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Incredible to believe, but my wee girl turns 18 months old on Wednesday.
With Mrs D being away on a girlie weekend up to Grantown, I took the opportunity and profited from the reasonable weather to take Ailsa up her first Corbett. She loves berries, raspberries being one of her particular favourites, so Meall nan Subh looked like a good choice. Some sources suggest that the name means Hill of the Raspberries, others give it the less specific meaning of Hill of the Berries. Either way, it seemed relevant and suited our requirements, being only a couple of hours at most up and down.
We went up through Crieff and Lochearnhead, turning off at Lix Toll into Killin before taking the miniscule road up into Glen Lochay. Last time I had been along this road was in November 2010 when I did Beinn nan Imirean and Meall Glas. That day we had parked in the big new parking area just before the farmhouse at Kenknock. For this one, I had looked at a few reports from this and another site and established that it was indeed possible to drive up the minor road connecting Glen Lochay with Glen Lyon. Reports suggested that it was quite rough and potholed but I'd read of people doing it in Ford Fiestas and the likes, so I thought it should be OK.
I drove past Kenknock to the start of the aforementioned road opposite the bridge but just as I was about to turn up, I saw that there was a gate about 50 yards or so up the road. I had read that there was a gate (sometimes locked) at the high point of the road next to the Lochan Learg nan Lunn, but didn't realise that there were other gates as well. My initial reaction was that it was locked and that there was no way I was parking here and hoofing it up the road with an 18 month old toddler strapped to my back, but when I drove up to it, I could see that it wasn't padlocked.
After that, the road was pretty potholed but not as bad as some reports would have you believe. A second gate was reached after all the hairpins and after this the surface improved considerably.
We parked up in the large grassy area just beyond the high point on the road in line with the lochan and had a quick scooby snack before heading off up the steep, knobbly looking hillside. Everything I'd seen, read and heard about Meall nan Subh confirmed that it was a knobbly little character and this is indeed the case.
We took a slightly circuitous route up to avoid some of the steepest sections of crags and knolls but all in all it was highly uneventful. From the summit we daundered over to the stone pillar cairn and then across to the broken down trig point before dropping back down to the fence which we followed back down to the car.
Here are some photos which do a finer job of telling the story of the day.......
- Joy unrestrained at the thought of her first Corbett!
- The way up!
- Eh, we're going where daddy????
- Heasgairnich popping her head up
- Baa baa sheep!
- Sgiath Chuil and Beinn Cheathaich across Glen Lochay
- Pit stop on ascent
- First sighting of Loch Lyon
- Ahead to the summit
- Meall Ghaordaidh
- Pretty typical terrain up here
- Stronuich Reservoir down Glen Lyon
- Ailsa at the summit getting to grips with the basics of navigation!
- Me an' ma gal!
- Over at the stone pillar cairn to the east - cloud spilling into Glen Lyon
- Looking back west to the summit
- Can we go back home now daddy?
- Broken trig
- Cloud masking Heasgairnich
- Descent to the car next to the Lochan Learg nan Lunn below the crags of Creag nam Bodach