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It was 6 years to the day that I had climbed my first ever major hill Ben Vane. I hadn't really had any particular interest in hill walking when I was invited to join a friend and his father on a jolly up a hill. I remember having to rush out and buy a pair of boots, I purchased a cheap pair from Mountain Warehouse at a cost of £20
The original plan for today was to take a step up from doing 'easy' hills and do something special. The Ring of Steall was the idea but this was scrapped based on the information received from MWIS and other forecasts. The East was to have better weather than the West so the decision was made to do something less exciting on a day when the weather was due to be less than brilliant.
I made the decision to visit Glenshee for a bit of number crunching. This part of the country seems to be the right place if you want boost your number if that's your sort of thing.
Up at the crack of dawn (05:00) to get ready, put ma piece together, jumped into the hire car and drove to the train station to pick up Pieplough at 06:40 before heading off. I don't have a great deal of driving experience so I always get a nervous when driving somewhere new but we made it in a pretty good time and with no problems.
We parked at the ski centre over flow car park, got read and set off down the road.
The RoadThis is the view where we started our walk proper.
Carn an TuircThe path is pretty straight form here but it's wet and this slows you down somewhat, once off the wet part of the path you are on the awkwardly sized rocks of the top, they aren't large enough to hop over but not small enough to walk over effortlessly
The rocky topCarn an Tuirc summitWe sat in one of those horseshoe summit toilet things to eat a little breakfast before heading through the clag to the other claggy summit.
Cairn of Claise summitWe didn't linger on the summit for any length of time and just headed in the general direction of Tolmount hoping to pick up a path but we couldn't see anything. We ended up in a bog but it wasn't so bad, we managed to pick out way through it with out to much problems. We did catch a view of the hills eventually.
Tolmount & Tom BuidheWe picked up a path on the pull up to the Tolmount summit, the 200 highest mountain in Britain.
Tolmount summitGlen CallaterTime to make our way around to Tom Buidhe. Which is the second most disappointing summit I've been on so far after Mullach Clach a'Bhlair.
Tom Buidhe summitWe caught up with a large group of walkers must have been 20+ walkers there. It turns out that the group had 2 walkers completing their Munros. It a great achievement but I'm glad that one won't be my last is all I'm going to say.
We kept to the path that takes you back over to the summit of Cairn of Claise but we branched of fairly high up which avoided what looked to be a boggy short cut. We stopped to have a spot of lunch before passing under the summit by 200 meters or so and headed for the 4x4 track which almost takes you to the top of Glas Maol. We caught a view of the first hill we had done on the day.
Carn an TuircAs we passed over the Skiing development there was an exodus of walking making their way off the hills. There was just 3 sets of walkers now heading up to Glas Maol. I hope Glas Maol means hill of the mountain hare because there was at least 50 hanging around the summit and they seems fairly at ease with people it seems.
We got typical views from the highest hill of the day.
Glas MaolWe took a wee took a couple of minutes here before setting off to the last and best looking hill of the day Creag Leacach.
Creag LeacachThe above photo was as good as the views got of the hill because the clag soon covered everything up again. The walk up this hill was fairly easy going at first then you have to pick your way over the rocky top and in the rain it's pretty slippy with lots of loose rocks.
Creag Leacach SummitThis was the last of the Munros but it was now time to get off the hills. Do we head down the other side of this hill or do we nip back under the Glas Maol summit and around the hill and head down the ski slopes?
We decided on the latter and as we left the summit we bumped into a couple of walkers who advised we didn't do this in the clag because there is some very steep ground so it was decided we'd all head off the hill together via the recommended route.
First we had to get off the rocky top and now tired legs, this was pretty slow going. Next we had to head down the really steep wet grassy slope, then jump the fast flowing burn and back up the slope on the other side and make our way to the car park next to Meall Gorm. We took a wee minute here before starting the worst part of the whole day, the long pull up the road to the main car park.This was a tough walk after walking the 6 Munros but the trick is to keep going. I spotted a rock that looked like a wee penis but I didn't want to stop for a picture. On the map there's something called the Devil's Elbow it's roughly in the same area...is it the same thing?
Once we crested the hill the shot walk down to the car park was a blessing on the hips. It had been a long day and I was glad to see the car.
I think Pieplough and I were happy to have some company for the last part of the walk so I'd like to say thanks to Hazel and Meg for sticking with us to the end, you guys made the last part of the walk more less painful. Now, could you drive us back to Glasgow?
The drive back was very tough, I was tired and was making stupid errors especially going through Perth, lots of clutch issues.
Just outside of Glasgow the rain was coming down so hard that the window wipers weren't keeping up with it and we slowed to 40mph. We were thinking to ourselves that we got pretty good weather compared to this!
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Walked with my friend Matthew)