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Sub 2k Marilyns: Craig of Monievreckie, Beinn Dearg.
Date: 02/03/2019.
Distance: 18 km.
Ascent: 900m.
Time taken: 5 hours, 45 minutes.
Weather: Mild overcast, turning to persistent rain later on.
Not a great forecast looming for the weekend. Rounsfell had suggested meeting up for a walk and we briefly debated a bothy night before settling on a day walk. I was down in Glasgow anyway, so we decided to make use of the window of half-decent looking weather on Saturday morning. Jackie and I had planned this route a few weeks ago, but given up and gone up Earl's Seat instead. This time we made an earlier start and met Rounsfell in the Braeval carpark just outside Aberfeldy shortly before 9:30 am. Although the hills had been in thick clag on the way over, there were now shafts of sunshine and the mist was rolling back a bit.
Heading up We followed a marked trail briefly before breaking off to the right on a less obvious path. This led out of the trees and onto the moorland. A fork allowed us to get onto the ridgeline, which was nice as the views were quite good from here. Before too long, we were on the summit of the Craig of Monievreckie.
On the Craig of Monievreckie 
Ben Venue 
Lake of Menteith 
Towards the Trossachs We had to cross a couple of subsequent summits on the ridge - descents and re-ascents between them were actually quite brutal, and the path disappeared as we went onwards, leaving us in deep heather in places. Fortunately Rounsfell's repertoire of Christmas cracker jokes (not to mention Jackie's endlessly recycled cheese jokes) kept our mind off it, until it came to fighting a corner of the forest and a couple of barbed wire fences to get off the ridge!
Fun times Once out of the trees, it was an easy walk over grazing land to join the Rob Roy Way. Once back in the woods, this path became even better, and there was even a bench for our lunch (rookie error as we were passed by a group of a dozen or so DofE kids here, which we would need to overtake again).
Lazy Marilyn baggers The path turned to a track, and we descended gently, knowing we would soon need to go back up again. Great views of Loch Venachar and Ben Ledi from here though - I had hoped these hills would have good views of the Trossachs, and they delivered.
Ben Ledi across Loch Venachar 
Ben A'an across Loch Venachar Then it was time to leave the nice track and head up a fire break - this wasn't too bad aside from a fence crossing, but once back on the moorland, the hillside got steeper and steeper until it was almost overhanging
. Soon it levelled off a bit, and some more heather bashing took us to the mast on the summit of Ben Gullipen. Some of the best views of the day were probably from the ascent.
Ascending Ben Gullipen 
Towards Strathyre 
More fun route choices 
Ben A'an from Ben Gullipen 
West down Loch Venachar 
North across Loch Venachar 
Callander and Uamh Bheag 
Loch Venachar Sadly the first spots of rain hit here - we had been able to see the forecast rain moving in from the west, and we knew that was it for the decent weather today. There is a bit of a path over to Beinn Dearg, although it is a bit boggy and tussocky.
Ochils from Beinn Dearg It still wasn't chucking it down at the summit of Beinn Dearg, but we soon decided to put full waterproofs on anyway as we descended the SW ridge. This turned out to be a good move as the rain got steadily heavier without being particularly obvious about it.
Doune 
Lochan Balloch We soon dropped off the ridge into the more sheltered corrie to the north and followed tracks and bogs back to the Rob Roy Way. Some of this was quite wet! Once in the forest, it was a simple matter of plodding back to the cars and pretending that it wasn't **** down. We were so wet by the time we got back that any thought of stopping off for tea and cakes was abandoned, and we got into the car and cranked the heating up instead
. Anyway, these hills turned out to be as interesting as I'd hoped, and probably deserved better weather. With around 900m of ascent, they weren't exactly the easy option either, although they did keep us away from the misery at higher altitudes.
