of way up, more a muddy slither than a scramble, but I didn't want to waste time looking for a better way that might not exist. Above it everything that looked like it might be a faint trace of path was much closer to the top of the cliff either than the map showed or than I was happy with - at one point I found myself stepping out round the edge of a rock above the drop, and I wanted to keep well above the top of the landslip.

So I kept heading up to look for a better path, or at least keep away from the drop, but it was all a great mess of knee high tangled grass and occasional heather which wound round my feet as I hurried and tripped me up so that I fell half a dozen times at least. Once I found I'd lost my water bottle from the side pocket of my bag, and had to try to retrace a path and hope I'd noticed it quickly.

Nearer to the lighthouse wall a slightly clearer path appeared, although still well down the slope, and I followed the wall round to a gate at the far end. I couldn't go past without trying to see the lighthouse, but although a kind of green tunnel with occasional bramble strands across it led down inside there was no more sign of a lighthouse at the bottom than the top, and I turned back. From the gate some worn steps led down for a bit, and then stopped at the top of a slope which would have been impossibly steep and loose if it hadn't been overgrown with bracken - as it was it was just possible to hang on and slither down, and eventually be deposited on the shore.

At the bottom I knew that whatever lay ahead of me I had to go on, because there was no way I could possibly get back! But really, the worst was over and I was just into a steady race against the light - as the map suggested, there was an almost continuous flat fringe of land above the shore, and now that I was past the place where a path was marked, there actually was a path, a thin line usually in the short grass just above the beach, but occasionally wandering down to cross shingle, or further up into the bracken, with only a couple of rougher places where it had to climb slightly inland to avoid rocks on the shore.

As I came round towards the bothy the light was really beginning to fail, although I knew I couldn't have too far to go - a last fight through head-high bracken, just when I thought I'd seen the end of it, and a last burn crossing where I was too tired to care about staying dry, and I could see the dark building ahead of me along the shore.

Having reached it, I couldn't get the door open - it would rattle but not move, and I didn't realise that it was bolted at the very top, up above my head. So my efforts woke someone inside who shouted and possibly swore at me, but once he woke properly he relaxed and got up and lighted candles so I could see what I was doing, because it was properly dark inside.

I'd been hoping someone would be in, but now I kind of wished they weren't - if I'd been alone I could have pottered round exploring the bothy and the bookshelves and even had a go at lighting the fire while I calmed down a bit - but it probably was better not to be alone! So I got the rustliest bits of my unpacking and undressing over with, and then found my food and slipped out to sit on the doorstep and eat some dinner in the very last of the light - I was almost too tired to eat, but sacrificing one of my breakfast bananas got me started, and I knew I would feel better if I did. And I had a comfortable bed with two sleeping mats on it, so that I needn't have carried mine, and I really was tired, so going straight to bed wasn't too much of a sacrifice.

Tuesday 31st July

In the end I slept better than I had expected - it wasn't too cold and I didn't have too much of a war with my new sleeping bag, and I suppose I was just too worn out not to sleep, although it doesn't always work that way.

The morning was nice enough, reasonably bright and reasonably calm, although it was forecast to be windier later, and the other inhabitant turned out to be a young man from Oxford whose name I never found out - he had walked in through a glen and meant to walk out the same way, so couldn't tell me about the shore to the north, but that did seem to be the easiest way out.

My intention had been to walk out over Sgorr nam Faoileann, but I didn't feel that I could settle to it, or even to a quiet morning in the bothy - I wanted proof that I actually could get out of here, as soon as possible. So as soon as I'd packed up I set off, stopping just round the first point for breakfast. It really wasn't a bad walk out - a couple more rocky places above the edge of the water, since it was high tide again, and a bare foot river crossing where the bed itself was fine but I struggled to get out on the far side up a steep bank of shifting pebbles, but mostly a little shoreside path, with more arches, and views over to Jura.

I miscounted the little points and missed the ruins at Earachan and started feeling like I was getting nowhere, but that made my arrival at the little wooded point where the track starts a pleasant surprise.

This was where I figured out that there was something wrong with my camera, and that nothing I could do to the memory card was going to make it any happier, so this is where the photographic record starts again, with a few pictures squeezed onto an old card - it was a lovely spot, just where Islay and Jura start to get closer.

Traigh Bhan

It was nice to have a solid track under my feet again after the best part of a day, although first I had to battle with the gate, which was a great heavy thing taller than me, and had slipped at least half an inch on its hinges, so that I had to wrestle the whole thing upwards before I could get the bolt out of its socket, and then nearly couldn't shut it again. But I made it through, and then I was on the way out, a winding track to the old building at Baleachdrach, and then an uphill pull towards Lossit farm, with more excited pheasants than I'd ever seen in one place before.

Lossit

A detour past the farm brought me onto a better track and past a handful of houses, and then I was out on the road and coming down to the main road at Ballygrant, and the little cafe there which had always been my final aim - I came it across a few years ago while cycling on the island, and now try to visit on all my Islay expeditions!

I spent quite a while there eating a scone with jam and cream and drinking tea and browsing the used book shelf and the bus timetable - I had always meant to get the 15:30 Port Askaig ferry which met the bus on the other side, which gave me plenty of time to get the bus up to Bridgend for lunch and a visit to the brewery shop. I could have had time for a quick visit to Finlaggan, but didn't actually make a move to do anything about it until too late - in the end I wandered round about as far as the farm for the view over the loch, and then realised I'd left my water bottle in the cafe and retraced my steps.

I was looking slightly battered - apart from the mark on my thumb where my first gate bit me, my arms were covered with a network of slightly inflamed-looking scratches - I didn't meet many brambles, so I think they must have been the result of my battles with the bracken. I felt I looked like I'd been fighting a spiky monster, but I suppose I had!

At Port Askaig I was please to find the Hebridean Isles waiting for me, rather than Finlaggan - I'm not sure if I'd miscounted, or if they'd got out of sequence, but the old ferries are so much nicer! The slightly bumpy ride home was almost the end of my two and a half weeks in the west, only a last evening and morning in Tarbert left before a wet and wild journey back to the Ayrshire coast on the Waverley - not that we could see the coast until the last minute. I felt I'd made good use of those weeks, though.

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[iangpark]

Enjoyed that. The coast there is particularly fierce - and when we went we we barely on it! Well done in managing the 2 marilyns too - don’t blame you for missing out SnF as it is a difficult ascent from all directions.

[nigheandonn]

I have a tentative plan for going back next year and picking up where I left off - in from an afternoon ferry to the bothy, and out over the missing hill. It took me about two days to get from 'never again' to 'well, at least I know the worst now...'!

[denfinella]

A lovely read, and that whole coastline looks fascinating (shame about the camera issue). Not sure I have the patience to deal with all the pathless terrain, so it's nice to be able to read about it from the comfort of my house!

[malky_c]

Great report, and a good choice of route . Something like this had always been my plan - either on the way to or back from Jura, but I got an opportunity to visit the bothy when I was over for work. In the end I went to the bothy and up all of the main summits in that range, but the route was a bit less satisfactory than this one.

[nigheandonn]

A lovely read, and that whole coastline looks fascinating (shame about the camera issue).

Thanks - it was a shame, because it was the bit with all the caves and arches I missed, but I'll just have to go back next year

The tops of the hills are pretty easy walking, despite lack of paths, but where it's rough lower down it's pretty rough!

Great report, and a good choice of route

Thanks For the benefit of any future Islay-explorers, I will say that I think your choice of route from Glas Bheinn to the bothy, down the ridge of Beinn na Caillich, looks like a much better idea - you can visit the lighthouse along the shore from there if you want! But I do love a proper end-to-end walk.

(I really enjoyed reading all the existing Islay reports as research - it looks gorgeous in your pictures with the dusting of snow.)

[jfallow]

I'm in awe of your having the guts to do this by yourself. It sounds magnificent and terrifying! Thanks for sharing the experience - it was a great read.