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What a day! Beautiful sunshine and warm. We knew Beinn Dearg and especially Cona Mheall well from countless drives up and down to Ullapool over the years, and since the start of our hill walking mission I had thought that it would be great to get up there! Off we went, bright and early, parked at Inverlael and up into the forest. Needed to be watchful of which fork to take but after an hour or so reached the end of the forest and caught sight of Beinn Dearg ahead
- First glimpse
It was a lovely walk up the glen but very very hot. Ellen was a wee bit uncomfortable, but I felt ok🤣. Before long we got a clearer view into the glen
- Top of the glen
. Soon the path steepened and we stopped for lunch
- There it is
. Soon we hit the zig zagging path up the end of the Corrie, could see our hill ahead and the clifffs to the right were spectacular
- Steep slopes and cliffs
. About that stage I started to feel a bit queesy and was stopping a lot, strange...but we reached the lovely loch and stopped to admire the views back
- Lochan
It wasn’t long before we got to the famous famine walk, one of us enjoying the walk
- This is nice
but the other starting to feel a bit puffed, nice views east though
- Looking east
. Anyway, we had got this far! So up we went alongside the wall, marvelling at the sheer human effort that went in to this, just to earn a crust. Speaking of sheer human effort, we were knackered and sweating like hogs! By now I was done, too hot and pretty nauseous, stopping every 10 metres, but made it to the gap in the wall where I just had to stop “for 5 minutes” but basically just gave up. So annoying knowing that the summit was really close over fairly gentle slopes, but I just couldn’t face it. It was cooler and shady by the wall so suggested Ellen nipped to the top as I cooled down! I wasn’t feeling great at all, and even fantastic views of old favourites wasn’t consoling
- Old familiars
. One man stopped to chat for a while and the highlight of Ellen’s day was when she was at the cairn and asked him if he had seen her husband. “Oh, is that the older man?“ was the reply! Insult to injury for me, hilarious to her! And she didn’t even get a summit photo! Anyway, she was back soon and we headed down. It was tough, but got down and had another wee rest and within two minutes I was horrendously sick 🤢 Oh dear, this was a worry, but we sat for a while as I took on some water and headed down the Corrie and began to feel better and better, fine by the time we reached the car. So much so that we headed on to Ullapool for fish suppers and 4 cans of juice for me! I was so disappointed not to get to the top and no idea what had gone wrong. At the time I was convinced it was something I had eaten but pretty sure now it was some kind of heat related exhaustion. Lesson learned - more stops for cooling off on hot days!