Lead mine walk in very wet conditions

[Dander and explore]

We started our walk from the Ariundle car park. It was an extremely wet and rainy day with waterproof clothes required throughout. The display board near the start of the path has information for the Ariundle Oak trail, which has a distance of about 5.5km and forms part of the walk to the lead mines.

We followed the walking path straight up from the car park to the lead mines. We opted to do the lower variation across the river on the return. And we opted against the second variation due to the extremely heavy rain.

The path starts of very gentle. Great for a nice walk in. The burns were all very swollen by the continuous rainfall. Higher up one of the burns, usually likely a small trickle, flowed across the path. It was about ankle deep in places, with good waterproof boots we kept our toes dry though.

The bridge higher up doesn't look any better now than a few years ago. It had water running half way across it before it fell down between the slats. We braved it one at a time and while it creaked, it was fine. Nearly there once you are across!
Next we faced cows, who were blocking the path. As we looked at each other, contemplating how to get around them, the cows clearly took pitty on us and walked up the hill into the grass.
The path turned into a stream at this point and we saw many frogs.
Finally we reached the mine's spoil heaps. We had a little explore before heading back down the main path. The cows had disappeared and the bridge of doom held.
We opted for the variation along the oak trail down to the river. This was very swollen and the path on the far side was quite soggy in places. However, it was also beautiful.

Overall a great short-ish walk. It was very enjoyable despite the rain.

[thedonalds]

Update information: The lower bridge over the Strontian River is closed for safety reasons, seems to be some sort of structural issue, so the return walk down the east side of the river is not possible at present. Otherwise its still all as written above, even the dodgy old bridge up by the lead mine is still hanging on......