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Easter Friday, schools were closed, weather was great, so ten year old grandson Matthew and I decided to head for the hills. A hill I have driven past and admired many times, Beinn Dorain, was chosen as No1 priority with Beinn an Dothaidh an added possibility. In the end we settled for BD alone. (I'll have to return soon for BaD
) During the walk Matthew asked if he could write a WH report on this walk, so from this point on, the report of the walk is from Matthew's point of view
.
To start the ascent you begin in the quiet village of Bridge of Orchy which consists of some houses and a hotel. You cross over the A82 road and walk up to the underpass of the train station. After you go through a gate the walk starts properly. The first part was quite easy but soon gets harder and I found this part of the walk pretty hard and frustrating, but it was good fun. The route gets steeper and steeper as you go and the path sometimes disappears. There was a bit of talking with my grandad here and there to get me going, but it was really hard.
As we approached a stream there was a lot of muddy patches, so I would advise to go around them, though if you go around them watch for potholes in the ground. There was a very rocky ascent to the top of the bealach so before we started we had a bit of food.
We then pushed on to the top of the bealach. When we got there, I was surprised as I had never talked about John Deacon the Queen bass player that much. He is my current idol. (Don't laugh).
We set off towards the summit of Beinn Dorain which is the one that we wanted done most. There was an easy start and it just kept getting easier. Later I would eat my words. I would think why did I say that. After we got up this thing that reminded me of Ben A'an's summit, we were greeted by a long slog up to the Englishman's Cairn. Whoopee! Grandad kept saying there wasn't long to go to motivate me but it didn't help though in fact he was right.
There is a miniscule ridge walk from the Englishman's Cairn to the real summit. After trudging through a wee patch of snow we reached the summit. My No.12 Munro!!!
My god how did I get here. There were amazing views from the summit. Just to name a few mountains, Ben Liu, Ben Oss, Ben Starav, Bidean Nam Bian, Ben More and Stob Ghabhar. We had our hard earned lunch and after that we packed up and left.
The journey back down wasn't the most exciting so I'm not going to bore you with the details. Being honest it wasn't the best walk I've done with my Grandad but he is the best company. It was just not the best because it was way harder than some others but I still loved and enjoyed this day.
Hope I don't put you off doing this Munro. Thank you
!
Here are some pictures of our day.
- first pit stop
- heading up the coire
- panorama 1
- panorama 2
- panorama 3
- panorama 4
- heading for Beinn Dorain
- panorama 5
- panorama 6
- panorama 7
- panorama 8
- panorama 9
- summit pose (a la John Deacon).
- me and the cairn
- looking down on the A82
- panorama 10
- summit pose 2
- looking down on Bridge Of Orchy
- split rock 1
- split rock 2