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So this was the day that I thought would never come, my daughter Lucy coming out on the hills with me. She has always shown an interest and had mentioned that she might come along but I didn't think she would actually do it. To be fair to her she was the same with running and once she came out with me a few times she got hooked and is now regularly seen pounding the streets of Rutherglen.
Anyway back to the hills. When I mentioned on the forum a while back that I was looking for some easy hills to climb, the fine fellow that is Leithy Suburbs suggested the Cairnwell Three. So that was to be our destination.
We were on our way by 7.15am and reached Glenshee about 9.30. Into the cafe for coffee and cakes and then we were off.
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- Wearing borrowed clothes
'Mum are these walking poles just for show?'
'No, no you will be needing them later, trust me!'
As you can see from the photo, it was a bit dreich but I was hopeful it would brighten up later. As we passed one of the ski centre staff he asked us what our route was and told us to be mindful of coming off The Cairnwell because the scree was very slippy and someone had taken a bit of a tumble earlier. I reassured him that we would be careful and we would see him about 5ish. 'Yeah just in time for the sun to come out' he said! Crikey!! 'Hope he's wrong' I thought.
So it was up round the back of the restaurant and fairly easy climb up the track to Carn Aosda.
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- No 1 for Lucy
We had a quick chat with a couple at the summit, they were just out to do a couple of hills and then heading home. They kindly took our photo and congratulated Lucy on her first munro.
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- Me and my baby
I asked Lucy if she wanted to head up to The Cairnwell first or head out to Carn a Gheoidh. She said she would rather get the further away one done next. We followed the bulldozed track until it ran out and then picked up a rather boggy path. We were distracted from the mud by the sight of the lovely Loch Vrotachan and stopped to watch a couple of people fishing down near the hut. By now the rain was really tipping down and I took a very quick photo of Lucy with the loch in the background.
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- A very wet Lucy
Despite the rain we enjoyed the walk out and tried to follow the path as best as we could. After about 40 mins Carn nan Sac came into our misty view on our left-hand side and then in front of us was Carn a Gheoidh. After a steepish climb, using the poles!, we got up onto the stony plateau. We spotted a shelter and went over for a wee peek.
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- Room for a small one?
Lucy led the way and was soon at summit number two.
While Lucy sat in the shelter I wandered over to another cairn and tried to peer through the mist to get some kind of view but there was nothing!!!
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As we made our descent I asked what she thought of it all so far. She said that she was a bit disappointed at not having any views and she thought she would have seen some kind of wildlife. She was right it had been a bit on the boring side. I dug out the map and suggested that instead of retracing our steps we could return by another route. I did warn her that there may not be path and it would take us a wee bit longer. 'No, that's fine, I don't mind' Visibility had improved a bit so we headed south east towards Allt a Choire Dhirich. It was on the way down that we got the best treat of the day, a herd of about twenty deer right in front of us!!!! We stood completely still and as I reached into my pocket to get my iPhone to take a photo, a grouse came screeching out of the heather right beside us!!! I don't know who screamed loudest, me or Lucy but needless to say the deer vanished in a flash!!! I could have throttled that pesky bird, why do they do that???
Luckily we did catch sight of lots of hares and enjoyed watching their tails bobbing about the hillside. And of course we had the omnipresent frogs to freak us out. No problems getting photos of them!
Time was getting on and with Carn nan Sac on our left and The Cairnwell on our right we followed the burn upstream. We had a really steep climb on some wet slippery stones and for the first time that day Lucy looked a bit uncomfortable. I told her to really use her poles and she was fine but a wee bit shaky. I checked on the GPS and we were now at 873m. With the summit of The Cairnwell at only 933m I told Lucy that there was hardly any more climbing to do.
' Mum do I really need to do it?' She wasn't whinging, she just didn't want to go to the top.
'No of course you don't'
I left her sitting happily on a rock and reassured her that I would away no more than 20 minutes. I left her my iPhone just in case!!!
There is a good path here, so minus my rucksack I sprinted up to the summit, mmmmm not very impressive! Had a quick look for a trig point, couldn't see one and legged it back down. I had used my walking poles to mark the path that I used and sure enough I was back with Lucy in no time. We followed the path around the hill until the lovely Loch Vrotachan came back into view.
We were soon back on the broad track and headed back to the ski centre pretty much the way we had come up.
Although this wasn't the fastest or most direct route, I kept in mind what we had been told about the slippery scree and kept to the safer option. As our car came back into view the sun burst through the clouds and what time was it??? Five o'clock!!!!
And that was it, our adventure was over. Lucy managed 2.9 munros- what a girl! Once we were in clean dry clothes and on our way home I could relax a wee bit and enjoyed the journey. As for Lucy she was fast asleep in 5 minutes, no doubt dreaming about our next girls' day out- spa day followed by cocktails at the Corinthian! Bring on the robes and fluffy slippers
