free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
An exciting trip to Ailsa Craig had been the plan for today, but sadly that had been cancelled due to wind. On the bright side, the weather forecast was otherwise excellent for hillwalking (P.S. I think the low pressure systems the UK usually gets have been going to the Continent recently, hence the report title
), so we took the opportunity to fill an obvious gap in the Munro list close to Glasgow: Ben Vane. The car park was already almost full at 9.30am, and the parking meter (a hefty £4 for a day) didn't accept the new pound coins
or, and the card bit was broken. We managed to stump up £2 in smaller coins which gave us four hours for the full walk - in the end, it took about 4 1/2.
The walk itself was great - it was a weekend so there were plenty of others doing the same route, but we got the summit pretty much to ourselves. A few people were struggling with one of the scrambles higher up - all of the bits involving hands are avoidable, but you sometimes need to go searching for the alternative path.
