Struie - the short, fast route!

[gld73]

I'd done Meall Doula, a sub2k up the road near Lairg in the morning in fine drizzle, but decided to pop up another hill on the way home too. Unfortunately the weather had returned to the heavy rain and low cloud of the previous 2 days, so any good intentions of doing the full length of the ridge to cover Struie and Struie Hill were abandoned, and I made do with a quick, wet, windy ascent of Struie and then back down. Hardly worth a walk report for the 42 mins and view of the inside of a cloud - but if anyone is wanting to know the quickest way to tick off this marilyn rather than do the more enjoyable walk covering Struie Hill too, this is it!

There's a rough parking area on the west side of the Struie road (the B9176) at around grid location 650850, room for a handful of cars. Walk north up the road around 80-100m and there's a small pile of stones marking the best place to cross the small stream (well, maybe it's usually a ditch, but it was a stream today) and find the clear path through the heather which heads steeply up the west side of Struie. Not much else to say! The path takes you all the way to the summit cairn (and then along the ridge if you want to continue to Struie Hill at the other end). For me, the horizontal rain made it an easy decision to return straight back to the car!

From the layby/parking area looking towards the lower flanks of Struie

A short distance back north along the road, this small pile of stones marks the start of a path up

Not marked on the OS map, but it's a clear path on the ground

Having passed the clump of trees about half way up, I wasn't optimistic about getting a view of the summit, let alone views from the summit

Struie summit cairn

A wet camera lens rather than deliberate special blurry effects

Resorting to a summit selfie as there aren't views of anything else to photograph!